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

with a thick shock of hair that used to be brown, he towered above both witnesses and juries, his courtroom voice often reverberating off the walls.  But no one, except perhaps a defendant, ever felt intimidated by him.  Rather, people felt protected.

Now he spent his life confined to a wheelchair, having lost control over the whole right side of his body.  There were some who felt sorry for him.  There were some who resented that he was no longer there to protect them.  And there were some who, having once taken him for granted, were now hesitant when they encountered him, as though they were afraid that, if they got too close, some of his misfortune might rub off on them.

He supposed he understood.  In any case, he made the best of it.  Each morning, he read three newspapers, from front to back -- the local Port Hancock Herald, The Seattle Times, and for good measure, USA Today.  After lunch, he would turn on the television.  He liked to joke that he finally had time to watch cable news.  And then, he would pull out his computer.  He had taught himself to both write and type with his left hand, and he used the computer to research anything and everything that caught his attention.

But far and away, his favorite part of the day was the afternoon hour when, rain or shine, summer or winter, in shirtsleeves or beneath a blanket or an umbrella, he was wheeled out onto the back patio of his Morgan Hill home and left by himself, with a glass of his favorite Bordeaux, to breathe the fresh air, and listen to the birds, if he were lucky, or to the chorus of neighborhood dogs barking, if he were not, and contemplate his life and circumstance.

He was, on whole, reasonably satisfied with the way things had turned out.  Oh, he wished he still had a sound body, of course, but he was thankful he hadn’t lost his mind.  He wished he had had the comfort and companionship of Althea a lot longer than he had.  And he wished his two elder daughters and their families lived a lot closer than they did.  But at least Lily still lived at home.  And he had Diana Hightower, his faithful housekeeper and caregiver, who catered to his every whim.  In truth, irascible and demanding as he knew he could be on occasion, his needs were simple and his wants few.

There had been years when he had felt cheated at not having a son to carry on his name and work, but not any longer.  He was more proud of Lily than he could ever put into words.  She had not only grown up in his image, she had, to all intents and purposes, exceeded him.

He shrugged off the idolization the community held for him.  He knew what his limitations were, even if no one else did.  He was a good attorney, to be sure, and he had brought all the fervor and righteousness to his work that he could muster.  Lily, on the other hand, had no limitations.  She had a love for the law and a mind for the nuances and ambiguities that he had never had patience for, but that often won cases.  And now, being there for her whenever she needed him had become his primary focus.

The Lightfoot case was going to be a challenge, Carson knew.  Never mind the death penalty, just the effort to change the perspective of the community was going to be a giant mountain she would have to climb.

“I can’t believe Grace dumped this in my lap,” she had fumed when she got home Friday evening.

“If I were Grace, I’d have done the same thing,” Carson had told her.

She probably wouldn’t get the fellow off, he knew, but everyone in the county, right down to the last Native American, would know she had left no stone unturned in trying -- even if she didn’t yet know it herself.

Carson pulled the blanket that covered him a little tighter against the raw Saturday afternoon and sipped at his glass of wine.   He loved his daughters dearly, all three of them.  But if truth be told, perhaps he loved his youngest just a little bit more.

He glanced across the expanse of manicured lawn that separated his property from that of his next-door neighbor.  It was the home of Helen and Maynard Purcell, the in-laws of the slain police detective, and things had been bustling over there for the past several days, as people from town had come to pay their respects, and people from out of town had made their way into town to attend the funeral.  It was quiet now, the house was empty, the limousines had come and gone, and Carson hoped there was enough room in the church for all the people he suspected would want to be there.

The man in the wheelchair sighed deeply.  He should have been at the church, too, he knew, and then gone on to the cemetery afterwards.  The Purcells had been more than neighbors -- they had been good friends for decades.  He had watched their daughter grow up right alongside his own.

But he was fighting some sort of a bug, and he had been told in no uncertain terms -- by Maynard Purcell, himself, no less -- that he was not to go out and potentially catch something worse, that he was instead to stay at home and keep warm.

That was the real price he was paying for his stroke, he thought with a scowl, not the loss of half of his body, but the loss of most of his independence.

. . .

The Port Hancock Presbyterian Church on Parkland Avenue in New Town was indeed overflowing at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon.  It looked as though a good part of the community had turned out for Dale Scott’s funeral.  There was a steady drizzle, which some might have thought appropriate for the occasion, and a