The Code of the Hills Read Free

Madeleine, who sat behind her impossibly tidy desk. “Is the witness here yet?”
    â€œNo, and I don’t expect him for a minute. Here,” she said, tossing a slim file across her desk, “you’ll need to review this quickly before he gets here.” As Elsie reached for the file, Madeleine stood up and pulled a bejeweled key chain from her handbag. She was exquisitely dressed in a winter white suit with a pearl brooch, not a hair of her smartly bobbed head out of place. Madeleine had been a beauty in her day, Elsie knew from the glamour shots in her office; but as she entered middle age, she had permitted a plastic surgeon to tinker with her face, and with her Botox-­injected forehead, collagen lips, and eyebrows pulled up a bit too high, she’d developed a scary look.
    Elsie looked at her with surprise. “Where are you going?”
    Madeleine paused just long enough to give her an imperious glance. “I have a meeting. I’m having brunch with the president of the Rotary. We’re planning a fund-­raiser for the Girls’ Club.”
    â€œBut what about our case preparation?”
    â€œYou need to get to work on it.” Madeleine pulled on a pair of expensive tan leather gloves, picked up the Burberry trench coat draped over a chair and gave it a shake. “Call me this afternoon and tell me how it’s going. I want to hear about the witness. But don’t interrupt me at this meeting.” Then she swept out of the room.
    Elsie had never really liked her boss, but now Madeleine dropped even lower in her estimation. Madeleine Thompson had obtained her political position through a gubernatorial appointment, which the prior governor bestowed out of gratitude to her husband, a generous longtime supporter. As a young attorney in the 1980s, Madeleine was the first woman to practice law in McCown County and showed great promise, taking on criminal appointments and representing them with panache. But then she’d married the local John Deere distributor. In rural Missouri, the only person with more money than the John Deere distributor was the man with two dealerships. Madeleine’s husband had three. She quit practicing.
    When middle age progressed and she tired of being a social matron, Madeleine wanted to toy with politics, and found her opportunity when the current state prosecutor was appointed to an opening on the circuit bench. The governor at the time, a young man with little experience and even less legal background, gladly handed the position to her and considered the political debt to her husband paid in full.
    Madeleine clearly enjoyed the spotlight, and the job of prosecutor certainly provided the attention she wanted; but she was not work brittle, and her trial skills were rusty. So she tended to take high-­profile cases for herself and plead them cheaply, which appalled Elsie. Is this what Madeleine had planned for the Taney case?
    After her boss’s exit, Elsie walked down the hallway to her office, acutely aware of how quiet the building was on a Saturday morning. She settled into her padded chair, rubbing her forehead and wishing she had some Advil. She wished, too, that Noah would call and clear the air; their spat was hanging over her like a dark cloud. She checked her phone just in case, but there were no texts or calls.
    She shook her head to clear it. I’ve got more to do than think about his bullshit , she reminded herself.
    Resolutely, Elsie pulled her chair to her desk and reviewed the file. There wasn’t much to it: an incident report from a police officer made reference to a juvenile court file, which was not duplicated for confidentiality reasons. From the police report she learned that Kris Taney lived at a residence in Barton with a wife and a girlfriend, had three minor daughters with his wife and an infant son by the girlfriend. She checked his DOB: he was thirty-­six years old. He had an older brother, Al Taney, who