River’s End

statement.
    “Sam Tanner is an innocent man, a victim of this tragedy. He’s lost the woman he loved in the most brutal of fashions, and now that horror has been compounded by the police in their rush to close the case. We hope to correct this injustice swiftly so that Sam can deal with his grief and go home to his daughter.”
    He took no questions, made no other comments. He let his bodyguards plow through the crowd and lead him to the waiting limo. When he settled inside, he imagined the media would be rife with sound bites from his entrance. And he was right.
    After seeing the last news flash of Smith’s Los Angeles arrival, Val MacBride shut off the television with a snap. It was all a game to them, she thought. To the press, the lawyers, the police, the public. Just another show to bump ratings, to sell newspapers and magazines, to get their picture on the covers or on the news. They were using her baby, her poor murdered baby.
    Yet it couldn’t be stopped. Julie had chosen to live in the public eye, and had died in it.
    Now they would use that, the lawyers. That public perception would be twisted and exploited to make a victim out of the man who’d killed her. He would be a martyr. And Olivia was just one more tool.
    That, Val told herself, she could stop.
    She went quietly from the room, stopping only to peek in on Olivia. She saw Rob, sprawled on the floor with their grand’ child, his head close to her as they colored together.
    It made her want to smile and weep at the same time. The man was solid as a rock, she thought with great gratitude. No matter how hard you leaned on him, he stayed straight.
    She left them to each other and went to find Jamie.
    The house was built on the straight, clean lines of a T. In the left notch Jamie had her office. When she’d come to Los Angeles eight years before to act as her sister’s personal assistant, she’d lived and worked out of the spare room in Julie’s dollhouse bungalow in the hills.
    Val remembered worrying a bit about both of them then, but their calls and letters and visits home had been so full of fun and excitement she’d tried not to smother the light with nagging and warnings. They’d lived in that house together for two years, until Julie had met and married Sam. And less than six months afterward, Jamie had been engaged to David. A man who managed rock and roll bands, of all things, she’
    d thought at the time. But he’d turned out to be as steady as her own Rob. She’d considered her girls safe then, safe and happy and settled with good men. How could she have been so wrong?
    She pushed that thought away as useless and knocked lightly on Jamie’s office door before opening it.
    The room had Jamie’s sense of style and organization. Ordinarily the sleek vertical blinds would have been open to the sunlight and the view of the pool and flowers. But the paparazzi and their telescopic lenses had the house under siege. The blinds were shut tight, the lamps on though it was mid-afternoon.
    We’re like hostages, Val thought as her daughter sent her a harried smile and continued to talk on her desk phone.
    Val sat in the simple button-backed ohair across from the desk and waited. Jamie looked tired, she noticed, and nearly sighed when she realized how little attention she’d paid over the last few days to the child she had left. As her heart stuttered, Val closed her eyes, took several quiet breaths. She needed to focus on the matter at hand and not get mired in her grief.
    “I’m sorry, Mom.” Jamie hung up the phone, pushed both hands through her hair. “
    There’s so much to do.”
    “I haven’t been much help.”
    “Oh, yes, you have. I don’t know how we’d manage without you and Dad. Livvy—I can’t handle this and give her the attention she needs right now. David’s shouldered a lot of the load.”
    She rose and went to the small refrigerator for a bottle of water. Her system had begun to revolt at the gallons of coffee she’d gulped down. In the center of her forehead was a constant, dull headache no medication seemed to touch.
    “But he has his own work,” she continued as she poured two glasses. “I’ve had people offer to field some of the calls and cables and notes, but. . .”
    “This is for family,” Val finished.
    “Yes.” Jamie handed her mother a glass, eased her hip on the desk. “People are leaving flowers at the gate of Julie’s house. I needed to make arrangements for them to be taken to