Read The Trial for Free Online Page A

cold. I covered my face with my hands, felt Clapper’s arm around my shoulders. “I’m here, Lindsay. I’m here.”
    I took my hands down and said to Clapper, “I just spoke with him yesterday. He was ready to go to trial. He was ready, Charlie.”
    “I know. I know. It never makes sense.”
    I stared down at Barry’s body. There were too many holes punched in his jacket for me to count. Blood had outlined his body and was running in rivulets down toward the garage.
    I dropped enough f-bombs to be seen on the moon.
    And then I asked Clapper to fill me in.
    “The little boy was running down the steps right there to greet his father. Daddy was calling to the kid, then he turned back toward the street. Must have heard the shooter’s car pull up, or maybe his name was called. He turned to see—and was gunned down.”
    “How old is the child?”
    “Four. His name is Stevie.”
    “Could he describe what he saw?” I asked Clapper.
    “He told Officer Lewis that he saw a car stop about here on the road at the top of the driveway. He heard the shots, saw his father drop. He turned and ran back up the steps and inside. Then, according to Lewis, Barry’s wife, Melanie, she came out. She tried to resuscitate her husband. Their daughter, Carol, age six, ran away to the house next door. Her best friend lives there.
    “Melanie and Stevie are in the house until we can get all of them out of here.”
    “What’s your take?” I asked Clapper.
    “Either the driver tailed the victim, or he parked nearby, saw Schein’s car drive past, and followed him. When Barry got out of the car, the passenger emptied his load. Barry never had a chance.”
    We stepped away from the body, and CSIs deployed in full. Cameras clicked, video rolled, and a sketch artist laid out the details of the crime scene from a bird’s-eye point of view. Techs searched for and located shell casings, put markers down, took more pictures, brought shell casings to the tent.
    Conklin said, “Oh, my God.”
    I hadn’t heard him arrive but I was so glad to see him. We hugged, hung on for a minute. Then we stood together in the sharp white light, looking down at Barry’s body lying at our feet. We couldn’t look away.
    Rich said, “Barry told me that when this was over, he was taking the kids to Myrtle Beach. There’s family there.”
    I said, “He told me he’d waited his whole career for a case like this. He told me he was going to wear his lucky tiepin. Belonged to his grandfather.”
    My partner said, “Kingfisher put out the hit. Had to be. I wish I could ask Barry if he saw the shooter.”
    I answered with a nod.
    Together we mounted the brick front steps to the white clapboard house with black shutters, the remains of the Schein family’s life as they had known it.
    Now a couple of cops were going to talk to this family in the worst hour of their lives.

Chapter 18
    We rang the front doorbell. We knocked. We rang the bell again before Melanie Schein, a distraught woman in her midthirties, opened the front door.
    She looked past us and spoke in a frantic, disbelieving voice. “My God, my God, this can’t be true. We’re having chicken and potatoes. Barry likes the dark meat. I got ice cream pie. We picked out a movie.”
    Richie introduced us, said how sorry we were, that we knew Barry, that this was our case.
    “We’re devastated,” Richie said.
    But I don’t think Barry’s wife heard us.
    She turned away from the door, and we followed her into the aromatic kitchen and, from there, into the living room. She looked around at her things and bent to line up the toes of a pair of men’s slippers in front of a reclining chair.
    I asked her the questions I knew by heart.
    “Do you have a security camera?”
    She shook her head.
    “Has either of you received any threats?”
    “I want to go to him. I need be with him.”
    “Has anyone threatened you or Barry, Mrs. Schein?”
    She shook her head. Tears flew off her cheeks.
    I wanted to give her