Arrangements

"Say that again," demanded Andrea.

Kyle still wasn't meeting her eyes.

"I arranged to have the police officers not tell you about Adams when you came in so I would have a chance to talk to you," he admitted.

"That's NOT what you said," accused Andrea. "You said you 'arranged' to have me 'sent' here."

"...Right, sent here to the interview room I was in."

"Bullshit!" They weren't in court right now, and Andrea had no reason to restrain herself from calling him out. "You want me to believe that your little 'arrangement' was to wait patiently until the next time I had business at the precinct and THEN have me redirected? You didn't just have me sent to this room, you 'arranged' to have me sent to the precinct, didn't you!"

Kyle just nodded quietly.

"And what exactly is this 'arrangement' that lets you give instructions to cops? Last I checked, they weren't in the habit of following the orders of murder suspects. Did you find time to get elected the Chief of Police in between your busy schedule of court cases and killings?"

Seeing Kyle wince slightly, Andrea thought, 'That last comment might have been going too far, but… No. Screw him! I don't like being manipulated!'

"I didn't instruct the officers directly… I made some calls and called in some favors to have others make the actual arrangements."

"Bullshit again!" barked Andrea. "You're not making things better by lying."

That finally drove Kyle to lift his head and look at Andrea straight. His expression was still pained, but there was a furrow to his brow that said he didn't like being talked to this way.

'Too bad for him,' thought Andrea. 'He was the one who wanted me here, not me. If he doesn't like the way I talk to him, I can just walk out and never come back.'

"I'm not lying." His voice was level, but it was clearly taking effort to keep it that way. "You don't believe I have that kind of influence?"

As it happened, Andrea was skeptical that Kyle had the kind of pull necessary to have cops do his bidding, especially given his current situation. Maybe he was secretly a person of influence of some kind, above and beyond being a state prosecutor. But even if he was, what were the chances that influence would count for anything when he had been arrested for murder?

That wasn't what Andrea was calling him out for though.

"I don't believe that you did that kind of business with phone calls. You want me to believe that you stood out in the hallway and used the jailhouse phone to call and make shady arrangements?"

Before Kyle could respond, Andrea jabbed an accusatory finger at him. "Those phone calls are always recorded, you wouldn't be stupid enough to leave a record of some clandestine dealings, not when it might jeopardize your murder trial."

Kyle faltered for a moment before nodding. He looked unhappy at having been caught in a lie again, and for having made a mistake. Andrea suspected that meant he hadn't even considered the issue of leaving a recording. 'But that does confirm that I was right that he didn't make calls himself,' she thought.

"So how was it done, oh-great-mastermind," she mocked. "Do you have yourself a crooked cop on the payroll here in the precinct, sneaking in here and being your errand boy?"

"...Sure, you got me. I had a cop take the messages."

Andrea rested her elbows on the table, leaning forward, as close as she could get while still being out of Kyle's reach.

"Why do you keep lying to me, Kyle?" she asked slowly, narrowing her eyes. "What are you hiding? What is it that you think is going to upset me more than how you've manipulated me already?"

'What's worse than me thinking you're a murderer?' she thought.

Again, a pause.

Kyle scowled back at her. "What makes you think I'm lying this time, Sherlock?"

"Your lips are moving."

In fact, this time her suspicion wasn't the result of deduction and logic. Andrea had never played cards with Kyle, but she suspected that he usually had a pretty good poker face. Certainly he'd rarely let anything slip when they'd faced off in court. It must have been the stress of the experience and his lack of sleep, but his mask was slipping.

He was normally so quick, so smooth, so fast with a retort or a witty comeback. Even when they had been sparring earlier, it seemed like it had come easily to him. But every time she had caught him in a lie, it had been preceded by a pause, a hesitation while he decided what he was going to say. That had been the tell undermining his poker face. When he'd admitted to having a cop run his errands, there was the tiniest of pauses, short enough that Andrea might not have spotted it if she hadn't been looking for it.

It was a good way to catch him out on lies he made up on the fly, but if she gave him too much time, he might start PLANNING his lies, and then they would be harder to spot. She needed to keep him off balance, like a hostile witness on the stand.

"Tell me what I want to know or I'm walking out of here…" she said.

This time the pause was long enough that Andrea could almost see the cogs turning in Kyle's mind as he tried to work out what lie to tell. She wanted him to be honest and that meant not giving him time to think. She stood up again, making ready to leave for what felt like the hundredth time.

"WAIT!" shouted Kyle. "Wait… okay…"

"No," she said, moving towards the call button again.

"I got a lawyer to do it, okay?" Kyle shouted. "I got… another lawyer to do it for me…"

It would have been a kick in the teeth if Andrea hadn't been half expecting it.

Who else would even be allowed to visit someone who had just been arrested for murder? The only people who would be allowed in to talk to a suspect and then free to leave again were cops and lawyers.

And most of all, it was just too crazy to believe that she would have been the first lawyer he would have asked to represent him. For all his talk of her 'caring' and 'believing he was innocent', he'd have to be stupid to want her as his attorney. Not when even the court assigned attorney he would have received would have more experience than her. Not when he clearly had the money to pay for one of the best high-profile attorneys.

"Who?" she asked curtly.

"Francis McCabe."

That was a name that made Andrea pause. She nearly asked if it was THE Francis McCabe, but it was hardly likely that Kyle was talking about a different Francis McCabe.

He was one of the senior partners of Armstrong, Jackson and McCabe, perhaps the most prestigious law firm in the city. He was the best lawyer you could hope to have in your corner if you were facing a charge of murder-in-the-first-degree and money was no object.

It made perfect sense that he would have been the first person Kyle called. The fact that McCabe came in person to meet with Kyle at whatever crazy hour he had been called suggested that Kyle probably did have more influence than she'd given him credit for. Or at least more money.

The only thing that didn't make sense was why Andrea was here now instead of McCabe? Unless…

"So on finding yourself an unwilling guest of the city's finest, you called up your good friend Francis McCabe, who came down from his ivory skyscraper in the middle of the night to meet with you so you could… have him run some errands for you to engineer tricking ME into being your attorney… That about the size of it?"

Andrea folded her arms and leaned back against the wall right next to the call button. The implication was clear.

"No," said Kyle, "or at least, not exactly. I… asked him if he would take my case. I asked him first."

He paused and looked to Andrea as though to see if she would accuse him of lying again. So far he sounded truthful, but Andrea gave nothing away.

She could understand why he would think she'd be insulted not to have been his first choice, even though she thought that would have been crazy, especially if he had Francis McCabe as an option.

She was more insulted that he tried to lie to her about it.

She was MOST insulted that he thought she wouldn't see through him.

"Go on…" she said.

"We talked over the details of my situation," Kyle swallowed before continuing. "I explained my version of what happened, we discussed possible legal strategy, and concluded that we weren't going to move forward with representation together."

"He didn't want to touch your case with a 40-foot pole?" Andrea asked.

"Not quite. He was willing to take the case, but we had… irreconcilable differences regarding legal strategy."

"Plea deal?" she asked.

"That is correct." Kyle wasn't hesitating anymore. He looked beaten down.

'Apparently, he's finally decided that honesty is the best policy,' Andrea thought. 'Good decision. Now time to get to the bottom of what's been going on.'