Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper Page A

clarified the law for me, could you just do your job and go fetch my client?”
    He meets my eyes for a moment, makes a horsey sound with his nose, but opens the door.
    “You just make yourself comfortable,” he says before closing it, which, it is immediately apparent, is exactly what he says before closing these doors on everyone.
    Who knows whether the guard takes his time bringing Tripp in because he’s busy with other matters of legitimate urgency or is savoring the opportunity to give me the finger from the other side of the one-way glass, but it’s nearly a quarter of an hour before he returns with my guy.
    “Thomas Tripp, meet Mr. Crane. Mr. Crane, Thomas Tripp,” the guard says formally, standing between us with hands extended as though to bring us all closer together in the way of old friends.
    “Thanks. But I think we can get along on our own now,” I tell him, gesturing for Tripp to sit down, but he doesn’t move.
    “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” the guard says.
    “Look, I’m permitted as much time with my client as I require, as both you and the warden are well aware, and—” I start, and would continue (my appetite for laying into gnomish quasi-officials sufficiently whetted) but he stops me by raising his small palms in surrender.
    “Quite so! Quite so! Take all the time you need, Mr. Crane. Just you knock whenever you’re through.”
    He skips out of the room with something near a click of his heels—suddenly the sprightly leprechaun—and leaves Tripp standing in the same position as when he was brought in, seemingly unaware of the negotiations going on around him.
    “Please sit down,” I tell him, once more indicating the seat on the other side of the table. Once more he seems not to hear.
    “Mr. Tripp, you’ll soon learn that I’m an unconventional sort of lawyer, open to almost any innovation in protocol, with the sole exception of conducting interviews with those who insist on standing while I’m seated. So please, for my benefit, won’t you sit down?”
    “You’re my lawyer?”
    “Didn’t your local counsel, Mr. Norton, confirm this with you? It was upon his recommendation that you have retained the firm of Lyle, Gederov for your defense. I’m their associate, Bartholomew Crane, although I urge you to call me Barth.”
    “Ah yes,” he says with a flare of recognition. “So you’re to be my winged monkey, are you?”
    “Is that how Mr. Norton described me to you?”
    “Not exactly.”
    Neither of us says anything for a time until I conclude that the responsibility of carrying out the niceties is to be borne by me alone.
    “Well, for what it’s worth,” I say and extend my hand, which snaps him out of whatever spell had been placed over his motor skills. He gives me a firm, if somewhat moist handshake.
    “I’m Thom Tripp,” he says, and finally slumps into the opposite chair.
    “Well, I’ve reviewed your file, Mr. Tripp, and—”
    “Thom.”
    “Thom, yes—thanks—reviewed your file and now I need to talk to you about your view of things. You offered no statement to the police, which was wise. But what I need now is all the background stuff, anything you feel is relevant. Especially what you think the Crown may already know that I may not yet know, if you see what I mean.”
    He looks at me and breathes through enlarged nostrils, as though he requires more air than his nose was originally designed to accommodate. His file gave his age as forty-two, but I would have put him a few years older. Not because of the usual evidence of baldness, gray hair or wrinkles (his skin is smooth and his hair, although thin, covers most of his scalp and is more brown than anything else) but from the sticky weariness of his eyes. Aside from this one might even say he has an air of youth about him, a schoolboy-turned-schoolteacher precision to his features along with the eager, craning effect of a head sitting a little too high on top of his neck. But the eyes show