The Fire This Time by S. Frederic Liss

Author:S. Frederic Liss [Liss, S. Frederic]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Murder, Thriller
ISBN: 9781953510075
Publisher: Adelaide Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you

can understand.

“He writes like he lost a child,” Maddie said after the service.

“Ireland was his only child,” her da replied, “and, yes, he lost her.”

At Gloucester’s trial for vehicular homicide, Ed Hornstein attacked the credentials and competence of the prosecution’s accident reconstruction expert, arguing a two-week course in accident reconstruction at the Massachusetts State Police Academy–with only one day devoted to the physics of moving bodies, the coefficient of friction, torque, and other such subjects–did not qualify anyone to reconstruct an accident from skid marks, the size, depth and location of dents on an automobile, gouge marks in the street and curb, and the other physical evidence found at the accident scene. Without a qualified expert, the science was no better than astrology or mythology, Hornstein argued, and a jury could only speculate how the accident happened and speculation would not sustain a conviction. He also attacked the field sobriety tests administered at the accident scene, demonstrating how sober people had trouble counting back from one hundred or standing on one leg or walking heel to toe in a straight line. He played the sympathy card, remaking Gloucester from a drunk and careless driver to a victim, a father who would live his life blaming himself for his baby daughter’s death. The jury acquitted in less than two hours. Later, Hornstein represented Maddie’s ex-husband in the divorce.

After the entry of the jury’s verdict and Gloucester’s discharge, Maddie ducked into one of the wrought iron spiral staircases that turned up in odd corners of the Suffolk County court-house and spun herself dizzy racing down the steps. At the Park Street MBTA stop, she paused at the top of the staircase. Beneath her, the subway. The third rail. The arch of the entrance, the steps down, lured her. The bench where she once sat mourning the assassination of President Kennedy lured her. The Harvard-Ashmont line then, since 1965 the Red Line, its comings and goings, lured her. How easy it would be. How fast. Peace at last. She descended to the subway platform.

A woman, elderly but erect and able to walk without a cane, appeared on the platform. She wore a veiled hat and white gloves and carried a missal. Her hair, white with age, had hints of its former color, auburn. “To what end?” Her ma’s voice? “Gloucester who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing will measure his mourning as a miser measures his pennies. And your da? Only God may inflict such pain and only God may relieve it.” The woman paused and balanced herself on Maddie’s shoulder to dig a pebble out of her shoe, her touch lighter than a breath of air, then melted into the throng rushing up the stairs out of the Park Street subway station into the open air of Boston Common where she disappeared in the gathering fog.

Before

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