The Witness

“No.”
    “Good. Let’s walk down toward the park. I’m taking half an hour. You don’t usually go shopping this late in the afternoon.”
    “I like mornings.” But she’d have to mix it up more, she realized. Routines should never be noticed.
    “Do anything interesting this morning?”
    Somehow they were walking, and he still had her hand. What was she supposed to do about that? “I’m sorry, what?”
    “This morning, did you do anything interesting?”
    She thought of money laundering, Russian mobs, the FBI. “Not particularly.”
    “Now you ask if I did anything.”
    “Oh. All right. Did you?”
    “I spent a lot of it being yelled at or lectured to. As expected, Missy came in to claim she’d tripped, and wanted me to release Ty. She wasn’t happy with the charges against him, or the consequences of them. Now that he’s sober, Ty’s actually taking it better than she is.”
    When Brooks lifted a hand in a wave to someone across the street, Abigail fought back a wince.
    This was
not
being invisible.
    “After she finished yelling at me,” Brooks continued, “she did a lot of crying. When I let them talk to each other, they both did a lot of crying. After that, she hunted up and hauled in a lawyer, one who’s been a pissant his entire life. That’s where the lecturing came into my day. He seems to feel I’m exceeding my authority by offering the rehab and counseling in lieu of a trial and possible jail time.”
    “It isn’t within your authority to set a plea bargain.”
    “You’re both right, so I informed the pissant that was fine. Ty could stay put until we went before the judge, held a bail hearing and so on. And how he could risk spending the next several years in jail.
    “How you doing, Ms. Harris?” he called out to a tiny woman watering a tub of mixed bulbs outside Read More Books.
    “I’m doing, Brooks. How about you?”
    “Can’t complain. Where was I?” he asked Abigail.
    She could feel the tiny woman’s eyes on her as she continued down the sidewalk, hand in hand with Brooks.
    “You told the pissant lawyer Ty could risk spending the next several years in jail. I really need to—”
    “That’s right. So, at that point, Missy and Ty started yelling at each other. Personally, I don’t understand people who stay together when they’ve got so much animosity and contempt for each other they can call each other those kind of names. But Ty got worked up enough to turn it on me, vow to finish what he started last night and kick my ass.”
    “It all sounds dramatic and distressing.”
    “Can’t say otherwise. Ty’s vow didn’t please the pissant, as it made his claim of diminished capacity or whatever the hell he was going for break apart like rotten lumber under a hammer. He was less pleased yet when Ty reached through the bars and got a hand around his pissant throat.
    “Hey, Caliope. Those roses look mighty pretty.”
    A woman in a long, colorful skirt, a huge straw hat and flowered gardening gloves waved from her yard. “I knew you were going to say that.”
    He laughed. “Alma’s daughter. She’s a psychic.”
    Abigail started to explain how doubtful it was that the lady with the gorgeous rosebushes had psychic ability, but Brooks was already continuing the story.
    “I will admit my reflexes might have been just a tad slow pulling Ty off the pissant, due to all the yelling and lecturing.”
    Her head might’ve been spinning a little, but she followed well enough. “You let your prisoner choke his lawyer, and found it satisfying, as you’d have liked to choke him yourself.”
    Brooks gave her arm a swing and grinned at her. “Though it doesn’t reflect well on me, that’s about the truth of it. The pissant quit then and there—and Ty’s sentiments toward him, delivered at the top of his lungs as said pissant retreated, were suggestions of self-gratification I don’t believe the pissant can manage. Missy ran out after the pissant, screaming and sobbing. And as a result of drama and distress, I’m taking half an hour with a pretty woman.”
    “I believe there are people who think the rules, or the law, shouldn’t apply to their particular situation because they’re poor or they’re rich, they’re sad or sick or sorry. Or whatever justification most fits their individual makeup and circumstance.”
    “I can’t argue with that.”
    “But the court system often gives credence to that attitude by makingdeals to those who’ve broken the rules