Rikers Island was a squat, ugly disk of land in the East River named for a Dutchman—Abraham Ryken—who gained it in the city’s infancy and created a slavery-based empire around it. Were Ryken, or one of his Rikers descendants （the name was Anglicized by the early 1800s） to return in a time machine to the island, they might be fooled into believing not much had changed. Rikers was still mostly populated by men of color, living and working in captivity.
Joe had spent a fair amount of time there, both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney. Like most people in his line of work, he never imagined he would see it as a defendant in shackles. As the bus squealed to a stop in front of the reception building, he felt the last bit of hope leak out of him like pus from an infected ear. He would be at Rikers for a few months, depending on whether, and how, he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in the first degree. The Brooklyn DA’s office would offer nothing in terms of a plea deal, not with a DNA match on two bodies. He could throw himself upon the court’s mercy and see what happened. In all likelihood, that meant “life without the possibility of parole,” a sentence he had seen meted out to only one of his clients over the years. It meant life upstate, maybe Sing Sing in Westchester County. More likely Dannemora, near the Canadian border, or Attica out by Buffalo. Gray walls, endless winters, and God only knew what kind of daily violence and other horrors.
If I can kill myself in here, I might, he thought as he made his way off the bus and fell in line with the others.
Now, a week later, he reached the assigned attorney cubicle and beheld Aideen, her grin tight but warm. She was in a dark suit and a white blouse, her plump little hands folded on the desk. At Rikers, even for a lawyer, she stood out simply by being a short woman with blonde hair and blue eyes.
“Sit down, Joe,” she said gently, as if she knew it was a strange request.
“Aideen, I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
“Bring you into this,” he said, sighing heavily and sitting down at last. There was a tug at his groin, and he winced. His orange jumpsuit was scratchy and badly fitted. It grabbed at his body in odd places. “By the way, I hate this thing.”
“Oh, the jumpsuit?”
“Yes. How are you, anyway?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“The kids?”
“All good. Have you been okay in here?”
“So far, yeah,” he said, his eyes widening as if he knew that was a lucky break. There had been a few bad looks and one shoving incident, but for the most part Joe had been left alone. For the first few days he was mystified at this. A middle-aged white guy could expect trouble, at least a shakedown if not a beatdown. A younger Black inmate had explained it to him, though, on the third day as they made their way back from breakfast. You ain’t got a short-timer’s look, the guy had said. That’s why no one’s messing with you. Never seen a white man in here who didn’t have a short-timer’s look—scared, like it’s a dream they can’t wake up from. But not you, old man. You look like you just got home.
“Do people know you’re a lawyer?” she asked. “That can cut both ways.”
“I don’t think anyone cares.”
She nodded. “Well, I hear you need counsel.”
“I’ll find someone. Look, if Craig put you up to this, I’m sorry. It’s not that I wouldn’t want you to represent me—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off lightly. “You don’t want me wrapped up in it.”
“Correct. I don’t.”
“I wasn’t sure about it either. Believe me, though, that Craig didn’t put me up to anything. I mean, sure, he’s playing us both. I could see that. It’s what he does.” The last word was higher and accented. “But he does it for the right reasons, most of the time.”
“Craig told you what he thinks?” Joe asked. Aideen’s blithe, almost throwaway line about Craig “playing” them both—as if this were some kind of game and not the most serious thing imaginable—had not escaped him.
“Yeah,” she said. “Aaron Hathorne setting this all up? I can see it. You can’t?”
“I can see it, but . . .” He trailed off and was quiet. Aideen seemed to wait patiently. He opened his mouth to speak, then clamped down. He wanted more than anything not to say the next thing. He had never said it aloud. It was horrifying to contemplate. He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Let me ask you a question. What if I think I could have done it?” He held eye contact with her, willing her not to look away. She did not look away.