Gravewriter Read Online Free Page A

every day, in all seasons. He wore natural-fiber red suspenders and an organic silk necktie blandly colored with vegetable dye—special ordered by his wife.
    â€œWhy is it so goddamn dark in here?” he said, jerking open the blinds to reveal the vista of a brick wall five feet away.
    â€œLovely,” Carol cooed. “And if you look down the alley, you can see the gleaming new Dumpster. It’s Caribbean blue.”
    Martin wasn’t listening. “Look at this letter I got,” he shouted. He had a thin voice that cracked when he raised it, like a bad cellphone connection. Why juries would trust that voice had been a mystery to Carol, until she realized that Martin’s desperate voice made him sound like the underdog. And everybody roots for the underdog.
    Carol reached a hand out for the letter, but Martin had decided to perform it.
    â€œ ‘Dear Attorney Smothers,’ “ Martin called out, reading dramatically from the paper. “ ‘It never fails to amaze me how low some peopleof your so-called profession will stoop. Congratulations—you have sunk to a record low, either to get rich or to glorify your own ego—I don’t know which.’ ”
    He clapped the letter between his hands and growled.
    â€œConsidering what you’re paying me,” Carol deadpanned, “I’d say it’s for ego.”
    Holding the letter in two fists, Martin read more. “ ‘That animal Garrett Nickel got what he deserved a year ago—a death sentence on the night he escaped. Too bad it happened quickly and relatively painlessly, which is more consideration than Nickel ever gave any of his victims.’ ”
    â€œIf you consider bullets and drowning to be painless,” Carol offered.
    â€œ ‘That punk Peter Shadd, who escaped prison with Nickel and then shot him, deserves two things,’“ Martin read on, “ ‘a medal for ridding the earth of subhuman scum, and a noose. The only thing he did wrong was not turning the gun on himself after shooting his partner. Why are you trying to get him off? This was a case of scum killing scum. Shadd is a junkie, a thief, an escapee, and a killer. Why are you defending him? Why can’t you just let him rot? You talk in the papers about his rights—don’t you know that nobody cares about his rights?’ ”
    Martin crumbled the letter and hurled it with a grunt toward the open window. It sailed high, bounced off the glass, and rolled into a corner near a mousetrap baited with petrified peanut butter, an abandoned spiderweb, and a dozen other paper balls.
    â€œHow can you respond if you throw it away?” Carol asked.
    â€œI have the return address,” Martin huffed. “Take a letter down for me. Please?”
    Carol smiled. Martin had never said “please” for anything before Carol had entered law school, six months ago. With her legal pad anda sharp no. 2 pencil, she wheeled her chair to the center of the small office, sat, and crossed her legs. She saw Martin’s eyes flicker for an instant to her coffee brown thighs as she casually pulled at her skirt and flipped it down over her knee. She looked away and smiled again. Martin had been married longer than Carol had been alive. She readied the pad and pencil.
    Martin rubbed his chin, looked off toward Saturn, and dictated.
    â€œ ‘Dear Dickhead,’ ” he began. “ ‘In response to your rant, there’s a little document I like to refer to from time to time, known as the fucking U.S. Constitution. I suggest you read it, or’—strike that—’I suggest you have somebody read it to you. I hope you can understand it, though I realize it was written a long time ago on old-fashioned crinkly paper, and there has never been a sitcom or a reality TV show based on the Bill of Rights.’ ”
    Martin stuck his thumbs in his waistband and paced, dictating off into space. “