A Cure for Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

a new partner in crime, someone to share her bad habit, and she, for reasons I would never know, had picked me as a target.
    It wasn't like I was a virgin when it came to drugs: I'd smoked more than my share of pot in high school and college, done coke a few times, had also been known to crawl into the office with a wicked hangover on occasion. But it had all fallen into the category of recreational, nothing where I'd ever felt at risk of losing control. Not until this.
    I'd known as soon as Paul had told me that Beth was dead that my own future was at risk. If anything, I'd underestimated my exposure. While the firm had managed to keep Beth's death from becoming a public scandal, Beth's father had flown to New York and started calling in favors. The next thing I knew, I was being cast as Beth's corruptor, facing utterly false accusations that I'd turned her on to heroin. An investigation was opened and I was interviewed by two detectives, but ultimately it didn't even go to a grand jury.
    While the criminal investigation had been halfhearted and fleeting, Winthrop had also filed a formal complaint against me with the bar, alleging that I had procured the heroin that had killed his daughter. As best I could tell, Winthrop's only basis for this was his own need to believe it, but it wasn't an accusation I could easily disprove either. By then I had resigned from Walker Bentley to avoid being fired; I'd hired a lawyer with my own money to defend me before the bar investigation. Disbarment had been a real possibility, so much so that my six-month suspension for admitted drug use actually came as a relief.
    I had been so swamped with my own troubles that I'd never properly mourned Beth. I hadn't attended her funeral, certain that I would not be welcome. Worst of all was the ugly fact that her death was, in part, a relief: there was a real sense in which I didn't miss her at all, that I felt myself lucky, an escapee. In my bitterest moments, I thought that Beth had died before she could finish totally ruining my life.
    I pushed these thoughts from my mind. It was over, done with; I was where I was. I went to find Myra.
    MYRA GOLDSTEIN had been a public defender ever since law school. Given our office's turnover rate, a half dozen years was enough to make you pretty senior, and Myra now worked exclusively on serious felonies. Even though we were on the same office team, I hadn't really gotten to know her. I'd always found her aloof and a little condescending.
    The door to her office, which she now shared with our newest lawyer, Shelly Kennedy, was closed, which was unusual around here. I knocked, waited, knocked again. I thought I heard a voice on the other side of the door but couldn't make out what it was saying.
    After a moment Myra yanked the door open. She was a brusque, angular woman in her early thirties, with dark, unruly hair that just barely snaked past her shoulders, and bulky hipster glasses. She was pale, with light green eyes that softened the slight harshness that the rest of her conveyed. While Myra was attractive, she appeared either not to know or not to care. She smelled of tobacco more than perfume.
"I said 'Come in,' " she said.
    "I couldn't hear you through the door."
    "You're here on the Tate case," Myra said, moving back behind her desk, stepping lightly around the piles of paper that filled much of the floor of the office.
    "Right," I said, standing awkwardly until I realized that Myra was not going to suggest that I sit, at which point I took Shelly's chair. The office felt especially cramped because of the disarray on Myra's half, which spilled well over into what should've been Shelly's territory.
    "Isaac wants me to have a copilot on this one, I guess."
    "He seems to think it's going to be a big one."
    "Murder cases are all big ones," Myra said dismissively. "Isaac's
just worried I don't have my head in the game."
    "Do you?"
    "Not at the moment. But I will."
    "I'm sorry about the Gibbons verdict," I