“You here for Malley?” She chuckled as she asked the question.

“Yeah,” he admitted, throwing his bar card and driver’s license on the counter. “How’d you guess?”

“You’re a sucker for the hard-luck cases. His is as hard as they come.” She laughed again as she picked up his identification and handed him a locker token and a yellow laminated lawyer’s pass to hang around his neck.

Finn slipped the pass over his head and took the token over to the wall lined with dented steel lockers, sliding it into the key slot of one and opening it. He knew the drill by heart: he took everything out of his pockets-wallet, keys, phone, BlackBerry-and tossed them into the locker. Then he took a legal pad out of his briefcase and slid the case into the locker. Only the pad was permitted into the jail.

He put his overcoat on top of the pile before he closed the door and turned the key, hearing the token drop into the lock. He tugged once on the door to make sure it was secured, and walked over to the metal detector. Carol was waiting there for him.

He stepped through the archway and the metal detector buzzed once. She beckoned him forward, and he moved toward her, keeping his feet shoulder-width apart and putting his arms out to his sides, palms up. She picked up a handheld security wand and began running it over his torso. She was still chuckling softly to herself.

“It’s not nice to laugh, you know that, Hollings?” he said.

“How can you not laugh?”

“He’s my client. At least, he may be.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not funny.” She passed the wand over his belt buckle and it gave a chirp. She looked down at his crotch and passed the wand over the front of his pants a few times. The wand whined rhythmically in time with the motion of her arm. “You got anything in your pockets, or is that just the buckle?” she asked.

“You’re welcome to check.”