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serious?”
    â€œI’m very serious. We found your stash in the basement.”
    â€œWhat?!”
    â€œAnd we found something else that I’d like to show you. Can you follow me into your bedroom,” Hotchkiss said.
    Beatty followed the detective. When they reached the bedroom, Hotchkiss stepped aside. Beatty took one step into the room. Then his knees buckled.
    â€œOh, God,” he moaned. “It’s Christine.”

CHAPTER 9
    â€œIf you keep this up, I’m gonna have to have a cardiologist on speed dial,” Mike Greene gasped when he caught his breath.
    He and Amanda were lying side by side in Amanda’s bed. They’d been so busy lately that they hadn’t been able to see each other, but one of Amanda’s trials had been set over and crime had taken a holiday for a few days so they were finally spending a night together.
    â€œListen, old man,” Amanda said, “if you can’t keep up I’ll have to look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction.”
    â€œWho would you find who’d put up with you?” Mike answered.
    Amanda laughed. “Point taken,” she said. Then she rolled on top of Mike and started playing with his chest hair.
    â€œGod, woman. You’re insatiable.”
    Before Amanda could reply, her phone rang.
    â€œDon’t answer it,” Mike whispered as he ran a hand down her back.
    â€œI’ve got to,” Amanda said as she sat up. “That’s my business phone, and that means a client is calling.”
    Mike sighed.
    â€œAmanda Jaffe,” Amanda said when she had the phone.
    â€œMiss Jaffe, this is Tom Beatty. I’m in jail. They’re saying I murdered Christine.”
    Prior to 1983, the Multnomah County jail looked the way a prison was supposed to look. Constructed of huge granite blocks, the foreboding fortress perched on Rocky Butte and shouted, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Then the Rocky Butte jail was torn down to make way for the I-205 freeway and the detention center was moved to the fourth through tenth floors of the Justice Center, a sixteen-story, state-of-the-art facility in the heart of downtown Portland that was across a park from the courthouse.
    Amanda barely noticed her surroundings as she walked through the Justice Center’s vaulted lobby and pushed past the glass doors that opened into the jail reception area. She’d been upset when the phone rang, interrupting her evening with Mike, but she’d lost any interest in sex the moment she learned that Christine Larson had been murdered.
    After showing her ID to the guard at the reception desk and going through a metal detector, Amanda entered the elevator that took her to a floor in the jail with contact visiting rooms. When the elevator door opened, Amanda found herself in a narrow hall with a thick metal door on one end. Next to the door, affixed to a pastel-yellow concrete wall, was an intercom. Amanda pressed a black button and announced her presence. Moments later, electronic locks snapped open and a uniformed guard ushered her into another narrow corridor that ran in front of three soundproofed visiting rooms. The upper half of the corridor wall of each contact visiting room was made of thick, shatter-proof glass that let the guards monitor the activity in the room. Each room was outfitted with two molded plastic chairs that stood on either side of a round table secured to the floor by metal bolts.
    The door to the contact visiting room was solid steel. The guard spoke into a radio and the locks on the door snapped open. Amanda took one of the chairs and placed a pad and pen on the table. Moments later, a second metal door at the back of the room opened and a guard led Tom Beatty inside.
    Amanda’s client looked terrible. He was dressed in an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. His face was blank, his hair was uncombed, and there were deep circles under his eyes.
    â€œWhat happened?” Amanda asked as soon