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aren’t.”
    “Watch out for him. He only wants the media case.”
    “I guessed as much.” If the Jeffco sheriffs didn’t find evidence pointing at someone else as the murderer, I’d be their poster boy. Suspended lawyer-junkie turned gumshoe whose ex-wife is found brutally murdered on his property…it’d be a feeding frenzy for the media. Any lawyer representing me would benefit big-time from all that free PR. Make enough money and gain enough glitz to propel him or her into the upper echelon of high-priced, in-demand lawyers.
    And to think Laura had hoped this weekend would be about
me
getting more jobs.
    Laura.
    “I gotta protect her, somehow,” I murmured, staring at her. “She can’t afford to lose this place.”
    “Look, Rick, if things get…” Sam patted me on the back. “…well, just know I’ll represent you two, pro bono.”
    I wasn’t sure how to respond. Or maybe I was afraid that responding made the fear real.
    I heard Laura’s throaty laugh. Looked over to see the detective flashing her a grin. I suppose if he hadn’t had that Mario Lopez thing going for him, I could’ve cared less.
    “They’re only laughing, Zen Man.”
    “Hot-shot deputy should move on, do his job. Killer is probably still here.”
    “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Sam scanned the crowd. “Only a criminal defense attorney could commit the perfect crime.”
    Grudgingly, I looked away from Laura and Mario-Dude. “I’m not sure this is such a perfect crime. Too exhibitionist, show-offy. As though some narcissistic, megalomaniac psycho is thumbing his nose at his peers. Hey, look what I did right in the midst of you, and nobody caught me.”
    “Think it’s a he?”
    A loud clang, followed by a curse, cut through the night. At the top of the stairs that led down to the parking lot, the deputy coroners were wrestling with the laden gurney. It was going to be one hell of a descent. Just like Wicked to be the center of attention until the bitter end.
    I returned my attention to Sam. “Doesn’t seem like a woman would do it to her while Wi—Deborah was naked.”
    “But naked and alone, that is when she was most vulnerable—prime opportunity if one is bent on killing her, whether they’re a man or woman.”
    I thought about the stab wound in the heart area. Why hadn’t the killer just stuck the knife into her brain stem? Or done it prison style, which any good criminal defense attorney would know, by stabbing repeatedly and quickly for max blood loss? Brain stems. Prison style. Ways a man might do it. But as I well knew, women attorneys had balls, too. Sometimes bigger ones.
    I checked out the clusters of lawyers, sizing them up. In one clump of baby sharks, a wiry dude was smoking and chattering to a pal. His embroidered coat and paisley tie were a clash of patterns and color, making me wonder if that’s how he’d planned to dress or if he’d run out of clean clothes that matched.
    I shifted my gaze to another group of heftier, older CrimDefs, none of whom wore paisley. One of the men in the group, Max Cameron, was in a twelve-step group I used to attend in Denver. He’d kicked a bad crack habit fifteen years ago, which included time for selling drugs to an undercover cop. That he’d rebuilt his life and practice was a success story among us recovering junkie-lawyers.
    “If only I hadn’t let her talk me into bringing her,” Sam said, staring at the deputy coroners folding one of the blue plastic sheets.
    “She said it’d been your idea.”
    He shook his head slowly, side to side. “Never knew with her what was real.”
    “True. I think she was determined to be here, maybe to confront me although I’m not sure it was really about that necklace. You know her, talking stuff up before it’s a done deal. Probably had announced to all kinds of people she’d be here. Unfortunately, one of those people was the killer.”
    “Premeditated? I don’t know. Stabbed through the heart sounds like a crime