Free Flightfall by Andy Straka Page B

bed, lies a thick sheaf of papers I have shown to no one—curled pages torn from a legal pad filled with my handwriting and bound together with a rubber band. I’ve been wondering if I should just go ahead and destroy the manuscript. Glancing at the top of the dresser, my thoughts race back to it now:
    The Blue Hallejuah
    A Memoir
    By Jerry Strickland
    The investigation that sent my wife Rebecca to prison started with fish. A lone fisherman on the James, at any rate, who caught more than he bargained for among the Belle Isle rocks: the partially decomposed body of a semi-nude young woman draped around a submerged log in sight of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge.
    The year was nineteen eighty-six. In the annals of homicide enquiries, no doubt many victims have been discovered in more exotic and colorful poses than Jacqueline Ann “Jackie” Brentlou. But the Brentlou girl was only thirteen. She was from a stable, middle-class family in Woodland Heights, the youngest of three children, and she had disappeared one beautiful spring day while walking home from school.
    That made her killing far from typical of the murders my partner, Edgar Michael, and I were working in Richmond at the time. Our typical caseload consisted of gang and drug-related murders, drive-bys involving out-of-town players who plied the I-95 corridor from Miami to New York trafficking heroin or cocaine.
    Officially, that didn’t make the Brentlou case more of a priority than any other. Unofficially, everyone involved, from the scene techs to the office of the Chief Medical Examiner, wanted in the worst way to find whoever was responsible killing Jackie Brentlou.
    And find the killer Edgar and I did, if only too late. His name was Jacob Gramm and he had raped and murdered before. Rebecca was never able to tell the whole truth about how or why she came to know about and kill Gramm. Had she done so, she might have avoided spending the last six years of her life at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women.
    During his summation at Rebecca’s trial, the Commonwealth’s attorney chose to gloss over Gramm’s guilt. Instead, he had a lot to say about vigilantism and Rebecca’s state of mind. It’s only fitting then that I rise here at the end of my days to set the record straight. If he knew what I knew, even that Commonwealth’s attorney would have to agree. Few have ever stood as falsely accused as my Rebecca . . .
    END OF EXCERPT
    COMING in 2012
    The next full-length novel in the Frank Pavlicek series by Andy Straka:
    THE K STREET HUNTING SOCIETY