Page 126 of Lethal Prey

“Is the jury going to believe Bends? That he didn’t do it?” Virgil asked.

“Don’t know,” Roller said. “I believe him. The jury might think otherwise. ’Cause he is a biker, and he looks and talks like a biker.”

“You’re making me unhappy, here,” Lucas said.

“It’s gonna be tough. But we’ve got all the other stuff. That Fisk was at Bee, had access to the knife, that she was dating Carlson at the time of the murder and lied about it, that she lived next to the park. We’ve got the law student battered as Marcia Wise was…”

“They got those fuckin’ shoe prints,” Virgil said.

Roller: “Yeah. They got the shoe prints.”

They talked about all of it for a while, until Virgil asked the question: “What do you think?”

Roller considered, then said, “Fifty-fifty.”

“I don’t want fifty-fifty. I want ninety-ten,” Lucas said. “She killed them all.”

“Get me the hard evidence, and I’ll use it,” Roller said.

“I promised Frankie I’d hang her,” Virgil said. “Now I’m afraid it’s the jury that’s gonna get hung.”

—

On another frigidDecember evening, Fisk welcomed Gray to her yellow house. Snow was falling outside, big slowflakes drifting sideways across the street. Gray brushed off his parka and stampedsnow off his feet before entering. Fisk had been reviewing all the information that came out of the discovery process and had built a fire with white-barked birch logs in the living room fireplace.

The smell of the burning birch, the snow flurry outside the window, was like an old-fashioned New England Christmas by Robert Frost or somebody else literary…maybe Dickens?

The snow globe scenery didn’t fit the occasion.

When Gray sat down, Fisk pulled her feet up under her and asked, “What do you think?”

“Not that again.”

“C’mon. I want to know.”

Gray looked into the fire, the crackling logs.

“Gonna be complicated, Mandy. I can only tell you one thing for sure. We’re gonna take your husband’s size ten-and-a-half shoes, which were all over the site where Doris’s body was found, and stick them so far up the prosecution’s ass that they’ll need a winch to get them out. We’re gonna hang Timothy. You might find that upsetting, but we don’t have a choice.”

“Well, you know…Timothy’s dead. So I’m okay with that. But we’re not in a great place, Earl—it’s not all good.”

Gray sighed, and said, “No, it’s not. They’ve got quite a list of dead bodies. We’ll challenge them, and the judge might eliminate some of them, but I don’t think he’ll throw out all of them.”

“The dead bodies have nothing to do with me, Earl,” Fisk said. “Give me a number.”

“If I gotta…sixty-forty for a hung jury,” Gray said. “No better than forty percent for an outright acquittal or an outright conviction.”

The goddamn dogs were sitting there, looking at her expectantly,maybe with indictments in their beady eyes, canine accusations. It occurred to Fisk that if the prosecution had been able to call the dogs as witnesses, she’d be done.

She turned and held out two hands toward the fireplace, feeling the heat.

Gray: “Feeling the heat?”

“A little,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell you what, Earl. Sixty-forty for a hung jury? I’ll take that. I’ll take that. I got faith.”

She stood up and reached behind a mantel clock that Timothy had inherited from his mother, and that she planned to throw in the trash as soon as she was clear of the trial. She’d hidden two of the Chuckit!s there, and she took one in each hand and threw them over her shoulders.

The two Jack Russells went careening down the living room rug, jumping, tumbling, chasing the bouncing blue-and-orange balls.

“Sixty-forty,” Fisk said, as she and Gray turned to watch the dogs. “Sixty-forty, you little fuckers.”