(NB: Jack's e-mail addresses - j.j.turner@llandl.com or jackjacob@yahoo.com. Better send to the Yahoo address. Fuck, I can't believe I'm really going to do this.)

Hi Jack,

I hope you don’t mind this going to your Yahoo account. I thought it would be better than using your work address. I guess you’ll soon see why.

I’m drafting in Word so that I don’t send this e-mail to you by accident, incomplete and unedited. But if you can read it, this is to tell you that I’m leaving Lyon, Lacrosse and Levine. I have two Windows open, one for this and one for my letter of resignation. I’ve nearly finished the latter. And I’m still not certain if I’m really going to send this to you or not.

It puzzles me that I think you deserve to hear I’m resigning before I tell anyone else. Other than Ariel, of course. Though I imagine that you don’t know I’ve been visiting her. I’ve been keeping it pretty quiet. Calling at strange hours. Avoiding the men that I know someone has planted at the hospital. Waiting, watching.

She’s resigning too. Which I guess won’t surprise you. I’ll hand in our letters together tomorrow, and then that means that she only has to get through a week of sobriety after her rehab leave ends before she and I head west. She won’t manage it, I know. But she’ll do her best and right now I think that’s all anyone can expect of her.

If you’re interested, we’ve both been accepted by this new pro-bono place in Orange County. Some depressed ex-White House guy’s idea of atonement for years in government. Interesting that, huh? And he’s happy to take on an alcoholic and a paralegal who gets panic attacks as associate counsels. I guess that’s atonement too. I have money, left over from that little lottery win. Enough to pay our ways, put down a rental deposit, get our stuff moved across the country.

You know what made me decide to leave, Jack? It was when I walking from the car park to the LL&L building yesterday morning. It was one of those mornings with a harsh winter sun bringing everything into this startling clarity. And I thought, you and I are the only people who work here now who know the truth about what you’ve done. Well, other than Mr Malloy, I suppose. But I’d rather not even speculate about what goes on in that gentleman’s brain.

Willow’s gone. Ariel tells me that she’s changed addresses twice in the last couple of months. You won’t find her now even if you use the same channels Ariel did. Even your father might not. So she’s safe. For now, anyway. Safe, and a shadow of who she once was or could have been. I imagine too that the very public news about the Junior Partner at LL&L who was stabbed in a Georgetown mugging the night after Ariel came to see her, might be troubling Mrs Peterson-Logan just a little bit. Sometimes I think that what you let happen to Willow is the worst thing you’ve done.

Grant’s gone. And I know he didn’t die in a mugging, though I dare say you’re the only person alive now who knows exactly what happened that night. Ariel blames herself. I don’t see the need to blame anyone but you. And I’ll never understand how you got through the oration at his funeral. It was an exquisite speech, you know. I as good as hated the man and I still tasted bile in my mouth to hear you praising him, rhapsodizing on him, bemoaning the brevity of a life of such promise.

And Ariel’s gone. Or going, very soon. Even if I weren’t going with her, there’s no way she could continue at LL&L now. And you know the worst thing? She’s grieving for you worse even than she’s scared of you. And she’s terrified, Jack, she’s sick with it. She’s still in love with Grant, but on some level she still loves you. As a friend. Almost as a sister. Far more than she loves me. It hurts, and she hates herself for it. And I should hate you for it, but I find that I can’t.

And that’s it, isn’t it? We were the only people who ever knew. And as I’ve been careful about seeing Ariel in rehab, and as I’m still here, alive and untroubled, I imagine that it’s a bit of a shock to read that I know it at all.

So I realized that I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t stay working for you, couldn’t stay for the daily encounters with poor, dedicated Riley and his enviable ignorance; couldn’t stay loving you and loving Ariel and not knowing which way I was facing over any of this. Oh, I do love you, Jack. That’s why I’m writing this. So after everything, maybe I’m the crazy one.

I’m sitting here at my laptop fighting tears. Isn’t that idiotic? That softer side you told me you loved to find, that I always try to cover with my "sniper’s wit", or whatever you call it. It’s not so deeply hidden as all that, and I’ve never tried concealing very much from you. But you brought it out of me in a way that nobody else could. Maybe Ariel, if she and I had ever slept together. But we haven’t, and even though I think she might offer now, I won’t take advantage of her gratitude.

It wouldn’t be like our times together anyway, would it? I’m rambling now, but you know, for a while after that first night I was ashamed of what you could do to me. And not because you’re a guy – I’ve slept with men before, it wasn’t a big deal. But because of what it told me about myself.

It was a hard night, that one. I was a mess. Shaken by the meeting with Forrester, tired but rushing on adrenaline, desperately worried about Charlie. I remember knocking at your door at three in the morning, not even knowing why I was there. I'd had a crush on you for months but that's hardly a sound reason. I remember you opening the door. Disheveled. Beautiful. You’d been asleep for only an hour, you said. You’d stayed late at the office, brooding, waiting for Forrester to be dead. You invited me in. And you were so kind, Jack. You gave me a cup of tea. You listened to me talk about serial killers and justice, listened to me trying not to talk about Charlie.

And when I’d finished my tea you took the cup away and put it on the table beside us, and ran your hands through my hair. Your fingers were gentle, curious, soothing on my scalp. And then your mouth was sweet against mine with toothpaste and sleep, and you smelled, as you always do, of ink and expensive shirts. And when we were pressed together in a sweaty heap on your couch and I let you fuck me, you made me lie on my back so that you could look me straight in the eye.

"Let you fuck me," is such an understatement, isn’t it? We went off the deep end, Jack. I found that carefully repressed dominance that runs through every vein in your body, and it intoxicated me. You tasted my submission and it drove you like a whip. And yet you were still kind, still caring, still Jack. I fell so in love with you that night. Not the bitter-sweet, aching love I have for Ariel – the one I can live with, the one that makes me a better person. But something harder, darker. Something more like you.

Does it bother you to read this? To know that after everything I’m still fixated on you? On your body, on your voice. On the way you gently took me to pieces and put me together again. On the way you’ve done the same thing to me every time we’ve been together since then. Once or twice a month at first. Interspersed with other encounters on both sides. I’m not sure if you knew, but I had such an encounter with Grant’s prostitute, and even went on a date with your Daphne in the end. It didn’t go that well. Sadly, my kind of strange is not hers.

But lately it’s been closer to three times a week. Sometimes more. You need me, and you need me badly enough not to trouble to hide it. If being managing partner put five years on you, Grant’s death has added another ten. You’re exhausted. Graying. Your eyes look like agony. And yet you’re still so beautiful. And so good to me. You call me after work, you ask me to come over to discuss whatever case we have. Because you would never make me do the things we do in my apartment: you understand my need to have power in my own home, and I’m so grateful for that, it hurts. So I come over to your place, and before long you have me cuffed to your bed and screaming your name. And nursing bruises the following day that are like a wondrous distorted map of where your hands have been. I’m not inclined to complain about it.

But I’m scared now, Jack. Of you. Of me. Of what I might say when you hold my head back against your pillow and press yourself into me until all the world goes away, and then tell me to let my mind go where it will and tell you anything. Because I do. In your arms, in your eyes, I can’t help but believe that you’re trustworthy. I’ve broken privilege. I’ve wept because Grant is dead, because Ariel is a drunk, because that bitch Britt Hanley is falling apart. I’ve told you all of my secrets. All but the fact that I know yours.

The thought of the things I might ask you makes me nauseous. Did you just kill Grant and Sean Waters, or did you push Daniel Barrington and shoot Detective Traub as well? Did you really have nothing to do with Zero Tech, or was that another lie? Did you kill Grant because you went off your medication, or isn’t it strong enough for you anymore? Are you taking it now? Did you plan either murder in cold blood, or did you just act through an episode and then leave the cover-up to more experienced hands? What do you think about what you’ve done, Jack? Do you even remember killing Grant, or are you so fucked up that you genuinely believe he died in a mugging? How long did you let him talk before you knifed him?

How long would your hands remain on my brow and my chest after I said any of those things? How long before they found their way to my throat?

Maybe it’s safer to come clean at once. And to tell you that Ariel and I are leaving, and we’re not coming back. We’re not going to make trouble for you, Jack. Or ask for the answers to any of my questions. There’ll be no attempts at blackmail. No heroics to force justice upon the wrongdoer. If there’s any admissible evidence left that could indict you for either murder I’d be astonished. And even if I were willing to risk my life on the slight hope that there is, I’m not willing to risk hers.

But that’s not the only reason. The truth is that neither of us can face it. Because we love you. Under all the terror and the anger and the horror at what you’ve done, we still just want you to be okay. It’s almost funny.

Do you know what my fantasy has been? You can call it absurd. Ariel already has, though she gave me one of her gentle smiles when she did so, which is better than I deserved.

I keep imagining that we take you with us. That our new boss lets you in too, and you come and do a proper spell at pro-bono redemption. The mismatched three of us in an apartment in downtown Santa Ana, setting up home together like some trashy sitcom. That I’m there to see you take your medication every day, to hold your hand when you go to get your head seen to; that mine is the smile that keeps you calm, that keeps you centered, that keeps you more or less like a functioning human being. That you stop going to your father every time there’s a crisis in your life, but come to me instead. And I won’t tell you that everything’s going to be okay, or that what you’ve done doesn’t matter. I won’t pay off people who you’ve hurt, or move the bodies for you. But I’ll be there. I’ll love you.

In my fantasy you rest your head on my lap and I stroke your hair, and right there and then you weep almost everything away. In my fantasy you repent of the suffering and death you've caused, really repent, and I’m so strong, and so forgiving, and somehow that's enough. In my fantasy I can take the bad with the good. The psychotic with the devoted man of the law. I can truly believe that punishment would only make you worse, and that my love and Ariel’s friendship could turn you back into the man we always thought you were.

But it isn’t going to happen. Ariel and I aren’t strong or wise enough and I’m even not sure that it’s medically possible. And you’ll never leave Lyon, Lacrosse and Levine. Not now. Not yet. Not until there’s a safe congressional seat laid on for you by your father and his friends. You’re trapped, my friend. As trapped into a life of glory and success as Willow Peterson-Logan is into a life of compromise and disappointment. And for the same reason.

I feel almost as sorry for you as I do for her.

So Ariel and I will share that apartment. Live and work together. And to be harsh, Jack, if you’re going to murder either of us without taking on the other, you’d better do it before we leave Washington. Because once we’re in California I’m not going to let her out of my sight for more than half an hour at a time. And even then you can be sure that I’ll be just in the room beyond, and that if she so much as gasps in mild surprise I’ll come a-running. I can’t save you, Jack. And maybe I can’t save Ariel either. But I’m telling you now that I’m damn well going to try.

I went off for a bit just then, and finished my letter of resignation. I’ve also done some thinking, and decided that I will send this e-mail when I’ve finished it. Perhaps I’m just fatalistic. I can’t quite see myself ever making it out of LL&L alive. So maybe I just want to have some control over the when and the why.

I have two favors to ask you.

The first is that you spare Ariel. Please. She’s suffered enough.

The other is that when it’s my turn, you don’t do it when I’m drunk or high. Don’t hold me under the water. And for the sake of everything we’ve had together, Jack, please don’t get someone else to do it for you.

Do for me what you did for Grant. The stab wound was in his stomach, direct and clean. You didn’t trick him or get him in the back. He knew what was happening, right to the end. Whatever happened with him, do the same for me. Look me in the eye, Jack. Just look me straight in the eye.

I’m going to send this now. And then I’d better get to bed.

I'll see you at work tomorrow. Take care of yourself. Remember that I love you.

Yours ever,

Jeff Fineman