Blood Orange Read Online Free PDF Page B

plenty on top, she might be able to coax something out of one of the
guys there.
    Three-year-old Lolly had been chloroformed and strangled. The
evidence against Filmore was flimsy. A few fingerprints that could
have been left at any time over the last few months and a crummy
alibi. Surprising, really, that the government thought it had enough
to convict.
    Lolly had been tied in a plastic bag and tossed down the side of
a hill near Lakeside. By the time a rider found her body, coyotes had
torn the bag open.
    David drank from his water bottle, hoping to wash away the bile
burning his throat. He thought of Bailey, of the life bursting out of
her. He could not think of her as retarded or emotionally disturbed; he never used these terms to describe her. She was Bailey, and he
loved her, and if anyone ever laid a hand on her he would commit
murder.

    He had to figure out a way to keep Bailey out of his thoughts or
he’d lose the objectivity he needed to defend his client.
    Frank Filmore was saying something, declaring something. Gracie
looked at David and raised her perfect eyebrows. His attention
snapped back.
    “I did not do this … this awful, this horrendous thing. You
must believe-You believe me, don’t you, David? I’m innocent.”
    David heard his father’s voice saying only an idiot lawyer believed his client.
    “It really doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, Frank, and it’s
not my job to prove your innocence.”
    “I have a lovely wife; we’re expecting a baby. Why would I do
such a thing? And Lolly, I loved Lolly, I used to watch her swimming in her little pool-“
    “I don’t want to hear this.”
    “But how can you prove I’m innocent if you don’t-“
    David rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not my job to prove
you’re innocent. What Gracie and I do is, we make the prosecutor
prove you’re guilty. We see that justice is done. That’s all we do.”
    Frank Filmore looked offended. “You’re saying you don’t believe me?”
    “I’m saying what I believe is irrelevant. You can be telling the
truth or lying like crazy, what we have to do is make the prosecutor
prove his case one hundred percent. It’s like in football.”
    Allison laughed, then quickly covered her mouth.
    “The ref’s job is to make sure the teams play fair, win fair. That’s
all a defense attorney’s supposed to do, make sure the prosecutor
follows the rules.”

    Gracie said, “David used to play ball, Frank.”
    “I hope you won. I hope you won all the time.”
    A guard knocked on the door of the interview room and told
David he had a phone call. “She says it’s urgent.”
    On the other end of the phone Dana was almost hysterical.
David could barely make sense of what she said.

    Iwo white cars with Union-Tribune logos on their doors were
parked against the curb, and television vans blocked Miranda
Street in front of the Cabot house. On the edge of the park neighbors and busybodies stood and stared and gossiped.
    Between phone calls to the police and David and the appearance
of the first reporter, Dana had hung a sheet over the broken window
in the living room. Now there were police in the house and
strangers under the olive tree, some of them flicking cigarette butts
into the beds of white impatiens. Bailey loved every minute of it.
While Dana sat on the stairs in the entry, the little girl kept up a
vivid commentary from the dining room, where she stood on a chair
watching the street through a pinched-back corner of the blinds.
    The eleven o’clock news would show her elfin face peering out at
the world as if the daughter of the man defending Frank Filmore
were herself a prisoner.
    “Daddy’s home,” Bailey cried as she jumped off her chair and
ran across the tiled entry to the front door, ponytail flying. Dana
grabbed for her arm. Screaming, Bailey twisted away. She was agile,
too fast for Dana and twisty as a morning-glory vine climbing a fencepost. David opened