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NORMA TELLS ME THAT McGoey has offered to give her a ride to the train station.

“Does this mean you’re warming up to him?” I ask.

“No,” she says, “it means I never rode in a Maserati.”

When they’re gone, it’s just Katherine Welsh and me alone in the courtroom. I’m still in my chair, mostly because I don’t have the strength to even start thinking about the long ride home.

Welsh comes over.

“Well, to use that last guy’s own words,” she says, “that certainly shocked the shit out of me .”

“Because I accepted him, you mean?”

She raises her perfect eyebrows and nods.

“He did say he thought your guy did it, did he not?” Katherine Welsh says. “As a matter of fact, it sounded like he thinks Mr. Jacobson has left a longer trail of victims than John Wick.”

“I have great confidence in my powers of persuasion,” I tell her, “what can I tell you?”

“I thought about using a challenge just because Norma was so fired up to have you seat him,” she says. “But I decided to roll with it.”

“And the good news is we get to do it all again tomorrow!” I say with completely false enthusiasm.

She remains standing over my table, still looking like a million bucks after a long day of legal grunt work.

“I really only know you by reputation,” she says. “And I know what you said before about being all set to kick my ass. But are you absolutely certain you’re going to be able to see this thing through?”

“Hundred percent,” I say, without any hesitation.

“Well,” she says, “I just wanted to say that.”

“Noted for the record.”

I can’t tell whether she’s trying to be sincere, or just trying to soften me up. When you have been at this kind of work as long as I have, with the scars to prove it even after one win after another, grading high on cynicism and sometimes even paranoia becomes part of your genetic code.

On the other hand, maybe she is being sincere, and isn’t looking for an edge the way I always am.

Most of the time I like being Jane Effing.

Just not always.

“See you in the morning,” I say.

She’s still putting papers into her briefcase when I turn at the door.

“Katherine?” I say.

She swivels her head around.

“Thanks for asking,” I say.

“You’re welcome.”

“By the way? I don’t have any choice but to see this through.”

My words sound surprisingly loud in the empty room.

“Because you’re sick, you mean?”

“Because I owe it to my client,” I say. I pause then and say, “Because even dead I’m a better lawyer than McGoey is.”

Rip is waiting for me when I’ve unlocked my front door and deactivated the alarm.

“Oh, you think I don’t know what that face means?” I say to him. “So you think I look like shit, too.”

He just stands there, tail wagging, until he comes over to me and rubs up against my leg and lets me scratch him behind his ears. It’s as if he knows how truly lousy I feel at the moment, in addition to how lousy I must look, my rescue dog rescuing me all over again.

“You try living on death row,” I tell him, “and see how you like it.”

He barks suddenly.

“Oh, wait,” I say. “You already did that.”