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The Dead Woman's Verdict
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My grandmother is, as far as the law is concerned, a dead woman. She faked her own death so she could go off with the boy she'd grown up beside, and she left evidence behind that made my grandfather her killer. He went away for twenty years. She sold his house and ran to Port Halcyon with the other man. One of them became a famous attorney who talks about justice in courtrooms. The other became a philanthropist who talks about compassion under television lights. My grandfather carried the word wife-killer for the rest of his life. My father grew up on whatever the neighbors could spare. He never spent a day in school, and he wore his hands raw laying brick until he'd put me through college. Two generations, two pairs of ruined hands, lifting me one step at a time out of Pinebarrow. Fifty years after my grandmother's fake death. I sit on the felony bench of the Dunstone Superior Court. In front of me are five young women charged in a murder. The case against the first four is airtight. Against the fifth, there's half a fingerprint at the scene and a witness who accounts for her entire night. Even the police call her the least likely of them. The murder charge won't hold. I go through her file. Under family, there's a name. Evelyn Harrow. My grandmother. I look at how much the two of them resemble each other. And when her lawyer moves to have her released from this courtroom a free woman, I bring the gavel down lightly. "This court denies the defense motion for dismissal. This court further recommends that the district attorney formally charge the defendant with murder."
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The Dead Woman's Verdict Chapter 7
Only then did something move in Evelyn's face.Her eyes went wet."Walter, it wasn't me. It was Victor. He forced me back then."I'd been drinking that night and it happened, and afterward he told me that if I didn't go along with it he'd report the whole thing and have me taken away."She grabbed at Grandpa's hand. "I had no choice, Walter. There was nothing I could do.""You lying witch. You're the one who said a divorce would finish your career. You're the one who said the house and the money were Walter's and you'd walk out of that marriage with nothing. That's why you invented the funeral."And don't you dare say I seduced you. If you hadn't wanted it, could I have done any of it alone? Now it's out and you want to hand them my body instead. Don't hold your breath, Evelyn."The couple who'd spent thirty years being photographed together were tearing at each other in the middle of the courtroom.I stood next to Grandpa and watched the two of them come apart.The reporters
The Dead Woman's Verdict Chapter 6
The camera flashes didn't let up.Evelyn, who had never once lost her composure in public, put a hand up to hide her face."It's the same name, that's all. That woman isn't me."Then another man got up out of the gallery.His hair was snow white and his suit was cut to the inch.Victor Harrow.He and Grandpa had come up together from boys.When there was no food in Victor's house, Grandpa took it out of his own mouth and carried it over.When Victor nearly died out in the hills, Grandpa went in after him and half killed himself getting him back.And at the end of it, Victor got himself between Evelyn and her husband, and the two of them spent his whole life for him.Victor looked at him with open disgust."Sir, Evelyn and I have been married for decades, and we grew up in this city. Whatever happened in whatever town you came out of, you've got the wrong woman. If you're short on money, ask us honestly and we may help you. But if this is a shakedown, understand that the Harr
The Dead Woman's Verdict Chapter 5
Marina still hadn't grasped a thing.She was shouting. "It's you. You set me up. That little nobody was nothing, she was nothing. My grandmother will get me out of this."I looked at Evelyn, collapsed in her chair.No.Marina would wait forever.I brought the gavel down once.The courtroom went quiet.I stood, came down from the bench, and took off my robe."There's one more matter to be heard in this courtroom today."It's a case that runs fifty years."And I've never believed justice fails to arrive. Only that it can arrive very late.""A fifty-year-old case? Wouldn't the statute have run twice over?""What kind of case makes a judge take off his robe first?""Now I'm curious. Fifty years back the forensics were garbage. There were a lot of bad convictions."I went on."It begins in a farming town called Pinebarrow."A man there was accused of murdering his wife."The evidence never closed, but with everything weighed against him, he was sentenced to twenty years."
The Dead Woman's Verdict Chapter 4
From the second I walked in, the comments in the stream didn't stop."Why is that snake back? Wasn't he suspended? Of course he is. The rules bend one direction for guys like him. Somebody upstairs is holding the ladder.""What did he mean by that? Is there something about Marina's case we don't know?""There's nothing. He went looking for trouble from the start. I can't wait to watch Evelyn wipe the floor with him."I took the bench again.Evelyn Harrow at the defense table, Marina Harrow beside her.Grandpa had sat behind a table like that once.He'd had no one. Nobody believed him, and nobody stood up to argue for him.All he ever did was say it again and again. "I'm innocent. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't kill my wife."The clerk finished the instructions, and we went back on the record.Evelyn rose without hurrying.She took the case apart with real skill.On her account, everything done to Chloe Rhodes, from the first blow to the last, belonged to the other four def
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