Malice by Danielle Steel Page B

Grace wasn't giving an inch. Molly was getting nowhere.
    She stopped in the detective's office to look at the hospital report and the Polaroids again, and it made her feel sick when she saw them. Stan Dooley came in while she was reading the report, and he was surprised to see her still at work, fourteen hours after she had started.
    “Don't you have anything else to do at night?” he said amiably. “A girl like you ought to be out with some guy, or hanging out in bars, looking for her future.”
    “Yeah,” she laughed at him, her long blond hair hanging invitingly over her shoulder. “Just like you, huh, Stan? You were here the same time I was this morning.”
    “I have to. You don't. I want to retire in ten years. You can be a shrink until you're a hundred.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She closed the file and put it on his desk with a sigh. She was getting nowhere. “Did you see the hospital report on the Adams girl?”
    “Yeah. So?” He looked unmoved.
    “Oh come on, don't tell me you can't figure it out.” She looked angry at the casual shrug of his shoulders.
    “What's to figure? So she got laid, nobody says she got raped. And who says it was her father?”
    “Bullshit. Who do you think laid her? Six gorillas from the zoo? Did you see the bruises, and read what he found internally?”
    “So she likes it lively. Look, she's not complaining. She isn't saying that she was raped. What do you want from me?”
    “Some sense for chrissake,” she blazed at him. “She's a seventeen-year-old kid, and he was her father. She's protecting him, or some misguided illusion about saving his reputation. But I can tell you one thing, that girl was defending herself, and you know it.”
    “‘Protecting him.’ She blew the guy away. What kind of protection is that? I think your theory is real nice, Doctor, but it won't hold water. All we know is that she may have had a little rough sex. There is nothing to prove that she had it with her father, or that he was roughing her up. And even if, God help me, she did fuck her old man, that's still no reason to shoot him. That still doesn't make it self-defense, and you know that too. There's nothing to prove that her father hurt her. She's not even saying that. You are.”
    “How the hell do you know what he did?” she shouted at him, but he looked unmoved. He didn't believe a word of what she was saying. “Is this what she told you, or are you just guessing? I'm looking at the evidence, and a seventeen-year-old girl who is isolated and so removed she's practically on another planet.”
    “Let me tell you a little secret, Dr. York. This is not a Martian. She's a shooter. Simple as that. And you want to know what I think, with all your exams, and fancy theories? I think probably she went out and got laid that night after her mother's funeral, and her old man thought it wasn't right. So she came home and he gave her hell, and she didn't like it, got pissed off, and killed him. And the fact that he was jacking off in bed is pure coincidence. You can't take a guy that the whole community knows as a good guy and convince anyone that he raped his daughter and she shot him in self-defense. As a matter of fact, I talked to his partner today, and he said pretty much the same thing I did. I didn't share the evidence with him, but I asked him what he thought must have happened. The idea that John Adams would do anything to harm his child, and I didn't even say what you thought it might have been, horrified him. He said the guy adored his wife, and his kid. He said he lived for them, never cheated on his wife, spent every night with them, and was devoted to his wife till the day she died. He said that the kid was always a little strange, very unfriendly and withdrawn, didn't have many friends. And wasn't that keen on her father.”
    “There goes your theory that she was out with her boyfriend.”
    “She doesn't have to have a regular to go out and give it away for half