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

who can get inside it, I’m thinking we’ll be able to throw the book at both of them.”

“Computer?” Joe echoed.  “You found a computer at Pierson’s place?”

“Yep.  It was in the closet in Wayne’s bedroom.”

Joe thought about the ironies of life, and about a man who, after twenty years, might finally have the opportunity to even the score.  “I think I just may know the person who’d be able to help you out there,” the private investigator informed the detective.

Michael White Horse was only too happy to oblige when Joe came knocking on his door again and explained the situation.  And with the private investigator’s assistance, he was at police headquarters less than an hour later.

“There might be a little poetic justice in this,” Joe told the man in the wheelchair.

White Horse laughed.  “Even after all this time,” he said, “I have to tell you -- nothing would please me more.”

Flynn wheeled him into one of the interview rooms, where Stiversen, Dawson and Cooper were waiting.  “To preserve chain of custody,” he explained, and then a twinkle appeared in his eye, “and to maybe teach Ben and Andy here a thing or two.”

It took the computer programmer less than ten minutes to get into Wayne Pierson’s laptop.  “Not all that sophisticated,” he said.

“Anything that can help us?” Dawson asked anxiously, after White Horse had been poking around for about half an hour.

“Well, how about half a dozen different searches for how to build a pipe bomb?” White Horse replied.  “Will that help?”

“You got to be kidding!” Stiversen gasped, and he dashed out to find Flynn.

“It’s all right here, plain as day,” the computer programmer told the detective as soon as he came in.  “He didn’t encrypt anything.   He didn’t even try to erase anything -- although I could probably still have found it, even if he had.  He’s an amateur.”

Flynn grinned broadly.  “Well now, then, there,” he said, “let’s see his father try to get him out of this one.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Six

It was the middle of August before Lily felt confident enough to return to the office, and get back to work.

Her memory was still spotty -- and things she remembered one minute she discovered she could just as easily forget the next.  Sometimes, she found that she had difficulty speaking -- that words didn’t come out of her mouth the way she intended them to.  Or she would hear herself repeating things for no reason.  And more often than she liked, she had difficulty concentrating, and then she would get frustrated with her inability to keep things straight.

She spoke to Amanda about it.  “How can I get up in a courtroom and represent a client if I can’t even trust that the words that are going to come out of my mouth are going to come out right, or that I won’t throw a tantrum in front of a jury?”

“If it becomes a problem, we’ll deal with it,” her friend assured her.

In fact, Amanda had already spoken with someone -- a therapist who was having significant success working with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, and with professional athletes who had suffered traumatic brain injuries.

According to the doctors, the swelling in Lily’s brain had receded, her lung was working properly again, and her ribs had pretty much healed themselves.  She still had the cast on her arm, but that was scheduled to come off in a just few more weeks.  What would be left were the scars from the shrapnel and the glass.  They might fade with time, but she knew she would always be able to see them, even if they were just in her mind.

She knew how lucky she had been, how close she had come.  And she knew she had put her best friend in unspeakable jeopardy.  More than anything, it made her angry -- angrier than she could ever remember being.  But that anger was not directed only at the two men who had tried their best to blow her to smithereens.

Before she returned to work, Lily knew she had to take a good long look in the mirror.  While she had never thought of herself as prejudiced, Diana had hit a nerve.  It was true that she had not gone out of her way to befriend Native Americans or accept them as clients, and had maybe, without being consciously aware of it, even seen them as somehow lesser.  It was true that she had, from the beginning, seen not just the Lightfoot case, but Jason Lightfoot, himself, as losers.  And it was true that she treated John Dancer, who had come all the way across the state just to protect her, more as an employee than as an associate.  And it was also true that she had had no intention of wasting any more of her time and energy on this trial than was absolutely necessary.

Now the realization that the behavior of a few stupid men -- who had simply acted on impulses that she, herself, harbored -- had become more than just an eye-opener.  And she was not only angry, she was ashamed.  And that shame fueled a transition she welcomed, but had never expected.

Before the bombing, she had resigned herself to losing the Lightfoot case -- to be honest, maybe even looked forward to it.  Now, she was determined to fight the good fight.  She might well lose, she understood, but at least Jackson County would know there had been a battle.

It helped that Wayne Pierson and Grady Holt had been arrested.  And that Buzz Crandall had been suspended without pay from the Jackson County Jail pending the outcome of assault charges against him.  Lily had given a full statement to John Henry regarding both incidents with the Silverado, as well as the plane that had dropped the bomb.  But she knew it wasn’t enough.  She knew the rest would have to come from her.

“Broad Street,” she announced to Dancer as soon as breakfast had been eaten, and she had gathered her things together.

“Yes, Ma’am!”