Free Unreasonable Doubt by Vicki Delany

where he said the incident occurred, although police found a tire in his trunk which had been punctured by a nail and the temporary replacement tire on the car.
    The homeowners had been in Ontario visiting relatives at the time of the murder. The house had been for sale for a long time, as it needed a substantial amount of work. Fingerprints lifted off the front and back doors and kitchen surfaces were all identified: the homeowners, Walt Desmond and two other realtors, both female, and the few people who had viewed the house, most of whom were women.
    Desmond had been arrested at his home two days later.
    On a quick superficial read, Smith thought the case looked weak. Yes, Sophia had an appointment to meet Desmond at the place she was killed. When police arrived Desmond had blood on him, but he claimed he’d touched the body to check if she was still alive. The back door had been unlocked, Desmond said, and that had surprised him. A key to the house was kept in a coded lockbox for access by real estate agents. The homeowners told police they had given a spare key to a neighbor to keep an eye on the house. The neighbor was a seventy-six-year-old woman who emphatically claimed she’d never lent the key to anyone. Smith read quickly. She’d need to search court documents, but it didn’t look as though the defense lawyer had bothered to point out that keys were easy to duplicate, or that the code to the lockbox was available to anyone who worked in a real estate office. The neighbor said that when Desmond visited the house, he always parked outside by the front sidewalk, where the car would be visible to anyone passing by. But that day he parked in the back alley, so no one could say what time he’d arrived. Desmond claimed he parked in the front or back alternately, depending on the direction he’d come from at any given time. But the defense had not raised that point in court.
    Innocent or guilty, Walt Desmond’s lawyer had put up a mighty shoddy defense.
    She checked another page. The lawyer had died of bowel cancer about a year later. She wondered if he were already ill at the time of the trial.
    According to one of her coworkers, Sophia had been wearing a new bracelet the day in question which she, the coworker, particularly admired. A tennis bracelet, thin and sleek made of gold with a single inset row of diamonds. The stones were glass, not real diamonds, and the gold was cheap, but it had still been very pretty. It had been a gift, Sophia boasted to her friend, from her boyfriend.
    The bracelet was not on her body when she was found. The police had searched the house, Walter Desmond’s home, yard and garbage, Desmond’s clothes and his wife’s clothes. The thin bracelet made of glass stones and impure gold had never been seen again.
    Smith pulled up the archives of the Trafalgar Daily Gazette . Some of their old stories had been converted to digital, anything to do with the D’Angelo killing among them. Tensions in town had been running strong, and not many people were on Walt Desmond’s side. She wondered about that. The man had no prior record of any sort, evidence wasn’t conclusive, he protested his innocence, yet people were quick to condemn him. She made a mental note to talk to her mother.
    One of Sophia’s coworkers at the bank testified that Sophia said she found Desmond “creepy.” The witness couldn’t say why, in that case, Sophia had continued to deal with him. The realtor’s office had other agents. A friend from high school testified that Sophia never liked to “make a fuss.” The defense lawyer had not objected to testimony that amounted to little more than hearsay and implications, and jurors were left free to conclude she hadn’t asked for another agent for that reason.
    Other than the fingerprints, no forensic evidence had been submitted.
    Walt Desmond was found guilty of first-degree murder, largely on the basis of the