Chapter 32: Visiting the Woman in Jail
"Is this Andrew Sanchez?" The voice on the phone was brisk and professional, the kind that didn't waste syllables.
"Speaking."
"My name is Miranda Walsh. I'm an attorney. My client Bonnie has requested a meeting with you. Are you available this afternoon?"
Andrew looked at the clock. Past three. "It's a bit late in the day. Will visiting hours still be open?"
Bonnie wouldn't be at a precinct holding cell anymore. With her record — multiple documented offenses across several states, plus the open murder charge — she'd have been transferred to county jail within a day or two of her arrest, pending the full prosecution. That wasn't a short subway ride.
"I can drive you," Miranda said, without any particular emphasis. Just a fact, offered as a solution. "If you can be ready in the next few minutes, we'll make it."
Andrew gave her his address.
Ten minutes later, someone knocked at his door.
The woman in the hallway was compact and put-together — short blond hair, sharp suit, the kind of posture that suggested she moved through the world at a pace she set herself. She looked at him with a direct, assessing efficiency that wasn't unfriendly, just economical.
"Miranda Walsh."
"Andrew Sanchez." He matched her register automatically, extending his hand. She shook it once, clean.
"Ready?"
"One second." He picked up the bag he'd left on the coffee table — cream puffs and a few other things he'd made that morning, packed on the theory that showing up somewhere empty-handed was a habit worth breaking. "For the road," he said, holding it out.
Miranda took it without ceremony, said "thank you," and turned for the stairs, her heels sharp on the landing.
Andrew locked up and followed her down.
Her car was a Buick, late model, well-kept. She drove the way she did everything else — efficiently, without unnecessary motion. The jail facility was outside the city proper, which meant highway time, which meant a stretch of road where conversation was either going to happen or wasn't.
For a while it wasn't. Miranda had the particular quality of someone who was comfortable with silence in a professional context, and Andrew didn't feel the need to fill it.
Then the rustling of the bag being opened broke the quiet.
Miranda drove with her left hand and ate a cream puff with her right, navigating the light highway traffic with the casual competence of someone who'd done worse things while driving.
Andrew watched this without comment.
"These are good," she said, after a moment. "Where are they from?"
"I made them. The recipe's based on a place near my apartment — I've been working on getting it right."
Miranda glanced at him briefly — a quick, genuine look of surprise — then returned her eyes to the road. Her tone shifted slightly, the professional crispness softening a degree or two. "You actually cook."
"It's something I've been getting into seriously."
That was apparently the right key. The conversation opened up from there — food, techniques, the specific neighborhood joints she had opinions about, the places in the city worth going out of your way for. By the time the facility came into view through the windshield, they were on first names and she'd eaten three more cream puffs.
Miranda parked and got out, but didn't move toward the entrance. She checked her watch — 4:13 — and reached into her jacket pocket for a pack of cigarettes. She offered one across the roof of the car.
"I don't smoke," Andrew said, and took a few steps upwind without making a thing of it.
Miranda lit hers and looked at the building for a moment.
"Bonnie and I go back," she said, without preamble. "I was her public defender the first time she went to court. She was seventeen. Shoplifting, minor possession — nothing like what she's carrying now." She exhaled. "I've watched her make every bad decision available to a person, one after another, for fifteen years."
"You stayed in touch," Andrew said.
"Off and on. She calls when she needs a lawyer, which has been more often than it should be." A pause. "The men she's chosen have all been a specific type. Bad in ways that didn't require her to feel anything. Easy to leave, easy to betray, no real cost either direction."
Andrew didn't say anything.
"You're not that type," Miranda said. It wasn't a compliment exactly. More an observation delivered as a fact.
"I'm not as decent as that sounds," Andrew said. "I knew what her situation was and I didn't ask questions I didn't want answered. That's not exactly moral courage."
"Heh." Miranda took a last drag and dropped the cigarette. "Anyway. Here's the thing — Bonnie didn't ask to see you. I'm the one who called."
Andrew looked at her.
"She specifically said she didn't want you to come. Which is exactly why I thought you should." Miranda straightened her jacket. "I want to see what she does when she has to say that to your face instead of through me."
Andrew processed this. "You drove me out here to watch you prove a point to your client."
"I drove you out here because someone should, and because I'm curious what she says when she can't avoid it." Miranda started toward the entrance. "You coming?"
Andrew stood by the car for a moment.
He thought about Bonnie in the woods with the earring in her fist. He thought about Christie's face in the rearview mirror, asleep in the back seat of a car headed nowhere good. He thought about the week in his apartment — the particular quiet of it, the way things had almost been ordinary for a few days.
He didn't know what Bonnie not wanting to see him meant. He wasn't sure he needed to know. But he'd come this far.
He followed Miranda inside.
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