expert's pretty certain its a bullet hole. The bullet's gone. Ma Franklin must have deep-sixed it.'
'When will we have the criminologist's report?'
'By the end of the week.'
'Let's step up the background investigation of Franklin. Put another man on it if necessary.'
'What for? The fact that Mrs. Franklin puttied over the bullet hole, then moved the picture to conceal it, proves she was covering up for her son. Griffen will have to drop the charges.'
'Never bank on the prosecution acting reasonably, Barry. Abigail Griffen is not the type to roll over. She may not draw the same conclusions from the evidence that we did. We go full-bore until the moment the indictment is dismissed.'
'You got it,' Barry said wearily. 'I'll put Ted French on the backgrounder. How are things in Atlanta?'
'Joel took the deal.'
'That's what you hoped, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'How are his parents doing?'
'Not well.' Matthew paused for a moment and rubbed his eyes. 'I'm flying back tomorrow, Barry, but don't tell anyone. I want to take a few days off.'
'Are you okay? You don't sound so good.'
'I'm tired. I need some time to myself.'
'I've been telling you that for years. When do you land? I'll pick you up at the airport.'
'I'll be in at three-ten. And, Barry, that was good work at the Franklin house. Very good work.'
Matthew hung up. His eyes were glazed with fatigue and he was bone weary. He lay back on the bed in the dark and thought about Joel Livingstone and Jeffrey Coulter back in Portland and Alonso Nogueiras in Huntsville, Texas, and all the other people for whom he was the sole difference between life and death. It was too much for one man to do and he was beginning to think he just couldn't do it anymore.
Matthew thought about Tracy Cavanaugh's drive and desire.
There had been a time when he moved from one cause to another with the energy of a zealot. Now the cases just seemed to grind him down, and it was taking all his strength to stand up after he was done with them. He needed time away from the clients and the ever present specter of death.
He needed something . . . someone.
Matthew turned on his side and hugged a pillow to his cheek.
The linen felt cool and comforting. He closed his eyes and remembered the way Abigail Griffen looked in one of the photographs he kept in the manila envelope in the lower right drawer of his desk. The photo was his favorite. In it, she stood relaxed and happy outside the French windows of her home, her arms at her side, her right knee slightly bent, looking toward the woods, as if she was listening to some faint sound that carried to her on the wind.
Chapter NINE
The morning had been cool and overcast, but the fog burned off by noon and the sun was shining. Abbie circled the cabin taking pictures from different angles with her Pentax camera. She tried to capture the cabin from every angle, because she needed a photographic record of the place that in all the world had come to be her favorite.
When she was finished photographing the cabin, Abbie followed a narrow dirt path through the woods to a bluff overlooking the Pacific. She took some shots from the bluff, then walked down a flight of wooden steps to the beach.
Abbie was wearing a navy-blue tee shirt, a bulky, hooded gray sweatshirt and jeans. She hung the camera around her neck and took off her sneakers and socks. There had been a storm the previous day and the Pacific was still in turmoil. Abbie pushed her toes through the sand until she reached the waterline. Gulls swooped overhead, She set up a shot, stepping sideways toward the bluff whenever the freezing water came too close. A wave rose skyward, spraying foam, then fell in a fury.
Abbie finished the roll of film and continued down the beach.
She loved the ocean and she loved the cabin. The cabin was the place she came to escape. She would awake with the sun, but stay in bed reading. When she was hungry, Abbie would whip up marionberry, ginger or some other type of exotic pancakes and a caff latte. She would nurse the latte while reading the escapist fiction she had no time for when she was in trial and which helped her to forget the grim work of prosecuting rapists and murderers. Then, for the rest of the day, she would continue to do absolutely nothing of importance and revel in her idleness.
Abbie hunched her shoulders against a sudden gust of wind.
The sea air was bracing. The thought of losing the cabin was unbearable, but she was going to lose it. The cabin belonged to Robert and he had made it clear that she would never use it once the divorce was final, taunting her with the loss because he knew how dear the place was to her. It gave Abbie one more reason to hate him.
The sun began to set. Abbie reached a place where the beach narrowed at the base of a high bluff. She turned for home, leaning forward to fight the tug of the sand. By the time she arrived at the stairs that led back up to the cabin, she was feeling melancholy. She sat on the lowest step and tied her sneakers. She would be able to buy another cabin, but she doubted she would find one that suited her so perfectly.
Abbie rested her forearms on her thighs and lost herself in the rhythm of the waves. What would she do after the divorce? She would not mind being alone. She had lived alone before. She was living alone now.
Living alone was better than living with someone who used you and lied to you. What she would miss was the special feeling of being in love she had experienced with Larry Ross and during the early days of her marriage to Robert. Abbie wondered if she would take the risk of falling in love again, knowing how easily love could be snatched away.
When the chill reminded her of the advent of night, Abbie hoisted herself to her feet and climbed the stairs. She walked slowly along the short path through the woods. Something moved deep in the forest and Abbie froze, hoping it was a deer. She had been on edge since the attempted break-in at her house. When Matthew Reynolds commented that Charlie Deems was the type of person who would seek revenge, Abbie remembered that the burglar's physique vaguely resembled Deems's. The thought that a man like Deems might be stalking her was profoundly unsettling.
Abbie waited nervously in the shadows cast by the pines, but the source of the sound remained a mystery. She returned to the cabin, showered, then made a nice dinner, which she ate on the front porch. She sipped a chilled Chardonnay that went well with the trout amandine and saffron rice pilaf. Overhead, the stars were a river of diamonds so sharp they hurt her eyes. They never looked like this in the city.
Abbie loved to cook and usually felt upbeat after consuming one of her creations. Tonight, she was thinking about losing the cabin and she felt logy and maudlin. After dinner, she sipped a mug of coffee, but soon felt her eyelids drag. She emptied the coffee onto the packed earth below the porch rail and went inside.
Abbie sat up in bed, certain she had heard a noise but unable to tell what it was. Her heart was beating so loudly, she had to take deep breaths to calm herself. The moon was only a sliver and the room was pitch black. According to the clock on her nightstand, she had only been asleep for an hour and a half.
Abbie tried to identify the sound that had awakened her, but heard only the waves breaking on the beach. Just as she convinced herself that she was only having a bad dream, a stair creaked and her heart raced again.
Abbie had taken to carrying her handgun since the attempted break-in, but as she reached for it, she remembered that her purse was downstairs.
She had been too exhausted to change her clothes when she went to bed, so Abbie was wearing her tee shirt and panties and had tossed her sneakers, socks and jeans onto the floor next to the bed. She rolled onto the floor and slipped on her jeans and sneakers.
There was a deck outside the bedroom window. Abbie grabbed the doorknob and tried to open the door quietly, but the salt air had warped the wood and the door stuck. Abbie pulled a little harder, afraid that the intruder would hear her if she jerked open the door. It would not move.
Another step creaked and she panicked. The second she wrenched the door open footsteps pounded up the stairs toward her room. Abbie ran onto the deck. She slammed the deck door closed to slow the intruder, then she rolled over the low deck rail just as the door to her bedroom slammed open. For a brief moment, Abbie could see
