Though it was getting late when Jill left the police station, she walked next door to the fire station to see if Dan was working. She found him in the weight room bench-pressing, and stood at the door watching him for a moment before he saw her.
She didn’t know why she was here, really. She should be able to handle this. She’d had difficult cases before. Granted, none of them had left her client’s life hanging in the balance. And she’d never had so many surprises in a case, surprises that shouldn’t have been…
But she did believe Celia. She did.
Tears pushed into her eyes, and she sniffed. Dan heard her and looked up. “Jill.” He got up, as if self-conscious about what he was doing, and wiped his face on a towel. “I didn’t know you were here. It’s late.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I was just at the police station. Thought I’d come see if you were here.”
“You’re upset,” he said, looking into her eyes. “Come sit down. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She let him lead her to a folding chair, and he took the weight bench across from her. “Nothing, really,” she said. “I just…uh…I’m having some problems with Celia’s case. I don’t know quite what to do.”
“Has something happened?”
She contemplated telling him. How much was attorney-client privilege? How much was guaranteed to be in the paper tomorrow, anyway? How much would the fire department know in just the next few minutes when the cops started talking?
“Celia’s back in jail.”
“What? Why?”
She got up and walked across the room, picked up a small barbell, set it back down. “She broke a court order and went to see Stan tonight. It just so happens that, after she got caught, they discovered that someone had injected arsenic into his IV bag.”
Dan got slowly to his feet, his mouth open.
“He’s okay. I mean, this new poison didn’t have much time to get into his system. They caught it in time.”
“Jill—”
“I know,” she said, stemming his response. “I know how it looks. Believe me…I know. She’s in jail. They probably won’t let her out. And I don’t know how I’ll fight this.”
Forgetting the sweat he’d worked up, he put his arms around her and pressed her head against his shoulder. She rested in that embrace, thankful that something had the power to bring her that much relief, that much comfort.
“What is she saying?” Dan asked.
Jill pulled back and looked up at him. “That she didn’t do it. Even Stan…he’s saying that an orderly came in before her and switched the bags…Sid is convinced he’s covering for her. But that doesn’t make sense. She would know she’d get caught. Why would she do that?”
“It’s an awful coincidence, Jill,” he said. “For this person to come in and poison him again, and it just happens to be right before she comes? That’s hard to buy.”
“She didn’t do it.” The words were said so weakly that she hardly believed them herself. “She didn’t, Dan. It may look like it to everyone else, but not to us.”
He let her go and sat slowly down. “I want to believe her. I know what it’s like to have people accuse you because of how things look. This town is bad about that. I haven’t forgotten how they almost strung me up. You were the only one who believed in me.”
“I may be the only one who believes in her. But I have to.”
He met her eyes. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’ll be wrong. But she’s my friend, and now she’s my client. I have to get rid of whatever doubts I have.”
“Then you admit you have some?”
She looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t want to, Dan. I don’t want to have doubts about my friend. I look in her eyes, and I believe her. But then when I walk away, and I start adding things up…”
“You start to realize you’re human?”
“I haven’t got time to be human,” she said.