David Ellis - The Hidden Man

THE HIDDEN MAN introduces attorney Jason Kolarich, a Midwestern everyman with a lineman's build and an easy smart-ass remark. He's young, intelligent, and driven, but he's also saddled with an overwhelming emotional burden – one that threatens to unravel his own life, and possibly the lives of those around him.
Twenty-seven years ago, two-year-old Audrey Cutler disappeared from her home in the middle of the night. Her body was never found. All the detectives had to go on were vague eyewitness accounts of a man running down the Cutler's street, apparently carrying someone. Without enough evidence to suggest otherwise, Griffin Perlini – a neighbor with prior offenses against minors – was arrested, but never convicted.
The case is long closed when Perlini is murdered in his apartment nearly thirty years later. Now a man named Mr. Smith appears in Jason Kolarich's office offering him a suspicious amount of money to defend the lead suspect in Perlini's murder, saying only that he represents an interested third party and that Kolarich is perfect for the case. Sure enough, the man on trial is Audrey Cutler's older brother Sammy, Kolarich's childhood best friend, a man he hasn't seen since a falling out almost twenty years prior. And just when it seems like the case can't get any more complex, the mysterious third party starts applying pressure to Kolarich. With his own life and Sammy's in the balance, Kolarich has to not only put aside the mounting anxiety of the case but also a heart wrenching personal tragedy in order to find out what really happened to Audrey all those years ago.