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of passion to me.” He made a shushing sound. “We have a visitor.”
    Footsteps crunched to a stop. “Richard Levine?”
    A petite redhead in a Jefferson County sheriff’s uniform, topped with a zipped-up leather jacket, stood in front of me. Her short, curly red hair, big eyes, and oversized mouth reminded me of a Raggedy Ann doll.
    “Yes.”
    “I’m Sergeant Friesen. Sheriff Benning asked me to interview you—mind answering a few questions?”
    “He won’t be doing that,” interrupted Sam. “I’m his lawyer and he’s invoking his right to remain silent.”
    I needed help, yes, but I’d been around the block enough times to know it made me look better, as in innocent, if I answered questions now. “It’s all right, sergeant, I’m happy to comply.”
    “But…” Her eyes shifted from me to Sam and back. “…he says he’s your attorney. Is that correct?”
    “I am.” Sam edged his tall frame between me and Red. When I started to speak again, he made a halting sign with his palm.
    “Especially, sergeant,” he said, regarding her like a cockroach that needed to be stepped on, “since you know that once he says he wants an attorney, you have to head for the door, figuratively speaking. It’s called the Sixth Amendment. It’s good reading, and for your benefit, it’s short.” He extracted a business card from his breast pocket. “Let me write my cell number on the back.” He frowned, patted his shirt pocket again, then reached into his pants pocket. He scanned the ground at his feet.
    “Problem, counselor?” asked Red, those big eyes narrowing.
    “I seem to have, uh, misplaced my fountain pen.”
    Oh, this was working out well. Sam had aggressively stepped in, damning her perception of me with that Sixth Amendment jab…and now he was fretting over some goddamn fountain pen. Just the kind of representation I’d always dreamed of while on the brink of being charged with first degree.
    For the first time in a long, long time I craved a drink. Or a toke. I cleared my throat. “I’d like to explain—”
    “I’m taking him down to the station,” Red called out to the Mario Lopez deputy charging our way.
    Laura was also speed-walking toward us, her face tight with worry, obviously concerned by what she saw coming down.
    “He’s lawyered up.” Red explained to the deputy, who’d halted next to her, one hand hovering over the butt of his gun as though I might go
loco
any moment.
    “Turn around, sir,” she said to me, pulling her handcuffs off her belt, “and put your hands behind you.”
    Only a fool wouldn’t have done as told. As I turned, I muttered to Sam, “Get me out of this.”
    “You’re retaining me?”
    I nodded stiffly.
    “Then shut up,” he said, clapping me on the back. “I’ll do the talking from here on out, old chap.”

Six
     
It is just as is and ain’t no is-er.
—Rural American Zen
     
    I t was Sunday morning and I was fucked.
    Incarcerated on first-degree murder charges for an ex-wife I despised and had successfully avoided for the last five or so years, then the one time she steps foot on my property, she’s murdered with an
alleged
object I’d been waving at her in self defense an hour before her ugly demise. I’d had plenty of time sitting in the cell to ponder what could be worse than my being fucked on trumped-up charges, and hadn’t come up with anything other than my own death, which meant I was about as fucked as they come.
    Such thoughts weren’t exactly on the enlightened top ten for the Zen Man, but when you’re incarcerated in a cold, impersonal Jefferson County Detention Center cell where everything’s bolted down, even the toilet, with walls painted the color of that green shit that flew out of Linda Blair’s mouth in the
Exorcist
, Zen thoughts fly outta your head, down the hall, into the visitors’ waiting area, and out the door to the light, breezy, sun-filled outdoors that you begin to wonder if you’ll ever see again.
    Sitting