Fighting Chance(33)

“You can’t make this all your fault,” she said to him. “If he won’t talk to you, he won’t talk to you.”

“I know,” Russ said.

“He won’t talk to Gregor, either. I talked to Bennis. Gregor is going crazy.”

“I know,” Russ said again.

“You can’t do this,” Donna said. “You’ll make yourself sick. What if you make yourself too sick to work and then he does want to talk to you? What will happen then?”

“He won’t want to talk to me,” Russ said. “You didn’t see him. You didn’t see his eyes.”

“I saw that damned video,” Donna said. “I saw that.”

“You can’t see his eyes in the video,” Russ said.

And that was true.

But it didn’t matter what was true.

And when morning came, Russ left the living room and went upstairs to the master bedroom and took a shower.

If he’d expected the shower to shake him out of the mood he was in, he’d have been mistaken. But he hadn’t expected any such thing. He was numb from head to foot. He thought he could stick a needle into his side and not even notice.

When he came down from showering and dressing and behaving as if nothing were the matter, Donna was waiting for him in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, and his briefcase.

“I didn’t cook anything,” she said. “You’re acting as if you wouldn’t want it. But I will cook something. You only have to say the word.”

“I’m late for the office.”

Donna kissed him. Russ was sure she had. He couldn’t feel it, but he saw her lean over toward his cheek. The boys were not up. That was very odd. They usually woke very early, far earlier than he did himself. Of course, they had both been very restless the night before. Tommy had watched the news, and he was smart enough to understand it. The baby was just good at picking up signals that something was wrong, and when he did, he fussed.

Russ got out of the house as quickly as he could and into his car and then downtown, down to where the traffic was. He loved the sound of the traffic. It made him feel almost instantly better. The whole world had not stopped. There were still people going places.

When he got upstairs, the receptionist was at the front desk, looking bright and blond. The secretaries were typing away in the peripheral offices. The door to Mac Cafton’s office was open, and Mac was standing at the side of his desk, waiting.

Mac Cafton was Russ’s almost-new partner. They’d been together for less than four years, but before that, they worked together for years in a large multi-partner firm that they had both hated. When they had decided to go out on their own, going on together seemed a better idea than trying to fly solo. It had not, however, been easy, and Mac was always on the verge of bleeding ulcers.

Mac moved toward the reception area as soon as he saw Russ come in. Russ gave up any thought of getting into his own office without a conversation.

“Hey,” Mac said.

“Hey,” Russ said.

“You want to come in? I’ve been worried about you.”

The receptionist flashed him yet another big smile. Russ made himself go into Mac’s office.

Mac closed the door behind him. “I have been worried about you,” he said. “You were a mess when you went home yesterday and you look like you’re a mess now.”

“I am,” Russ said. “I’m sorry. I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

“You can go home for the day, if you want,” Mac said. “Or just hang around here and take it easy. I can handle most of what needs to be handled. I don’t know how your clients will feel about having to deal with me instead of you, but we can work around that if we’re careful.”

Russ shook his head. “No. Thank you, but no. I’ve got to snap myself out of this sooner or later. Donna asked me this morning what I would do if Tibor suddenly changed his mind and wanted to see me and I was too sick to do anything about it. I suppose she had a point.”

“I tried to talk to Tibor myself about an hour ago.”

“Did you? How did it go?”

“No joy,” Mac said. “Got told by a very polite policewoman that he wasn’t interested.”

“You should have expected that,” Russ said. “It’s not just me he isn’t talking to. He wouldn’t talk to a public defender, either.”

“I remember, but people can be odd about this kind of thing. I thought he might not want a public defender, because he didn’t want a public defender. And I thought he might not want to talk to you because he was embarrassed.”