Straw Men Read Online Free

have been one of the first women to crack the clubby, all-male ranks of the Pittsburgh Police Department. Her dignity and confidence apparently survived the brutality and degradation she’d endured.
    â€œDavid’s Downtown,” she said.
    The husband, also a cop. Christensen remembered him as a block of granite with a head, one of the men he’d seen with Dagnolo as they slipped past reporters just a few minutes ago. Teresa offered nothing else, just crossed one denim leg over the other with considerable effort.
    â€œAnd you didn’t tell him you were coming here?”
    â€œNot to see you, no. Told him I had a rehab appointment. I’m putting you in an awkward position. I realize that.”
    Christensen nodded, glad for the acknowledgment. “You understand I have no official role in this case. I testified during the original trial as an expert witness on memory, but other than my relationship with Brenna I’m in no way—”
    â€œThere was a time I would have killed Brenna Kennedy if I ever got the chance. I want you to know that up front.”
    Christensen studied her eyes for the hatred behind those words, but saw none. Was she just trying to provoke him? He wished they were in his private counseling office five blocks away, rather than this cramped and comfortless working space.
    â€œIn a therapy situation, this is where I’d say, ‘Now we’re getting somewhere!’ ” he said. “But we’re not, and I guess I’m trying to understand where that came from.”
    â€œYou’re a smart man, Dr. Christensen. I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”
    â€œBecause she defended DellaVecchio?” he said.
    Teresa leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “You’ll never understand what it took for me to get up on that witness stand during the trial. Looking and talking like I did back then, like Frankenstein’s bride with a mouthful of marbles. Having to face down that smirking little shit at the defense table, having to sit twenty feet away from the face in my nightmares for two full days, smelling his BO, reliving that night. Pray to God you’ll never know what that was like.”
    â€œYou’re—”
    â€œShe tried her best to make me look like a liar,” Teresa said. “Then she put you on the stand to make it worse. You with your little theory about ‘evolving memories,’ telling the jurors that what I’d said, what I’d turned myself inside out about for two fucking days, was basically a crock—”
    â€œNo, I never—”
    â€œâ€”that what I remembered was unreliable, ‘polluted’ was your word. That I wasn’t really remembering what happened, just parroting back a convenient story concocted for me by investigators who just wanted a collar. I wanted you both to die when I heard that, Dr. Christensen, and I wanted to watch. DellaVecchio, Brenna Kennedy, and you. Those were the names on my list back then, in that order.”
    Christensen knew better than to react, so he waited. She’d delivered her rage in a reasoned narrative, passionate but without obvious emotion. Just as when she testified, her voice never once wavered. She might have been telling him about picking up her laundry, or locking her keys in the car. It was one of the most remarkable moments of self-control he’d ever seen.
    â€œI just wanted you to know that,” she said.
    He nodded. “I understand.”
    She offered no apologies or absolution, but the room seemed to depressurize as she leaned back in her chair. “But that’s not why I came.”
    â€œIt gets worse?” he asked.
    She didn’t smile, but instead looked down and cleared her throat. “I came to tell you … you might have been right.”
    Christensen opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked away, then back into those penetrating eyes. He’d imagined this moment,