Mark Gimenez - Accused

"I could send them home."

"You cannot hide from the Muertos. They are here now, in America. And they are here to stay."

How does a lawyer zealously represent his client pursuant to the rule of law when some people make their own rules?

"Do you deliver personally to Senator Armstrong's daughter?"

"You know about her?"

Scott nodded. "And I know what happened to Trey's cocaine."

"What?"

"Those construction workers down the street, they stole it."

"You are sure?"

"They told Carlos."

Benito gazed at the fireworks in the sky above them. "He was my friend, and I did not trust him. I hope I did not get my friend killed."

The next installment of "Murder on the Beach" aired that night on the late news.

"This is Renee Ramirez live from Galveston. Rebecca Fenney might have less than three weeks of freedom left-her murder trial starts in fifteen days-but she seemed unconcerned tonight as she enjoyed the fireworks on the seawall."

The picture cut to the Fenney family on the seawall.

"She taped us!" Rebecca said.

Scott, Rebecca, Bobby, and Karen were in the living room watching the TV.

Back to Renee Ramirez. "And here she enjoyed something else. Or should I say, someone else."

The picture went to a shadowy night scene on the beach. Two people strolling along the surf. A bare-chested man and a woman in a white bikini. The woman stopped and kissed the man. Then she skipped down the beach and removed her bikini and ran into the water. The man followed her and embraced her and they…

"Oh, my God," Rebecca said.

"Uh-oh," Bobby said.

"That's not you and…?" Karen said. "Oh, boy."

Renee Ramirez had secretly filmed them that night on the beach three weeks before. It was clearly Rebecca-her red hair glowed in the moonlight-but it was not clearly Scott. The tape ended, and the screen returned to Renee Ramirez.

"This was only ten days after Trey's death, and Rebecca Fenney was acting like a college girl on spring break. But I'm sure she loved Trey."

A thought occurred to Scott.

"Rebecca, you said Renee did a profile of Trey… When?"

"A couple weeks before he…"

"Did you go with him to the studio?"

"No. I was shopping in Houston that day. But they didn't do the interview at the studio. They did it here."

"Here where?"

"At the house."

Scott stared down at his ex-wife.

"Renee Ramirez was in your house?"

With Renee Ramirez sipping a Mimosa in the foreground and the whitecaps of the waves washing ashore in the background, it was a chamber of commerce portrait of Galveston Island.

She was a stunningly beautiful Latina in a stunningly short skirt. She had shiny brown hair and smooth tan skin but her eyes were as blue as the summer sky. Her voluptuous body strained against her snug low-cut white top. She wore a turquoise-and-silver necklace and silver coyote earrings and no wedding band. She was young, beautiful, and perched on a high stool with her long bare legs crossed as if daring Scott-or any man within eyeball range of her-not to stare.

He stared.

Scott had called her station and set up a meeting at the open-air pool bar at the Hotel Galvez on the seawall for that Monday morning. Renee had arrived first and ordered the Mimosa. Scott had arrived with his blood pressure pumping, ready to give her a piece of his mind for putting his daughters on television. She attempted to preempt his fatherly anger by appealing to his manly vanity, as if that would work.

"Those football tapes, you were quite the stud in college, Scott. You look like you could still play."

"Oh, thanks, I-" He caught himself. Damn, it almost worked. "Don't put my girls on TV again."

"Freedom of the press. You and Rebecca are news, you were in a public place, and they happened to be there with you. So how about an on-air interview?"

"No."

She pushed her lips out. "Odd. Most lawyers are begging to be on TV." She sipped her Mimosa. "Anyway, I was completely within the law."

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

"Should you and Rebecca have been groping each other like horny teenagers on a public beach that night?" She grinned. "That was you, wasn't it? What was that about, for old time's sake?" She shrugged. "I guess she is your ex. Screwing her is one thing, but why are you defending her?"

Scott got suspicious. He glanced around the bar for a hidden camera. He saw nothing, but he accused her anyway.

"Are you secretly taping our conversation?"

"You mean, like with a wire?"

"Or a tape recorder."

Renee slid off the stool and stepped so close to Scott he could breathe in her perfume.

"You want to pat me down?"

Yes. Desperately.

"Doesn't look like you're hiding anything. Your clothes are so tight I doubt you could get a finger in between."

"You could try."

She winked at him then climbed aboard-her stool-and assumed her legs-crossed-I-dare-you-not-to-stare position.

"So why are you defending her?"

"She's the mother of my child."

"But she cheated on you with the guy she killed!"

"She cheated with him, but she didn't kill him."

"You just can't let her go." She shook her beautiful head. "Men. You know the best way to get over her? Cheat back."

"But we're not married."

"Doesn't matter. You need to get over her-it's a psychological thing. And it'll make you feel better." She uncrossed her legs and swiveled toward him then licked her glossy lips and leaned in. "And I happen to be free today."

Leaning toward him like that, she exposed a significant portion of her full, soft breasts-which attracted Scott's male eyes. Gabe Petrocelli was right: she was as alluring and dangerous as a rattlesnake. Rattlers are pit vipers-they hunt warm-blooded prey; they swallow their victims whole; and they are conniving slithering beasts. They coil up and shake their rattles to attract your eye, to distract you, to disarm you, then-ZAP! — they strike at you with jaws wide and sink their fangs into your flesh and inject their venom. Scott tried not to stare at Renee's rattles.

"I'd be afraid of seeing a tape on the evening news."

"I doubt you're that good." She gave him another sexy wink. "But I'll guarantee confidentiality."

The man who had not been with a woman in almost two years wanted to say, "Let's get a room!" But the lawyer representing his ex-wife on a murder charge said, "I doubt anything is confidential with you."

She frowned and sat up, taking her rattles with her. The lawyer had spoiled a perfect human encounter, as lawyers are wont to do. But the man was comforted by the knowledge that he was years away from requiring a Viagra prescription.

"Why'd you air that tape just two weeks before the trial?"

"Sweeps week. Ratings. Sex sells, Scott. I'm hoping the networks will pick it up when the trial starts."

"You're hoping Trey's murder advances your career?"

She rolled her blue eyes. "Save the righteous indignation, Scott. I know lawyers. And I know a lawyer's only measure of success is money and the things money can buy. Why do you want to be a federal judge, to save the world? Or because it's a taxpayer-guaranteed lifetime salary? You're willing to have your career advanced by an asshole like Armstrong, but you're judging me?" She almost laughed. "Lawyers are always so goddamned self-righteous, always ready to criticize everyone else's ambitions and denounce everyone else's desires-at eight hundred dollars an hour." She shrugged. "Besides, I didn't kill him."

He shook his head.

"Look, Scott, I graduated with straight As in journalism, but the only job offer I got was as a weather girl-and only because of my looks. I put myself through UT modeling for local stores in Austin, could've signed with a New York agency but I wanted a serious profession, like journalism. Turns out I was still modeling. Five years standing in front of a green screen pointing out cold fronts and high-pressure systems. Now I'm thirty years old. My time to jump to the networks is running out fast. This body won't last forever. I've got to spend two hours a day in the gym to compete."