A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

John Henry sighed.  Tom Lickliter nodded to himself.

“He can’t get enough cocaine into his system to keep him as euphoric as he once could, and she believes him,” Lily went on.  “So she makes two panicked telephone calls.  The first is to the police officer friend, who’s at a bar on the outskirts of town.  The second is to her father, who’s already in bed.  The friend leaves the bar, jumps into his car, and heads back to town to look for his partner.  The father jumps out of bed, pulls on his clothes, and tells her he’s on his way.  Now, I suspect you’re about to charge my client with Dale Scott’s murder, so I feel obligated to tell you that one of these three people is prepared to admit that, after finding Dale in the alley and trying unsuccessfully to talk him down, he lost his temper, and did indeed beat the crap out of him.  The other two are prepared to say that, at one point or another, they were there, in that alley, too.  And all three of them are prepared to confess, under oath, that they shot and killed Dale Scott.”

Lily sat back in her chair and waited for comment from the prosecutor and his deputy.

“That’s quite a story,” John Henry said.

“Isn’t it?” she agreed.  “All three of them had means, motive, and opportunity.  And all three of them will testify against themselves and for each other.  You know as well as I do what that means -- you’ve been a lawyer longer than I have.  You’ll never get a conviction.”

The prosecutor scowled.  “I can charge one for the murder and the other two as accessories, you know,” he threatened.

“Yes, you could,” Lily conceded.  “But which one, which two?  How are you going to prove who actually pulled the trigger?”

Tom Lickliter smiled a genuine smile of admiration.  “I think she’s got us, John Henry,” he said.

“So, whoever it is who did it -- he or she -- is going to get off scot free for a cold-blooded murder?” the prosecutor exclaimed.  “Where’s the justice in that?”

Lily shrugged.  “Where’s the justice in a woman being used as a punching bag for years on end?  You saw that hospital file.  You know what he did to her.  That heavy veil she wore at the funeral, it wasn’t to hide her grief -- it was to hide her injuries.”

“She could have left him.”

“Maybe,” Lily said.  “But after you’re told long enough and often enough that, if you leave, he’ll hunt you down and kill you, and no one will ever find you, and he’s a cop who could do it and know how to get away with it -- for some people, it’s just not that simple.  And she had two children to worry about.”

“So what am I supposed to do?  Just drop the whole thing?”

“I certainly would never presume to tell you what to do, John Henry, ” Lily told him.  “But if I were you, I’d call a little press conference to say that the case will remain open, that you aren’t going to rush into anything, and that as soon as enough evidence is obtained to enable you to make a charge that will stick, you’ll make it.  Then I’d leak a little drib and drab here and there about what kind of person Dale Scott really was, and in time -- I suspect that most people won’t care if his killer is ever brought to trial.”

John Henry thought for a moment.  “It doesn’t seem entirely fair, though,” he said at length.  “After all, the three of them were ready to let an innocent man go to the gallows, weren’t they?”

“It looks that way,” Lily conceded.  “And what I said was, you wouldn’t get a conviction -- I didn’t say they were honorable.”

The prosecutor drew a deep breath and nodded.  “All right, Lily, I’m going to go along with you on this.  I have no choice, really.  I’ve already gotten one black eye from this mess.  I don’t need another.  But I’m curious -- do you know which one did it?”

Lily shrugged.  “I have my suspicions.  But to tell you the truth, I don’t think you really want to know.”

“I still think it was Hitchens,” John Henry declared.  “I could have made a pretty good case against him.”

“Not good enough,” the defense attorney said.

“Which means the whole thing will just languish for a while and then fade away.”

“And maybe, twenty or thirty years from now,” Tom interjected, “when we’re retired, someone will pull the file out and wonder why the case was never solved.”

John Henry nodded.  “I guess I don’t really mind so much.  Scott was a dirty cop.  He probably deserved what he got.”

“Thanks for seeing it that way,” Lily said, rising.  “I’ll tell my client.”

Tom walked out with her.  “That was nicely done,” he said.

“I’m afraid I can’t take much of the credit,” she responded.  “The idea wasn’t mine.  It was theirs, with a little help from my father.”

“Why am I not surprised?” the deputy prosecutor said.  “The profession lost a lot when it lost Carson Burns.”

Lily smiled.  “Thanks,” she said.  “I’ll tell him you said that.  I know he’ll appreciate it.”

“Look,” Tom said, feeling both bold and tentative.  “The case is over, which means there’s no issue of impropriety here.  So I was wondering if maybe, sometime, you might like to go out for dinner?”  It had been way too long.  He felt totally clumsy.

For her part, Lily felt her face grow warm.  “I anticipate we’ll be facing each other over many more cases in the future, but I don’t see why that should be a factor,” she replied, wondering why her legs suddenly felt a bit wobbly.

“Should I take that as a yes?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager, because things like this couldn’t be rushed.

“I think you can interpret that as a yes,” she confirmed, hoping she didn’t sound