Bleeding Hearts by Jane Haddam

just lying there stacked up against the vinyl-covered furniture and stretched out on the industrial-grade rug. The smell had been awful.
    Chuckie’s smell was awful too. It was as if the sourness of his sweat were woven into him, unremovable by soap. Fred would never have taken his case if Chuckie hadn’t insisted on pleading innocent.
    Ass.
    Chuckie stirred in his seat, stretched his arms, shook his head. “I got to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Where’s that guy that takes me to the bathroom?”
    “Maybe he’s gone to the bathroom himself. He’ll be back in a minute, Chuckie. Just hold your water.”
    “I been holding my water,” Chuckie said. “I been holding myself. Why didn’t you let me get up there and talk?”
    I didn’t let you get up there and talk, Fred thought, because I didn’t want to be witness to a lynching. He said, “The defendant doesn’t have to testify, Chuckie. And it’s generally a good idea if he doesn’t. Prosecutors can be very tricky bastards.”
    “I could have explained myself,” Chuckie objected. “I mean, I had things to say.”
    “I know you did, Chuckie.”
    “I could have told them all about those girls. The things they said to me. The things they did.”
    “I know.”
    “Once you’ve screwed ’em, their lives are ruined anyway,” Chuckie said. “My mother told me that. A woman’s virtue is all she has. If she loses it, she might as well be dead.”
    “Your mother must have been a very interesting woman, Chuckie.”
    “Oh, she was. Except she wasn’t really my mother. My real mother went away somewhere. Why didn’t you tell them about the eyes?”
    “The eyes?”
    “Yeah, you know. When somebody gets murdered, the picture of the murderer stays in their eyes, and all you have to do is look. But my picture didn’t stay in any of their eyes. So I couldn’t have murdered them.”
    “It was a case of multiple serial suicides.”
    “Suicides,” Chuckie said firmly. “That’s the ticket.”
    “There’s Sergeant Devere,” Fred said. “If you’re going to the john, you’d better do it now.”
    “I still say you should have told them about the eyes,” Chuckie said. “That would have cleared up everything.”
    Fred stood up and waved to Sergeant Devere, who nodded and began to come across the front of the courtroom to them. Sergeant Devere didn’t like Chuckie any more than Fred did, but Sergeant Devere was a professional. In fact, as far as Fred was concerned, Sergeant Devere was awesome. If Devere ever started to play poker for serious, he’d get rich.
    “Chuckie wants to go to the bathroom,” Fred told Sergeant Devere. “I’d like to go for a walk, if you get what I mean.”
    “Of course,” Sergeant Devere said. “I’ll take Mr. Bickerson out back for a while.”
    “I don’t see why I always have to be out back whenever you take a walk,” Chuckie said. “I’ve seen trials on television. The accused guy doesn’t always have to go out back.”
    “Judge’s orders,” Sergeant Devere said.
    “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the first day here, you grabbed a paperweight during recess and tried to take a policewoman hostage.”
    “Self-defense,” Chuckie said sullenly. “You can’t blame a guy for what he does in self-defense. I’m being railroaded here.”
    “Right,”
    “Mr. Bickerson?” Sergeant Devere said.
    Fred moved away from the table, giving Devere room to work with Chuckie’s shackles. Chuckie was wearing shackles because on their second day in court, he’d tried to kick the bailiff in the groin. Fortunately for the bailiff, Chuckie had seen karate kicks only in the movies. He’d never before actually tried to do one.
    Fred left the courtroom, looked around the corridor outside—newspeople everywhere; more cameras than a store that was going out of business on Broadway—and then made his way to the stairs. He went down the single flight to the basement and along the corridor there to the