Proof of Intent

EXTRAORDINARY ACCLAIM FOR THE WORKS
OF WILLIAM J. COUGHLIN

PROOF OF INTENT

“A solid legal thriller that will delight the late Coughlin's fans who've wondered what happened to Charley and what's still happening in picturesque Pickeral Point. Long may the franchise wave!”

—
Amazon.com

“Sorrells takes one of the more endearing fictional lawyers from the 1980s and early 1990s, the late Coughlin's Charley Sloan, and puts him back in court with the same clever, bombastic style that Coughlin perfected in a string of successful Sloan novels.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Walter Sorrells is bringing new life to the Charley Sloan series that was successful in the eighties and nineties.”

—I Love a Mystery
newsletter

“Mr. Sorrells has done an excellent job of staying true to the character . . . the courtroom scenes particularly are a study of excellence.”

—
Harriet's Book Reviews

SHADOW OF A DOUBT

“Coughlin's spellbinding grasp of the courtroom held me on the edge of my seat until the last page.”

—William J. Caunitz

“Lucid, emotionally demanding. The courtroom action soars and plummets its way to the most unexpected denouement since
Witness for the Prosecution
.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A legal must-read.”

—
The Detroit News

IN THE PRESENCE OF ENEMIES

“A taut legal thriller . . . Coughlin knows his stuff.”

—Playboy

“Satisfying and right on target . . . Among Coughlin's best.”

—The Detroit News

“Taut drama and great courtroom action . . . Fans will love it.”

—Library Journal

“Coughlin keeps you burning the midnight oil to the very end.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A convincing legal thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly

THE JUDGMENT

“Vintage Coughlin. Sharp, tight, and full of suspense.”

—Scott Turow

“William Coughlin, with the engraver's finest awl, has created another legal thriller filled with the aching human frailties that are hidden in all of us. Masterfully, he intersects his characters into one thunderous conflict after another until Charlie Sloan, the lawyer with the threadbare heart, is the last man standing. If you don't have enough time to finish
The Judgment
, don't start it.”

—Paul Lindsay, author of
Freedom to Kill

“Finely wrought characterizations and a practiced novelist's respect for the way in which unanticipated tragedy can bring on moments of quiet insight.”

—Kirkus Reviews

THE STALKING MAN

“All the pieces come together in a chilling climax to this tightly knit shocker.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Horrifying . . . intense. This is one to keep you sitting up straight.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Good storytelling . . . jackhammer drive . . . the climax is gripping.”

—The Detroit News

WILLIAM J. COUGHLIN

WALTER SORRELLS

 

 

Also by the Author

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Preliminaries

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Trial

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Forty-seven

Forty-eight

Forty-nine

Fifty

Fifty-one

Fifty-two

Fifty-three

Fifty-four

Fifty-five

Fifty-six

Fifty-seven

Fifty-eight

Fifty-nine

Verdict

Sixty

Sixty-one

I would like to thank Mary Kelly and John Walke of the Prosecuting Attorney's Office of St. Clair County, Michigan, for the generous gift of their time and legal insight.

Also thanks to Van Pearlberg, assistant district attorney of Cobb County, Georgia, who has been helpful to me on many legal and law enforcement issues over the years. I've taken a couple of liberties with legal procedure in this novel. The blame for this naturally falls on me and not on the legal professionals who have assisted me along the way.

To Jane Rayburn, I appreciated the fine tour. You have a big future as a tour guide if the journalism thing doesn't work out.

Personal thanks to Patti Hughes and Ruth Coughlin for reasons that will be obvious to both of them.

Later the address would become familiar to everyone in America, a phrase on everyone's lips. Just like “the Rockingham estate” or “the compound at Waco.” But at the time 221 Riverside Boulevard in Pickeral Point, Michigan, was just a big house I'd never visited before, dark and unfamiliar at that dead hour of the night.

And so at first I didn't see him. As I'd been instructed on the phone, I had come in the back door. The moon was throwing a white patch on the dark floor.

As my eyes adjusted, a dark blob in the middle of the large empty room slowly resolved itself into the form of Miles Dane. He was sitting on his haunches, head bowed, eyes shut, lips moving silently. Meditating, maybe? He wore a robe of liquid white silk.

He didn't look at me, didn't stir, just sat there with his lips moving, something glistening on his face. I figured, okay, maybe the guy was a flake—but since he was a potentially big client, too, I'd wait. Even if it was a couple minutes past four o'clock in the morning.

After a moment or two the moon went behind a cloud. Miles Dane stood abruptly and walked across the straw mat floor, through a doorway and down a long, dark hallway. I followed. He was a short man, with the physical vigor and build of a wrestler.

We walked silently through his large living room, up a flight of deeply carpeted stairs, down a long hallway, into a bedroom with an expensive view of the river.

“There,” he said, pointing.

“What?” I thought he was pointing out the picture window. The dark, mottled water looked like hammered lead.

“No, Charley.
There
.”

Then I saw her. She lay in the bed as though sleeping. The moon came out from behind the cloud and a pale light washed the floor, revealing both her ruined face and the black blood that suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

Even before seeing the woman lying dead in her bed, it had been a bad night. I'd been woken at around two o'clock that same morning by a disturbing call from my daughter, Lisa, and then been unable to sleep, lying there in bed torturing myself about the mistakes I'd made in my life. Just as I'd decided the night was a dead loss, that I might as well get dressed and read a book for a while, I'd gotten the puzzling call from Miles Dane.

You probably know Miles Dane. He's the most famous writer in Pickeral Point, Michigan—which, to be fair, is not saying a whale of a lot. But still. One of his early novels,
The Bust
, had been made into a movie starring Charles Bronson back in the early seventies, and he's been on the best-seller list off and on ever since. Though from what I gathered, lately it's been more off than on.

I had met Miles several times over the years. He hung around the county courthouse occasionally to do research for his novels, and had taken me to lunch once to ask me some technical details about murder prosecutions. We said hello to each other in the grocery store or bookstore every once in a while. But other than that, we were pretty much strangers.

Miles is one of those writers who ended up being famous as much for being famous as for anything to do with his work. The square jaw, the bantam rooster build, the black clothes, the black cowboy boots, the omnipresent shoulder holster. And, of course, the eyes: They were gray and piercing, somehow managing to seem both haunted and threatening at the same time. He did well on the talk shows back in the days when Johnny Carson had still sandwiched the occasional writer in between the starlets and the ballplayers and the funny guys from the zoo. He said inflammatory things about women and minorities to magazine writers. He drove Italian cars into trees. He got into the occasional well-publicized fistfight, and always came out of the police station looking great for the waiting cameras.

I always thought his books were a little pretentious. The hero was generally some kind of compromised semicriminal with a name like Donnie or Dwayne who went around thrashing people and then talking like he'd read too much Kierkegaard. But Miles kept the pages turning, I'll give him that, throwing Donnie or Dwayne into one scary predicament after another. While the first books were alright, the last few I'd read seemed to verge on self-parody.

But then, what do I know about writing? I'm just a small-town lawyer, scraping by.

“Have you called the police?” I said.

Miles Dane had slid down the wall and was hunkered on the floor, where he began panting like a dog.

“Miles?”

When his breathing finally settled down, he shook his head slowly, no.

“It's your wife?”

He nodded, then put his face in his hands.

“I'll make the call,” I said.

“Diana,” he said. “Her name is Diana.”

The city fathers of Pickeral Point have been uncharacteristically wise when it comes to shepherding the police department. The latest chief they hired, Elvin Bower, is a good man. They pay him well, and he hires good people. Over the years the detectives in the department have been drawn from the ranks of Detroit homicide cop retirees. I've had my share of run-ins with them, but I've never questioned their professionalism.

The first policeman to show up at Miles Dane's house was a uniformed kid of at least twelve. I told him not to worry about the body, just to call for his supervisor and the city detective, then to start stringing crime scene tape. He gratefully did as he was told. The new town detective, a woman with the unfortunate name of Chantall Denkerberg, showed up about fifteen minutes later. I'd had no dealings with her, but she'd cracked a very complicated murder-for-hire case in Detroit that had made national headlines a couple of years back and came to the department with a reputation as a hotshot.

“Charley Sloan,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I'm Mr. Dane's attorney.”

Denkerberg's eyebrows rose slightly. She was a tall, handsome woman of about fifty, her severe black pageboy punctuated by a white streak over the left ear. Blue coat, blue skirt, white blouse buttoned to the neck and starched hard.