River’s End

“You’re telling me we have fried chicken in the house? Don’t toy with me, Noah.”
    Noah laughed, his dark green eyes dancing. “A whole bucket. Minus the piece I swiped on the way home. Mom said we’d go for it because you’d need some comfort food.”
    “Yeah.” It was good to have a woman who loved you enough to know you. Frank sat down on the front stoop, loosened his tie and draped an arm around Noah’s shoulders when the boy sat beside him. “I guess I do.”
    “The TV’s had bulletins and stuff all the time about that movie star. Julie MacBride. We saw you and Tracy going into that big house, and they showed pictures of the other house, the bigger one where she got killed. And just now, right before you got home? There was this little girl, the daughter. She came running out of the house. She looked really scared.”
    Noah hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from the image, even when those huge terrified eyes seemed to stare right into his and plead with him for help.
    “Gee, Dad, they got right up in her face, and she was crying and screaming and holding her hands over her ears, until somebody came and took her back inside.”
    “Oh, Christ.” Frank braced his elbows on his knees, put his face into his hands. “
    Poor kid.”
    “What are they going to do with her, if her mother’s dead and her father’s going to jail and all?”
    Frank blew out a breath. Noah always wanted to know the whats and the whys. They didn’t censor him—that had been Celia’s stand, and Frank had come around to believing her right. Their boy was bright, curious, and knew right from wrong. He was a cop’s son, Frank thought, and he had to learn that there were bad guys, and they didn’t always pay.
    “I don’t know for sure. She has family who love her. They’ll do the best they can.”
    “On the TV, they said she was in the house when it happened. Was she?”
    “Yes.”
    “Wow.” Noah scratched at a scab on his knee, frowned. “She looked really scared,” he murmured. Noah did understand bad guys existed, that they didn’t always pay. And that being a child didn’t mean you were safe from them. But he couldn’t under stand what it would be like to be afraid of your own father.
    “She’ll be all right.”
    “Why did he do it, Dad?” Noah looked up into his father’s face. He almost always found the answers there.
    “We may never know for certain. Some will say he loved her too much, others will say he was crazy. That it was drugs or jealousy or rage. The only one who’ll ever really know is Sam Tanner. I’m not sure he understands why himself.”
    Frank gave Noah’s shoulders a quick squeeze. “Let’s go listen to whales sing and eat chicken.”
    “And mashed potatoes.”
    “Son, you might just see a grown man cry.”
    Noah laughed again and trooped inside with his father. But he, too, loved enough to understand. And he was sure he would hear his father pacing the floor that night, as he did when his job troubled him most.

Four
    Confession may be good for the soul, but in Sam Tanner’s case it was also good for snapping reality into sharp focus. Less than an hour after he wrote his tearful statement admitting the brutal and drug-hazed murder of his wife, he exercised his civil rights.
    He called the lawyer he’d claimed had only complicated his marital problems and demanded representation. He was panicked and ill and had by this point forgotten half of what he’d confessed.
    So it was a lawyer who specialized in domestic law who first claimed the confession had been given under duress, ordered his client to stick to his right to remain silent and called out the troops.
    Charles Brighton Smith would head the defense team. He was a sixty-one-year-old fox with a dramatic mane of silver hair, canny blue eyes and a mind like a laser. He embraced high-profile cases with gusto and loved nothing better than a tumultuous court battle with a media circus playing in the center ring.
    Before he flew into L.A., he’d already begun assembling his team of researchers, clerks, litigators, experts, psychologists and jury profilers. He’d leaked his flight number and arrival time and was prepared—and elegantly groomed—for the onslaught of press when he stepped off the plane.
    His voice was rich and fruity, drawing up through the diaphragm like an opera singer's. His face was stern and carefully composed to show concern, wisdom and compassion as he made his sweeping opening