The Crime Writer Read Online Free PDF Page B

the weight of the decisions to come, the other canted back in his chair, thumb dimpling a cheek, forefinger riding his upper lip. Both of their heads were bowed as if in prayer. Before their features resolved, I had a strong sense I was walking into the famous picture of JFK and Bobby taken when Khrushchev’s freighters were steaming toward Cuba.
    I understood their concern. I’d already proven less than pliable as a client. Despite their advice, I’d elected not to waive my right to a speedy trial. Bail had been denied, a cover-yer-ass move by the down-the-middle judge we’d drawn, cowed by mounting media fanfare. The prospect of spending maybe years locked up awaiting trial was terrifying enough to compromise my judgment on the matter. My lawyers and I had also gone a few rounds over the plea. My choices were guilty or not guilty. The temporary-insanity issue would be visited—in a second trial phase—only if I were found guilty.
    Donnie Smith, hair tamped down from his post-gym shower, picked up right where we’d left off. “Your pleading not guilty will antagonize the judge, the public, the press, and the court. And it’s that group that decides your fate. Not just those twelve people. You have to plead guilty to help you gain credibility on the question of impaired sanity. Given the media, Harriman’s gonna try the case, and you can bet she’ll mop the floor with us in the guilt phase, leave you stained. We need to get to sanity quickly, with a clean slate, and without dragging you through a trial that you are unlikely to win.”
    My heart felt like it was fluttering my shirt. “But I didn’t do it. And not a single fucking person believes me.”
    Not the first time they’d encountered such a claim. Blank eyes. Patience, edging to impatience.
    “So your position is you don’t remember that you didn’t kill her?” Donnie spoke slowly, as if to a developmentally delayed child.
    I didn’t answer. It sounded stupid to me, too. As before, each minute with them contributed to my growing fear that I had no defense. And that if I didn’t want to die in a prison cell, I’d have to admit to something I did not remember.
    My frustration bubbled to the surface. “Is anyone trying to find out who really did this? Or are they all too busy playing trial games like us?”
    Donnie and Terry glanced at each other uneasily.
    “What?” I said, worried. “What’s that look?”
    “LAPD turned over something troubling yesterday in discovery,” Donnie said. “Genevieve called you the night of the murder at 1:08 A.M. , approximately twenty minutes before her murder.”
    “I was told that already.”
    Donnie removed a sealed LAPD evidence bag from his briefcase. It contained a CD. “And she left you a message.”
    “Is it bad?” I asked. No answer. Agitated, I stood, walked a tight circle, sat back down again. “That’s why they changed my voice mail access.”
    Donnie popped the CD into his laptop and clicked a few buttons.
    The familiar voice, back from the dead, was haunting. “I wanted to tell you I’m with someone new. I hope I hurt you. I hope you feel this pain. I hope you feel so alone. Good-bye.”
    It took me a few moments to recover from hearing Genevieve. I sat there with my heartbeat pounding in my ears and my lawyers staring at me with calm concern. Her voice, the accent, those nuanced pronunciations. But the invasiveness of the message’s presentation also unnerved me. The cops had heard Genevieve’s last words to me before I had. The message—like the rest of my life, frozen by the prosecution and available to me only secondhand—hammered the final nail into the coffin of my rights and privacy.
    I didn’t remember hearing Genevieve’s message that night, of course. The bitterness of it clashed with where I thought she and I had left things between us, but she’d been moody and difficult at times, so the tone was hardly shocking. Under no circumstances could I imagine it making me want to