Move to Strike Read Online Free PDF Page A

reputation over the past few years – taking on various seemingly unwinnable high-profile cases such as the Martin matter,
Montgomery vs the US
, and more recently, the
Commonwealth vs James Matheson
, in which David and Sara defended a young Ivy League student accused of killing his corporate heir girlfriend. And so his arrival at this scene – a setting the media were obviously hoping would provide the backdrop for the ‘celebrity crime of the year’ – was no doubt viewed as a welcome addition by the camera- and microphone-toting minions now jostling behind the yellow and black police barricades.
    â€˜David Cavanaugh and Sara Davis, here to see Lieutenant Joe Mannix,’ called David to a uniform manning the front entryway, lifting his voice above the hubbub.
    â€˜Go ahead, Mr Cavanaugh,’ said Reno, stealing a glance at Sara, his eyes automatically darting downwards to the mound beneath her overcoat. ‘The lieutenant is expecting you.’
    â€˜I knew it,’ said David as they entered the house. ‘Even the rookie thinks this is a bad idea.’
    â€˜Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Sara said as another policeman led them towards the back of the house, the crowded hallway now covered in plastic, the lights casting odd shadows throughout the twisting corridor, the air tinged with the scent of alcohol. ‘Just how bad can it be?’
    But she stopped as they entered the bi-fold doors and took in the scene before them – the once-attractive woman, flattened against the back of her stylish kitchen chair, her skin now drained of colour, her middle barely held together by two bloody folds of ribcage on either side of her chest.
    â€˜David, I am so sorry,’ she said, touching his elbow before collecting herself and waving at a now approaching Joe who had obviously seen them enter.
    But David did not hear her. All he saw was the horror of the tragedy before him – the brutal onslaught of violence that had taken a life with so much promise, and ripped it from existence with hostility, with cruelty, with disrespect. And in that moment he felt an all-encompassing need torun to her – to take her hand and feel for a pulse and do something,
anything
to try to bring her back, which was ridiculous of course, considering the scene before him.
    â€˜I didn’t mean to ruin your birthday,’ said Joe as he reached them, talking to Sara but stopping right in front of David as if trying to protect him from the view of the victim, at least for a second or two. ‘And I’m sorry, man,’ he added, meeting David’s eye. ‘I know you two were friends.’
    David nodded.
    â€˜Frank said the husband confessed,’ replied Sara, now flicking her eyes towards David before refocusing on Joe, aware that David knew she was trying to snap him out of the shock of what lay before them, by forcing him to concentrate on the task at hand. ‘Said it was an accident – that he shot her by mistake.’
    â€˜That’s what he says,’ said Joe.
    â€˜Where is he?’ David asked. ‘And does he want to talk?’
    â€˜In the living room,’ replied Joe, leading them back outside the house and towards the path down the far western boundary. ‘And I’m not sure how much he wants to say besides reiterating what he told us earlier.’
    â€˜And the kids?’ asked David, having been briefed by Frank in the initial phone call about the two children’s status.
    â€˜They’re in the boy’s bedroom. They’re with the doctor’s business partner, a TV exec by the name of Katherine de Castro. She is sitting all nervous like at the boy’s desk while the two kids are straight-backed and silent like two petrified statues on the kid’s bed.’
    David and Sara nodded.
    â€˜Okay,’ said Joe as they moved inside the house once again and reached the living room door. ‘For what it’s worth,