Presumed Guilty Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone?”
“The old number doesn’t work. He must have let it go.” “Probably didn’t pay his bill.”
“Do you know any of his old friends? People who might be in
touch with him? I’m afraid of how this is going to hit him.” “I can try to think of someone.”
“Please do.”
Cara took her mother by the arm and sat her down in her favorite chair. Dallas felt lumps in it. It was getting worn.
“How about some lunch?” Cara said.
“I can’t eat.”
“Yes, you can,” Cara insisted, echoing the words Dallas must
have said a thousand times to her daughter during her bouts with
sickness or distress.
It was a disquieting juxtaposition. Cara was the mothering one
now, and Dallas the little girl. But she did not want to be little, or
helpless, or paralyzed. She wanted to help Ron. Now.
And couldn’t.
5.
    Jefferson Waite arrived just before noon. He hardly had a foot in the door when Dallas asked him what was going on.
“Let’s go into the living room,” Waite said.
Dallas stood still. “Tell me now. Please.”
Cara, who had been making sandwiches in the kitchen, came to her mother’s side.
Jeff closed the door. He wore a powder blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, and a burgundy tie perfectly knotted. He was in his midforties with a full head of brown hair flecked by wisps of gray. He exuded confidence, which was exactly what Dallas needed at that moment. “I don’t want you to worry the first time you hear it. These things — ”
“What happened?”
“They say it’s murder.”
Dallas felt something flow out of her head, a sucking away like the sand under a receding wave. Cara grabbed her left arm, and that’s when Dallas knew she had almost fallen.
Jeff helped Cara get Dallas to the sofa. Cara sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“It’s a huge mistake,” Jeff said. “I saw Ron, I talked with him, he’s scared but he’s staying strong. It’s all a major misunderstanding.”
“Who was it?” Dallas said.
“The victim is a young woman named Melinda Perry. That’s all I could find out.”
Young woman? “Can I see him?” Dallas said. “Where is he?”
“They’ve got him at the men’s jail, downtown.”
She looked at the lawyer. “What’s going to happen, Jeff?”
He sat on the coffee table so he could take her hand. He was muscular and trim, with intelligent blue eyes. “Tomorrow he goes before a judge. I’ll be there with him and get the formal charge and the arrest report. Then I’ll go talk to the DA and see what they’ve got.”
Panic burst through her. “They’ve got to have something. They wouldn’t arrest him if they didn’t have anything. What could it be?”
She heard screeching outside. The sound of tires.
Jeff went to the door and pulled back the curtain.
“Man, that was fast,” he said.
“What?”
“TV people.”
Pinpricks stuck her skin. Publicity. She hadn’t even considered that. In her singular focus she thought only of Ron, and of this problem as one they could solve together, quietly. That’s the way they handled things between them, wasn’t it?
But now she realized this accusation would not be kept quiet, couldn’t be swept under their private rug. Ron was a big-time pastor with a national platform. He’d been on radio and TV, once on The O’Reilly Factor talking about the scourge of Internet porn.
He was a media darling, with his good looks and eloquence. Now he was a target for the press — a family-values pastor accused of murder.
“Stay calm,” Jeff said. “I will do the talking for you. All right? Not you, not your daughter, not Ron. Is there anyone else in the family they could get to?”
Dallas shook her head. “Only our son, Jared, but he’s out of the county.”
“Don’t sell these people short,” Jeff said. “Now stay here.”
He went outside, closing the door behind him. A few moments later Dallas heard his voice, firm and resolute.
“Mrs. Hamilton will not be commenting on this matter. I will be