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

do for the pain but take the drugs.  I got so hooked on them that, for a while there, I didn’t know up from down.  Dale lived through that with me, and it wasn’t pretty.  Learned a good lesson, he did.  He always said it was the best lesson I could’ve taught him.”

“Thank you,” John Henry said.  “No more questions.”

. . .

The last thing Lily wanted to do was beat up on the man.  He had suffered enough, as they say.  Moreover, the jury obviously empathized with him, and it was never smart to show a bunch of people doing their civic duty how misguided they could be.  But she had to do something.

“You and your son were close, weren’t you?” she asked gently.

“Sure were,” Scott declared.

“And, as his father, you’d have done just about anything for him, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” the witness said.  “That’s what fathers do.”

“And I’m sure you kept in touch, right?”

“We sure did.”

“In the last, say, two or three years, how often would you estimate you saw your son?”

“Mother and I talked to him on the telephone at least once a week,” Scott declared.

“Yes,” Lily pressed ever so gently, “but how often did you actually see him?”

“Every chance we had.”

“Do you remember when the last time was that you saw Dale, Mr. Scott?”

“Of course I do,” the man said, “That would have been last Christmas.  The whole family come over and spent the day with Mother and me.”

“That would be roughly two months before he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“And how about the time before that -- when was that?”

“Time before that would’ve been summer, probably around the Fourth of July.”

“Thank you,” Lily said.  “I have nothing further.”

The judge looked over at the prosecutor, who shook his head.

“You’re excused, Mr. Scott,” she said, and everyone watched him leave the courtroom.  “You may proceed, Mr. Morgan.”

“The people rest, Your Honor,” John Henry responded.

Ten

Totem Point Park jutted out above the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the eastern edge of Port Hancock.  Combining a series of indoor and outdoor museums, it honored the tribes of Jackson County, and exhibited the finest examples of native art to be found in the Northwest.  Walking paths cut into the grass connected totem clusters with small structures designed to look like tepees that displayed paintings, weavings, pottery, and other artifacts that depicted an extraordinarily rich culture.

Native food was prepared and served at tiny kiosks along the paths.  Benches dotted the point, from which one could see all the way across the Strait to the rugged, snow-capped Canadian Rockies soaring skyward over British Columbia.  Educational in concept, and a natural tourist attraction, the park had initially been bankrolled by the federal government, but it had been created and was now sustained by the tribes in an amazing show of unity.

Carson Burns and his daughter had been coming to this place on this date for the past ten years.

Unlike any other in recent history, this particular Sunday was magnificent.  The sky was bright, the temperature hovered around eighty degrees, the frantic tourist season was well in the past, and the view was unparalleled.

They chose their favorite spot near the end of the point, a small stone bench beneath a large tree.  Lily positioned her father’s wheelchair so that it faced the Rockies, and sat down beside him.  And Dancer, ever present, retreated to a safe distance to give them some privacy.

“A day like this, a place like this, you can hardly believe there’s a thing wrong with the world,” Carson observed.  It was the tenth anniversary of Althea Burns’ death.

Lily took her father’s left hand in hers and they sat in silence for a moment, he remembering his soul mate of forty years, she remembering the soft-spoken nurturer she resembled so much.

“It’s all just an illusion,” she murmured.

“What is?” he asked.

“Life,” she said.  “And the tricks it plays on us.”

“No point in fretting over what’s done,” Carson advised.  “Better to concentrate on what needs doing.”

Lily sighed.  “That’s the problem,” she told him.  “I am.”

“I thought things were going pretty well for Mr. Lightfoot,” he said in some surprise.

“On whole, I think they are,” she said.  “But there’s still a piece missing -- right in the middle of my puzzle, and I guess I’m just not going to be satisfied until I find it.”

“You telling me you won’t be happy with an acquittal?” Carson queried.  “Thought that’s what you’ve been aiming at all this time.”

“It is, and I would be delighted with an acquittal,” she assured him.  “But that doesn’t keep me from wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“Why that night was different.  Even if Dale was in the alley to meet Morales, even if he did pull his gun and intended to shoot Jason so there’d be no witness, even if Jason fought with him over the gun -- self-defense is obvious here, and I believe we should get an acquittal on it.  But the beating Dale took -- that’s what still bothers me.  I don’t care how drunk Jason was, that’s just not who he is, and I want to be able to tell the jury that.  I want them to know, because it’s important.  But I don’t know how to do that -- because there’s still that piece missing.”

“Do you think the jury cares?” Carson asked.  “He’s become almost a folk hero in all of this.  Do you really think they’ll care that the one time he was facing certain death, he acted out of character?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said.  “Before, I think all they cared about was holding someone responsible for Dale’s death.  Now, I think they’re beginning to see Jason as a person, not just as a defendant, and Dale as a scoundrel.  But I’m still not sure that’s enough.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little too hard on yourself?”

Lily shook her head.  “You don’t get it, and I’m not sure I do, either,” she told him.  “Here’s a client who thinks he’s going to hang as sure as we’re sitting here, and what does