Page 111 of The Right to Remain

“Truth is, every parent who puts their kid on the internet has to weigh the same pros and cons. On the one hand, the sponsorships might help pay for college someday. On the other, thousands of creeps all over the world are jerking off to pictures of children in dance leotards. You just hope the perv doesn’t take it any further than that.”

“Did you tell Owen about this?”

“No way. I told Helena. But I figured Owen would probably find out for himself sooner or later. I truly thought he would lose it. That’s why I gave Helena the gun to carry in her purse. Again, ‘no good deed goes unpunished.’”

CJ glanced at Naomi through the glass door, and Jack’s gaze followed. She had removed every stitch of clothing and was lying on the white marble floor, making a snow angel with orange paint.

“Good lord. I wish I wasn’t such a sucker for artists.”

Naomi screamed loud enough to be heard through the glass door. CJ’s cat had run through her snow angel and was oranger than Garfield.

“Excuse me,” said CJ, and he hurried inside to help with Naomi’s artistic mess.

Jack stayed at the patio table, wondering if anything CJ had so freely shared was true.

Chapter 40

The next morning, Jack left the courthouse with a spring in his step. He’d spent two hours trying to convince a judge to suppress evidence in a case that had nothing to do with Elliott. He won.

What a difference it made to have a client who actually spoke to him.

Jack hurried down the granite steps and started toward the parking lot. February was his favorite month in South Florida. While most of the country was dealing with the worst of winter, Miami was at the peak of paradise. He put on his Wayfarer sunglasses, loosened his silk necktie, and slung his suit coat over his shoulder. It was one of those perfect days that transported him back to his life as a young lawyer, Jack before Andie, when he would put the top down on his red convertible and take the scenic route along the river back to his office, cruising to U2 with his iPod at full volume.

Jack stopped at the entrance to the lot. These days there was no red convertible waiting for him, iPods could be found only in the back of junk drawers, and his playlist was populated mostly with music that Righley liked. And, as usual, there was more work to be done. Since his talk with CJ, he’d been contemplating the timing of his next move in Elliott’s case. He was coming off a nice win in another case, and maybe he was on a roll.

No time like the present.

Jack pivoted, walked straight to the state attorney’s building, and checked in with the receptionist. Julianna Weller had a lunch appointment on her calendar but was willing to grant Jack “a quick meeting with a hard stop at noon.” Jack rode the elevator up and two minutes later wasin the prosecutor’s office. She greeted him cordially but checked her watch as she took a seat behind her desk.

“You have thirteen minutes,” she said, reminding him that “hard stop at noon” meant a very hard stop.

Jack settled into the armchair and wasted no time. “I’m here to talk about the analysis of the fingerprints lifted from Helena Pollard’s Beretta.”

“What about it?”

“After the deposition, you told me there may be a print on the gun that doesn’t belong to Helena. What’s the status?”

“It’s been confirmed. There is indeed a print on the gun that does not belong to her.”

It was not the answer Jack had expected. “Whose print is it?”

“It can’t be determined.”

An even more puzzling answer. “Excuse me?”

“As I told you before, the print in question is of low quality. Our expert has been able to rule out the possibility that it belongs to Helena Pollard. However, the specimen is not of sufficient quality to determine whose print it is.”

“How convenient for you,” said Jack. “If it can’t be determined whose fingerprint it is, you can argue that it belongs to my client.”

“We all have to play with the cards we are dealt,” said Weller.

“That doesn’t mean I have to let you deal from the bottom of the deck.”

“I don’t appreciate that remark.”

“I don’t accept your analyst’s conclusion as final. I want my own fingerprint expert to examine that so-called inconclusive fingerprint.”

“What do you think that will accomplish?”