Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) Read Online Free Page A

for her contact information. Her handwriting was neat and blocky—she could have been an architect if she hadn’t gone into law. “She left this address and phone for you.”
    Arlen held out his hand. He looked at the postcard for a long moment as if it might tell him something—a secret message, a code to unpack letter by letter. Will saw the transformation: Arlen’s face, usually as placid as a mountain lake, turning stormy.
    “This woman—” Arlen shook his head, choking off words.
    “What?”
    “Nothin’.”
    “She’s a little bit of a freak, isn’t she?” Will said—anything to keep Arlen talking. “Like she’s part psychic.”
    “Naw, she ain’t psychic.” Arlen’s fingers twitched at his side. “Man, if I could tell you how many times I dreamed… He met Will’s eye full on—a stare tough as oak. “All I’m saying is that I couldn’t’ve committed the act of murder
before
they locked me up.”
    Will hesitated. The boy cop’s words echoed in his ears:
Prison will change a man
. “And now?”
    “I’m just saying—that girl best not be coming around if she knows what’s good for her.” He crumpled her note in one fist and tossed it back to Will. “Throw it away.”
    Will shoved it in his pocket, out of sight. He didn’t think his friend was capable of murder. Exaggeration, maybe. But not murder. Arlen was angry—and he had every right to be.
    Will looked hard at his new tenant—his shoulders that were more muscled now, his eyes that had lost some of their light. The outlook for men released for false imprisonment wasn’t exactly good. Prison life was a life of violence, where the potential of threat—physical and otherwise—lurked everywhere, ubiquitousand unavoidable as the institutional fluorescent lighting. What kind of man did Arlen have to become to withstand years behind bars? Lambs among wolves did not survive.
    Will got to his feet.
    “You heading down?” Arlen asked.
    “Yeah. Sometimes I actually have work to do. Care to come with?”
    Arlen may have considered it a moment, but he shook his head.
    Will walked across the tiny living room to the door. “I got another one for ya,” he said. “If a lawyer, a judge, and a jury consultant were trapped on a desert island and you could only save one of them, would you go to a movie or out to a bar?”
    “I ain’t going back to jail,” Arlen said. “I’d save them all.”
    By evening, Lauren’s secretary, Rizzi, had called three times. The whole office had gone mad as hatters in Lauren’s absence—mercury in the watercooler. Burt was a complete bear, calling on the interns for tangential research that he obviously didn’t need but absolutely had to have right away. Lauren’s colleague Bryce Pinker was furious because Lauren’s biggest case had been temporarily dumped on him, and he was trying to get Rizzi to take his kids to band practice. And, to top it off, the copier had died.
    “It’s nuts here without you,” Rizzi said. “Like an eclipse, when all the birds go crazy because it’s night in the middle of the day.”
    Lauren chewed an antacid quietly so Rizzi couldn’t hear. “I promise. I’ll be back soon. This shouldn’t take too long.”
    “The quicker, the better.”
    “Have you heard anything about when they might be having the vote?” Lauren asked.
    “Nothing unexpected. But don’t worry, hon. I’m your eyes and ears.”
    “Good,” Lauren said. “You know how much I want to have my name on the door.”
    “Well, maybe being away for a day or two will make them see that you should have been a partner two years ago instead of that deadbeat Rich Weller. But what do I know? I’m just the secretary.”
    Lauren laughed. “I owe you. We’ll go out for tequila when I get back.”
    “Are you the DD?”
    “Yep.”
    “I hope to God they do make you a partner. Somebody’s got to get me a new copy machine.”
    Lauren’s father was less sympathetic than Rizzi when she called to tell him the