Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure?”
    “Matt, you want to take this on. I can see it, all that energy radiating from you like some physical force. Do you know why you feel like you have to do it?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Do you think you still have something to prove? That you’re still a great lawyer, maybe?”
    “No. I’m satisfied with the reputation I built before I got sick of it all. Anyway, that’s not really important anymore.”
    “How is your lack of regard for the legal profession going to play into this case?”
    “I don’t know. I think I can put it aside for this one case.”
    “Think about this, Matt. Why do you want to take this on?”
    I sat quietly, thinking through the whole situation. I had nothing to gain and perhaps a lot to lose by getting back in harness. But nobody should play with the system. Justice creaks along in our society, but it usually does the right thing. And it does it right, because, for the most part, the men and women who work in the system, the judges, lawyers, and cops, are honest people doing honest jobs.
    It’s an adversarial process, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an all-out war. There are rules that have been hammered out through a trial-and-error process that evolved over eight hundred years of Anglo-American jurisprudence. But every now and then, somebody like Agent Wes Lucas comes along, and just out of sheer meanness, or stupidity, or both, skews the system.
    “Matt,” J.D. said again. “Why do you want to take on this case?”
    “Because Wes Lucas really pissed me off.”
    “That’s a good enough reason. You go kick some butt.”

CHAPTER SIX
    J.D. was perusing the reports that had come in overnight from the crime scene technicians. They had discovered a lot of fingerprints in the Favereaux mansion, and were checking them against people who had reason to be in the house. It was a process of elimination, an effort to discover the identity of anyone who had no reason to be there.
    Two experts had examined the computer found in James Favereaux’s bedroom, and neither was able to crack the sophisticated encryption code that protected it. J.D. was surprised that a retired businessman would have any need of such security. It didn’t make sense.
    One of the reports was a biographical sketch of James Favereaux. He was sixty-four years old, and a graduate of a high school in New Orleans. He’d served in the army in Vietnam and earned a Bronze Star for valor when he was nineteen. He’d saved the life of his platoon leader, a young lieutenant, whom he dragged wounded out of a firefight.
    When Favereaux got out of the army, he used the GI Bill to study at Louisiana State University, graduating with a degree in business. He’d spent his life as an investor, putting money into one project after another, and making substantial profits on every venture. When he was in his mid-forties, he got married in New Orleans to a woman named Linda Fournier, who was twenty-five years his junior.
    J.D. picked up her phone and called Dr. Bert Hawkins, the medical examiner for the Twelfth Judicial Circuit. “Bert, it’s J.D.”
    “Ah, the loveliest detective on Longboat Key.”
    She laughed. “That’s easy to do when you’re the only detective.”
    “Well, you’re a lot prettier than Martin Sharkey.”
    “So is everybody else.”
    “I guess it’s a good thing he got promoted to deputy chief,” Hawkins said. “You’re calling about Mrs. Favereaux?”
    “Yes.”
    “Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of her head. There were no other injuries to the body. She died real quick.”
    “One of your techs called me yesterday and said the fingerprints you ran came back as those of a woman named Darlene Pelletier.”
    “Yeah. Probably a maiden name.”
    “I don’t think so, Bert. I just got some information on Mr. Favereaux, and he married a woman named Linda Fournier. Can you double check those prints for me?”
    “Sure. I’ll take them again and have somebody run them through