Dismas Hardy - 09 - The Motive by John Lescroart

Author:John Lescroart
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thriller
Published: 2011-06-07T03:00:00+00:00

Chris Rosen was a professional trial attorney with nine years of experience and a specialization in arson cases. He'd prosecuted three homicides and a dozen arsons in that time, winning four of them outright and getting lesser convictions with substantial prison time on the others. So he could say with absolute truth that he'd never lost a case, which in this most liberal city was an enviable, almost unheard of, record. Maybe Rosen hadn't always gotten a clear win, either, but Hardy knew the truth of the defense bias in San Francisco—indeed, it was one of the factors involved in this case for which he was most grateful—but this was cold comfort as he watched his young, good-looking opposite number rise with a quiet confidence and a friendly demeanor to match it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began. "Good morning. We're here today and for the next few days or weeks— let's hope it won't be too many weeks—to hear evidence about the murders of two people, Paul Hanover, a lawyer here in San Francisco, and his fiancée, Missy D'Amiens." Hardy noticed that Rosen came as advertised—he was playing it smooth. He didn't refer to the dead impersonally as "the deceased" or even "the victims." Rather, they had been real, live people until they had been "murdered." He continued to the jury in his serious, amiable voice. "On Wednesday, May the twelfth of last year, someone set a fire at the home that Mr. Hanover shared with Missy D'Amiens. Firemen coming to fight the blaze found the bodies of a man and woman, burned beyond recognition, in the foyer of the house. Wedged under one of the bodies was a gun. Both victims had been shot in the head. The evidence will show beyond a reasonable doubt that neither wound was self-inflicted. Neither victim killed the other and then him- or herself. These people were murdered in their home, and the murderer lit a fire in the hope of destroying the evidence that would connect him or her to the crime."

Rosen paused to collect himself, as these grisly and dramatic events would obviously upset the psyche of any reasonably sensitive person. Clearing his throat, excusing himself to the jurors "for just a moment," he took a few steps over to his desk, where Cuneo pushed his glass of water to the front edge of the desk. Rosen took a sip, cleared his throat again and turned back to the jurors.

"We will prove to you, ladies and gentlemen, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person who fired those shots into the heads of each of these victims was the defendant in this case, Mr. Hanover's daughter-in-law, Catherine Hanover. She did it for a common and mundane reason—Mr. Hanover was going to change his will and name Missy D'Amiens his beneficiary. When he did that, his inheritance of nearly fifteen million dollars would go to Missy, and the defendant would get no share of it.

"On the very day that he died, according to the defendant's own statement to police, Mr.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.