Unfit to Practice by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page A

was a local cop. He would hear about the auto theft and the files and would want to know if his could be involved. He would be concerned.
    The custody hearing continued at eleven-thirty this morning.
    How could she manage this catastrophe? She had to get into the office, talk to Sandy.
    “Because what I'm wondering . . .” said Officer Scholl, digging around in a pocket and putting on expensive-looking mirrored sunglasses against the glare of sun. She faced Nina directly: “Is the auto theft ancillary? You know? Did this thief want your files?”
    “How could anyone know I'd be taking them home last night? I don't often do that,” Nina said.
    “You don't take files home?”
    “Well, yes. But these particular files—”
    “Could someone have seen you leave and followed you home?”
    “I didn't notice anyone, but I wasn't looking either.”
    “This young lady, Nicole Zack. She left after you had arrived.”
    “I'm sure she had nothing to do with it.”
    “Maybe. But it's raining, it's dark, she's supposed to be biking home. Maybe she opens the Bronco door—”
    “It was locked. I locked it.”
    “Maybe. But maybe she sees a key on the seat. You dropped it there. Maybe she decides to borrow the Bronco just to get herself home.”
    “She'd have to break in, because as I keep telling you, the Bronco was locked with my spare key.”
    “You were tired. Maybe you just thought you locked it,” Officer Matthias put in.
    “Talk to her if you want,” Nina said. “But it wasn't her. I locked the doors. I didn't hear anything.”
    “Well, but, you know? Nikki Zack, right here last night, walking along this very driveway on a noisy, stormy night. We know her. You defended her once.”
    “I know what you're thinking, but she was acquitted. She was proven to be innocent of that crime.”
    Scholl sighed. Here police butted heads with defense attorneys daily. “Maybe she was proven innocent of
that
crime,” she said. “But, speaking generally, involvement with the law, meaning us, gets to be a bad habit. Like cigarettes.” She smiled in an overly friendly fashion. “People get hooked before they know it. They can't quit.” Below his own sunglasses, Matthias's pale mouth wiggled in response to her joke.
    “That may be the opinion around the good old police department,” Nina said, knowing better but unwilling to conceal her disdain, “but she's a friend of my son's, and I trust her.” She didn't, but they didn't have to know that.
    “She know any of the people whose files got stolen? Any people who might be mentioned in the files?”
    Nina thought about her cases. “No. Look. This is simple auto theft. I believe that, but it's an emergency for me because of the briefcase. The files. This is urgent, Officer.”
    Scholl snapped her notebook shut. “We'll give it the same urgent attention we'd give any theft of property.” She delivered the news in that same controlled officious monotone that made Nina think paranoiacally of all sorts of things: whether she was more unpopular than she knew with law enforcement, whether they might actually put the theft on the back burner to cause her further discomfiture, whether Scholl was laughing at her problems behind those unfashionable glasses, for starters.
    “I have to get to my office,” Nina said. “I have to call a taxi. I—”
    “Call me if you find your files at your office,” Scholl said, handing Nina her card.
    “I won't. They were in the truck.”
    “Check anyway.” Officer Scholl asked for Nikki's address and phone number and Nina gave the information. As soon as the two officers pulled out, Nina got on the phone to the taxi company. Another half hour passed before she arrived at the Starlake Building and rushed down the hall to her office, feeling naked without her briefcase, stripped, vulnerable, mad, and frightened all at once.
    “Three questions,” said Sandy as Nina came into the office. “These points and authorities on the summary-judgment