Certain Prey

kitchen.
    Carmel was looking for what she called a peel. If she could get her fingernails under some aspect of a story, or some aspect of a witness, she could peel the testimony back and damage the witness’s credibility. She’d begun to think that she could peel the dog-walker. He was divorced, and carried two convictions for domestic assault, which hurt any witness if there were enough women on the jury. She could get the women, all right. The problem was getting the assault conviction before the jury, since the average judge might mistakenly consider it irrelevant.
    The dog-walker lived near the restaurant and knew the restaurant owner by sight. Had the dog-walker and his ex-wife ever eaten at the restaurant? Had they ever had an argument in the restaurant, when they were breaking up? Might the dog-walker have bad feelings about the restaurant, or its owner, even if they were unconscious?
    It was all bullshit, but if she could implicitly ask, “Can you believe the testimony of an admitted brutal wife-beater?” of twelve women good and true . . . That would be a definite peel.
    She was dialing her client when her secretary stuck her head into Carmel’s office, unannounced, and asked, “Did you hear about Hale Allen’s wife?”
    Carmel’s heart jumped into her throat, and she dropped the phone back on its base. “No, what?” she asked. She was one of the top three defense attorneys in the Twin Cities, and her face showed all the emotion of a woman who has been asked the outside temperature.
    “She’s been killed. Murdered.” The secretary couldn’t quite keep the relish out of her voice. “In a downtown parking garage. The police are saying it was a professional assassination. Like a mob hit.”
    Carmel hushed her voice, while letting the natural interest-show through. “Barbara Allen?”
    The secretary stepped in and let the door close behind her. “Jane Roberts said the cops came and got Hale, and they rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. She was already dead.”
    “Oh my God, the poor woman.” Carmel’s hand went to her throat. And she thought: I didn’t do this. And she also thought: I was sitting right here, where everybody could see me.
    “We’re thinking we should get some money together and send some flowers,” the secretary said.
    “Do that: that’s a good idea,” Carmel said. She found her purse beside her desk, and dug inside. “I’ll start it with a hundred.” She rolled the cash out on the desk. “Is that enough?” L ATE THAT AFTERNOON, on the open-air balcony of her fabulous apartment, a gin and tonic in her hand, Carmel worried: gnawed a thumbnail, a bad habit she’d carried with her since grade school, chewing the nail down to the quick. For the first time since the infatuation with Hale Allen had begun, she stepped outside of herself and looked back.
    She’d often told her clients, those who were more or less professional criminals, that they could never think of all the possible ways to screw up a crime. However many ways you cover yourself, there’s always some way that you are not covered.
    Carmel had considered the possibility of killing Barbara Allen herself. She’d never killed anything before, but the thought didn’t particularly bother her. She could pull the trigger, all right. But the devil was in the details, and there were too many details. How would she get a gun? If she bought one, there’d be a record of the purchase. She could use it and throw it away, but if the cops came asking for it, “The dog ate it” would be insufficient.
    She could steal one, but she could get caught stealing it. And she’d have to steal it from one of two or three people she knew who had guns, and that might point a finger at her. She could try to come up with a fake ID—a crime in itself—but she was memorable enough that a gun-store clerk, asked later about the purchaser, might well remember her, especially if prompted by a photo.
    Then there was the killing itself. She could do it. She could do anything she put her mind to. But, as she’d warned her clients, mistakes, accidents, or even random chance could ruin even the best-planned crime. With murder, in the state of Minnesota, a mistake, accident or random error meant spending thirty years in a nonfabulous room the size of a bathtub.
    In the end, she’d decided the least risky way was to go with a pro. She had plenty of untraceable cash stashed in her bank deposit box, and she had Rolando D’Aquila,