Dead to Rights by Jack Patterson (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

a Saturday morning for you to be calling me. Good thing I’m still in Georgia and not back in Seattle.”

“You’re still here?” Cal asked, somewhat surprised.

“Yeah, just getting in a round of golf this morning. Tee time is in five minutes, so make this quick.”

“Last night, I spoke to a guy who claimed to be at Susannah Sloan’s house the night of her murder—a guy by the name of Jacob Boone. Does that ring any bells for you?”

“Nope. Never heard of him.”

“Well, that’s odd,” Cal said. “He told me this last night and said Sheriff Sloan questioned him during the investigation.”

“It wasn’t in the discovery.”

“Are you sure?”

“If I could, I’d let you dig through my trial notes. But I swear to you I’ve never heard of the man, that name, or any other claims that someone else was at Susannah’s house the night she was murdered other than Drake.”

In the background, Cal heard what sounded like a familiar voice calling for Sullivan.

“Sorry, but I gotta run. We can talk about this on Monday if you’ve got more questions.”

Cal hung up and shook his head. He drew several conclusions about Sheriff Sloan: Sloan was either inept or hiding something—or both. Cal’s curiosity was also piqued about the familiar voice he heard in the background of his call with Sullivan.

Could that be who I think it is?

Cal started pounding away on his computer, using search engines to establish a connection between Sullivan and the voice of the other man.

After a couple of simple searches, Cal’s jaw dropped.

Would you look at that?

Robert Sullivan graduated at the top of his law class at Emory University. The student who graduated second in his class at Emory that same year? None other than Hal Golden.

***

ARMED WITH KNOWLEDGE of this suspicious connection, Cal contacted Larry Arant at The Searchlight to see if he’d be willing to meet and compare notes about the case with him and Kelly. Surprisingly, Arant agreed.

Arant had a large pot of coffee brewing when Cal and Kelly stepped into the nearly deserted office.

“Big day today down at the track,” Arant said. “If you’re going to chase anyone down to speak with them about this case, that’s where you’ll need to do it.”

“Except you,” Kelly said with a smile.

“The track isn’t my thing, but we will have a photographer there—well, our only photographer will be there. I’ll hear about it from everyone else without having to suffer through the deafening roar of those suped-up cars.”

Satisfied with the amount of coffee in the pot, Arant pulled it off and poured the black liquid into their mugs.

“But we didn’t come here to talk about the derby, did we?” Arant asked as he handed Cal and Kelly their cups.

“No, we came here to talk about this Drake case with you one last time,” Cal said.

“Just once more? Promise?” Arant quipped.

“I’m doing my job,” Cal said. “If you’re not thorough, you’ll get burned.”

“Or sued,” Kelly added.

“Oh, I know about all that far too well,” Arant said.

“Okay, so what I don’t get is how no one else was brought up as a suspect,” Cal said. “I haven’t seen it in any of the articles I read about the trial, but did Sullivan ever try to make the case that someone else could’ve murdered Susannah other than Drake?”

Arant stirred his coffee, adding in cream and sugar. “He made vague references to it, but that was the problem with his defense. It was always some other nameless and faceless man who did this to Susannah. Never once did he raise the possibility that it was someone in the community or even outside of it who killed her. In a nutshell, the defense he used was my client didn’t do it. He’s innocent. He loved her. He couldn’t have done this. Predictably, it failed.”

“So, the investigation never veered away from Drake?” Cal asked.

“Never. It was Drake from the first day until the last. It was backward if you ask me. Sheriff Sloan determined it was Drake and did everything in his power to make sure he gathered the evidence necessary for conviction.”

“It worked,” Cal said, “but I’m not sure he got the right man.”

“At the time of the trial, a few people thought somebody else killed Susannah, but the majority believed Drake did it. You’ll always find some people around here who think it was a conspiracy and some kind of cover up. However, all that talk was in generalities, nothing specific.”

“Who did people suspect the most?”

“Jacob Boone comes to mind,” Arant said with a shrug. “When Boone realized he was losing his kids forever, it was one of the most painful moments I’ve ever witnessed in a courtroom. He’d definitely have motive.”

“Anyone else?”

“Some people brought up Jordan Hayward, which very well could’ve been the case, but we’ll never know it now.”

“Is that all?”

“Oh, no. Sheriff Sloan’s name got floated around. However, he’s enjoyed such a favored status in the city, I find it hard to believe you’d get a true objective sense of him from the community.”

“That’s quite a list to add to Drake’s name,” Cal said. “Those are the four I came up with as I’ve been researching this story.”

Arant nodded knowingly. “And while those are four good suspects, they aren’t the only ones.”

“There’s a fifth person?” Cal asked incredulously.

“Don’t laugh too hard, but Devontae Ray is another name that got tossed around.”

“Devonate Ray? The guy confined to a wheelchair? What motive would he have?”

Arant scratched the back of his head and looked at his coffee. “You’d be surprised. He’s actually got more reason than anyone to kill her.”

“Really?”

“I’m shootin’ ya straight. Ray’s been through a lot, most of it at the hands in some way or another with the Sloan family.”

“Please explain,” Cal said, pulling out his notebook.

“You’ve been here a week, and this story hasn’t come up?” Arant asked. “Hard to believe.”

“Not a peep.”

“Well, there are two things that happened. The first is that Ray’s older brother, Phillip, was arrested on a felony burglary charge … along