Guilt by Association
Read Guilt by Association Online
Authors: Susan R. Sloan
SUSAN R. SLOAN’S
GUILT BY ASSOCIATION
“A STRONG DEBUT BY SUSAN SLOAN … AS TIME LESS AS ANY GOOD YARN…. ITS CLIMAX IS A TENSE COURTROOM SHOWDOWN THAT ENDS WITH A GENUINE SURPRISE”
—
Seattle Times/Post-lntelligencer
“SLOAN HAS WRITTEN MORE THAN A THRILLER. IT IS A CHRONICLE OF CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARDS WOMEN THAT COVERS MORE THAN THREE DECADES.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“SURE TO SHOCK … AN IMPECCABLY WRITTEN EMOTION EVOKER… . And more than a tale of tragedy, it is a tale of sweet, satisfying revenge for which every victim of a heinous crime must wish.”
—
El Paso Herald-Post
“RINGS TRUE EMOTIONALLY…. Sloan gives an affecting look at Kern’s turmoil over the years and proves, in her procedural way
(including a very good courtroom sequence), to have been building to a splen did and ironic surprise.”
—
Los Angeles Times
more…
“COMPELLING … SOLIDLY CRAFTED … RUSHES HEADLONG TOWARDS A TAUT AND THOROUGHLY SATISFYING FINALE.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“THE EVIL OF POWER AND THE POWER OF EVIL— Susan Sloan has captured the stains of both in this explosive drama of atonement and resurrection.”
—Stephen Greenleaf, author of
False Conception
“GUILT BY ASSOCIATION
IS A HARROWING, UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL AND HAS A CONCLUSION THAT WILL CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.”
—
West Coast Review of Books
“A
BRILLIANT BOOK [THAT] WILL HAVE YOUR HEART THUMPING AND YOUR HANDS GRIPPING YOUR SEAT. A guided missile straight to the heart of America.”
—Greensboro Watchman
(AL)
“AN INGENIOUS PLOT FOR REVENGE … THAT LEAVES THE READER CHEERING AND SMILING to the very last page.”
—
Baton Rouge Magazine
“A COMPELLING STORY”
—
Salisbury Post
“GRIPPING…. A BLOCKBUSTER DEBUT NOVEL THIS IS TERRIFIC FICTION INEVITABLY DESTINED FOR THE BIG SCREEN.”
—Toronto
Saturday Star
“YOU ARE RACING TO GET TO THE IMPENDING CONCLUSION AND MOURNFUL ABOUT HAVING TO CLOSE THE COVER.”
—
Mystery Review
“DELIVERS A SATISFYINGLY TRICKY PLOT IN A NARRATIVE BRISK ENOUGH TO KEEP READERS ENGAGED ALL THE WAY.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“COMPELLING EXCITING, WELL WRITTEN, AND WELL PLOTTED.”
—
Ellenville Press
“A BRILLIANT BOOK [THAT] WILL HAVE YOUR HEART THUMPING AND YOUR HANDS GRIPPING YOUR SEAT.”
—Book World
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1995 by Susan Sloan
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-57113-5
Contents
For Pamela,
who was there from the beginning,
and got the body up front.
And for Virginia,
who never stopped believing in me.
I know she’s smiling.
I would be more than remiss if I did not acknowledge some of the people who helped make this book a reality.
I wish to thank Lieutenant Mike Pera and Sergeant Angela Martin of the San Francisco Police Department, Sexual Assault Division,
and members of the San Francisco Rape Treatment Center, for their invaluable input.
My sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Susan Pendergrass for her expertise, to Susan E. Klein for her research and observations,
and to Janine Asch and the library staff of Half Moon Bay, California, for their assistance.
I am indebted to my agent, Esther Newberg, for being one in seventy-eight, and to my editor, Jamie Raab, for creating more out of less.
I am particularly grateful to Linda Stenn for her many contributions, to Howard Schage for his continuing support, and to my little group of readers who kept me going when I was ready to quit.
And my deepest gratitude goes to Sally Sondheim for her unflagging faith in me—and her eagle eyes.
I
t was cold—the kind of cold, at once heavy and bitter and I penetrating, that was so characteristic of New York City in winter.
There hadn’t been much snow to speak of, only a brief flurry now and again that powdered the sidewalks and dusted the rooftops and then disappeared, as if by sleight of hand, leaving people to wonder whether they had really seen anything at all.
It was three days before Christmas, and Manhattan could not have been described as anything but bleak. Temperatures lurked in the low twenties and skies were filled with sullen clouds that never managed to do more than glower by day and threaten by night.
Margaret Westfield was not used to being awake at six o’clock on a Saturday morning, much less dressed and out. But she had a week’s vacation from her job as an assistant bookkeeper for a Seventh Avenue clothier, and she was taking advantage of the time off to spend the holidays with her family in Rhode Island. She wanted to give Brandy, her frisky golden retriever, a good run in Central Park before relegating him to the cramped back seat of her Volkswagen beetle for the three-hour journey to Providence.
Only rich people and crazy people kept automobiles in
Manhattan, Margaret knew, but her father had ignored her protests.
“It’s just my way of making sure that you’ll always have a way to get back home to us,” he said when he handed her the keys.
He knew she had gone to New York to get away from the family or, more precisely, away from the embarrassment of being thirty-three years old and the only one of his eight children who was still unmarried. But he had no intention of abandoning her.
“If traffic’s not too bad, we’ll be there in time for lunch,” she told Brandy as they crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park.
It was too early for most New Yorkers to be up and about, and Margaret found herself alone on the path she and the dog usually took to the pretty little lake in the green oasis that ran down the middle of the concrete city. After several yards, she stopped and, reaching down, unsnapped Brandy’s sturdy leather leash. The retriever bounded on ahead of her and was soon out of sight.
Margaret pulled her knit cap down over her short brown hair, buttoned her navy pea jacket over her stocky figure and started after him. She wasn’t concerned. They took this same route every day and she knew Brandy wouldn’t go any farther than East Drive, where he would sit on his haunches, with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging, waiting for her to catch up so they could begin their game of fetch with the ratty tennis ball she always carried in her pocket. Even in the middle of winter,
he couldn’t wait to plunge into the lake’s icy water. But when she reached the road, the dog was nowhere in sight.
“Brandy?” she called. “Come on, boy. We haven’t got all day.”
There was no response. Margaret frowned, peering up and down the road in the pre-dawn gloom. The four-year-old retriever was impeccably trained, responding to her voice commands almost before the words were out of her mouth, and
next to his breakfast and dinner, there was nothing in the world he liked better than his morning play.
Margaret crossed the road and continued along the walk toward the lake, looking in all directions, calling for the dog every fifteen or twenty steps. She was well beyond the boathouse before she heard a faint whimpering sound.
“Brandy, where are you?” she shouted.
This time she received a short urgent bark in response which came from somewhere off to the right. Margaret spotted a narrow path and turned quickly onto it, hurrying along for several hundred yards while it twisted and turned and the retriever’s woofs and whimpers grew louder. Around one last corner, the path abruptly widened into a small clearing. The dog was about forty feet away, barely visible, with his rump exposed and the rest of him buried beneath a clump of bushes.
“Brandy, you come out of there,” Margaret ordered. She hoped he hadn’t cornered some small animal in the brambles. She had never known him to go after a park creature before, but she supposed there was always a first time.
The retriever looked over at her, gave another short urgent bark, and turned back to the bushes, making no attempt to obey her command. Margaret was totally bewildered. He had never behaved like this before. Sighing, she reached for the leash she had slung over her shoulder and started toward him.
When she was thirty feet away, she realized that, in between his cries and yelps, he was indeed working at something he had found. The last thing she ever allowed him to do was pick up strange food.
“Brandy, no,” she demanded at twenty feet. “Whatever it is, you leave it alone.”
When she was ten feet away, Margaret stopped dead in her tracks. In the gray dark, she saw a human foot in a black satin pump.
Margaret gasped. The body of a girl lay half-hidden under the bushes. Whatever clothes she might have worn were shredded beyond recognition, she was covered with angry-looking bruises, and her skin had a bluish tinge to it. Brandy was crouched on top of her, licking at her face.
“Oh my God,” Margaret murmured, now frightened, inching closer, one hesitant step at a time.
The girl’s face was swollen and caked with frozen blood, and ugly purple marks showed on her throat. There was something unnatural about the way one leg was positioned but Margaret didn’t dwell on it. She was sure the girl was dead, yet when she mustered up enough courage to push her fingers against the purple neck, she felt a feeble, thready pulse.