Free A Very Simple Crime by Grant Jerkins Page A

political as well as a practical move. It never hurt to have a pretty woman in court. He firmly believed that having a man and woman sitting at the prosecution table was the only way to go. You had to cover all the bases, after all. And that was certainly true, but it was also true that there was just something about Paula Manning that he simply liked. There was just something about her, something hard underneath.
    Fox had entrusted the actual prosecution to Leo because Leo was, after all, the assistant DA and had shepherded all of the evidence thus far to reach this critical point. He believed in Leo. He believed Leo could win the case. He had, after all, given Leo the assistant DA position, hadn’t he? Of course he trusted him. Of course he believed in him. Then why did he still have a nagging doubt somewhere in the back of his mind? Leo was one of the best trial lawyers Fox had ever seen, and he was damn glad to have him as his assistant DA, but Leo had yet to show clearly and demonstratively where his loyalties lay. He had not sacrificed. Fox knew that it sometimes took a baptism of fire before some men would totally and completely pledge their loyalties to another man. This would be that time. If the case was won, Fox was sure to go on to become the state attorney general, and the DA’s chair would be a fait accompli for Leo.
    If the case was lost, all would be lost.
    At the bail hearing, Leo addressed the judge in his best tone of placid reason. “Your Honor, in light of the cruel and sadistic nature of the crimes of which Mr. Guaraldi is accused, the People move to deny bail for the defendant,” Leo said, and sat back down. Paula, who was sitting to his left, betrayed no emotion.
    Guaraldi sat to Monty’s left at the defense table. Behind them, Janice Guaraldi waited expectantly. She held a ragged ball of Kleenex in her clenched fist. Behind her, the courtroom was packed with press and the merely curious who wished to know firsthand what sort of bail would be set for the country’s most notorious and diabolical child murderer. Monty stood up and nodded imperceptibly to Leo. This was the first time these two men had ever met in or out of court. To Leo, Monty Lee was the high-priced defense attorney who had tried to get Samuel Abdul off the hook. He held Monty Lee in the same contempt as the shiftless lawyer who would have set free the man who had swindled his mother out of her dead husband’s inheritance.
    “Your Honor, this is outrageous,” Monty said with the utmost calm. “My client has committed no crime. He is merely a suspect. And not a very good one at that. We all know that the people of this city live in fear. They demand that the child killer be caught, and rightfully so. The police department, in its clamor to find the killer, to meet the people’s demand, has accused the wrong man. In short, the prosecution has yet to offer up one piece of hard evidence. To deny my client bail would be, as I have said, outrageous.”
    Judge Elizabeth Duran lifted a thick folder and waved it at Monty. Decades of smoking and marinating her vocal cords in single malt scotch had left her voice as deep as a man’s. “Mr. Lee, did you read the same police report I did? Two of the missing children were enrolled in his preschool. Did you read the affidavit of the eyewitness who saw your client removing a tarp wrapped in the shape of a body from the trunk of his car? Did you see the same pornographic photographs depicting women being tortured and degraded?”
    “Women, Your Honor, not children. A taste for a little S&M isn’t a crime.”
    “No, it’s not. However, there’s also the matter of the DNA evidence.”
    “Found along with DNA from nine other children who attend the day care. The Guaraldis often transport the children in that vehicle.”
    Duran cleared phlegm from her throat and shuffled through the papers one final time.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Lee, but I’m inclined to agree with the prosecution on this