A Matter of Life and Death

the door to the judge’s chambers.
“It’s not locked,” Carasco said. “Come on in.”
The door opened, and Hennessey forgot all about his case.
“Ah, Stacey. I was in trial all day, and I didn’t get a chance to call. I’m afraid I can’t have dinner tonight. I have a ton of work to catch up on and the trial ran late, so I have to burn the midnight oil.”
Stacey’s smile disappeared. She was so beautiful and she looked so disappointed that Hennessey wanted to comfort her.
Carasco turned to the deputy DA. “Ian, this is Stacey Hayes, the daughter of a friend. She’s in town job hunting. Stacey, this is Ian Hennessey, one of our brighter DAs.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Ian said, feeling instantly stupid for saying something so trite.
Stacey smiled. “Were you involved in Tony’s case?”
“I was,” Hennessey answered, hoping desperately that this stunning woman wouldn’t ask about the outcome and think he was a loser. The judge came to the rescue.
“Say, I just had an idea,” Carasco said. “Ian, do you have dinner plans?”
“Uh, no,” said Hennessey, who had been resigned to a takeout dinner from one of the local food carts.
“I have a reservation for two at Bocci’s, one of my favorite Italian restaurants,” Carasco said. “It would be a shame to waste it. Why don’t you take Stacey? She’s new in town. You can give her the rundown on what to do in Portland.”
Hennessey couldn’t believe his luck. “Sure, if Miss Hayes…”
“It’s Stacey if we’re going to talk all evening. And I’d love to get your take on what’s good in Portland.”
“Then that’s settled,” Carasco said. “You two scram so I can get some work done.”
Hennessey and Stacey left, and Carasco smiled. Everything was going as planned.

CHAPTER TEN
Erika thanked Robin over and over until they said goodbye outside the courthouse.
“You were terrific,” Mark Berman said as the law partners headed back to their office.
“I was lucky the State’s key witness was honest, because I don’t know what I would have done if we’d lost and Carasco put Erika in jail.”
When Robin returned to her office, she met with Loretta Washington, a five-foot-one African American dynamo, whom Robin had nicknamed “The Flash,” because she was always in motion. The firm had been bringing in too much business for Mark and Robin to handle alone, so they had hired two associates. Loretta, like Robin, was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She’d grown up in the Bronx, graduated from Queens College in New York, and traveled to Portland when she’d received a full ride from Lewis & Clark Law School. Loretta had finished fifth in her class, had clerked on the Oregon Supreme Court, and was not only a brilliant appellate attorney but was showing promise as a trial lawyer. She was also fun to be around.
Loretta had researched an evidence issue Robin wanted to raise in a brief and had advised against it for very sound reasons. Robin accepted Loretta’s analysis reluctantly before sending her on her way. By the time she finished the conference, the sun was down, and Robin was wiped out from the trial and starving. She grabbed some sushi to go and took the bus to her apartment.
Jeff was in Central Oregon investigating a personal injury case for Mark. When she flipped on the light in their apartment, she saw that the dishwasher was open and the sink was full of her dirty dishes. A note on the dishwasher in Jeff’s handwriting asked her to run it.
Living with Jeff had, for the most part, been great. Robin loved Jeff and he loved her, but that didn’t mean that everything was always rosy. Robin was fiercely independent and had an aversion to being ordered around her whole life. She had sued the school board and won when they refused to let a girl wrestle on the boys’ high school team. She had rebelled against going to a state law school and instead had excelled at a top law school on the East Coast, a part of the country that the people in her small farming community talked about in whispers. Her mother’s fondest wish was for Robin to come home, marry a nice, local boy, and have children, but Robin had moved to Oregon. Her independent streak extended to her career as a lawyer, during which, to Jeff’s dismay, she had risked her life for a client or friend on more than one occasion.
That wasn’t the only trait of Robin’s that upset Jeff. He was a neat freak, and Robin was not. She left newspapers scattered around after she read them, she didn’t make the bed, and she, as Jeff had duly noted, tossed dirty dishes in the sink without rinsing them off or taking the time to put them in the dishwasher.
Jeff had tried to impose his sense of order on Robin soon after they’d started living together. Robin resented any effort to control her, no matter how small, and this had been a source of tension in an otherwise happy relationship. Robin ignored the note. She would run the dishwasher when she was good and ready.
Thinking about her mother made Robin feel guilty. Her father had always supported her. He was the one who hired the lawyer to fight the school board when it had ruled that she couldn’t wrestle on the boys’ team, and he encouraged her to go to law school at Yale, but her dad had passed away, and Robin felt bad about living so far from her mother. Her three brothers still lived in town. They were married, had kids, and visited often. Sometimes, Robin felt like the black sheep in the family because she wasn’t there for her mom, even though she was the most successful child.
Robin thought about calling home, but she was too exhausted to put up with her mother’s questions about when she was going to visit and whether she still enjoyed her job, and her lengthy play-by-play of