Why (Stalker Series Book 2)
Page 1
by Megan Mitcham
Dispatch: Sir, tell me what’s wrong, so I can get you help.
Caller: My family … Please, no! (A scream.)
Dispatch: Sir, are you hurt?
Caller: No. (Sobs.) My family! They’re dead! They’re all dead. Someone killed my family!
Dispatch: Sir, what is your name?
Caller: Perry Carter Jr.
Dispatch: Mr. Carter, I need you to hold on the line while I send help your way. Do not hang up. Hold the line.
Caller: Please hurry!
Dispatch: (Off call dispatcher requests police to address.) Mr. Carter, who is dead?
Caller: Everyone! They’re all dead! (Short, erratic breathing.)
Dispatch: Are you hurt, Mr. Carter?
Caller: No! I told you, my family is dead.
Dispatch: What are their names, Mr. Carter?
Caller: Pamela Carter, Claire Carter, and Perry Carter III.
Dispatch: Have you seen each of them?
Caller: Yes! (Scream.) They’re all in the parlor.
Dispatch: Are they breathing?
Caller: Noooo! (Huff.) I told you, they’re dead.
Dispatch: Mr. Carter, you requested an ambulance. You’re also saying they’re dead. How do you know they’re dead?
Caller: There’s blood everywhere.
One
“Okay, ladies, glasses up.” Libby lifted her froth-topped mug into the air. Her friend hadn’t needed to tell Larkin or Marlis, who’d nearly beaten her to the punch by sloshing their beer high.
Genevieve clutched her mug to her chest and groaned. She’d picked this hole-in-the-wall bar to keep away from the spotlight. How had her dearest friends in the world, women who understood her better than she knew herself, not gotten the hint?
“This is not about me,” Gen warned.
“Like hell, it isn’t.” Larkin leaned over and grabbed Genevieve’s arm.
“Jesus, it’s Indian summer out there, and your hands are icicles. How are you going to make it when the real cold sinks in?” Gen pulled her arm from Larkin’s hold and lifted her beer toward the other ones suspended above their small high-top table.
“Hibernation.” Larkin winked. “I know my hands are cold. It’s ten degrees in this place.” She whirled her frozen hand around the neon lit space.
On the little bit of wrist that peeked out from Larkin’s perfectly tailored business suit, gooseflesh prickled her porcelain skin. Gen, on the other hand, had shucked her suit jacket as soon as she’d elbowed the last reporter out of the way in front of the courthouse and opened her Uber’s door. Even in the dark, cool pub, perspiration collected between her breasts and dampened the fabric of the dress pulled tight across her belly.
Libby lifted her chin and surveyed them one at a time with her signature sultry smile. “To our Gen, the best attorney in all of New York. May the jury realize your majesty or have nary another orgasm as long as they live.”
Surprise laughter snorted from Gen’s nostrils, drawing with it a hint of the dread she’d carried around since the closing arguments. Her shoulders bobbed. The worry forcing her to walk like a hunchback lifted, and for the first time since jury selection, her spine uncoiled. She shouldn’t have put her friends off for so long. They knew what was best for her. Always had. Always would.
Marlis choked on her giggles.
“That’s a steep penalty, don’t you think?” Gen asked.
Libby shrugged.
Gen wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “If we could enforce it, maybe we wouldn’t have the burden of crime or the overflowing prison population.”
“To Genevieve, her success, and having more time to help her horny friends get laid.” Libby shoved her glass toward the center of the circled mugs with a hurrah.
Marlis’s choking suspended, replaced by a whooping battle cry that drew the attention of every man in the room.
“To everything except the last.” Larkin clanked her mug into the middle.
“To Judge Faraday, the man who changed my life.” Gen thrust her glass against her friends’.
“You did all the work.” Larkin scoffed.
“But her family couldn’t have afforded Harvard.” Libby lifted her hand palm up. “No offense. Mine couldn’t have either. Brooklyn babes.” She offered Gen her hand.
She smacked her palm to Libby’s. They shared that connection while Mar and Larkin shared more
monied backgrounds. No matter how much money Larkin’s dad had blown, they had more than her family. And she didn’t hold their money, past nor present, against them.
“To you.” Mar lifted her glass. “The baddest bitch attorney in all of NYC.”
They all drew long swigs, Genevieve a little longer than the rest. She had some catching up to do. Since the trial started, she’d limited herself to one glass of wine on Saturday evenings and no men. Zero. Which meant she was starved to the point that her libido had cannibalized itself over the past three months. It was the saddest part of the whole affair besides having to watch a police officer cart her friend off in handcuffs at the end of every day.
“Some of us don’t have a fine piece of ass warming our bed every night.” Libby slammed down her glass and waggled her brows at Larkin.
“Not every night,” Larkin defended.
“Right.” Marlis’s eyes rolled toward the back of her skull. “And anyway, I take offense to that.”
“Take offense to what?” Gen had lost the thread of the conversation. She hadn’t knitted any conversations without elements of timelines, evidence, and lines of questioning for so long. It took practice to keep up with this crew.
“He’s been on an op for the last week,” Larkin blurted. “I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing, or when he’ll be home.” She didn’t state the obvious worry. What if he didn’t come home?
Gen and the others had worried the same thing from the moment they’d learned exactly who Calder Beckett was and what he did for a living … now that his last set of life-threatening injuries sustained on the job were behind him.
No one said a word. The sounds of the various sports games poured from the television screens and filtered between them. The Mets were up by one.
Genevieve hated the quiet tension leeching into their usual harmony. She looked Larkin in the eyes. “I don’t understand how you do it. Especially after your mom.”
“Gen,” Marlis scolded.
“It’s what we’re all thinking about right now, so why not talk about it?” She hated the pit of worry in her stomach. Over the years, she’d crossed the proverbial line a time or two, but it beat silence.
Silence ruined lives.
Libby’s upper lip curled, and her gaze narrowed. Her beautiful friend turned menacing when coming to the aid of another. “Well Christ, Genevieve, you—”
“She’s right.” Every heavily mascaraed eye shifted to Larkin. “In the beginning, it was in his past. It was something we didn’t have to deal with. Then when they realized his capabilities, that he’d recovered one hundred percent, they wanted him back in the field. I knew it was a part of him. Helping people and restoring balance drive him, and I will never take that away from him.” Her head hung, and Larkin picked at her perfectly manicured nails.
“But?” Gen prodded.
“The thought of losing him keeps me up, and it makes eating nearly impossible.” Her friend dabbed at the corners of her eyes and sucked in a breath.
Marlis grabbed Larkin’s hand and held it tight.
“I’m sorry, Lar.” Libby rubbed the handle of her mug.
Gen downed half her beer in three gulps and then set it down with a thud. “Talk to him about it.”
Again, they gave her the wide eyes.
“I can’t.” Larkin’s head shook, flipping her low ponytail from side to side. “I’m not going to make him choose—”
“I’m not suggesting you make him pick only one of the two things that makes the blood pump through his veins.” Gen liked cutting people off. It was a character flaw, but in this case, it was warranted. “I’m saying tell him how scared you are.”
“What good will that do?” Larkin begged.
“It won’t change the way he operates. It won’t change your fear.” Across from her, Larkin drew a breath to argue, but she wasn’t the interrupting type. Gen smiled. “But he’ll know how you feel. He’ll reassure you, explain their capabilities and tactics so you’ll understand it all a little better, and then you’ll find a peace about it.” She took another sip. “Ultimately, you don’t want to lose him. Not in combat and not in a failure to communicate. If you hold it inside, you’ll lose him.”
They all stared at her with loose jaws and wide eyes. It wasn’t a first. She said crazy shit all the time, usually to get a rise out of them, but this was the first time she’d ever used her powers for good. It fit like a department store bra. Uncomfortable, but it got the job done.
The rest of her beer burned its way along her esophagus. It’d been too long if beer hurt going down. “Now”—she turned her hiked brow to Marlis—“why were you offended?”
“Um, wait.” Libby raised her hand as though they were in kindergarten and Gen were the teacher.
Gen shivered the thought away and glared at Libby. “What?”
“Who are you and what have you done with our hyper-sexual, over-the-top friend Genevieve Holst?” Libby grabbed her and pulled her close. The green of her friend’s big eyes studied her intently.
“She’s still in here, but she’s trapped under case files, a pounding gavel, and an old bailiff's slow, shuffling steps.” Genevieve wanted to wave the waiter over for another round, but she still had to appear in court. She didn’t know when the old broad would sing. It could be tomorrow or fifteen days from now, depending on how well she’d done her job. This was no time to fuck it up. A life was on the line. Her friend’s life.
When she shoved her glass to the center of the table, their gawking intensified. In the background, Javier Baez knocked one over the ivy with two runners on, giving the Cubs a two-run lead. Libby released her hold and muttered a curse. Brooklyn babes cared about ball even when it wasn’t an American League game.
“You just made so much sense,” Marlis awed.
“Don’t act like I’ve never added two and two and gotten four. Christ!” Gen threw her hands up and let them smack the table. “Marlis, what were you offended about?” Anything to get the focus off her.
“Um …” Mar’s cute nose crinkled. “I forgot.” She looked from one of them to the other but stopped on Libby for a beat. “Oh, I remember. I’m offended Libby implied I’m not as good of a wingman as you are.”
“You’re not.” Gen shrugged.
Marlis flounced and folded her arms.
Libby flashed Mar a sweet smile but couldn’t quite hide her wince.
“Think about it,” Gen offered. “How many times in the past year have I told you which one to pick and what to say? Think about your success rate. Now, think about the ones you’ve picked and your success rate.”
Her friend’s lips waggled from side to side.
“Did you pick that married yuppie?” Larkin asked Gen.
“What do you think?” Gen lifted Mar’s mug and syphoned off a gulp of her barely touched brew.
“Hey,” Marlis whined.
“You don’t even like beer,” Libby interjected. “I don’t know why you insist on ordering it.”
“When in Rome …” Mar discreetly pointed toward the other, mostly male patrons. Pints and mugs littered their tables.
A jeer from the far corner yanked Gen’s attention from the abundance of beer to a table of construction workers. On any normal night, the sight of thick biceps, sweat-matted hair, and worn jeans would have incited a lady boner so insistent she’d have ended the evening sharing the three pints on their table. Probably more, if she was being honest. Something about callused hands and work-hardened muscles got her going. But this trial had dampened her drive like none before. Damn the grueling subject matter and her unique position in the case.
“Look.” Libby pointed at the largest of the screens that hung across from the men’s table. Minutes ago, it hosted a ball game she’d been discreetly following—Cubs vs. Mets—but now, in its place, was the last thing she wanted to see. The news.
Perry’s mugshot filled the screen. Of all the hurdles she’d had to overcome in the case, that goddamned mugshot might have be
en the most difficult of all. The normally charismatic man had such a blank expression that a ream of office paper boasted more character. His eyes held no life. They were dead. Like his family. That was the only way Gen had rationalized it in the media and in her own head. How was a man who’d lost his entire world in the most brutal way possible only days before supposed to look when he was arrested for their murders, especially when all the evidence pointed at another man?
“Shit,” Larkin groaned. “Sorry, Gen.”
“You can’t control the networks, can you?” Genevieve joked, but her eyes remained glued to the screen.
The construction workers’ jeers turned into mute, undivided attention.
A somber journalist spoke. “The second longest criminal trial in New York City’s history nears its end as both sides offered summation this afternoon. Now, Perry Carter Jr.’s life is in the hands of the jury. If convicted of the grisly murders, the prosecution will push for the death penalty. While New York State maintains a memorandum on the death penalty, it can be sought in the Federal Court hearing the case. For more on this, we go to our legal correspondent, Trisha Moyer.”
“The death penalty?” Marlis squeaked. “But …”
“Thank you, Nancy. Good evening, everyone.” Genevieve’s once upon a time best friend, Trisha Moyer, stood with her forearm propped on the edge of a news station desk. Gen’s headshot filled the background, misshaping her head and making her look like the girl from Willy Wonka, only she’d eaten a strawberry.
Thank you, red hair.
WHY
A STALKER SERIES NOVEL
Megan Mitcham
Copyright Warning
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Published by MM Publishing LLC
Edited by Jenny Sims
Proofread by Tina Rucci & Lynn Mullan
Cover Design by Shayne Leighton of Shayne Leighton Designs
Who
All Rights Are Reserved. Copyright 2020 by Megan Mitcham
First electronic publication: February 2020
First print publication: February 2020
Digital ISBN: 978-1-941899-37-3
Print ISBN: 978-1-941899-38-0
To all you true crime “weirdos” and the ladies of My Favorite Murder. Thank you for the sense of community and acceptance for our curious obsession. I can’t tell you how many quaint circles I’ve busted up with the story of my favorite murder. When you find your Karen or Georgia, it’s worth all the wide eyes and odd looks.
Warning
This novel, while 100% fiction, deals with the difficult topics of death by suicide and sexual assault. It is my hope that by bringing these topics into the forefront, we can deal with them with better awareness in our own lives; however, it may not be suitable for all audiences.
Contents
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
Prologue
Dispatch: 911. What is the address of your emergency?
Caller: I need help! (Labored breathing.)
Dispatch: What kind of help, sir?
Caller: I need an ambulance and the police. Get the police here, now!
Dispatch: Sir, what is the address of your emergency?
Caller:
Dispatch: Sir, tell me what’s wrong, so I can get you help.
Caller: My family … Please, no! (A scream.)
Dispatch: Sir, are you hurt?
Caller: No. (Sobs.) My family! They’re dead! They’re all dead. Someone killed my family!
Dispatch: Sir, what is your name?
Caller: Perry Carter Jr.
Dispatch: Mr. Carter, I need you to hold on the line while I send help your way. Do not hang up. Hold the line.
Caller: Please hurry!
Dispatch: (Off call dispatcher requests police to address.) Mr. Carter, who is dead?
Caller: Everyone! They’re all dead! (Short, erratic breathing.)
Dispatch: Are you hurt, Mr. Carter?
Caller: No! I told you, my family is dead.
Dispatch: What are their names, Mr. Carter?
Caller: Pamela Carter, Claire Carter, and Perry Carter III.
Dispatch: Have you seen each of them?
Caller: Yes! (Scream.) They’re all in the parlor.
Dispatch: Are they breathing?
Caller: Noooo! (Huff.) I told you, they’re dead.
Dispatch: Mr. Carter, you requested an ambulance. You’re also saying they’re dead. How do you know they’re dead?
Caller: There’s blood everywhere.
One
“Okay, ladies, glasses up.” Libby lifted her froth-topped mug into the air. Her friend hadn’t needed to tell Larkin or Marlis, who’d nearly beaten her to the punch by sloshing their beer high.
Genevieve clutched her mug to her chest and groaned. She’d picked this hole-in-the-wall bar to keep away from the spotlight. How had her dearest friends in the world, women who understood her better than she knew herself, not gotten the hint?
“This is not about me,” Gen warned.
“Like hell, it isn’t.” Larkin leaned over and grabbed Genevieve’s arm.
“Jesus, it’s Indian summer out there, and your hands are icicles. How are you going to make it when the real cold sinks in?” Gen pulled her arm from Larkin’s hold and lifted her beer toward the other ones suspended above their small high-top table.
“Hibernation.” Larkin winked. “I know my hands are cold. It’s ten degrees in this place.” She whirled her frozen hand around the neon lit space.
On the little bit of wrist that peeked out from Larkin’s perfectly tailored business suit, gooseflesh prickled her porcelain skin. Gen, on the other hand, had shucked her suit jacket as soon as she’d elbowed the last reporter out of the way in front of the courthouse and opened her Uber’s door. Even in the dark, cool pub, perspiration collected between her breasts and dampened the fabric of the dress pulled tight across her belly.
Libby lifted her chin and surveyed them one at a time with her signature sultry smile. “To our Gen, the best attorney in all of New York. May the jury realize your majesty or have nary another orgasm as long as they live.”
Surprise laughter snorted from Gen’s nostrils, drawing with it a hint of the dread she’d carried around since the closing arguments. Her shoulders bobbed. The worry forcing her to walk like a hunchback lifted, and for the first time since jury selection, her spine uncoiled. She shouldn’t have put her friends off for so long. They knew what was best for her. Always had. Always would.
Marlis choked on her giggles.
“That’s a steep penalty, don’t you think?” Gen asked.
Libby shrugged.
Gen wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “If we could enforce it, maybe we wouldn’t have the burden of crime or the overflowing prison population.”
“To Genevieve, her success, and having more time to help her horny friends get laid.” Libby shoved her glass toward the center of the circled mugs with a hurrah.
Marlis’s choking suspended, replaced by a whooping battle cry that drew the attention of every man in the room.
“To everything except the last.” Larkin clanked her mug into the middle.
“To Judge Faraday, the man who changed my life.” Gen thrust her glass against her friends’.
“You did all the work.” Larkin scoffed.
“But her family couldn’t have afforded Harvard.” Libby lifted her hand palm up. “No offense. Mine couldn’t have either. Brooklyn babes.” She offered Gen her hand.
She smacked her palm to Libby’s. They shared that connection while Mar and Larkin shared more
monied backgrounds. No matter how much money Larkin’s dad had blown, they had more than her family. And she didn’t hold their money, past nor present, against them.
“To you.” Mar lifted her glass. “The baddest bitch attorney in all of NYC.”
They all drew long swigs, Genevieve a little longer than the rest. She had some catching up to do. Since the trial started, she’d limited herself to one glass of wine on Saturday evenings and no men. Zero. Which meant she was starved to the point that her libido had cannibalized itself over the past three months. It was the saddest part of the whole affair besides having to watch a police officer cart her friend off in handcuffs at the end of every day.
“Some of us don’t have a fine piece of ass warming our bed every night.” Libby slammed down her glass and waggled her brows at Larkin.
“Not every night,” Larkin defended.
“Right.” Marlis’s eyes rolled toward the back of her skull. “And anyway, I take offense to that.”
“Take offense to what?” Gen had lost the thread of the conversation. She hadn’t knitted any conversations without elements of timelines, evidence, and lines of questioning for so long. It took practice to keep up with this crew.
“He’s been on an op for the last week,” Larkin blurted. “I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing, or when he’ll be home.” She didn’t state the obvious worry. What if he didn’t come home?
Gen and the others had worried the same thing from the moment they’d learned exactly who Calder Beckett was and what he did for a living … now that his last set of life-threatening injuries sustained on the job were behind him.
No one said a word. The sounds of the various sports games poured from the television screens and filtered between them. The Mets were up by one.
Genevieve hated the quiet tension leeching into their usual harmony. She looked Larkin in the eyes. “I don’t understand how you do it. Especially after your mom.”
“Gen,” Marlis scolded.
“It’s what we’re all thinking about right now, so why not talk about it?” She hated the pit of worry in her stomach. Over the years, she’d crossed the proverbial line a time or two, but it beat silence.
Silence ruined lives.
Libby’s upper lip curled, and her gaze narrowed. Her beautiful friend turned menacing when coming to the aid of another. “Well Christ, Genevieve, you—”
“She’s right.” Every heavily mascaraed eye shifted to Larkin. “In the beginning, it was in his past. It was something we didn’t have to deal with. Then when they realized his capabilities, that he’d recovered one hundred percent, they wanted him back in the field. I knew it was a part of him. Helping people and restoring balance drive him, and I will never take that away from him.” Her head hung, and Larkin picked at her perfectly manicured nails.
“But?” Gen prodded.
“The thought of losing him keeps me up, and it makes eating nearly impossible.” Her friend dabbed at the corners of her eyes and sucked in a breath.
Marlis grabbed Larkin’s hand and held it tight.
“I’m sorry, Lar.” Libby rubbed the handle of her mug.
Gen downed half her beer in three gulps and then set it down with a thud. “Talk to him about it.”
Again, they gave her the wide eyes.
“I can’t.” Larkin’s head shook, flipping her low ponytail from side to side. “I’m not going to make him choose—”
“I’m not suggesting you make him pick only one of the two things that makes the blood pump through his veins.” Gen liked cutting people off. It was a character flaw, but in this case, it was warranted. “I’m saying tell him how scared you are.”
“What good will that do?” Larkin begged.
“It won’t change the way he operates. It won’t change your fear.” Across from her, Larkin drew a breath to argue, but she wasn’t the interrupting type. Gen smiled. “But he’ll know how you feel. He’ll reassure you, explain their capabilities and tactics so you’ll understand it all a little better, and then you’ll find a peace about it.” She took another sip. “Ultimately, you don’t want to lose him. Not in combat and not in a failure to communicate. If you hold it inside, you’ll lose him.”
They all stared at her with loose jaws and wide eyes. It wasn’t a first. She said crazy shit all the time, usually to get a rise out of them, but this was the first time she’d ever used her powers for good. It fit like a department store bra. Uncomfortable, but it got the job done.
The rest of her beer burned its way along her esophagus. It’d been too long if beer hurt going down. “Now”—she turned her hiked brow to Marlis—“why were you offended?”
“Um, wait.” Libby raised her hand as though they were in kindergarten and Gen were the teacher.
Gen shivered the thought away and glared at Libby. “What?”
“Who are you and what have you done with our hyper-sexual, over-the-top friend Genevieve Holst?” Libby grabbed her and pulled her close. The green of her friend’s big eyes studied her intently.
“She’s still in here, but she’s trapped under case files, a pounding gavel, and an old bailiff's slow, shuffling steps.” Genevieve wanted to wave the waiter over for another round, but she still had to appear in court. She didn’t know when the old broad would sing. It could be tomorrow or fifteen days from now, depending on how well she’d done her job. This was no time to fuck it up. A life was on the line. Her friend’s life.
When she shoved her glass to the center of the table, their gawking intensified. In the background, Javier Baez knocked one over the ivy with two runners on, giving the Cubs a two-run lead. Libby released her hold and muttered a curse. Brooklyn babes cared about ball even when it wasn’t an American League game.
“You just made so much sense,” Marlis awed.
“Don’t act like I’ve never added two and two and gotten four. Christ!” Gen threw her hands up and let them smack the table. “Marlis, what were you offended about?” Anything to get the focus off her.
“Um …” Mar’s cute nose crinkled. “I forgot.” She looked from one of them to the other but stopped on Libby for a beat. “Oh, I remember. I’m offended Libby implied I’m not as good of a wingman as you are.”
“You’re not.” Gen shrugged.
Marlis flounced and folded her arms.
Libby flashed Mar a sweet smile but couldn’t quite hide her wince.
“Think about it,” Gen offered. “How many times in the past year have I told you which one to pick and what to say? Think about your success rate. Now, think about the ones you’ve picked and your success rate.”
Her friend’s lips waggled from side to side.
“Did you pick that married yuppie?” Larkin asked Gen.
“What do you think?” Gen lifted Mar’s mug and syphoned off a gulp of her barely touched brew.
“Hey,” Marlis whined.
“You don’t even like beer,” Libby interjected. “I don’t know why you insist on ordering it.”
“When in Rome …” Mar discreetly pointed toward the other, mostly male patrons. Pints and mugs littered their tables.
A jeer from the far corner yanked Gen’s attention from the abundance of beer to a table of construction workers. On any normal night, the sight of thick biceps, sweat-matted hair, and worn jeans would have incited a lady boner so insistent she’d have ended the evening sharing the three pints on their table. Probably more, if she was being honest. Something about callused hands and work-hardened muscles got her going. But this trial had dampened her drive like none before. Damn the grueling subject matter and her unique position in the case.
“Look.” Libby pointed at the largest of the screens that hung across from the men’s table. Minutes ago, it hosted a ball game she’d been discreetly following—Cubs vs. Mets—but now, in its place, was the last thing she wanted to see. The news.
Perry’s mugshot filled the screen. Of all the hurdles she’d had to overcome in the case, that goddamned mugshot might have be
en the most difficult of all. The normally charismatic man had such a blank expression that a ream of office paper boasted more character. His eyes held no life. They were dead. Like his family. That was the only way Gen had rationalized it in the media and in her own head. How was a man who’d lost his entire world in the most brutal way possible only days before supposed to look when he was arrested for their murders, especially when all the evidence pointed at another man?
“Shit,” Larkin groaned. “Sorry, Gen.”
“You can’t control the networks, can you?” Genevieve joked, but her eyes remained glued to the screen.
The construction workers’ jeers turned into mute, undivided attention.
A somber journalist spoke. “The second longest criminal trial in New York City’s history nears its end as both sides offered summation this afternoon. Now, Perry Carter Jr.’s life is in the hands of the jury. If convicted of the grisly murders, the prosecution will push for the death penalty. While New York State maintains a memorandum on the death penalty, it can be sought in the Federal Court hearing the case. For more on this, we go to our legal correspondent, Trisha Moyer.”
“The death penalty?” Marlis squeaked. “But …”
“Thank you, Nancy. Good evening, everyone.” Genevieve’s once upon a time best friend, Trisha Moyer, stood with her forearm propped on the edge of a news station desk. Gen’s headshot filled the background, misshaping her head and making her look like the girl from Willy Wonka, only she’d eaten a strawberry.
Thank you, red hair.