Page 132 of The Wrong Side of the Law

“Okay, that’s it. What is your goddamn problem, Lisa?” I snarl the question at her, mopping whisky off my face with a sleeve. Lucky she didn’t get it in my eyes: that would have hurt.

“That was a funeral offering.” That disgusted look is back, but it turns quickly to sadness. “Because you’re dead inside. You’ve lost your humanity. All of it that matters, anyway.”

“No.” I slump over the bar, holding my head in my hands. “I haven’t. And that’s the problem. I loved her, Lisa. I really, truly did. Like an idiot, I let myself fall in love with her.”

“Well, that was kinda-sorta the point of pushing the two of you together.” Lisa says the words with a dry, almost mocking tone, but she puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Why does that make you an idiot?”

“She warned me, Lisa. She fuckingwarnedme. Said her stepmother had even tried to get her to go to bed with me as a way to control me. And she even told me this before we… y’know. Before she did it.” I’m starting to tear up. The alcohol fumes from my clothes must be irritating my eyes. “She told me, Lisa. And I still fell for it. Fell forher.”

“Oh, honey. That’s just…” Lisa gets up from her stool and wraps her arms around me. “That’s not all of it, though, is it?”

“No. It’s not,” I whisper.

God, I don’t want to talk about this, not even with one of my most trusted mentors. Is it the whisky that’s loosening my tongue? Or just some bullshit pop-psychology need to unburden myself?

“I defended her, Lisa. To Whitehall. When he confronted me with evidence of what she’d done, I just couldn’t believe it, and I lied to protect her. She’d gone to the evidence locker to get pictures of something for Kowalski, and when Whitehall showed me the chain of custody logs, I lied and said I’d asked her for pictures, too.”

“But there’s more to it than that.” Lisa’s arms grow tighter around my shoulders. “Go ahead. Get it out in the open.”

“I fired her, Lisa. But only because Whitehall made me. Even after I knew what she’d done, I wouldn’t have fired her. I couldn’t defend her anymore, but I couldn’t have done anything to hurt her unless I was forced to.”

I close my eyes, remembering that day, seeing her crying in my office.

“She confessed what she’d done. And I didn’t turn her in for it. I let her get away with it, when I should have had her arrested for evidence tampering.”

Lisa laughs softly.

“What’s so funny?”

Stupid whisky. My eyes are really leaking now, but if I dry them on my sleeve it’s going to just make things worse. I grab a handful of napkins from the dispenser on the bar and start wiping at my eyes, then blow my nose.

That’s odd. The alcohol fumes should have cleared out my sinuses, not plugged me all up.

“You are, you big goof.” Lisa realizes I don’t understand and explains further. “On the surface of it, you’re mad at Emily because she didn’t live up to your standards, but you can understand why she did it. You don’t want to admit it, but you do. The person you’re really pissed at, though? You’re mad at yourself, becauseyoudidn’t live up to your own standards.”

That’s certainly a different perspective.

“You’re trying to rationalize it away,” Lisa says. “That’s what’s tearing you apart. You knew that Frank Wilson was innocent, and yes, Emily did abuse your trust a little and break the law, but you know that she did it for a good reason. And you know that at the time, there was nothing else on the horizon to save Frank.”

“Lisa, she didn’t just abuse my trust! She manipulated me from the very-”

“Oh, get over yourself,” she interrupts. “You’ve got a serious Javert thing going on here.”

“Ja-who?”

“Javert. FromLes Misérables. A supercop, more or less. A man of conscience and duty, a man who saw everything in black and white. There were no shades of gray, no possibility for him that something could be other than completely right or utterly wrong. But one day he found that his conscience and his duty were pulling him in opposite directions and he had… I guess you could call it a crisis of faith. What you’ve got going on right now.”

“Okay,” I say, intrigued in spite of myself. “I’ve never read the book or seen the play or anything. What happens? Does his conscience win or his duty?”

“Neither,” Lisa answers, her mouth set in a grim line. “The conflict was too great for him to resolve, and he killed himself. Jumped off a bridge.”

“Huh. That doesn’t really help me resolve my own issue, now does it?” I venture a weak laugh. “I don’t think the bridges over the Intracoastal are high enough, anyway.”

“Don’t even joke about that, you asshole,” Lisa snaps. “You have people who love you and care about you.”

“People? Who? Other than—and I’m assuming here—you.”

“Emily Wilson, you idiot.” Lisa pokes me in the forehead. “I’ve known that girl since she was, what, maybe three? Four? She loves you. She’s absolutely devastated that she hurt you, but she couldn’t see any other way to guarantee her brother’s safety.”

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