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

Hancock.  His wife of twenty-nine years was waiting for him in the living room.

“I think I liked it better when you were with the Police Department,” Beth Gideon called out when she heard the door to the garage close.  “At least, then I knew when your shift ended you’d be on your way home.”

“Sorry, Sweetheart,” Joe said, coming into the living room to give his wife a kiss.  It was then that he realized she wasn’t alone.  His son and his daughter were there as well, and he stopped short.  “Uh-oh, what did I forget?” he asked.

“Well, that all depends,” his son replied.

“Happy Birthday, Dad,” his daughter declared.

“Today?” Joe said.  “Is today the 27th?”

“All day,” Beth told him.  “And dinner’s waiting.”

“Well, let’s not let it wait any longer,” her husband said, leading the way to the dining room.

“And what’s keeping you so busy these days, Dad?” his son asked when they were seated around the table, and Beth was serving up roast beef, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob.

“A murder, a couple of silly attempts at murder, and a bombing that almost resulted in murder,” his father replied.

Alex Gideon was twenty-six years old, unmarried, but in a dating relationship that was threatening to become something more serious.  He lived in Bellingham, up toward the Canadian border, where he was employed as a high school math teacher.  He didn’t get back to Port Hancock very often.

“That’s a lot of cases to be juggling, isn’t it?” he observed.

“Actually, as it turns out, it’s all just one case,” Joe told him.

“Sounds ugly,” Tracy Gideon exclaimed.  “I hope you’re not in any danger.  Retirement was supposed to be about getting you away from all that risky stuff, remember?”  The twenty-four-year-old, who was also unmarried, worked in the emergency room at Seattle’s Harborview Hospital.

“I promise you, I keep my nose to the ground, and out of harm’s way,” Joe assured her.  “Anyway, all I do is the footwork.”

“That means he gathers the information, and someone else gets to follow up on it,” Beth said.  She had struggled through twenty-five years of worrying about him, day and night, and she had no desire to see his current career become a repeat of his last.

Alex raised his wine glass.  “In that case, happy birthday, Dad,” he said.  “And here’s to many more to come.”

. . .

Lily had been home for almost two weeks before she finally got up enough courage to approach Diana.  She found the housekeeper in the laundry room on Tuesday afternoon, humming softly to herself as she sorted whites from colors.  It was, Lily acknowledged, both ironic and appropriate.

“Okay, tell me, am I a racist?” she asked without preamble.

If she had taken Diana by surprise, the housekeeper didn’t show it.  “No more than most around here, I guess,” she said.

Lily was dumbfounded.  “I had no idea.”

Diana, who knew she was in no danger of losing her job, eyed the attorney for a moment.  “There are those who know what they are, and live by it,” she said.  “And then there are the rest who don’t really think about it much, unless for some reason they have to.”

“Have I ever said anything or done anything to offend you?”

“No, you haven’t,” the housekeeper conceded.  “But sometimes attitudes can speak louder than words or actions.”

“But I’m outraged over how the community feels about Jason Lightfoot,” Lily declared.

“No, you’re outraged about how the community feels about you because you’re defending him,” Diana corrected her.  “We all know you didn’t choose Jason to be your client -- he was forced on you.  And you resent that because you feel the same way most everyone else around here does -- that he’s guilty and doesn’t deserve defending.”

Lily opened her mouth to respond, but the right words weren’t there for her to say -- because Diana Hightower was right.  Her resentment had little to do with her knowing Lauren Scott and wanting justice for the murder of her husband, and more to do with what her professional life in Port Hancock was going to look like after she defended the Indian, and whether people would hold it against her to the point of seeking legal assistance elsewhere.

. . .

It didn’t take long, or even much effort, for Flynn and Coello to confirm both the White Horse story and the Pullman story.  Nor, the detectives discovered, were they the only instances of violence against Native Americans that Wayne Pierson and his friend Grady Holt had been involved in.  A little digging uncovered a trail of incidents, going back years, that had been given short shrift by police across the state, thanks to high-powered attorneys from Seattle and more than likely, Flynn and Coello suspected, a generous greasing of palms.

There was no actual proof of anything, of course.  There was the White Horse matter, in which the victim had recanted his identification of his assailants, and an even thinner case in the Pullman murder, where the two men now in question had been listed only as persons of interest, but had not been officially questioned by authorities before being whisked out of town.  As for the rest, it was only hearsay, distant memories of police officers about distant cases -- eighteen cases, to be exact, over the past twenty years, involving the same two gentlemen.  But it was enough to get the detectives to the Jackson County Prosecutor.

“Do you two know who you’re dealing with?” John Henry inquired in surprise.  “Walter Pierson wears some pretty big boots around these parts.”

In fact, Walter Pierson was even bigger than that, and the detectives were well aware of it.  His family had settled in Port Hancock before there even was a Port Hancock.  He owned the largest bank in town that owned some seventy percent of the mortgages across the county -- thanks in no small part to his oldest son’s interest in the largest real estate company in town, and his middle son’s stewardship of the biggest title company in town.

He was a generous