Presumed Guilty Read Online Free PDF

the stupid one, man.” Guillermo didn’t say it viciously, but Jared could sense a bubbling beneath his surface.
Didn’t matter. Jared felt a compulsion to speak. The thoughts were like bile wanting to burst out of him of their own accord, and he would let them.
“What’s with people looking at statues, huh? Thinking there’s anything there?”
Carlos, who was forty or so and smaller than the other two, dipped his brush in a paint can and said, “Shut up and work.”
“You want some?” Jared put his hands out, challenging.
“Crazy,” Guillermo said. “In a church, talkin’ trash about Jesus.”
Jared walked a few steps on the drop cloth toward his coworkers. “Listen to what I’m saying, genius. People are better off not knowing anything, instead of coming into a church and worshiping Jesus statues.”
A voice on the radio shouted something in Spanish .
“Come on,” Guillermo urged. “You bring down bad stuff on everybody, you keep talking that way.”
Jared let the words fly. “You afraid of God? That what you’re afraid of? Because of a stupid statue?”
“Hey — ” Carlos pointed at Jared.
Now it wasn’t the radio noise rattling around in Jared’s head but something else, voicelike, pounding. He didn’t know what this was, but it was urgent and angry. Spitting angry, and something had to be done to show these stupid —
“Get back to work!” Carlos yelled, but Jared was already going down the aisle, the noise beating inside his head, and he had his brush up.
He heard Guillermo say, “What’s he doin’?” but it barely registered in the chaos of his brain.
Now Jared focused in on Jesus, on his face, looking down. Jesus nailed, a statue. Was this what they were afraid of?
With one swipe of his brush, Jared covered Jesus’s face in white paint.
“No!” Guillermo shouted.
And Jared thought, I know how to bleed too, Jesus.
When he turned around, he saw his two coworkers staring, but not at him. At the door.
Jared looked over and saw a priest standing there, shock all over his face. And next to him Scott, the boss man, about to go ballistic.
4.
    “Cara, it’s me.”
“Hi, Mom. Guess what? I’m getting a promotion at the bank.
Today I — ”
“Cara, listen to me.”
“What’s wrong?”
Dallas tried to make her hand relax its grip on the phone but
couldn’t. “Your dad’s in trouble.”
“Trouble? What do you — ”
“He was arrested.”
Cara’s gasp jabbed through the phone. “Why?”
“I don’t know, but the police came to the house this morning.
They took him away in handcuffs. They wouldn’t even tell me.” “Mom, Mom, are you all right?”
Dallas swallowed hard. “Will you start praying — ”
“Mom, I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to — ”
“I’ll be right there.”
Dallas felt trapped in a fog, seeing little, hearing nothing, until
Cara came and threw her arms around her and held her. Dallas
returned the embrace around Cara’s taut body. Her daughter, at
twenty-seven, still looked like the tennis player she’d been in high
school. But her face, under the short blond hair, was worried. “Mom, you have got to tell me what’s going on. I can’t believe
Dad would be arrested for anything.”
Dallas shook her head. “All I know is what I told you. They
arrested your father, just took him away like a common criminal.
Why would they do that?”
“Have we got a lawyer?”
“Yes. Jeff Waite. He’s going to see your father this morning.” “Is he good? Because we have got to have the best.” “Oh, yes, he’s good. He’s done pro bono work for the church.” Out of habit, Dallas patted her daughter’s shoulder. It was the
calming move. Cara had always been a bit of a control freak, an
imposer of order. Dallas had spent more hours than she could count settling her daughter’s nerves. Now Cara was here to return the
favor.
Cara said, “Have you talked to Jared?”
Dallas shook her head. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Does he have a cell