“Wilde?” Oren asked now. “Are you okay?”
Just as it had happened to Wilde less than an hour earlier, Wilde struck Oren’s solar plexus with the heel of his palm, temporarily paralyzing the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. Oren made an oof noise and stumbled back. Wilde stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His eyes took in everything. Oren was not in uniform and was not carrying his gun. There was no weapon in the nearby vicinity. Wilde scanned for nearby drawers or places where Oren might stow his gun. There was nothing.
Oren stared up at Wilde with a look so pained—from the physical or emotional Wilde couldn’t say, but he had a guess—that Wilde had to turn away. The strike had been necessary; that was what Wilde told himself, even as he questioned the need and remembered that Oren Carmichael was seventy years old now.
Wilde reached out his hand to help. Still heaving, Oren slapped it away.
“Take deep breaths,” Wilde said. “Try to stand upright.”
It took another minute or two. Wilde waited. He had tried not to hit him too hard, just hard enough, but again he had never hit a man in his seventies. When Oren could speak again, he said, “You want to explain yourself?”
“You first,” Wilde said.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Four cops from Hartford just grabbed me off the street, threw a black bag over my head, and worked me over with a cattle prod.”
The realization came to Oren’s face slowly. “Oh Christ.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“What did they do to you, Wilde?”
“I just told you.”
“But they let you go?”
“You think that makes it better?” Wilde shook his head. “I managed to call Laila before they took me. She called Hester, who called someone in Hartford and made threats neither one of us want to know about. That someone made a call and they let me go.”
“Oh, shit.” Oren’s face dropped. “Hester? She knows about this?”
“She doesn’t know I’m here.”
“You figured it out,” Oren said. “How long do you think it will be before she does?”
“Not my problem.”
“You’re right. It’s mine.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I messed up, Wilde. I’m sorry.”
Wilde waited. He didn’t have to prompt Oren to come clean. He would now. Wilde was certain of it.
“I need a drink,” Oren said. “You want one?”
That sounded pretty good to Wilde right now. Oren poured them a Macallan single malt scotch. “I’m really sorry,” he said again. “I know that’s not good enough, but a cop had been murdered.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“As you already know, Hester called in Henry McAndrews’s body being found on behalf of”—Oren made quote marks in the air—“‘an anonymous client who is protected under attorney-client privilege.’ You can’t imagine how much this pissed off the Hartford police. One of their own takes three bullets to the back of his head in his own home—and some loudmouth city lawyer won’t tell them who found the body? They were enraged. Naturally. You can understand that.”
Oren looked at Wilde. Wilde’s expression gave him nothing.
“And then?” Wilde said.
“And then the cops, still furious, checked into Hester and—surprise, surprise—they learned that she was currently dating a fellow law enforcement officer.”
“You,” Wilde said.
Oren nodded.
“So they came to you.”
“Yes.”
“And you betrayed her attorney-client privilege.”
“First off, you’re not a client, Wilde. You don’t pay her. You’re a friend.”
Wilde frowned. “For real?”
“Yes, for real. But second of all, and far more important, Hester didn’t tell me it was you. I didn’t ask her. I didn’t overhear her. I didn’t obtain the information that you were the client in question in an illegal way. I surmised that you were the client that Hester was unethically protecting independently of my private relationship with her.”
Wilde just shook his head.
Oren leaned forward. “Let’s say this happened before Hester and I started dating. The Hartford cops come to me and say, ‘That slick New York attorney from your hometown is protecting someone who broke into the house of a murdered cop, do you have any guesses who that might be?’ My educated guess, even back then, would have been you, Wilde.”