Prosecution: A Legal Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

Quentin was
telling the truth. This was murder for hire, carried out with a
clear mind and a cold heart. What possible reason could Goodwin
have had? And if he had done it—hired Travis Quentin to murder his
wife— had he managed somehow to put it all out of mind, the way
every prosecutor and every defense attorney forgets about each case
they try as soon as the verdict comes in and they start thinking
about the next one? Was it really that easy?
     
    Turning away, I glanced at the clock on the desk. It
was a few minutes after nine, not too late to call. Horace answered
on the first ring. "You been expecting my call?" I said with a
laugh.
     
    "No, I thought it was Alma. I've barely seen her this
week. Every night she's got a meeting, getting ready for their
fund-raiser Sunday."
     
    I had forgotten the fund-raiser. "Listen, Horace," I
began, trying to think of the best way to get out of it.
     
    "Listen, Horace yourself," he growled. "You're not
getting out of it. I have to go; you have to go."
     
    The absence of logic in this was irresistible.
     
    "No, Horace, you have to go because you're married to
the woman who's in charge. And because you're a judge who might
want to get reelected. I don't have to go anywhere."
     
    "I understand all that," he said placidly. "I have to
go; you have to go. I have to go because I'm married to Alma, and
you have to go because she wants you there. Now tell me, you get
through all that stuff I gave you? What do you think?"
     
    "You mean, do I think he did it?" I paused, trying to
draw some conclusion that made sense. "If I didn't know him, if I'd
never met him, if the only thing I knew was what this guy Quentin
says, I suppose I'd think there was a chance."
     
    For a moment, Horace was silent. Finally, he said,
"You don't think there's enough there for a conviction, do
you."
    I hesitated. "I'm not even convinced the case should
be prosecuted. Are you?"
     
    "It's like I told you. I hope he didn't do it."
     
    "But you think he did. Why?"
     
    "Couple of things. The polygraph, for one. Quentin
passed it. The meeting with Goodwin and the way all the charges
were dropped. The way Quentin knew where Nancy Goodwin was going to
be. But maybe more than any of it, there's something about Goodwin.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't want to believe he did it, but
when the state police told me I didn't have the kind of reaction
you have when you just know something couldn't have happened that
way."
     
    I knew what he meant: the certainty that someone was
innocent and the awful doubt that you might not be able to prove
it. If there was anything worse than defending someone who was
convicted of a crime they did not commit, it had to be prosecuting
the case that sent that innocent person to prison. It was the fear
that every decent attorney felt, and the sense of danger that gave
an edge to everything that happened in the criminal courts.
     
    Horace had a gift for listening to the things left
unspoken. "Joe, you have all the right instincts. If Goodwin didn't
do it, you'll know it."
     
    "What makes you think I'm going to do this?" I
asked.
     
    "What makes you think you won't?"
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    From a small city of gray stone buildings you could
walk across in ten minutes, Portland had grown into a maze of
misshapen skyscrapers and interlocking freeways. The federal
building and the county courthouse, once two of the most prominent
structures in town, were now buried in the shadows of the
surrounding office towers. For nearly a hundred years Portland had
been a center of the timber trade. Lumber was one of the things the
world could not live without, and the men who knew how to make
money from it had left behind mansions that were monuments to their
own bad taste and children educated in a way that made certain they
would have neither the vices nor the virtues of their fathers. The
sons of pirates became gentlemen, and the daughters of whores
became ladies, and if there was a