Defensive Wounds by Lisa Black Page B

Ha.”
    â€œHa indeed. And your admiration had nothing to do with the open-throated blouse and the tight skirt?”
    â€œNothing whatsoever. I am a scientist .”
    â€œGlad to hear it. Gotta go,” Theresa added as her phone popped up with a text message: PC LL —the trace-lab secretary’s code for “phone call, landline.” Theresa hustled across the hall to pick up.
    â€œDid you see the news last night?” a stressed-out voice nearly shouted in her ear.
    â€œSonia?”
    â€œThey announced to the world that Marie was found stripped and hog-tied. Tell me everyone in the city is not getting their rocks off on that image right now.”
    â€œSonia, no, I didn’t see the news, but you have to assume they’re going to lead with the most salacious detail—wait, how did they know that?”
    â€œAll the lawyers knew, and I’m sure it went through the cops like wildfire. Most of whom are men.”
    â€œSo are the lawyers!” Theresa pointed out.
    â€œI’m sure it was the first thing out of your detectives’ mouths when Channel 15 called.”
    â€œI’m sure it wasn’t. It would have been a handy way to weed out any crackpot confessions from the real thing. You have to stop taking this so personally, Sonia. The inevitable gloating over Marie’s death is not an attack on all defense attorneys. It’s an attack on Marie. She was aggressive and abrasive—”
    â€œSo am I.”
    Theresa sat down, closed her eyes. “You are a hard worker and mount a vigorous defense. Marie chose to be a lying manipulator. People would not feel the same way about you if you were murdered.”
    â€œThey would. Have you seen the forums?”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThe comments that people post at the end of the Plain Dealer story. Go to Cleveland.com.”
    â€œOh, for the love of chocolate, Sonia, you’re not reading those ? They’ll make you want to go home and lock your doors and avoid all human contact, even when the topic is as innocuous as flowers outside city hall or the proper way to install a mailbox. Never read forums.” Theresa could only imagine the comments.
    â€œThe most understated one, with the fewest spelling errors, quotes Shakespeare’s Henry VI .”
    â€œLet me guess: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ ”
    â€œYes—which was only suggested by the character so that their rebellion would succeed without anyone there to support the law.”
    â€œA rebellion against an oppressive, serfdom-supporting regime. I would think you’d be on the peasants’ side in that fight.”
    Sonia pointedly ignored that aspect of the English king’s reign and went on to read entries that curled Theresa’s hair and surely violated several communications statutes. Several people had written in to say that the person who’d attacked them, stolen their money, even shot them still walked the streets because of one Marie Corrigan. Victims claimed that the woman had convinced juries that they’d been the ones at fault. Marie had been called every designation except attorney, including, by one particularly wordy participant, “a filthy, wretched creature driven by twisted, power-mad impulses, who ground the suffering of others beneath her heel in order to buy designer shoes.”
    Theresa stifled a snicker over that one in deference to her friend as she accessed the Internet.
    â€œNo one points out that she raised money for the United Way or that she mentored with the female law students’ organization at Cleveland State every year since graduation. I don’t even do that.”
    Good Lord, was all Theresa could think. She’d warped young minds—rather, trained more people to be like her? “Again, Sonia, you have to let this go. Marie would not have asked you to be her champion, and she’s beyond all this vitriol