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that the fucking attorney would rather burn me at the stake than see his client convicted."
     
    He knew that wasn't all of it. There was something else. Something she wasn't going to tell him. But if not him, then who? Who did Spider talk to? Because Laura was right, Spider didn't talk to him. At least not about anything that mattered. There was just too much he didn't know about her, and to say that about someone you'd known for fifteen years was to admit defeat as a friend.
     
    What he did know, was certain of, was that if you didn't talk to someone, eventually you exploded. Maybe that was what was happening to Spider right now. Problem was he'd never been very good at getting people to open up. Truth was that he wasn't sure he wanted to hear Spider's problems, even if he could get her to talk.
     
     
     
    They couldn't go in the courtroom of course, so they had to sit in the hallway waiting to be called. It reminded Tommy of school. He'd spent a lot of time in the hall. Being smaller than the other kids, and the only Asian in a small Southern town, he'd caught a lot of hell. Since he came from a long line of martial artists who'd been eager to pass on the tradition to the next generation, he'd given their hell right back to them.
     
    Being his father's only son, and in fact the only son born to the first American generation of Chans, he'd been showered with attention from all sides. He was the pride and joy of his family, and they never scolded him for getting in fights at school. At the time he had wondered why, but now he realized that they wanted him to be tough. He started competition at six, and by twenty he had won Grand Nationals. He successfully defended his title two years running. Then one day he'd been shopping with his first wife when two gunmen tried to rob the store they were in. The gunmen made them all lie on the floor. When the old man behind the counter reached for something, one guy spooked and shot him. About that time the cops showed up with sirens blaring. The guys were squirreling out, and Tommy didn't hesitate. He jumped off the floor in a single fluid movement, ran and landed a kick to the nearest gunman's head. As his gun rattled to the floor Tommy swung, kicked, and the second one went down.
     
    Tommy was in all the papers; he was a hero. It was on that day that he decided to become a cop, thereby disappointing his family for the first time.
     
    Now, years later, he was still spending time in the hall for breaking the rules.
     
    Spider looked cool now. Almost aloof. Seeing this, Tommy relaxed. He handed her his coke, she took a drink and handed it back.
     
    A stiff in a coat walked out of the courtroom. "Detective Spider Webb!" he called.
     
    Spider stood up, looked down at Tommy and smiled. "Won't be long now, Tommy boy."
     
    He watched her walk in, thinking how he hated this part of the job worse than anything. Worse than going to the victim's house and telling his family. Worse than having to look at—and smell—half-decayed bodies, or dealing with the IAD. It was the worst of everything all rolled together. You had the perp, and the victim's family, and all the suits, and pictures of the crime scene. Then to make it even better you had to get up on stage and answer a bunch of stupid questions that had purposely been rigged to trip you up. All the time you knew that chances were when it was all said and done the fucker would walk right out, scott-free, to kill or maim or abuse another day. It made him understand why Spider had just killed that guy in the park. No chance that guy was going to walk. The real bonus was—no day in court, 'cause court days sucked.
     
    When Tommy walked in the courtroom he saw Laura hovering around the DA's desk, and he smiled. Spider sat behind the DA's desk looking shaken but not stirred, and he relaxed.
     
    Most of the questions were routine, but then out of the clear blue the defendant's attorney said, "Detective Chan, did you hear the scream your