Truth-Stained Lies Read Free

death showed that she preferred outfits that exposed skin and were at least a size too small. The schoolmarm image wasn’t fooling anyone.
    When the judge left the room, Max mowed through the spectators to get to the restroom. Cathy stepped out quietly, checking over her notes. She made a quick pit stop by the ladies’ room, listening to the conversations among the spectators. They all seemed to have the same impression of today’s testimony that she had — that the defendant’s husband was lying, that the best friend was telling the truth …
    Cathy’s instincts were rarely wrong.
    She stepped out on the front steps of the courthouse. Media lined the sidewalk out front, some of them already broadcasting about the last few hours in the trial. She trotted past the television vans and hurried to the parking garage. Her Miata sat in a parking space on the top level, baking in the hot sun.
    She slipped in and pushed the button to put the top down. As it retreated over her head, she saw an envelope stuck under her windshield wiper. What now? She opened the door and reached to grab it.
    The flap was tucked inside the envelope and her name — Cat Cramer — was typed on the center of it. No return address.
    She turned on her engine and sat idling as she pulled the typed note out.
    Dear Curious Cat
,
    I’ve grieved that Leonard Miller’s bullet only hit
your fiancé. Too bad you weren’t with him that day. You deserve what he got. But look at you, turning your tragedy into dollar signs
.
    Guilt or innocence is not something to be judged by a two-bit blogger with a drama-loving readership. Maybe it’s time you saw firsthand how speculation ruins lives. Judgment that has nothing to do with truth. See how it feels
.
    Enjoy the ride, if you survive it
.
    Your New Friend
    Cathy dropped the note. Was this a threat of some kind, or just an angry reader trying to mess with her? The mention of Leonard Miller, who’d murdered her fiancé and walked away scot-free, dredged up the rippling anger that had plagued her in those first months after his death.
    She swept her hair out of her eyes and looked around. There were a few others walking to their cars, a couple of cars pulling out of parking spaces. No one looking her way. Anyone could have left it anytime today. Her silver sports car wasn’t hard to spot, and all her readers knew she’d been attending this trial every day.
    It occurred to her that she should call the police, but she had to get home and write her blog before the rest of the press beat her to the punch. Before pulling out of her space, she typed a text to her closest circle — her three siblings and Michael Hogan, one of her closest friends and the brother of her murdered fiancé.
    Just found a note stuck on my windshield by some unsatisfied reader. Sort of a threat. Never dull.
    Dropping the phone onto her seat and sticking the note and envelope under her purse so it wouldn’t blow away, shepulled out of the garage and into traffic, her long black hair flapping in the wind.
    If the person who left the note was watching, she hoped she looked carefree and unflappable, even if it wasn’t true. Inside, she seethed. Her sense of justice cut like a razor, reminding her of the victims in the cases she was covering. She knew what it was like to have a killer walk away without a conviction, thumbing his nose at those who would never be the same.
    For those victims, she wrote on, doing her part to make sure the killers paid. She hadn’t been able to help society by working as a prosecutor — that seemed more about making plea deals than putting criminals behind bars. Court cases weren’t about justice. They were about finding loopholes. One cleverly conceived scheme by either side could influence the jury, if a case ever made it to court in the first place. Her skills were better used doing her own investigations and alerting readers to evidence that judges suppressed.
    She’d given up her job in the district