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

Wanda Posey, the savvy ex-librarian, added.  “But it seems to me that someone is trying to scare you off this case by threat, and using the US mail to do it.  Now, I’m not the lawyer here, but that doesn’t sound exactly legal to me.  In fact, it sounds downright criminal.”

“You have such a logical way of putting things,” Lily told her.

“Good,” Wanda said, picking up the phone.  “You want to make the call, or should I?”

She talked it over with her father first.  “I agree with Joe and Wanda,” he said.  “Sending threats through the mail is illegal.  You have every right to file a complaint.  And it’s important that you do so.  Not that it will get you anywhere, but at least you’ll be on record.”

“You mean, if anything happens to me?”

“Well, we certainly don’t intend to let it get to that,” Carson declared firmly.  “But I think dropping this nice little ball in Kent McAllister’s lap is the right first move.”

. . .

“I sure am sorry about this,” Arnie Stiversen said when he and his partner responded to Lily’s complaint.  “It isn’t appropriate, and we’ll certainly do our best to find out who’s responsible.”

“Although this kind of case, you know -- a murdered police detective and all -- I guess it was bound to bring out the crazies in the community,” Paul Cady put in.  “Of course, being crazy doesn’t mean being stupid.  We’ll check for fingerprints and DNA and all, but don’t be too surprised if we don’t find anything.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Joe said bluntly, because he had been senior to both of them, and he still had some clout in the department.  “You take this as seriously as you would take any threat of this kind, or I’ll go over your head.”

“Don’t worry,” Stiversen said, stepping in before his hotheaded partner could respond.  “We don’t take this sort of thing lightly, Joe, and you know it.  We’re on it one hundred percent.  And I’ll personally keep you updated on whatever we find.”

. . .

“What’s the matter with you?” Stiversen barked at Cady as they exited the Victorian.  “You know damn well she didn’t ask for this case -- it was dumped on her.  So now you want to make her pay twice?”

“Defense attorneys -- they’re all alike,” Cady sneered.  “They start crying foul the minute the going gets tough.”

“Oh, come off it,” his partner told him.

“Why should I?” Cady countered.  “Dale was my friend.  I thought he was your friend, too.  I don’t want some smart-ass lawyer getting his dirty Injun killer off on some screw-up technicality.”

“Dale was my friend,” Stiversen confirmed.  “But that doesn’t make Lily my enemy.  She’s only doing her job, and you know it.  So maybe you better start thinking about doing yours.”

“Yeah, and who are you to be telling me what to do?” Cady snapped.

“Well, I don’t know, partner,” Stiversen said.  “You want me to think the reason you’re dragging your feet on this is because you know who sent those letters to her?”

“Now that’s loyalty!” Cady exclaimed.  “Whatever happened to cops sticking together?”

“I’ve got loyalty,” Stiversen told him.  “But just so you know, I’ve also got ethics.”

“All right, all right,” his partner grumbled.  He looked at the plastic bags containing the threatening letters.  “I’ll get these over to the lab.  They can run their tests.  They might even find us a perp or two, although I won’t hold my breath.  But who knows, maybe they’ll luck out, and we can go waste time hunting down some otherwise law-abiding citizens who aren’t doing anything but letting off some steam.  And why?  Just because they have the balls to say what the rest of us are thinking!”

. . .

There were no usable fingerprints on the letters.  There was some DNA on the envelope flaps, but other than confirming that there was no match in any of the national databases, nothing came of the complaint, and the offensive mail continued to come to Broad Street.

And, as if that weren’t enough, Lily was becoming persona non grata around town, as well -- at the local supermarket, the beauty salon, her favorite restaurant, the JCPenney store in the Port Hancock Mall.  Acquaintances glared at her from a distance.  Casual friends did their best to avoid her.  Close friends didn’t discuss it.  And on one Saturday afternoon at the end of March, courtesy of a complete stranger, a rotten tomato found its mark.

“Wow, you’re getting downright dangerous to be around,” Amanda Jansen exclaimed, she and Lily having gone to the market together.  “Anything harder than a tomato could do some real damage, you know.”

“I’m really very sorry, Ms. Burns,” the store manager said.  “If you tell me who threw the tomato, I’ll have the person removed from the premises.”

“I don’t know who it was,” Lily told him.

“Oh, I see,” the manager said.  “Well then, I hope you won’t hold it against the store.  After all, we can’t be held responsible for our customers.  Legally, I mean.”

“Don’t worry,” she said.  “My calendar is full.  I have no plans to sue.”

Twice in the next month, she walked over to the courthouse in the middle of the day, only to come back and find her Toyota Camry adorned with crude graffiti.  Once, she was parked at the mall for half an hour, but it was long enough for the driver’s side of her car to be keyed.  And another time, she came out of the local movie theater to realize that not one, but two of her tires had been slashed.

“I guess you could say there are pros and there are cons to living in a small town,” Carson Burns told his daughter.

“Yes, but this is ridiculous,” Lily said.  “And you know what bothers me the most?  No one reported it.  No one even tried to stop it.  And it didn’t happen in a vacuum.  My car was either parked right out on the street or in a public parking lot.  There had to be witnesses.”

“Well, you can always