My cell phone buzzed as I was exiting the highway into the commercial district. Traffic had been murder at four o'clock on a Friday night. It reminded me of our trip to see Talia's folks tonight. But the phone call wasn't from Talia. The call was from Ernesto Ramirez.

"Hello," I said with as little feeling as I could muster.

"You said before-you made me an offer before. I tell you what I know and you keep me out of it."

"Right, I said that. The longer you take to tell me, the harder it will be for me to use the information, the more I'll need your live testimony."

"What does that-"

"It means tell me right now, Ernesto. Right. Now."

There was a pause. Electricity shot through me. I thought it was actually coming.

"Not over the phone," he said.

"Okay," I said, trying to conceal my reaction. I'd broken through. Easy and calm was now the right approach. "Where and when?"

"Later today," he said. "I'll have to figure out how. No phones, though. Face-to-face."

"Then make it very soon. I'll meet you anywhere. Don't keep me waiting, Ernesto," I told him. "Do not keep me waiting."

9.

I HUNG UP WITH ERNESTO AND TRIED TO KEEP MY expectations low. He seemed ready to play ball, but a promise wasn't anything more than a promise. Still, the more he'd held out, the more valuable his information appeared to be, the more my hopes rose in the air like they were filled with helium.

Talia called my cell as I was walking back into my office building. "Hi, babe," I said. "I'm trying to wrap everything up. I'm at the finish line."

"Great. Okay," she said, somewhat distractedly. I could hear Emily making a yelping sound near the phone. "Remember it's supposed to rain tonight. It would be good to get on the road as early as possible."

"Right. I just have to wait to hear from that guy I told you about, Ramirez. I'm on his schedule, not the other way around." Talia and I had been over this briefly this morning, but like most disjointed conversations while caring for a newborn, there had been no real resolution.

"And this matters, even if you're at the finish line?"

"It depends on what it is he gives me," I said. "We haven't formally decided to rest our case, and even if we do, if I uncover something huge, the judge would let us reopen."

Talia tended to Emily a moment. I was used to such interruptions. I waited her out.

"Does that mean you're planning on working this weekend, too? I mean, if this is 'something huge,' does that mean you aren't coming?"

I didn't have a good answer to that. "I don't know. He said he'd call me soon. I don't know 'til I know."

"That's not very helpful, Jason."

"I don't know what else to say. These are unusual circumstances."

"Are they?" Talia's tone sharpened.

"Yes," I said. "They are. This guy's life is hanging in the balance, Tal. He's being accused of murder and I might be coming upon evidence that proves it didn't happen the way they say. I'd put that down as unusual circumstances. Wouldn't you?"

"I'm just wondering if we're going to have an evolving standard of 'unusual.' That's all. Is there always going to be something? Am I going to be raising our children alone?"

"That's not fair-"

"You know what? I'm tired and nauseated and cranky, and right now I'm not in the mood for you to tell me what's 'fair.' I believe you told me last night that Paul told you to go with us this weekend, not to worry about anything else."

"But that was before Ramirez agreed to-"

"Okay. Jason? Just-stay here, okay? Stay here and go the extra mile for a man who you think is guilty of just about everything they're accusing him of doing."

"Talia, just-just give me an hour or two, okay? Two hours," I decided. "Two hours."

NINETY MINUTES CAME AND WENT. No call from Ernesto Ramirez. Paul Riley called my cell with a quick question about a document. Then, sensing something, he asked, "Where are you?"

"Office," I said.

"I thought you were going with your wife this weekend."

"I am. I'm just waiting for somebody."

"Tell me what you're doing."

I sighed. "Ernesto Ramirez. You remember that guy I told you about?"

"Jason, Jason. He's waiting to talk to Ernesto Ramirez," Paul said to someone. I heard Joel Lightner laugh and call out, "Dead end, kid!" I heard our client, Hector Almundo, say, "Tell him to go with his family."

"Well," Paul summarized, "the universal conclusion of your senior partner, your client, and your private investigator is that you should forget about this guy and go be with your family."

"I'll take that under advisement," I said.

"Hey kid-seriously. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. I've been you. But it's late in the game, and I think your part is done. You've done a phenomenal job and your family has earned a day or two of your time."

"Understood," I said. "But if-"

"That's an order, kid." The last thing I heard, before Paul hung up, was the sound of Joel Lightner and Hector Almundo laughing.

Well, laugh, I thought. It will just make that rabbit all the more magical.

HALF PAST SIX. Still no call from Ramirez. I was back on the phone with Talia.

"What's the delay?" she asked me.

"I don't know. He-I don't know. I tried his cell and he didn't answer. But I think it will be soon."

"You think it will be soon."

"Maybe 'hope' is a better word. What if-"

"Jason."

"-we waited until tomorrow morning-"

"Jason."

I stopped. There was an icy calm to my wife's voice.

"Emily and I are going now. You feel like you have to wait there, and I feel like I can't wait any longer. I'll call you when I get to my mother's."

I let out a long, sorrowful sigh. "Talia, baby, I swear that this won't always be like this. I promise."

There was a long pause. It sounded like my wife was crying. I wanted to fill the space with more promises, but I wasn't sure they helped. A promise never made is better than a promise broken, and I'd fractured plenty of them since this trial started.

"Say good-bye to Em." Talia's voice had choked off; she barely got the words out with emotion filling her throat. I heard her away from the phone. "Daddy's saying bye-bye, honey."

"Bye, sweetheart," I called into the phone. "Have fun with Grandma and Grandpa, Em. I love you, sweetie."

"Okay." Talia took the phone back. "Bye."

"I love you," I said, but the line had already gone dead.

And that was the last I heard from my wife. I spent the next four hours bouncing off the walls at my law office, cursing Ernesto Ramirez for the delay, making silent vows to Talia and Emily Jane, going online to investigate possible vacation spots for after the trial. Things would be better after this case. I would make it up to both of them. It wouldn't always be like this. This trial was the exception, not the rule.

When the phone rang four hours after we spoke, I thought it might be Talia, safely at her parents' house. Or I thought it might be Ramirez, finally agreeing to meet with me. In that brief flash of time as the phone rang, it didn't occur to me that she always dialed my direct line or the cell, not the general line that was ringing, nor did it occur to me that Ramirez would have probably used the cell phone number I'd given him.

Mr. Kolarich, I'm Lieutenant Ryan with the State Troopers.

I'm afraid I have some bad news, sir.

I don't remember with any specificity the next two hours. I remember my dumbfounded, illogical comments to the state trooper-she couldn't be dead, I just spoke to her a few hours ago; are you sure it was my wife and child in the SUV bearing our license plate, on the route we always took to her parents' house? I don't remember driving until I got to the backup on that county road, at which time I pulled the car over and jogged over a mile to the scene, blocked off with cones and tape and squad cars. The story was easy enough to discern without explanation; no doubt the other drivers, sitting idle in the traffic jam behind us, could have figured out what happened, too. That tricky curve in the road, the incessant rain bringing a one-two combo of poor visibility and a slick driving surface: Some car had gone over the embankment.

Looks like they died on impact, another state trooper told me, as we stood at the curve in the road that Talia had missed, by the side railing that had a large piece torn out of it, down at the ravine out of which they had fished Talia's SUV. I remember saying those words over and over for comfort, they died on impact, not believing them, trying to push out the image of Emily restrained in a car seat, underwater, struggling to breathe. No, they died on impact. Painless. No pain.

I remember rain, slapping unapologetically on my shoulders and hair. I don't remember calling my brother, Pete, but I do remember him being there, gently pulling me away, smelling his damp, musty windbreaker as his arm went over my shoulder.

I remember my cell phone ringing, and I remember taking it out of my pocket and throwing it into the ravine.

Various snippets follow: Arguing with the mortician about the amount of makeup on Talia's face as she lay in rest. The wake for my wife and daughter, surrounded by hordes of conservatively attired people, members of my law firm whom I didn't even know, still being a relative newcomer, and deciding that I had no interest in ever knowing them. Paul Riley, in that laid-back style of his, mentioning offhand the acquittal of Senator Hector Almundo on all counts, all thanks to me, and telling me to take all the time I needed before returning to work. Paul cautioning me not to rush to judgment, after I told him that I'd never be returning to Shaker, Riley and Flemming at all. Talia's father, indirectly reminding me, more than once, that I was supposed to be driving Talia and Emily Jane the night they died. Thinking that I should be crying when I wasn't, and shouldn't when I was. Being tired, exceptionally tired.

In hindsight, I was probably a ripe target for them, for everything that happened. After that phone call from the state trooper, after burying my wife and daughter, I had nothing left that I cared about in this world. I had nothing left to lose.

That, more than anything, is why I did what I did. And that, more than anything, is why they wanted me.

ADVICE OF COUNSEL.

Six Months Later: December 2007

10.

I STOMPED MY SHOES OUTSIDE THE DOOR OF MY OFFICE to shake off some accumulated snow. The frosted glass on the door read, in the appropriate order, SHAUNA L. TASKER, ESQ. and JASON KOLARICH, ESQ. "Hey," I said as I passed the administrative assistant whom we share, Marie, who has put her archaeology degree to fine use.

"What's the occasion?" she asked. I didn't feel the need to respond to her commentary on my attendance record. If this law office were a school, I'd have been expelled long ago for truancy. It's not that I don't like practicing law; I just don't like clients very much. They are needy and ungrateful.

"Why don't you go dig under your desk for some Incan deposition transcript or something," I suggested.

After I had spent a few months in a funk, Shauna basically dragged me to this firm and demanded that I rekindle my romance with the legal profession. I have no idea how to be a solo practitioner. Since law school, I'd been a prosecutor-where the cases come to you, thanks to a reliable slew of criminal activity in our fair city-and then a junior partner at Shaker, Riley, where partners like Paul Riley reeled in the clientele and I just did the work. The pattern here is I got to focus on the work without having to stroke some idiot for business and tell him how honored I was to represent him.

Shauna, bless her heart, has thrown a few cases my way, and I have benefited from a few cases courtesy of our upset victory in United States v. Hector Almundo. Most of them are criminal cases, which is fine as long as you get the retainer up front, but few of them are particularly interesting. The heaters-murders or white-collar cases-typically go to larger firms where the lawyer has gray hair.

"Hey," I said, popping my head into Shauna's office. She had her feet up on her desk, reviewing some transactional document. She does courtroom work like me, but she has wisely broadened her practice to handle basically anything else-real estate transactions, start-ups, trusts and wills, any number of commercial transactions. I refuse to do any of that. Put me in a courtroom, in the battle, or leave me alone. She is also active in three different bar associations, which allows her to "network," meaning she has to socialize with other attorneys, which is something else I detest with an intensity I normally reserve for brutal world dictators, or the Dixie Chicks.

So, to summarize: I don't like clients. I don't like transactional work. I don't like small-caliber criminal cases. And I don't like talking to other lawyers. I'm hoping to create a niche in the market for people under indictment for serious felonies who don't require that I converse with them.

"Twice in one week," Shauna observed upon my arrival. "Wow."

"I'm looking to set a personal best," I explained.

"That's the spirit. Just don't overextend yourself."

The attitudes on these women. I started back to my office but then popped back in, wondering what was different about Shauna today. It was the glasses, black horn-rims instead of her usual contacts, and her blond hair was pulled back. "The naughty-librarian look," I noted.

Shauna paused, to show her disapproval, then glared at me over her glasses. "Charming. Very mature." Shauna was easy on the eyes, as they say, more for the sum of her parts than any particular detail-smartly dressed, fit, intelligent-but like most professional women, she didn't like to be thought of as a slab of meat by the knuckle-dragging males in the profession. The reason she'd left her former law firm, in fact, was because the senior partner had certain ideas about the employer-employee relationship that were, let's say, inconsistent with Title VII.

Shauna and I had a few go-rounds in college ourselves, but we quickly recognized that animal sex and compatibility were two different things, and we managed to stay buds afterward. We really didn't have much of a choice back then, because there was a whole gaggle of us packed into a house off-campus, forcing people to double up on rooms, and somehow Shauna had drawn the short straw and gotten me as a roommate. That was after I got kicked off the football team for punching out the team captain, and I was lucky not to have been expelled from the university altogether. Had the team captain pressed charges, I would have been toast, but I think he found the whole thing embarrassing, considering he was an all-conference offensive lineman who was flattened by someone a hundred pounds and four inches his lesser.

My office would appear, to the untrained eye, to be abandoned. I had a couch that my brother had spotted me in one corner, shelving with law books, and a desk with nothing on it but a computer. I didn't like coming here, because it reminded me that someday soon, I was going to run out of money from my days at the silk-stocking law firm, and I'd have to get off my ass and restart my career. It was hard to imagine doing it here, but I didn't have a better idea. For several months after the bottom fell out, I'd received weekly calls from Paul Riley or someone else from the firm, asking me back when I was ready. But I couldn't go back there. And I couldn't stomach the idea, at this point, of answering to anyone else. As surprising as it may seem, given my overall sunny outlook on life, I don't like being told what to do, and I don't like having to be nice to people.

To summarize: I don't want to work for anyone else, or for myself.

My intercom buzzed at about ten o'clock. "Someone to see you," said Marie.

I hadn't expected anyone. "Do you want to give me a hint?" I asked. "We could play twenty questions."

"No, I'm happy to tell you, if you'd like."

Always the attitude.

Marie said, "Her name is Esmeralda Ramirez."