Sins of the Fathers Read Online Free PDF

to New York alone. But don’t be getting hooked on anybody while I’m gone.” His jaunty tone had an edge.
    “Have a nice trip.”
    “I intend to.”
    He hung up. That bothered her no end. The least he could have done was let her hang up on him.
    That night Lindy dreamed of death.
    5.

    First came the children.
    In Lindy’s dream they were running and screaming, dozens of them, in some sunlit field. A billowing surge of terrified kids, boys and girls, some in baseball garb, others in variegated ragtag clothes that gave the impression of a Dickens novel run amok.
    A dark, unseen terror chased them. From the hovering perspective that only dreams afford, Lindy sought desperately the source of the fear.
    She saw a black forest behind the field, one that belonged in fairy tales. Or nightmares.
    She moved toward the forest, knowing who it was, who was in there, knowing she’d meet him coming out. Darren DiCinni would have a gun, and in the dream she glided low to avoid being shot.
    Moving closer and closer now, the screams of the scattering children fading behind her. Without having to look behind she knew that a raft of cops was pulling up to the scene.
    Was she going to warn DiCinni, or just look at him?
    Would he say anything to her, or she to him?
    Bad things lived here, in this gloom where gnarly fingered trees came alive at night.
    Lindy didn’t want to go in, but she couldn’t stop herself.
    A shadowy figure started to materialize, from deep within the forest, and it was running toward her.
    She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
    Stop, stop, stop she wanted to say, but she could utter no words.
    The figure came closer. He was holding a shotgun.
    Pointed at her.
    He was going to kill her, and she couldn’t move. Her feet became sandbags.
    And then, on the edge of the forest, where the light from her world met the shadows of his, the killer emerged and now she did not scream but opened her mouth wide and silent.
    It was not Darren DiCinni.
    It was Marcel Lee.
    And then, powerless to stop them, Lindy was assaulted by image after image from a tortured past.
    She saw Marcel, running with a gang at seventeen, trying to get out. Now accused of murdering a cop.
    I ain ’ t do it, Ms. Field . . .
    She saw his eyes again and knew he wasn’t scamming. She could tell, after six years of looking into juvi eyes.
    She shouldn’t care. She told herself in her mind, in her dream, she shouldn’t care so much about a client. But she always did. And Marcel’s mother, who told Lindy she trusted her with her son’s life.
    She saw the police witness, Officer Brandon Scott. She saw his eyes again, lying eyes. Like in the song.
    And Leon Colby. He had to know his wit was lying. But he didn’t care. And in her dream, he didn’t care again.
    She saw Marcel Lee, going away to do life in Quentin. And his mother, crying and screaming in the courtroom. At her.
    Why ’ d you let ’ em do it? Why didn ’ t you stop ’ em?
    In her dream, Lindy’s heart bolted out of her chest, bloody and beating, and fled into the dark place.
    The dark place was Elmwood, the psych facility where they’d taken her after weeks of barely any sleep, after downing half a bottle of pills to kill the ghosts.
    She saw Marcel’s face again, only it wasn’t his face, it was Darren DiCinni’s face now, and he looked at her, wild-eyed and hopeless.
    And that’s when the guns in shadowed hands opened fire, filling his body with holes, his blood spraying her.
    6.

    “I can’t do it,” Lindy said.
    It was 8:14 Tuesday morning. Darren DiCinni’s arraignment was scheduled for nine. Lindy’s stomach was churning. She could see the corner of the Times building through the window of Judge Greene’s chambers.
    Greene, as always, spoke calmly.
    “Is this you talking, or is it Marcel Lee?”
    Lindy shot him a look, saw the astonishing understanding in his face.
    “Both,” Lindy admitted.
    “Then take it. Take the case. You have to put the