Jasmine Cresswell - Suspect

On the other hand, he wasn’t in a position to be judging other people’s failings right now, Liam reflected as he said goodbye to his sister and entered his office. His own choices and decisions over the past four years certainly didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Four years ago he’d spent the night with a woman dressed as Cleopatra whose real name he didn’t know and hadn’t made any effort to find out. That fact alone put last night’s careless seduction of No-Name into a new and unpleasant perspective. Clearly, he’d been pursuing a problematic lifestyle for several years. And what was his excuse? Four years ago, he’d been angry at the world because his father was a bigamist and the following year he’d had the bad luck to fall in love with a woman who’d murdered her husband. It was past time for him to admit that plenty of other people survived far worse. He’d chewed out Chloe this morning because she’d been unfaithful to her husband. Talk about the pot accusing the pan of being dirty! Okay, Chloe’s adultery had been reprehensible, but his own behavior would clearly not stand up to any sort of ethical scrutiny.

Awareness of his own culpability—that he’d behaved like a major dick—did nothing to improve Liam’s mood. In retrospect, he wished that he hadn’t been so damned smug this morning.

Chloe was already waiting for him in the small reception area, sipping water from a paper cup. She’d changed her ratty T-shirt for a soft cotton blouse that looked new, and her hair was combed into a smooth ponytail, held in place by a pewter-colored barrette. He felt a sharp jolt of sexual attraction as she crumpled the cup and tossed it into the trash, rising to her feet.

He pushed the attraction aside. God knew, where Chloe was concerned, sex had already gotten him into more than enough trouble. From now on, he was going to concentrate on thinking with his brain, a significantly smarter portion of his anatomy than his penis. Giving her a quick nod, he put the Cellini file on Jenny’s desk and tried to sound like a man in full control of his life.

“We’re finished with this case, Jenny, so you can send out the final bill.”

“Did we win?” Jenny asked.

“We did.” Liam gave a thumbs-up. Then he opened his office door and beckoned to Chloe. “Come on into my office,” he said. “I’m glad you made it back safely.” He was pleased with the casual courtesy of his opening gambit. “Since you’re here, I’m assuming you didn’t run into any trouble with the cops? Or the press?”

“I didn’t even see a squad car, thank goodness. And no journalists.”

“You got lucky. Quite often the journalists are more difficult to shake than the cops.”

Chloe followed him into his office. “I did what you instructed. I went to the mall at Park Ridge and watched a movie, although I couldn’t describe a single scene of what I supposedly saw. The worst thing about having the police believe I killed Jason is that I’ve been left with no time to mourn him. So every time I’m alone and quiet, I feel paralyzed with grief.”

Liam damped down another unwelcome rush of sympathy. Emotion and sound legal advice rarely went together. Besides, Chloe’s comments could be carefully calculated to evoke sympathy.

Until he took Sherri Norquist out for a celebratory dinner in the wake of the jury’s acquittal and she’d dropped her bombshell, he’d arrogantly assumed he would always know at some gut level whether or not his clients were guilty. Sherri had proved how ridiculous that assumption was. His feelings for her had also proved that he was quite capable of falling in love with a woman of dubious morals who lied easily and often. Sherri, it turned out, had murdered her husband because she wanted his money, and as far as Liam could tell she felt no remorse that the man was dead. Her only regret was that she hadn’t been clever enough to avoid arrest. Worst of all, she had assumed Liam would be delighted that he’d persuaded the jury to return a verdict of Not Guilty, despite the fact that she was guilty as charged. She’d even offered to marry him as a reward for his superior professional skills. She’d been offended, not to mention furious, when he declined the honor.

At least Sherri had provided a crash course in humility. Liam considered himself a wiser, as well as more cynical, man these days. His basic assumption post-Sherri was that all his clients lied, at least some of the time. Many of them lied all the time. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Chloe fitted right into the general pattern, at least as far as the events surrounding her husband’s murder were concerned. If he was to provide effective legal counsel, his task was to find out where there were holes in her story that the prosecutor’s office might take advantage of and then find ways to plug those holes without encouraging her to commit perjury. A task that wasn’t likely to be easy.

“Let’s get right to the point, shall we?” He sat behind his desk and turned a deliberately distant gaze toward Chloe. He had to ask these questions, even though he placed no reliance on the accuracy of her answers. “Did you kill your husband?”

She flinched, but answered steadily enough. “No.”

“Did you pay somebody else to have him killed?”

“No!”

She sounded surprised by his question, rather than outraged, which made him marginally more inclined to believe her. Murderers falsely protesting their innocence tended to go heavily for moral indignation.

“Do you still want me to represent you?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me explain just one of the reasons why that isn’t a smart decision on your part. Here are the facts of your situation as I understand them. Your husband is dead, stabbed through the heart. The stabbing occurred last night, while you were in the house. It also occurred after you and Jason had been arguing. You were found next to the body, holding a bloody knife. As if that’s not trouble enough, your daughter is not Jason’s biological child. I already advised you that it’s essential to notify the police of this fact. At which point, I can almost guarantee the first question the cops will ask is the identity of Sophie’s father. What are you going to tell them?”

“Nothing?” Chloe said, but her voice rose in a question.

He allowed himself a small smile. “I’m glad you were listening this morning. Nothing is a very good choice. However, the cops are going to press you for a name. The detectives working this case will be smart, and they’ll utilize every trick of the trade to persuade you to give them a name, because they’ll want it. Badly.”

“Why? Why in the world would they care?”

Liam’s smile turned bleak. “Because the police will suspect Sophie’s father—which would be me, of course—of being involved in the murder. They’ll want to question him. In other words, they’ll want to question me.”

She stared at him, eyes wide with shock. He was almost a hundred percent sure that such a possibility had never crossed her mind. “But that’s crazy! You had no idea about Sophie. You had absolutely no motive to want Jason dead.”

“True. But the police aren’t going to believe either one of us just because we happen to be telling the truth. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone last night so I have an alibi.” Depending on precisely when the mayor had been killed, Liam might still have been in the bar, in which case there were dozens of potential witnesses. If Jason Hamilton had been killed after 2:00 a.m., he had No-Name as proof that he’d been in an apartment on Alameda Avenue, and definitely not in the mayoral residence. Thank God he’d gone back to No-Name’s apartment last night and not to a motel. Otherwise, he’d have had no sure way to track her down, given that he had no clue what she was called. He grimaced in disgust at yet another reminder of the caricature that passed for intimacy in his life.