47 Bennie barreled in her wet parka down the marble corridor…
48 Marta stood over the metal strongbox in amazement. She had…
49 Judge Harry Calvin Rudolph sat atop the mahogany dais and…
50 Bennie and Emil walked down the wide hallway, past the…
51 The jurors sat at the conference table in the hotel…
52 Marta stood on the sunny shoulder of Route 72 in…
53 Ralph Merry ducked into a stall in the men's room,…
54 Marta sat in Judy's apartment, sickened as the shaken associate…
55 The sequestration hotel had plied the jurors with a breakfast…
56 Marta only reluctantly skimmed the list of handwritten numbers in…
57 Christopher's stomach was killing him. Pain shot through his gut…
58 Ten phone calls later, Marta sat at the edge of…
59 Bennie sat sweltering in her parka, growing increasingly impatient as…
60 Judge Rudolph was presiding, though when he looked down from…
61 Marta and Judy churned down the street, racing toward the…
62 Bennie climbed the snowdrift to Carrier's stoop, brushed snow off…
63 'It's D day, troops,' Ralph called to the other jurors.
64 Marta got her second wind as soon as she spied…
65 Marta stood near the front of the crowd, riveted at…
66 It took Emil Gorebian all day to interview lawyers, police…
67 In an anesthetized sleep, Christopher dreamed he was cantering a…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lisa Scottline
Acclaim and Praise
Copyright
About PerfectBound
Undefeatability lies with ourselves.
—Sun-Tzu
1
It started with a slip of the tongue. At first, Marta Richter thought she'd misunderstood him. She felt exhausted after the two-month murder trial and couldn't always hear her client through the thick bulletproof window. 'You mean you struggled in
Elliot Steere didn't reply, but brushed ash from his chair on the defendant's side of the window. In his charcoal Brioni suit and a white shirt with a cutaway collar, Steere looked incongruous but not uncomfortable in the jailhouse setting. The businessman's cool was the stuff of tabloid legend. The tabs reported that on the night Steere had been arrested for murder, he'd demanded only one phone call. To his stockbroker. 'That's what I said,' Steere answered after a moment. 'I struggled in his grasp.'
'No, you said he struggled in
A faint smile flickered across Steere's strong mouth. He had a finely boned nose, flat brown eyes, and suspiciously few crow's feet for a real estate developer. In magazine photos Steere looked attractive, but the fluorescent lights of the interview room hollowed his cheeks and dulled his sandy hair. 'What's the point? The trial's over, the jury's out. It doesn't matter anymore who was struggling with who. Whom.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' Marta asked. She didn't want him to play word games, she wanted him to praise her brilliant defense. It was the case of her career, and Steere's acquittal was in the bag. 'Of course it matters.'
'Why? What if it wasn't self-defense? What if I murdered him like the D.A. said? So what?'
Marta blinked, irritated. 'But that's not the way it happened. He was trying to hijack your car. He attacked you with a knife. He threatened to kill you. You shot him in self-defense.'
'In the back of the head?'
'There was a struggle. You had your gun and you fired.' Without realizing it, Marta was repeating the words of her closing argument. The jury had adjourned to deliberate only minutes earlier. 'You panicked, in fear of your life.'
'You really bought that?' Steere crossed one long leg over the other and a triangle of tailored pant flopped over with a fine, pressed crease. ' 'In fear of my life'? I stole that line from a cop show, the one where everybody smokes. You know the show?'
Marta's mouth went dry. She didn't watch TV even when she was on, another television lawyer with wide-set blue eyes and chin-length hair highlighted blond. A hardness around her eyes and a softness under her chin told the viewers she wasn't thirty anymore. Still Marta looked good on the tube and knew how to handle herself; explain the defense in a sound bite and bicker with the prosecutor. Wrap it up with wit. Smile for the beauty shot. 'What is this, a joke? What's TV have to do with anything?'
