Page 12 of Necessary Evil

He thought for a moment. “All of them.”

“Which one is bugging you enough to bring me down here?”

“Why did you become a defense attorney instead of a prosecutor?” he asked instead of answering her question.

“Are we playing Twenty Questions now?” Lucy winced at how defensive she sounded. Evan just stared at her with an eyebrow raised. She couldn’t afford to let him know this was a touchy subject. So she put on her court face. “My dad.” Lucy wondered how much he knew. “Have you dug into my past, Detective?”

He shook his head. “Why? Are you in trouble with the law?”

It figured he would turn her words back on her. She gave him a grudging smile and forced herself to relax. Evan might not be a friend, but he wasn’t an enemy either. “Not even a parking ticket. My dad, however…” She crossed her arms. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m trying to see if you’ll be open to what I’m going to ask.”

“That sounds ominous.” She got up and walked around the small room thinking about what she wanted to tell him. “My dad didn’t have it so good. He went to the Lowell Savings Bank and requested a loan that he was turned down for.”

“That’s not a crime,” Evan said.

She caught him staring at her ass as she passed by him, and it gave her the tingles. This mutual-attraction thing was getting harder to ignore. “He got mad. Stormed out. A few hours later an armed, masked man robbed the bank. Ran over a kid with the getaway car. The kid died.”

“Fuck.” Evan crossed his arms over his chest.

“There was a public outcry, as you could imagine. The police were pressed to find the robber ASAFP. Long story short, they arrested my father. Said they found a mask and gloves in his car that matched the surveillance videos. He was the right size. Had motive. The jury saw him flip a table on camera hours before. Off to jail he went. For ten years.”

“Did he do it?”

“I thought he did,” Lucy said. “Everyone did. We moved away. Mom divorced him. My brother and I weren’t allowed to write him.” It still bothered her that her mom had forced them to abandon him. It had put a wedge between them that had never healed. “Except the truth has a way of coming out. The money was never found. We sure as shit didn’t have it.” Lucy laughed without humor. “Then one of the junior bank executives got a case of the guilts on his deathbed. He was dying from a virulent form of cancer and wanted to meet his maker with a clear conscience.”

“Inside job.” Evan shook his head.

“Bingo. He told them where to find what was left of the money. It was confirmed. Everything checked out. My father was released shortly after my eighteenth birthday.”

Evan winced.

“Ten years in the pen.” Lucy closed her eyes and tamped down the familiar rage. “An innocent man. I think the mask and gloves had been planted by the cops, but I can’t prove it.”

“So that’s why you’re on such a mission.” Evan offered her a beer from the fridge. She declined. Beer wouldn’t cover it.

“Fucked up my childhood.” Lucy finished her soda. “Fucked up my father’s life. And destroyed my brother.” She sank back into the couch, all the pent-up emotion exhausting her. “Bobby got into drugs and eventually went to jail too.”

“Not you?”

“Just the opposite.” She released the crushing grip she had on her empty soda can and dumped it into the trash. “I became a little obsessed about being the good girl. I had nightmares when my library books were late. I got married right out of high school.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Big fucking mistake. It lasted all of two years. He was much older. Paging Dr. Freud, right? Anyway, he paid for my college. And after we divorced, he married someone even younger than me.”

“So you became a lawyer because of your dad?”

“It was too late for my dad.” Lucy tucked her legs up on the couch and leaned her head back on the cushion. “But it wasn’t too late for someone else’s dad.” This conversation was exhausting.

He gave a slow nod.

“Is that what you were looking for?”

“Yeah. I figured you were the right one for the job.”

“Uh-oh,” she said. This didn’t sound good.

“You know why I left the force?” Evan asked.

“You retired. Young, but with a full pension, right?”