“You may think of them as vitals,” I tell her. “Me? I think of them as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And by the way, I looked it up, and blood pressure isn’t technically considered a vital sign, you just measure it along with those other bad boys. Or girls, as the case may be.”
“I thought I was the one who did the homework for both of us when we had a first-period quiz,” she says.
It turns out my blood pressure has risen over its normal numbers.
“We’ll just write that off to where you’re headed after leaving here,” she says.
“You realize my brain needs all the blood it can get today, right?”
“Look at it this way,” she says, offering a crooked grin. “Lack of the proper amount never seems to have slowed you down before.”
“I’ve probably mentioned this before, doc,” I say, “but you’re never going to make it as a stand-up comic.”
“Wait,” she says, “check this one out: A lawyer walks into a doctor’s office …”
“You know what’s funny about doctor’s offices?” I tell her. “Not a single goddamn thing.”
Just like that, the funny goes out of her.
“You can do this,” she says quietly.
“Just about everybody who says they love me keeps suggesting that Ican’tdo this,” I say. “And they all seem to know me pretty well.”
“I’ve known you longer.”
I’ve seen her cry before when we’ve been seated across from each other like this. Every time she has, I’ve pointed out, and quite correctly, that it’s the patient who’s supposed to be doing the crying.
I’m afraid she’s about to restart the waterworks, her eyes having turned a telltale shade of pink.
“The last time you cried in front of me,” I say, trying to cut her off at the pass, “I think you even ruinedmymascara.”
Then I add, “They all think the trial is going to kill me,” before I add, “in more ways than one.”
“I simply won’t allow it,” Sam says.
She stands. I stand. She comes around her desk and we fall into a hug and then she is crying. But I stand strong. No way I’m doing my face all over again.
“You got this,” she says finally.
“Hold the thought,” I say. “But you need to let go of me now.”
She does.
“I’ve never asked you this before,” Sam Wylie says, “and whatever you tell me won’t leave this room. But do you think he killed that family?”
“Which family?” I ask her.
“You know which family.”
I don’t hesitate.
“No,” I say.
FIFTY-THREE
AS LOUSY AS I feel most mornings, I arrive in Mineola to an important reminder that there is still a ritual of which I never tire:
The walk I am taking toward the courthouse; my dear friends in the media waiting for me outside; the few minutes of back-and-forth I will spend with them; then through the doors and through the metal detectors before eventually making my way into the courtroom for one more murder trial—maybe my last—the kind that Jimmy Cunniff calls boxing without blood.
