did when his job troubled him most.
four
Confession may be good for the soul, but in Sam Tanner’s case it was also good for snapping reality into sharp focus. Less than an hour after he wrote his tearful statement admitting the brutal and drug-hazed murder of his wife, he exercised his civil rights.
He called the lawyer he’d claimed had only complicated his marital problems and demanded representation. He was panicked and ill and had by this point forgotten half of what he’d confessed.
So it was a lawyer who specialized in domestic law who first claimed the confession had been given under duress, ordered his client to stick to his right to remain silent and called out the troops.
Charles Brighton Smith would head the defense team. He was a sixty-one-year-old fox with a dramatic mane of silver hair, canny blue eyes and a mind like a laser. He embraced high-profile cases with gusto and loved nothing better than a tumultuous court battle with a media circus playing in the center ring.
Before he flew into L.A., he’d already begun assembling his team of researchers, clerks, litigators, experts, psychologists and jury profilers. He’d leaked his flight number and arrival time and was prepared—and elegantly groomed—for the onslaught of press when he stepped off the plane.
His voice was rich and fruity, drawing up through the diaphragm like an opera singer’s. His face was stern and carefully composed to show concern, wisdom and compassion as he made his sweeping opening statement.
“Sam Tanner is an innocent man, a victim of this tragedy. He’s lost the woman he loved in the most brutal of fashions, and now that horror has been compounded by the police in their rush to close the case. We hope to correct this injustice swiftlyso that Sam can deal with his grief and go home to his daughter.”
He took no questions, made no other comments. He let his bodyguards plow through the crowd and lead him to the waiting limo. When he settled inside, he imagined the media would be rife with sound bites from his entrance.
And he was right.
After seeing the last news flash of Smith’s Los Angeles arrival, Val MacBride shut off the television with a snap. It was all a game to them, she thought. To the press, the lawyers, the police, the public. Just another show to bump ratings, to sell newspapers and magazines, to get their picture on the covers or on the news.
They were using her baby, her poor murdered baby.
Yet it couldn’t be stopped. Julie had chosen to live in the public eye, and had died in it.
Now they would use that, the lawyers. That public perception would be twisted and exploited to make a victim out of the man who’d killed her. He would be a martyr. And Olivia was just one more tool.
That, Val told herself, she could stop.
She went quietly from the room, stopping only to peek in on Olivia. She saw Rob, sprawled on the floor with their grandchild, his head close to her as they colored together.
It made her want to smile and weep at the same time. The man was solid as a rock, she thought with great gratitude. No matter how hard you leaned on him, he stayed straight.
She left them to each other and went to find Jamie.
The house was built on the straight, clean lines of a T. In the left notch Jamie had her office. When she’d come to Los Angeles eight years before to act as her sister’s personal assistant, she’d lived and worked out of the spare room in Julie’s dollhouse bungalow in the hills.
Val remembered worrying a bit about both of them then, but their calls and letters and visits home had been so full of fun and excitement she’d tried not to smother the light with nagging and warnings. They’d lived in that house together for two years,until Julie had met and married Sam. And less than six months afterward, Jamie had been engaged to David. A man who managed rock and roll bands, of all things, she’d thought at the time. But he’d turned out to be as steady as her own Rob.
She’d
four
Confession may be good for the soul, but in Sam Tanner’s case it was also good for snapping reality into sharp focus. Less than an hour after he wrote his tearful statement admitting the brutal and drug-hazed murder of his wife, he exercised his civil rights.
He called the lawyer he’d claimed had only complicated his marital problems and demanded representation. He was panicked and ill and had by this point forgotten half of what he’d confessed.
So it was a lawyer who specialized in domestic law who first claimed the confession had been given under duress, ordered his client to stick to his right to remain silent and called out the troops.
Charles Brighton Smith would head the defense team. He was a sixty-one-year-old fox with a dramatic mane of silver hair, canny blue eyes and a mind like a laser. He embraced high-profile cases with gusto and loved nothing better than a tumultuous court battle with a media circus playing in the center ring.
Before he flew into L.A., he’d already begun assembling his team of researchers, clerks, litigators, experts, psychologists and jury profilers. He’d leaked his flight number and arrival time and was prepared—and elegantly groomed—for the onslaught of press when he stepped off the plane.
His voice was rich and fruity, drawing up through the diaphragm like an opera singer’s. His face was stern and carefully composed to show concern, wisdom and compassion as he made his sweeping opening statement.
“Sam Tanner is an innocent man, a victim of this tragedy. He’s lost the woman he loved in the most brutal of fashions, and now that horror has been compounded by the police in their rush to close the case. We hope to correct this injustice swiftlyso that Sam can deal with his grief and go home to his daughter.”
He took no questions, made no other comments. He let his bodyguards plow through the crowd and lead him to the waiting limo. When he settled inside, he imagined the media would be rife with sound bites from his entrance.
And he was right.
After seeing the last news flash of Smith’s Los Angeles arrival, Val MacBride shut off the television with a snap. It was all a game to them, she thought. To the press, the lawyers, the police, the public. Just another show to bump ratings, to sell newspapers and magazines, to get their picture on the covers or on the news.
They were using her baby, her poor murdered baby.
Yet it couldn’t be stopped. Julie had chosen to live in the public eye, and had died in it.
Now they would use that, the lawyers. That public perception would be twisted and exploited to make a victim out of the man who’d killed her. He would be a martyr. And Olivia was just one more tool.
That, Val told herself, she could stop.
She went quietly from the room, stopping only to peek in on Olivia. She saw Rob, sprawled on the floor with their grandchild, his head close to her as they colored together.
It made her want to smile and weep at the same time. The man was solid as a rock, she thought with great gratitude. No matter how hard you leaned on him, he stayed straight.
She left them to each other and went to find Jamie.
The house was built on the straight, clean lines of a T. In the left notch Jamie had her office. When she’d come to Los Angeles eight years before to act as her sister’s personal assistant, she’d lived and worked out of the spare room in Julie’s dollhouse bungalow in the hills.
Val remembered worrying a bit about both of them then, but their calls and letters and visits home had been so full of fun and excitement she’d tried not to smother the light with nagging and warnings. They’d lived in that house together for two years,until Julie had met and married Sam. And less than six months afterward, Jamie had been engaged to David. A man who managed rock and roll bands, of all things, she’d thought at the time. But he’d turned out to be as steady as her own Rob.
She’d
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