Nursery Crimes Read Online Free Page A

latest
Hellboy
or
Eightball
on the very day it’s issued, he’s completely inconsolable.
    “Thanks, sweetie.” I finally found a pair of leggings with relatively intact seams, threw one of Peter’s freshly laundered dress shirts over it, and accented the ensemble with a jauntily tied scarf. I looked at myself critically in the full-length mirror. At least my hair looked good. I’d dyed it to match Ruby’s red curls. I’d even kept dyeing it while pregnant, figuring that the damage to the baby from an ugly and depressed mother would be worse than whatever the hair dye might do to him.
    “Not bad for a fat girl,” I said.
    “You are NOT fat. You’re pregnant. You look great.” Peter walked over to me and slid his arms around my waist, his hands gently cupping my protruding belly. I leaned back against his chest and smiled. My husband always knows how to make me feel sexy. The night before I gave birth to Ruby, he gave me a black, lace maternity negligee and told me that nothing turned him on like the sight of my huge, pregnant body. What a guy. I have no idea if he was telling the truth, but I decided tobelieve him. We’re both convinced that the subsequent events were what put me into labor. Who needs labor-inducing medication when you’ve got a willing and able man around?

Three
    T HE office of the Federal Public Defender is in downtown L.A., in the U.S. Courthouse. I had always loved appearing in those courtrooms; the large, wood-paneled rooms have a solemn ambience that well matches the seriousness of the proceedings that take place there. The defender offices are, on the contrary, fairly typical, hideous, government offices with dingy carpeting and glaring, fluorescent lights. The low-rent atmosphere never helped convince my clients that their lawyer was competent and capable. Criminal defendants, like the rest of the world, tend to believe the old adage “You get what you pay for.” Since the indigent don’t have to pay their appointed counsel, they usually feel like they are getting their money’s worth. The constant battle to convince drug dealers and bank robbers that I was good enough for them had contributed to the malaise that eventually precipitated my departure from the office.
    Walking into the office that day, I felt an almost overwhelmingpang of nostalgia and longing. I missed the place. I missed going to court. I missed my clients. I even missed the lunatics I used to work with. Criminal defense lawyers are a strange lot, arrogant and usually somewhat nuts, but genuinely and fiercely committed both to their clients and their ideals. You need a special personality to take on the forces of the government day after day, particularly when most people despise what you do and generally feel quite comfortable telling you that. I can’t count how many times people have asked me, usually in tones bordering on disgust, what I would have done if I ever found out that a client of mine was guilty. I always reply that the real question is what I would have done if I had ever found out that a client of mine was innocent. The truth is that I probably would have collapsed with horror. If you do your best, lose, and a guilty person goes to jail, at least you can sleep at night knowing you’ve done your job. If you do your best, lose, and an innocent person goes to jail, that could pretty much ruin your life. Since, no matter how good a lawyer she is, most of a public defender’s clients end up in jail, defending a truly innocent person would be a nightmare.
    I tamped down my emotions enough to have a nice lunch with Marla. I even managed to limit my discussion of Abigail Hathaway’s death to my feelings of shock and my ambivalence over whether to tell Ruby. I refrained from accusing prominent local businessmen of murder. When we got back from our Chinese chicken salads, I said good-bye and went out to the elevator bank, punched the down button, and tried to resist the little voice in my head. If the