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of Ollie's as though I had. Curt seemed to assume I would join him, and the appeal of a drink won out over any reservations I might have had.
    Friday nights are usually pretty busy, but we were early enough to get a table away from the noisiest part of the room.
    "I hear you're working on the Wes Harding case," he remarked after we'd settled in.
    "Along with Sam Morrison."
    Curt gave me a Cheshire cat grin. "You're going to lose this one, sweetheart. Take it from me."
    I wasn't bothered by the sweetheart bit; that's the way Curt talked. But I was caught somewhat off guard by the conviction in his tone.
    "I wouldn't be so sure about winning," I told him. The words were pure bravado on my part, and I hoped they didn't sound as phony as they felt.
    He grinned again. 'This case is going to be my ticket out of here. It's already made the Sacramento papers, and there's a woman at a television station in San Francisco who wants to follow the whole trial. People are going to be watching this, Kali, important people. It's the opportunity I've been waiting for."
    Like most lawyers, Curt liked winning. More than that, though, he wanted to make a name for himself in a bigger pond than the likes of Silver Creek. The scuttlebutt was that he was a hard worker and fairly bright, but he'd had the misfortune of being a mediocre student at a mediocre law school. From there, it's a tough road to the top.
    Our drinks arrived. I licked at the salt on my margarita. "You want to be careful what you wish for, you know."
    "You mean about getting out of this town?"
    I nodded.
    Curt curled his fingers around his glass. "I don't understand how you could have traded a prestigious San Francisco practice for this." He gestured with his arm. I assumed he was referring to the town rather than the bar.
    "As I've explained before, it wasn't exactly a trade. Not a voluntary one, anyway."
    "With your credentials and experience, you must have a wealth of options. What does Silver Creek have to offer?"
    "Free parking?"
    He laughed. "Given the wages in this two-bit town, you need free parking."
    In truth, my options had not been as wide-open as Curt imagined. With a growing glut of lawyers, particularly at my mid-career level, and firms everywhere cutting back,
    the market was tight. I could have beat the bushes for a job in another big firm, gone through the whole prove-yourself-worthy-of-partnership contest, and then found myself once again bounced out the door for reasons over which I had no control.
    My other option was to go it on my own, which is what I'd chosen to do. Why I'd chosen to do it in Silver Creek was less clear to me.
    Curt downed half his vodka martini in one swallow. "You think I ought to set my sights on San Francisco or Los Angeles?"
    "Depends on whether you prefer fog or smog."
    Nary a chuckle. Curt took his career options seriously. "It's a long shot, I know, but someday I might even wind up being appointed to the bench." Finally, he allowed himself a smile. "Wouldn't that be something."
    "You'd better concentrate on winning this case first."
    "Oh, I'm going to win it." He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a file and slapped it on the table in front of me.
    "What's this?"
    'The lab report on clothing items taken from Wes Harding's place. The blood on the jeans was definitely not Wes's." He paused for effect. "Not only does the blood group match Lisa Cornell's, it's type B, which is found in only seven percent of the entire Caucasian population."
    "That's still a lot of people."
    He nodded. "Yeah, including me. But the jury's not going to be looking at the rest of that seven-percent pool. They're going to know the blood was Lisa's."
    "Did they do a DNA analysis?"
    Curt shook his head. 'The sample wasn't fresh enough for that."
    'Then there's no way to prove it's Lisa's blood. You're talking probabilities, not certainty."
    "Sweetheart, there ain't nothing in life that's certain, but this is about as close as you get."

7
    I suppose on one