The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5) by Michael Connelly

coffee to iced tea.
    “Who was Glenda hiding from?” I asked as soon as we were alone again.
    Stacey handled the jump cut in direction pretty casually.
    “Isn’t everybody hiding from somebody or something?”
    “I don’t know. Was she?”
    “She never talked about it, but she looked over her shoulder a lot, if you know what I mean. Especially when she came back here.”
    This wasn’t getting anywhere.
    “What did she tell you about me?”
    “She said that when she lived out here before, you were her lawyer, but she could never call you again if she took a bust.”
    The waitress put down our drinks and I waited until she was gone.
    “Why couldn’t she call me?”
    “I don’t know. Because it would all unravel, I guess.”
    That wasn’t the answer I expected. I thought that she would say that Glenda could never call me because it would expose her betrayal.
    “Unravel? Was that her word?”
    “That’s what she said, yeah.”
    “What did she mean by that?”
    “I don’t know, she just said things. She said it could unravel. I don’t know what it meant and she didn’t say any more about it.”
    Stacey was starting to act put out by the questioning. I leaned back and thought about things. Besides offering a few tantalizing words with no further explanation, she wasn’t much help. I guess I had been foolish to think Gloria Dayton—if that was even her real name—had confided in another prostitute about her distant past.
    All I knew now was that the whole thing depressed me. Gloria-Glenda-Giselle had been inextricably bound to the life. Unable to leave it, and it eventually took everything away from her. It was an old story and in a year’s time it would be forgotten or replaced by the next one.
    Our food came but I had lost my appetite. I watched Starry-Eyed Stacey put globs of mayonnaise on her BLT and eat it like a little girl, licking her fingers after the first bite. And that didn’t lift my spirits either.

10
    I sat in the backseat for a long time thinking about things. Earl kept looking at me in the rearview, wondering when I would give him directions. But I didn’t know where to go next. I thought about waiting for Stacey Campbell to come out of the restaurant after using the restroom and following her home so I knew where she lived, but I knew Cisco could run her down if I needed her again. I checked my watch and saw it was quarter to three. Bullocks was probably in the middle of things with the status conference in Judge Companioni’s chambers. I decided to wait a while before checking in with her.
    “The Valley, Earl,” I finally said. “I want to go watch practice.”
    Earl turned the ignition and we were off. He took Laurel Canyon up the mountain to Mulholland Drive. We turned west and after a few curves came to the parking lot entrance for Fryman Canyon Park. Earl pulled into a space, opened the glove box, and handed the binoculars over the seat to me. I took off my jacket and tie and left them on the backseat as I got out.
    “I’ll probably be a half hour or so,” I said.
    “I’ll be here,” he said.
    I closed the door and walked off. Fryman Canyon descends the northern slope of the Santa Monica Mountains all the way down into Studio City. I took the Betty Dearing Trail down until it split east and west. This is where I went off the trail and farther down through the brush until I reached a promontory with open views of the sprawling city below. My daughter had transferred this year to the Skyline School, and its campus backed up from Valleycrest Drive to the edge of the park. The campus was on two elevations; the lower level contained the academic buildings, and the upper side was where the sports complex was located. By the time I got to the viewing spot, soccer practice was already under way below. I scanned the field with the binoculars and found Hayley in the far goal. She was the team’s starting goalkeeper, which was an improvement over her previous school, where she was