by Laura Snider
Unsympathetic Victims
Laura Snider
UNSYMPATHETIC VICTIMS
Copyright © 2021 by Laura Snider
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-64875-118-9 (Paperback)
ISBN: 979-8-53612-178-8 (Hardback)
Contents
Also By Laura Snider
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
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Thanks for Reading
Next in Series
UNDETERMINED DEATH: Prologue
UNDETERMINED DEATH: Chapter 1
UNDETERMINED DEATH: Chapter 2
Read Undetermined Death
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also By Laura Snider
Ashely Montgomery Legal Thrillers
Unsympathetic Victims
Undetermined Death
Unforgivable Acts
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For Public Defenders everywhere.
Especially those that I worked alongside.
Keep fighting.
Am I a victim or a villain?
The answer depends on who you ask.
But I’d venture to guess that the truth lands somewhere in the middle.
—Ashley Montgomery
Prologue
Arnold Von Reich
December 10th – 12:00 a.m.
The truth was supposed to set him free. That was what other inmates had told Arnold while he spent that year incarcerated in the Brine County Jail, waiting for trial. But it wasn’t the truth that resulted in Arnold Von Reich’s eventual acquittal. It was an attorney, Ashley Montgomery. She didn’t care about truth; she cared about winning. Which was to his benefit, considering what he had done to his wife.
He had thought his trial was over, back when the foreperson announced, “Not guilty,” but he was wrong. The jail released him, sending him back into society, and that was when he started a wholly different sentence. It was not incarceration, but it was not freedom either. The Brine townspeople harassed him. Threatened him. Destroyed his property. He almost preferred prison.
Two of his harassers had been at Mikey’s Tavern all that week, watching him. Erica Elsberry, his late wife’s best friend, and Christopher Mason. They sneered and leered at him, like he did not deserve to breathe the same air as them. Like the atmosphere belonged to them. They were hypocrites, of course, like everyone else in Brine. For they had their own transgressions. The only difference was that they just made excuses for their fuckups.
Arnold sniffed, then sneezed, running the back of his hand along his nose. The musty air, a mixture of stale beer and moldy popcorn, inside Mikey’s Tavern played havoc on his allergies. But he had to bear it. There were three bars in town, and Mikey’s was the only one that would serve him.
His head drooped, and he attempted to focus on his drink. An amber liquid inside a cheap, heavily scratched glass. There were two of them, his drinks, one solid while the second was its ghostlike twin. He blinked hard, and the two glasses merged into one. Shit. It was nearly empty.
Arnold motioned to the bartender, waving a pale arm back and forth, like an overzealous student who wanted the teacher to call on him. The bartender didn’t see him.
“Hey!” Arnold shouted.
The bartender ran a stained rag along the top of the back bar. He moved pathetically slow. An old man tottering on aging knees. The bartender’s hair was nearly nonexistent, and his back was so stooped that it rivaled that of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Arnold hoped he would never make it to such an age, to morph into a weak shell of his former self. He would off himself if it came to that. He was no spring chicken, but he knew his way around a knife. He could hold his own, so long as he was sober enough to see straight. Which he wasn’t anymore—that ship had already sailed. The only thing to do was ride it through to the end of the night. Which reminded him of his empty glass.
Arnold snapped his fingers. “You! Old man!” All he wanted was another drink. But the bartender was ignoring him. Treating him like a pariah, just like everyone else in town. He hated it. In his younger years, Arnold would have hopped over the bar and forced the old man to fill his glass. But that was then, back before Amy’s death. Before the cops and prosecutor were waiting for any excuse, any misstep, to throw him back in jail.
The bartender turned and picked up a glass. He pressed his gray, furry face against the cup, inspecting it for watermarks. He turned it as he wiped furiously with that same dirty rag he had used on the back bar.
“Hey, y-you,” Arnold shouted, “get me another.” He held his glass in the air, shaking the ice. It clanked against the inside of the glass. A couple pieces tumbled over the edge and slid along the wooden bar.
The old man continued to ignore him. A burst of rage ignited in Arnold’s belly. Arnold was a person, just like everyone else.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” Arnold grumbled under his breath. “What a bunch of bullshit.” He narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on his glass. He raised it and brought it slamming down on the bar top. There was a horrible cracking sound as Arnold’s glass shattered into a thousand twinkling shards.
The bartender finally looked up, but he was not the only one that heard the commotion. A younger man came rushing out of the kitchen, his eyes blazing. “Arnie!” the younger man shouted. He clenched his fists at his sides as his nostrils flared like a Spanish bull. “What’s wrong with you, man?”
“Mikey Money,” Arnold grumbled. Mikey was the owner of Mikey’s Tavern. “I want another drink, and Helen Keller over here,” Arnie hooked a thumb toward the bartender, “won’t get me one.”
“It’s mid
night,” Mikey said. His eyes shifted toward a dusty clock mounted above the bar.
“That clock’s broken. It always says midnight.”
“It’s closing time. And Pops,” Mikey motioned toward the bartender, “isn’t going to get you another.”
Arnold’s eyes shifted from Mikey toward the prehistoric bartender, then back to Mikey. He had come to this bar every day since his acquittal, but he’d never noticed the similarities between the two of them. They did have the same shaped mouth, the same wide nose.
“I need another,” Arnold growled. Mikey was holding out for no reason other than spite. He hated Arnold just like everyone else in town, but he liked money too much to turn him away.
Mikey shook his head.
“Come on, Mi-key Mo-ney,” Arnold said, making air quotes while he slowly annunciated Mikey’s street name. “Take my mo-ney and get me some booze.”
“I’ll get you something, but it won’t be booze,” Mikey shouted as he stalked toward Arnold.
Mikey’s strong hands gripped Arnold’s shoulders, plucking him out of his chair.
“Put me down!” Arnold batted at Mikey.
Mikey loosened his grip and dropped Arnold. Arnold’s legs buckled, and he crumpled to the floor.
“Oops,” Mikey said, wiping his hands on his apron.
“What the f-fuck.”
Mikey shrugged. “You want down. You got it.”
Arnold pushed himself off the ground and slowly rose to his feet, swaying unsteadily. “You,” he pointed a crooked finger at Mikey, “know what I meant.”
A bell tolled somewhere off in the distance. Arnold tried to count the chimes silently in his head. One, two, three…he couldn’t focus.
“Hear that?” Mikey said. “That’s the church bell. Twelve bells. Closing time.”
“I only heard eleven.”
“Get out,” Mikey said. “I got a mess to clean up, thanks to you.”
Arnold narrowed his eyes, wondering if he could take Mikey in a fight. Mikey was strongly built, sober, and ten years younger than Arnie. There was no chance. At least not without his brass knuckles. He knew he should have brought them.
“Not tonight,” Arnold grumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Arnold said, dusting his pants with a wiry hand. He flipped Mikey the bird and tottered toward the back door. He pounded the silver bar with a balled fist. The door burst open, banging hard against the outer wall.
Arnold gazed into the darkened alley and felt around until he grasped the handrail. He stepped outside and nearly fell down the three steps from the tavern to the alley. When he regained his balance, he turned and slammed the door as hard as he could.
He waited a moment, wondering if Mikey would come out screeching and howling like a banshee, but he didn’t. He was probably crawling around searching for tiny shards of glass.
Screw Mikey, he thought as he turned to shuffle his way home.
Most of the lights in the alley were out. Only one lonely lamp survived. Its small fingers of white light barely illuminated Arnold’s path. He only made it a couple of steps before a door slammed, hard, behind him. Arnold stopped. Mikey’s Tavern had two doors that opened to the back alley. One from the kitchen and the one Arnold had used. Did Mikey come out of the kitchen door? Was he trying to sneak up behind Arnold now?
Surely not, Arnold thought. Mikey didn’t like him, but he needed Arnold’s business. He was a loyal customer, showing up every night at 7:00 p.m. Staying, and more importantly paying, until bar close.
He sighed and started toward the road. But then something caught his eye. A quick movement to his right. Something shifting from deep within the shadows. He turned too quickly, and the world jolted.
Arnold stumbled once, but he steadied himself on the wall. He stood very still for a long moment, allowing his vision to recover. He scanned the darkness through bloodshot, watery eyes. All was still. Silent.
“Mikey,” he called.
Nothing.
“Probably a mangy cat.”
But then, there it was again. Another movement. Arnold squinted, staring into the blackness. His eyes widened and his heart skipped a beat as a figure emerged from the shadows, materializing like a demon in the night.
“Who…who’s there,” Arnold stammered. The person wore a large black coat with the hood pulled up, obscuring both physique and facial features.
“Who are you?” Arnold demanded. Irritation quickly replacing fear. What kind of fucking moron hid in an alley behind a trash can? It was likely a bum, and he probably stank.
The person glanced down at a watch, then took another step forward while reaching up and pulling back the hood. Arnold’s eyes shifted toward the person’s face. He opened his mouth into a wide O.
The person moved, too quick for Arnold to react. A blade dropped into the person’s hand, and the blood drained from Arnie’s face.
“What are you…why are you…I…didn’t mean…” Arnold staggered backward.
The person dashed toward Arnold. The knife-wielding arm rushed through the air, sliding across Arnold’s throat. A sharp twinge of pain followed, and hot blood burst from the fresh laceration. Arnold’s arms came up, grappling to close the wound. There was no point. He tried to speak. To ask why. But he already knew. It was his final sentence. One that had been waiting for him since his acquittal.
He sank to his knees as his body grew unbearably heavy. His eyes shifted one last time toward his assailant. The person was already at the end of the alley, turning the corner without looking back.
Darkness seeped in from the edges of Arnold’s vision, and he began to lose feeling in his toes. He wasn’t religious, but he still asked forgiveness for what he’d done. Not that he believed in God, or that he was truly sorry. His body grew cold. He turned toward the sky and looked up at the stars, watching as they began to wink out, seemingly one by one, until nothing remained.
1
Ashley Montgomery
December 10th – 8:00 a.m.
The bell above the door to Genie’s Diner jingled. A gush of warm air greeted Ashley, heavy with the scent of cinnamon and apples. It was packed inside. Nearly every table was occupied. Ashley recognized them all. In a town of six thousand people, that was to be expected. What was not typical was their reaction to her. None of them smiled. None of them greeted her. They gave her what she called the Brine stare. They looked, sneered, then turned back to their business.
Ashley ignored them as she always did. She scanned the clientele until her eyes snagged on a chubby man with fire-red hair. He sat alone at a corner booth in the back of the restaurant. Jacob. Ashley’s only coworker. He held a paper in one hand and waved with the other. Ashley ducked her head and made a beeline for Jacob’s table.
“Murder last night,” Jacob said as she approached him. He held up that morning’s copy of the Brine Daily News.
Ashley slid into the seat across from him. Genie’s Diner was a traditional small-town café. Faded red booths lined one wall while four-top tables filled the center. The floor was checkered black and white in a style that had gone out so long ago that it was almost back in.
“What?” Ashley asked, snatching the paper out of Jacob’s hands. Jacob was the only person she knew under the age of sixty that still bought a physical paper.
“You don’t need to get so grabby.”
Ashley snapped the paper and eyed Jacob over the top of it. “Eat your eggs before they get cold.”
Jacob already had his food. Breakfast with Jacob at Genie’s was a daily affair, and he never waited for Ashley to order.
She turned back to the paper and read the headline: Man Slain in Back Alley. A quick scan of the article yielded little information. A jogger found a man behind a skuzzy bar downtown. The man’s throat was slit. The jogger was not identified by name; neither was the victim.
“Homicide,” Ashley mumbled as her eyes drifted back to the beginning of the article.
“Huh?” Jaco
b’s voice was muffled by a mouth full of food.
“I said homicide. You said murder. This is not a murder. You know that. At least not yet.”
Murder was a legal word. Something that attached to a criminal defendant after conviction. Homicide was the pretrial word for an unnatural death. It meant that one person caused the death of another. Ashley and Jacob were public defenders. As one of the only two defense attorneys in town, he should only consider a person guilty when a jury rendered an unfavorable verdict. It was their duty.
Brine was full of those who thought guilt attached at arrest and it was up to the defendant to prove otherwise. Actually, in truth, there was no changing their minds otherwise. Except, of course, if they were selected for one of Ashley’s juries and she had a full trial to manipulate the facts and alter their way of thinking.
It was Ashley’s form of magic. The reason the residents all hated her, even though she was a local too, born and raised in Brine. They saw her as a trickster. Which, she supposed, was not completely off base. She was good at her job. Very good. Everyone knew that. Most jurors left the bubble of the jury trial system, read all the news, then sorely regretted their verdict. But by then it was too late. The verdict was in and they could not take it back. It was why most residents believed Ashley should occupy a cell right next to her clients. She had no doubt that if she’d lived in Salem during the witch trials, she would have been the first to burn.
