Trophy Widow Read Free Page B

named John.” I shook my head. “But they didn’t bother to.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Because of your lawyer’s theory of the case , I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “Because they thought that they already had enough evidence.”
    She sighed. “They were right.”

Chapter Two
    I obsessed over those loose ends on the drive back. After I had spent close to two hours alone with Angela Green, her guilt appeared to be even more questionable than before. Of course, eight years had passed since that appalling night, and much had changed in her life since then. But even making allowance for that, the Angela Green I’d met today seemed incapable of gunning down her ex-husband, slicing off his penis with a piece of broken glass, and hurling the severed thing against the wall.
    I mulled it over as I drove.
    Angela hadn’t cleared up any issues, but she wasn’t the best person to ask about the loose ends. The decision whether to exploit them at the criminal trial had been a matter of trial strategy, and that decision fell within the bailiwick of Angela’s criminal attorney, Maria Fallaci. Maria was an experienced defender—a former assistant U.S. attorney who’d been defending capital murder cases for years. Maria had surely spotted the same loose ends and evaluated their potential. That evaluation had led her to a different trial strategy, namely, to make the focus of her defense the “battered wife” syndrome. That tactical decision landed Maria on the cover of Newsweek . Unfortunately, it landed her client in jail.
    I thought back again to my own memories of the trial. As the television and newspaper reporters told us over and over during the weeks leading up to the jury selection, the marriage had been one of those Age of Aquarius things. Michael and Angela met in Psychology 101 their freshman year at the University of Missouri in Columbia. It was love at first sight for what seemed a perfect couple for the Woodstock generation. Michael Green was white. Angela White was black. He had shoulder-length brown hair and a Fu Manchu. She had a wild Afro. They both wore tie-dyed T-shirts and faded bell bottoms. As for so many of his generation, the sixties look was not a flattering one for Michael: photographs of him from that era invariably elicited laughter from those who saw them decades later. He looked like a long-haired, mustachioed double for Sonny Bono from the old Sonny and Cher days. By contrast, the photos of Angela from that era depict a stunning African princess: high cheekbones, strong eyes, noble forehead, full lips, ebony skin.
    During the summer after their graduation, Angela White turned Green when they exchanged wedding vows. That fall, Michael started law school and Angela took a job as a substitute teacher in the St. Louis public school system. The early years were lean ones for the young couple, made even leaner with the birth of Michael junior during Michael’s final year of school. Their tiny apartment became tinier when Sonya arrived two years later. The young family struggled as Michael tried to establish a law practice.
    Hard work and perseverance eventually paid off. The Law Offices of Michael Green moved out of the storefront along a seedy stretch of South Grand Avenue and became Green and Associates in an upper floor of the Pierre Laclede Building in Clayton. A few years later, the firm’s name became Green and Sanders after Michael’s law school classmate Elliot Sanders joined. Elliot’s real estate work helped pay the light bills while freeing Michael to focus on his plaintiffs’ class action work. The two partners were confident that it was only a matter of time before Michael hit big casino. They were right, although Elliot didn’t live to see it happen. A heart attack killed him three months before the court approved the Vanguard Finance settlement and awarded Michael Green $1,250,000 in fees. The St. Louis Business