Free The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham by John Grisham

drive away.
    The letter from Quincy is handwritten in neat block letters. It must have taken him hours. It reads:
    dear post:
    thank you sir once again for taking my case. you cannot know what it means to be locked up like this with no one out there believing in you. i’m a different person these days, post, and it’s all because of you. now get to work and get me out of here.
    you asked me if my wonderful young lawyer tyler townsend had a theory about the real murderer. he did. he told me many times that it was well-known around that part of florida that keith russo and his wife were involved with the wrong people. they were lawyers for some drug dealers. they started making a lot of money and this got noticed. there ain’t much money in seabrook, not even for lawyers, and folks became suspicious. the high sheriff, pfitzner, was a crook himself and tyler said he was in on the drugs. probably in on the killing too.
    i know this for a fact, post. somebody put that damned flashlight in the trunk of my car, and i just know it was pfitzner. the whole deal was one big frame job. they knew it would be easier to convict a black guy in seabrook than a white one and man they got that right.
    a friend said i should hire russo for my divorce. bad, bad advice. he charged me too much money and did a terrible job. about halfway through i could tell he didn’t want to be no divorce lawyer. when the judge hit me with all that alimony and child support i said to russo, man you gotta be kiddin me. no way i can pay all that. you know what he said? said, you’re lucky it wasn’t more. the judge was a big church man and really disliked men who chased skirts. my ex said i was screwing around. russo acted like i got what i deserved.
    russo himself was a ladies’ man. anyway, enough of that. he’s dead.
    tyler didn’t know why they killed russo, but, when you’re dealing with a drug gang you have to figure he double-crossed them in some way. maybe he kept too much of the money. maybe he was snitching. maybe his wife didn’t want to lose everything they had. i met her a few times when i was in the office and didn’t like her. one tough gal.
    after my trial, tyler got threats and he was really scared. they finally ran him out of town. he said there were some bad people back there and he was moving on. years later, after my appeals were over, and he wasn’t my lawyer anymore, he told me that a deputy sheriff got killed in seabrook. said he thought it was related to the russo murder and the drug gangs. but he was only speculating by then.
    so there it is, post. tyler’s theory of who really killed russo. and he also thought that russo’s wife was probably involved too. but it’s too late to prove any of that.
    thanks again, post. hope this is helpful and i hope to see you soon. get busy.
    your client and friend, quincy miller.

Chapter 10
    The bloodstain expert who testified against Quincy was a former Denver homicide detective named Paul Norwood. After working crime scenes for a few years, he had decided to hand in his badge, buy a couple of nice suits, and become an expert witness. He had dropped out of college and did not have the time to pursue a degree in criminology or anything related to actual science, so he attended seminars and workshops on forensics, and he read books and magazine articles written by other experts. He was a smooth talker with a good vocabulary, and he found it easy to convince judges that he knew his stuff. Once qualified as a forensics expert, he found it even easier to convince unsophisticated jurors that his opinions were based on solid science.
    Norwood was far from alone. In the 1980s and 1990s, expert testimony proliferated in the criminal courts as all manner of self-anointed authorities roamed the country impressing juries with their freewheeling opinions. To make matters worse, popular television crime shows portrayed forensic investigators as brilliant sleuths able to solve complex crimes with