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

“Oh my,” he observed, catching her expression.  “You look like you just met with John Henry.”

“The man’s a moron,” she stated, tossing her head.

Joe chuckled.  “Then why do you let him get to you?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t know,” she muttered.  “Guess I can’t help myself.”

“The moron just left you a message,” Wanda Posey, the receptionist, file clerk, schedule-keeper, and coffee Meister said from behind her desk.

The grandmother, who was sixty-six years old and recently widowed, had retired from the Port Hancock Public Library after thirty years only to discover, not unlike Joe had, that she was too young to sit at home and do nothing.

“The body might be slowing down,” she liked to say, “but the brain is still speeding.”

While at the library, she had taken advantage of the opportunity to read almost every legal thriller that came her way, so there was never any doubt about what sort of job she would look for when she decided she was going to rejoin the workforce.

“It hasn’t even been ten minutes,” Lily said irritably.  “What did he want -- to rub it in?”

“Actually, he said that he’s thought your offer over,” Wanda replied, referring to the careful notes she always took.  “And he admits that he might have been a bit hasty.  So, in the best interests of everyone involved, he wants you to call him back.”

Lily was stunned.  “I don’t get it,” she said.  “Ten minutes ago, he was salivating over a public hanging.  I wonder what changed his mind so fast.”

“I’d say it was realizing that he has to go up against you,” Megan Fleming said, coming down the stairs carrying two heavy folders.

The twenty-eight-year-old had been Lily’s paralegal, sounding board, and right arm since the attorney had first opened her practice.  The wife of a Marine sergeant who had been stationed at Joint Base Lewis McChord, and the mother of an adorable little girl named Amy, she had lost her husband to the war in Afghanistan before he had even had a chance to meet his daughter.

Megan had gotten her legal certificate as something to do to fill the void, without having any real idea of what, if anything, she was going to do with it, much less where she was going to do it.  Then, on a pure whim, she answered an ad placed by a female attorney who was about to open a brand new law practice, and barely a month later, she and two-year-old Amy had landed in Port Hancock, where the people were friendly, the skies were blue, and she was going to be paid enough to rent a cute little ground-floor apartment on the edge of New Town, and enroll her daughter in a delightful daycare, a mere three Victorians away from her new office.

“Not with the case he’s got,” Lily declared.  “Not to mention the rather cloudy climate of the community.”  In addition to her conversation with the prosecutor, the scene at the cemetery was still fresh in her mind.  “There’s got to be something else going on here.”

“Well, whatever the reason, I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Wanda advised.

Lily didn’t intend to.  “Joe, before I talk to John Henry again, I need to know what changed his mind.”

Joe Gideon wasn’t any happier about this case than he knew Lily was, and if he could have declined to have any part of it, he would have.  But his loyalty was to the lawyer, not to the client.

“I’m already out the door,” the investigator said, making his exit.

“And I’m right behind you,” the attorney said.

“Wait a minute -- where are you going?” Megan cried, as Lily started after him.  “You just got here, and there’s a bunch of stuff on the Wicker case you have to look at.”

“There’s someone I need to talk to first,” she replied.

. . .

Even after three years, it felt strange for Joe Gideon to park his van in a visitor’s spot, rather than in the police employee parking lot, and enter the station through the front door instead of the back.  And sometimes, he even had to remind himself that he was visiting and not coming in to work a regular shift.

“Hey there, Sarge,” the duty officer at the front desk greeted him.  “How you doing?”

“Hi, Manny,” the retired police sergeant replied.  “Can’t complain.  How about you?”

“Can’t complain, either,” Manny Santiago said.  “You here about Dale’s case?”

Joe chuckled.  Even a city of 25,000 was a small town when it came to how quickly word could get around.  Like what attorney was representing what client, and what private investigator worked for the attorney who was representing that client.  And to be honest, Joe realized when he thought about it, he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

“You bet,” he said.

“I think Stiversen and Cady are in the back,” Manny told him.

“Thanks.”

Indeed, Arnie Stiversen and Paul Cady were in the big squad room that, along with interview rooms and holding cells, took up the rest of the first floor.

“Hey,” Stiversen said, coming forward with a big smile and an outstretched hand.

“Hey, yourself,” Joe replied, grasping the hand.  “How’s it going?”

“Okay,” the ten-year veteran who was still a friend said.  “So what is it with you?  You just can’t stay away from the old place, can you?  Still can’t figure out why you hung around as long as you did.  Not sure I’m going to make it another fifteen.”

“A wife who wanted me out of the house, and two kids to put through college,” Joe told him with a chuckle.

“I can relate to that,” Stiversen said with a nod.  The thirty-two-year-old had a wife and two kids of his own at home.

It was more or less the same opening banter that the two of them liked to engage in whenever they met, which, for the last three years, if not at the department, had been once or twice a month, over drinks at The Hangout, a trendy