od,
I want this maniac?" Lily Forrester said, her voice
bouncing off the colorful tiled floors and decaying stucco
walls. The Santa Barbara courthouse was a beautiful but
ancient structure that would have servered better as a museum
that a processing house for justice.
"Why did you ask Judge Orso to meet
with us this early?" Matt Kingsley asked his supervisor,
a tall, lanky woman with freckles and curly red hair. Lily
didn't look old enough to have a daughter in her second year
of college. One of the most impassioned prosecuters in the
county, she whipped around the office with nonstop energy,
putting the younger attorneys to shame. In many ways, such
intensity was frightening. Of course, anyone would get excited
about the crime they were presently handling. The victim was
an eight-year-old girl. Her father, Henry Middleton, had been
arrested the day before on charges of attempted murder.
The crime had occurred on Halloween. Betsy
Louise Middleton, dressed in her pink satin ballerina costume,
had consumed what easily could have amounted to a fatal dose
of strychnine administered in a straw shaped candy. The
child's parents appeared to be upstanding citizens. The father
owned a chain of furniture stores and served as a deacon in
the First Baptist Church, one of the reasons the police had
not immediately identified the couple as suspects. Instead,
every person Betsy had visited while trick or treating that
fatal night had been put through the wringer.
The investigation had been time-consuming
and exhaustive. Only four days before , the break the
authorities had been waiting for had finally arrived. While
working a convenience store robbery, a police officer had
stumbled across a Spanish-speaking witness in Ventura, a
nieghboring city located approximately twenty miles south of
Santa Barbara. The woman had positely identified Henry
Middleton from a photo lineup, stating that she remembered him
purchasing that particular brand of candy the day before
Halloween while his wife and children waited outside in their
red Ford Explorer. The witness recognized the defendant, as
she had purchased a mattress from his furniture company.
"Didn't you speak to Judge Orso yesterday?" Matt
Kingsley voice cut through the morning calm. His eyes were a
muted shade of hazel, his blond hair stylishly long. His look
was that of a former surfer without the charred skin. To add
to his appeal, he drove a bright yellow Ferrari and pruchased
his clothes at Saks Fifth Avenue or Nordstrom.
"Yes," Lily said crisply. "I
caught him on the golf course, though. He probably doesn't
remeber half our conversation."
Santa Barbara was a small judicial
district, and due to the early hour, the courthouse had yet to
come alive. A bedreaggled attorney was leaning against the
wall, sippig a cup of coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. Kingsley,
with his Brooks Brothers suit and squeaky new shoes, smirked
as he took in the other man's morning stubble, wrinkled shirt,
and dirty white sneakers. "Think this guy overestimated
the travel time?" he said, spotting what looked like a
garment bag on the floor next to the man's briefcase.
Lily's jaw dropped. For a few moments she
just stared, unable to believe her eyes. She considered
turning around, but there was no other way to reach their
destination.
©
1996 Penguin USA
hen
the accuser becomes the accused...
