Flat Lake in Winter by Joseph T. Klempner Page A

there are only a dozen streets in all of Cedar Falls, Fielder had little difficulty finding it. He pulled his ancient Suzuki to the curb, where it obligingly wheezed to a stop of its own accord.
    Before slipping into his suit jacket, Fielder gave it a good shake, hoping to rid it of the odor of mothballs that had followed him from the cabin. It had been close to a year since Fielder had felt compelled to dress up in his lawyer costume, and he hadn’t missed it a bit. He tightened the knot of his tie as he climbed the three steps, hoping he wouldn’t get too much flack over the work boots that were all he’d been able to find that morning. He carried an old attaché case that had been filled with bags of soil samples and jars of suspected termites, until he’d emptied it out the night before in order to make room for a pad of paper, a couple of pens, and some legal forms.
    Inside, the building smelled of mildew and dry rot. The wall paint was peeling, and the dark wood floors were stained and uneven. He found a door marked COUNTY CLERK, knocked once, and entered. A gray-haired woman looked up from behind a service window and smiled. If she noticed his boots, she didn’t comment on them.
    “Good morning,” Fielder said.
    “Good morning,” she echoed, pleasantly enough.
    “I’m here to represent Mr. Hamilton, on the murder case. And I’m new around here.” Fielder made a habit of announcing his ignorance at the first available opportunity. He’d found that people tend to want to help those unashamed enough to admit they were out of their element.
    “Well, don’t you worry about that,” the woman said. “I’m Dorothy Whipple, the County Clerk. But you can call me Dot - everyone else does.”
    “Thank you, Dot. I’m Matt, Matt Fielder.”
    “Hello, Matt. Now, first thing. Are you admitted to practice in New York?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “Good.” He watched as she fished around for a Notice of Appearance. “Are you retained” - she stressed the first syllable, pronouncing it ree tained - “or eighteen-b?” By “18-b,” she meant appointed by the Assigned Counsel Plan.
    “Actually, neither,” he said. “I’ve been brought in by the Capital Defender’s Office, which technically makes it section 35-B, of the Judiciary Law.”
    “Hmmmm,” she fretted. “Don’t have a box on the form for that. Guess we’ll just have to do a write-in.”
    Fielder found himself hoping that whoever else he’d encounter that morning would be half as accommodating at Dot Whipple, but he knew better. Even in his Bronx and Manhattan capital cases, he’d found judges, clerks, court officers, and stenographers who were completely thrown when they found out he’d been designated by an authority other than one they were accustomed to dealing with on a daily basis. One judge, presented with a simple order seeking the appointment of a mitigation expert to investigate a defendant’s background, had literally run from the bench, screaming
    A moment later, the trooper stuck his head out of the doorway and said, “This way, Counselor.”
    THE FIRST THING that struck Fielder about Jonathan Hamilton was how youthful-looking he was, and how very handsome. He had broad facial features, with the unusual combination of prominent cheekbones and thick lips. Except where he needed a shave, his evenly tanned skin looked as though it would be soft to the touch. Even the bristles of his three-day beard looked soft, sprouting through his skin in individual blond hairs, rather than casting a shadowy stubble across his cheeks. A shock of blond hair fell straight down his forehead. But all of those features faded into the background, to some degree; it was Jonathan’s eyes that were truly arresting. They were a pale blue - so pale as to almost suggest blindness, and so startling in their openness that Fielder found it difficult to look into them at times, yet impossible not to.
    The truth is that Matt Fielder is himself an extremely