Sudden Death Read Online Free

phone.”
    I left my cell phone in my suitcase, which the airline has delivered and is in the living room. “I’m fine. But we may have ourselves a client.”
    “Is it true the victim’s body was in his house?” she asks.
    “In the closet,” I confirm.
    “Sounds rather incriminating.”
    “Which is why you have to come home and uncover the kind of evidence that will let me display my courtroom brilliance.”
    “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
    I let the words roll gently over me, sort of like a verbal massage. I know she loves me, but I have an embarrassing need for reassurance. At least it would be embarrassing if I were to reveal it to her. Which I won’t. Ever.
    “Have you had fun?” I ask.
    “It’s been an amazing experience, Andy. These are people I haven’t seen or thought about in more than fifteen years. And in five minutes all the memories came back… I even recognized their mannerisms. It makes me wonder why I cut off from them… why we never stayed in touch.”
    Laurie’s father was a police officer in Findlay but decided to leave for a higher-paying job back East in Paterson, which qualified as the “big city.” He died five years ago, and I never got to meet him, but Laurie tells me he felt the move was the biggest mistake he ever made. I don’t recall her ever telling me if she shares that view.
    We talk some more about reconnecting with old friends; she knows I completely understand because of my experience in moving back to Paterson. “The Internet is the way to stay in touch,” I say. “E-mailing makes it easy, and there are no pregnant pauses in the conversation.”
    She doesn’t seem convinced, in fact seems vaguely troubled. I could ask her about this honestly and directly, but that would require too great a change in style. So instead, I change the subject. “If we take this case, we won’t be able to go away.” We had talked about a vacation.
    “That’s okay,” she says, and again I hear the tone of voice that I don’t recognize as belonging to Laurie. It’s a halfhearted statement in a mostly halfhearted conversation. I’m not sure why, and I’m certainly not sure if I want to find out.
    I get up really early in the morning to take Tara for a long walk. She attacks the route eagerly—tail-wagging and nose-sniffing every step of the way. We’ve gone this way a thousand times, yet each time she takes fresh delight in the sights and smells. Tara is not a “been there, done that” type of dog, and it’s a trait I admire and envy.
    As I get dressed to go to the office, I catch up on what the media are saying about the Schilling case. There are reports that Schilling and Preston were out together the night Preston disappeared and that witnesses claim the last time Preston was seen was when Schilling gave him a ride home.
    The striking part of the media coverage is not the information that is revealed, but the overwhelming nature of the effort to reveal it. I have 240 channels on my cable system, and it seems as if 230 of them are all over this case. One of the cable networks has already given a name to it, and their reports are emblazoned with the words “Murder in the Backfield” scrawled across the screen. They seem unconcerned with the fact that the victim was a wide receiver.
    As has become standard operating procedure, guilt seems to be widely assumed, especially in light of the way Schilling was taken into custody. His were not the actions of the innocent, and if we ever go to trial, that is going to be a major hill to climb. The fact that a national television audience watched as he fended off police with a gun only makes the hill that much steeper.
    Kevin and I don’t have much to talk about, and we just compare notes on what we’ve learned from the media. I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment at the jail to meet with Schilling, and Kevin plans to use the time to learn what the prosecution is planning in terms of