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said, Bell would be convicted or plead guilty regardless of which public defender represented him. So why would Judge West use his influence to get the case assigned to her and why would he go to such lengths to make certain she persuaded Jared to plead guilty? The inescapable answer rocked her. Jared Bell was innocent and Judge West wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
    A criminal defense lawyer’s two worst nightmares were helping the guilty go free and failing to save the innocent. Alex had lived the first with Dwayne Reed, and now she was faced with the second.

Chapter Eight
    ALEX WASN’T READY TO GO HOME. She needed more time to wind down and think and enough beer to help with the former without making the latter impossible. And that meant taking a trip to the Zoo.
    The Zoo was a downtown dive bar at Twelfth and McGee, a narrow, shotgun joint with room for a couple of dozen people. There were stools along the bar, a few chairs against the back wall, and standing room only for everyone else. The bartenders did business in front of a floor-to-ceiling display of whiskey, and the surest way to get thrown out was to ask them for a drink made in a blender. The walls, ceiling, and anything that was nailed down were covered with graffiti, some patrons just signing their names, others bragging or begging, and a few making promises they couldn’t keep.
    Alex was a regular. She liked it when it was jumping with shoulder-to-shoulder people and she could get lost in the noise. But she was glad it was Tuesday night, because that wasn’t a big night for the bar business and she needed a quiet place to drink in peace while she tried to find a way out of the wilderness.
    Half a dozen people were scattered around the room when she took a seat at the bar, the stools on either side of her empty, and asked for a bottle of Bully! porter. It was ten o’clock. She turned her phone off, not wanting to be bothered. Taking an easy pull, she rubbed the back of her neck, feeling her knotted muscles give a little bit. Cranking her head from side to side, she saw Hank Rossi approaching her from the back of the bar.
    “I’ll have what she’s having,” Rossi said, taking the stool next to hers.
    Alex shook her head. “Of all the gin joints . . .”
    “In all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. Casablanca . Great flick, even if the cop was on the take.”
    She wasn’t in the mood for company, especially his and especially if he liked Casablanca as much as she did. Rossi had arrested her for Dwayne Reed’s murder. He’d also saved her life when he killed Gloria Temple. None of which made them pals, Rossi making it clear that he was just doing his job, neither of them trusting the other. It didn’t matter that she’d been acquitted of murdering Dwayne and he’d been cleared in Gloria’s shooting.
    Rossi was long and muscled, with dark-eyed, craggy good looks that drew women close until the blood on his hands drove them away, blood that belonged to the bad guys who’d put up a fight, taken a shot at him, or just pissed him off too many times.
    Alex was surprised that he would join her, certain he’d rather drink by himself in a toilet stall than have a beer with her.
    “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid,” Rossi said. He tilted his beer toward hers and they clinked bottles. “Didn’t figure you for a Bogart fan.”
    “I was always more into Ingrid Bergman.”
    “Even if she was into Bogart?”
    “Girl has to dream.”
    “I’ll give you that, but I don’t thing she would have gone for you tonight.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “’Cause you smell like horseshit. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.”
    “Metaphorically? Don’t tell me you’re reading Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary .”
    “I am. Last night I got all the way up to motherfucker .”
    “Ah, but can you use it in a sentence?”
    “Stone, you motherfucker, you smell like horseshit.”
    Alex