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

“Whether he was standing, kneeling, or lying flat on his face?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” the prosecutor said.   It was the best he could do, under the circumstances.  “I have nothing further for this witness.”

. . .

“Where the hell can she be going with this?” John Henry asked irritably after court had adjourned for the day, and he and Tom were heading upstairs to their offices.

“Can’t say as I have a clue yet,” Tom replied.  “But it sure sounds like she really intends to open the door to self-defense.  Have you ruled that out as a possibility?”

“There was no evidence of it.”

“No injuries to the defendant?”

John Henry sighed.  “The thing is, he was covered in them.  But the officers who brought him in had to subdue him when he resisted arrest, so we couldn’t tell what injuries came from what encounter.”

The deputy prosecutor shook his head.  “You could have a real problem here,” he said.  “Have you considered a deal?”

John Henry bristled.  He had removed his suit jacket to counter the ineffective air-conditioning, but it wasn’t sufficient.  He was sweating profusely, causing Tom to wonder if it was only because of the heat.

“A deal?” John Henry snapped.  “Now, why would I want to think about that?”

If there was one thing he had learned from his years in public office, it was that defense attorneys came groveling for deals -- not prosecutors.  Besides, he had already offered to take the death penalty off the table, and the Indian had turned it down cold.

“Well, for one thing,” Tom said mildly, “I’ve been watching the jury, and it looks like you’re starting to lose them.  That’s always a bad sign, especially when it happens in the middle of the state’s case.  For another, if Lily Burns can get them to seriously consider self-defense, the defendant walks.”

The Jackson County Prosecutor smiled stiffly, because he had no intention of losing this case.  “You’re new here, Tom,” he said, “and so far, I like what I see -- I like it a lot.  But you don’t know this county or even this city very well yet.  You don’t know the people -- you haven’t developed a feel for them.  I have.  As a matter of fact, I’ve known them all my life, and I can guarantee you that what the overwhelming majority of them want is to see this guy hang.”

“Maybe so,” Tom conceded, because he had been listening to the radio and reading the Port Hancock Herald, and he knew what people were thinking and how they were feeling.  “But have you taken a good look at the jury lately?  They’re seeing some pretty slipshod investigating.   I know, I am.  Now, you’re certainly right when you say that I don’t know much about the people over here yet, but I’ve found that people are pretty much the same wherever they are, and over in Seattle, I can tell you, this case would be starting to look a lot like reasonable doubt.”

John Henry had looked.  He knew exactly what Tom was talking about.  Most of the jurors were now hanging on every word Lily Burns uttered, but that didn’t tell him whether they were buying her story.  “You know as well as I do that you have to try the case you’ve got,” he said.  “So, let me ask -- do you think it was self-defense?”

“What I think is that opposing counsel is doing the best she can to turn that pie-in-the-sky theory into a real possibility.”

“But do you believe it?” the prosecutor pressed.  “Do you believe it was really dark enough in that alley and Lightfoot was drunk enough that he didn’t know it was a cop that he fought with and then shot in the head?”

“Given what I’ve seen and heard so far, if I were an ordinary citizen, I might be persuaded,” the deputy prosecuting attorney had to reply.

John Henry scowled.  “If the jury buys it, the Indian walks, and I didn’t bring this case to trial to see him walk.”

“No, I don’t think you did,” Tom said.  “I think you went with what you thought was solid.”

“The son-of-a-bitch killed a cop,” the prosecutor declared.  “A cop with almost fourteen years on the force.  However it went down, if we can’t convict him for it -- what credibility do we have?  What kind of message does that send?”

Tom Lickliter was nothing if not a pragmatist.  “That’s precisely why I’d rather walk away with something I could hand the public than end up with nothing.”

“We’re not done with our case yet,” John Henry said, because he was too proud, or too stubborn, to contemplate defeat at this point, especially not at the hands of a lawyer who had once worked for him.  “We still have some pretty powerful testimony to go.  Besides, you don’t know Lily Burns.  If we were to go to her now, she’d smell that we’re scared, and believe me, she wouldn’t deal -- she’d take us all the way to verdict just to see us squirm.”

At least one part of John Henry’s comment was accurate, the Jackson County Deputy Prosecutor thought to himself -- he didn’t know Lily Burns  yet.

Eight

Tom Lickliter was a true Seattle native.  Born and raised on Queen Anne Hill, in the heart of the city, and educated at the University of Washington, he could honestly say he had never lived anywhere else.  Married to his high school sweetheart at the age of twenty-six, and then abruptly widowed at the age of forty-three, he had, on pure impulse, accepted an offer of employment from a remote little place on the other side of Puget Sound, pulled up stakes, and moved to Port Hancock.

Leaving Seattle was hard.  It didn’t just mean uprooting his two sons from the only home they had ever known.  It also meant getting used to a new job, trying to make a home in a new house, finding his way around a new town, and maybe one day, even beginning a new relationship.

Those who