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improvement over the previous state of affairs, no matter how lousy that may have been.” I bent the hand back and forth. “They did a good repair job on you, but you didn’t do your remedial exercises to stretch the damaged tendons, did you?”
    “What was the point?” Her voice was sullen now.
    I felt a strong need to shake her out of her defeatist attitude. I reached into my pocket and brought out a small penknife and opened the larger of the two blades.
    “If that’s the way you really feel, you’d better have this, it’s good and sharp. But no more wrists.” I pointed the blade at the front of her skirt. “Down there… Here, I’ll show you on my own leg. The inside of the thigh, up here. Ram it in and dig around a bit and you’ll get the prettiest pumping red fountain you ever saw, the femoral artery, no lousy little bloody trickle like you probably managed. It won’t take more than a couple of minutes before you’re all bled out and as dead as you could wish. I’ll put it in your purse in case you get in the mood. There.”
    She gave me that flat gray prison stare. “That’s pretty cruel, isn’t it?”
    “Cruel?” I asked harshly. “I’ll tell you what would be cruel, or at least damned inconsiderate, and that is for me to work my ass off, and maybe risk my life, to keep you safe, and then have you crawl into a dark corner and start hacking stupid holes in yourself again. If you’re going to do it, please do it now. I’ll take a little walk if you’re shy about having a man see you bleeding all over your panty hose.”
    We faced each other for a long moment. Then she did an odd thing. Tentatively, almost shyly, she reached out and touched my arm.
    “Tough, aren’t you?” she murmured. “May I have that coffee before I open my veins and arteries, Mr. Helm?” Deliberately dismissing the subject, she turned to the picnic table. After a moment she said, pleased, “How did you know I loved glazed doughnuts,
pink
glazed doughnuts?”
    “Sheer genius,” I said. “They had several kinds in the little bakery and I got two of each. They’re both yours. I’m a cinnamon man myself.”
    The awkwardness between us faded gradually as we sat there eating our doughnuts and sipping our coffee. I saw it happening to her now, what I’d expected to see at the penitentiary gate. Relaxing on the wooden bench, she breathed deeply as she looked about the pleasant rest area with its trees, undoubtedly prettier in the summer with green leaves and grass, but obviously beautiful to her as she savored her freedom at last, forgetting for the moment the prison ugliness that lay behind her and the bleak ex-convict existence that probably lay ahead.
    I could see the girl I’d known like a blurred image viewed through wavering layers of unclear water, and I was aware of an angry sense of waste. Something valuable had been wantonly destroyed here. The question was whether she’d wrecked her life, and herself, through her own criminal folly, or whether she had been the victim of vicious plotting by others. It was all very well for Mac to say that the problem of her innocence or guilt was academic, but I wouldn’t know how to deal with her until it was solved.
    “I want to apologize,” she said abruptly, turning to look at me at last.
    “What the hell for?” I asked, surprised.
    “A little while ago I said I didn’t believe anybody could be trying to kill me. I as good as called you a liar. But I’d promised myself that when I got out I’d never ever do that to anybody else after the way they treated me.” She drew a long breath. “Maybe it sounds childish, but it was the horrible
rudeness
that shocked me so, the total lack of consideration, as if I had no feelings that mattered to anybody; and I guess I didn’t. Men contradicting me flatly, men calling me a liar to my face, men telling me what a dumb broad I was to expect them to be taken in by… I mean, after the verdict, all right. I suppose all right.