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

then he gave the go-ahead to the attorneys, who arranged a meeting with the prosecutor to hammer out a deal.

“As you already know,” John Henry told Lily after the meeting had concluded, “Washington State has an eighty-five percent law.  Which guarantees they’re going to do most of their time.”

“What did you offer?” Lily asked, flexing her right arm that, after eight long weeks, had finally come out of its cast.

“Well, I started at forty,” he said with a shrug, “which is less than I would have asked for at trial, but I was able to get them to agree to thirty, which is more than I expected.  It means they’ll do at least twenty-five, and they’ll do it all at the Jackson County State Prison.  But I told them there was no agreement unless you signed off.”

Lily thought about it.  What Pierson and Holt had done was reprehensible, but had they not done it, perhaps she would not have found her own salvation and the resolve to fight for Jason Lightfoot.  Spending twenty-five years in prison for the crime the two men had admitted they committed might not have seemed long enough to her, but she knew that hanging for a crime her client may not have committed would be forever.

“As part of the deal, I want Walter Pierson to pay for rebuilding the Jansen cottage,” she said.

“I think I can arrange that,” John Henry said with a little smile.

“What about Crandall?”

“He didn’t want to go to trial, either,” the prosecutor told her.  “He’s already agreed to forty-five months, and he’ll do all of it.”

“Okay,” Lily declared.  “It’s time for this to be settled.

. . .

There was a party at the Carson home that night.  Dancer was there.  Joe and Beth came.  Amanda showed up, along with her parents.  Wanda came, too.  Megan found a babysitter so that she could come.  Maynard and Helen Purcell dropped by.  And Grace Pelletier made an appearance.  Carson wheeled his chair into the middle of the group and raised his glass of wine.

“To justice,” he said.  “May it always keep us honest.

Seven

Port Hancock lay in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, protected from the harshest of the Pacific Northwest weather.

In other areas of the state, pelting rain could fall nonstop for weeks, while in Port Hancock it was more a matter of days.  The worst winters were usually followed by the best summers -- long lazy days of clear blue skies and warm sunshine that hung on well into September and only reluctantly let go in October.

This year was different.  This year, summer ended abruptly the first week of September and autumn arrived, bringing with it abnormally cold temperatures.  Literally overnight, an arctic wind blew in and the thermometer dropped by thirty degrees.  And to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t a one-day fluke.

“Hell, this can’t be fall, it feels too much like winter,” the locals cried.

Nevertheless, leaves on the trees turned gold, then brown, and then fell -- all in little more than a week.  The ground froze, the skies turned steely gray, and heavy marine air greeted morning risers.  Meteorologists were at a loss.

“It’s downright November,” the locals complained.  “What the devil is going on?”

And then, as though it had all been just a bad joke, blue skies returned to usher in October, the sun shone brightly once again, and daytime temperatures soared into the eighties.  It was that rarity of rarities in the Pacific Northwest -- Indian Summer.

“The question is,” Lily said, as she was preparing to go to trial, “is it a good omen or a bad omen?”

. . .

The main courtroom on the second floor of the Jackson County Courthouse was as opulent as the rest of the building.  The floors were polished marble, the walls were paneled in mahogany, the bench and the podium were hand-carved rosewood, and the church-like spectator seats were of sturdy oak.  Windows ran the length of the room on the left, high and arched.  One mahogany railing separated the court from the gallery, while another set off the jury box on the right.  Two large rectangular rosewood tables sat between the bar and the bench.  The table that was closer to the jury would serve the prosecution, while the table that was closer to the windows would serve the defense.

On the first Tuesday in October, as the Honorable Grace Pelletier was preparing to enter the courtroom, John Henry Morgan was hovering around the prosecution table, chatting with someone Lily had never seen before, while Lily, Megan, and Jason Lightfoot were going over their notes at the defense table.  Behind them, the gallery was filled with one hundred and fifty people from around the county who had been summoned for jury duty.

Without warning, the prosecutor crossed over to stand in front of the defense table.  “Want you to meet my new second in command,” John Henry said.  “Tom Lickliter, meet Lily Burns.”

She had heard about the new suit on staff -- a transplant from Seattle, so the scuttlebutt went.  Some suit, Lily thought.  Tom Lickliter looked to be in his mid forties, around six feet tall, with blue eyes, a ready smile, and dark hair with just a hint of gray at the temples.

In other words, he was exactly what you would want a prosecutor to look like -- that was, if you were on the state’s side.  Lily couldn’t help it, she almost laughed out loud.  For all his posturing and self-assurance, John Henry wasn’t going to take any chances with his first capital case.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with a polite smile.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Tom Lickliter replied graciously.  “I have to say, your reputation precedes you, as does your father’s.”

Lily’s eyebrows shot up.  He had done his homework.  Perhaps he wasn’t just a suit, after all.  Perhaps John Henry had gone for Hollywood but had landed Harvard instead, and there was some acumen lurking beneath the summer-weight pinstripe suit.

The clerk brought the court to order before she