Sherryl Woods - The Laws of Attraction

The headline said it all: Guilty Man Freed.

Albert 'Tiny" Slocum was a charming two-bit punk who'd hoodwinked his lawyer and an entire jury into believing in his innocence. It hadn't helped that the case presented against him hadn't been airtight. He walked out of the courtroom a free man with a clean slate, thanks to Ashley D'Angelo, who'd once been dubbed Boston's "savior of the innocent."

Of course, Tiny had spoiled his innocent act a bit when he'd had the audacity to turn to the jury in front of the judge and call them ali suckers. That moment of pure cockiness had proved just what a psychopath he was. It had also earned him a promise from the prosecutor that he would find a way to put Tiny right back behind bars, maybe not for the crime of killing Letitia

THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION

Baldwin for which he'd just been acquitted, but for some other heinous act he had already committed. There were bound to be some.

That appalling scene had also been the moment that every criminal defense attorney with a conscience dreaded. Ashley D'Angelo was no exception.

Ashley hadn't much liked three-hundred-pound Tiny, but she had believed in him. He'd declared his innocence with such passion. He had a clever mind and a sharp wit that he'd used effectively to charm her into thinking he couldn't possibly be guilty of such a barbaric crime. In the course of what appeared to have started as a botched purse-snatching, elderly, frail Le-titia Baldwin had been beaten nearly to death by someone in an obvious rage at finding only a few dollars in her wallet. Tiny had professed to love and respect women. His own mother had backed him up, saying he was the ideal son. Ashley, who'd built her entire reputation on defending the innocent, had been taken in.

She'd also seen all the holes in the prosecution's case. She'd spent months building a defense, but before she could spend a single second feeling triumphant over the not-guilty verdict, she'd been hit with the gut-wrenching realization that Tiny was indeed responsible for Letitia Baldwin's massive injuries. The elderly woman had later died in the emergency room, changing the charge from assault to murder.

There wasn't enough merlot in all the wine cellars in Boston to help Ashley get over that sickening image. The crime scene photos played over and over in her head, like a looping newsreel that never quit.

Later, in the dark of night, when she was lying sleep

less in her fancy penthouse apartment, Ashley had finally admitted that on some level she'd known all along that she was defending a murderer?and doing it with the kind of aggressive tactics that were almost guaranteed to win an acquittal. She didn't know how to defend a client any other way, which was one reason she'd always been very, very careful about whom she chose to represent. Her firm had allowed her that latitude because she'd racked up courtroom victories and a lot of press in the process.

But even as she'd planned Tiny's defense, she'd suffered pangs of guilt. She'd been assailed by doubts. That's why she'd run to Rose Cottage before the trial had begun. It had been eating at her even then. Not that she'd wanted to say it aloud or even allow the thought to form. She'd wanted to go right on believing in Tiny, because she had to in order to live with herself. In retrospect, she knew she should have quit the case the moment she'd had that first niggling doubt, but somehow winning had become more important than anything else, and she'd known she could win.

Now that the truth was out, she was sick of the law, sick of her own ability to twist it for her client's benefit. Her self-respect was in tatters. How had her life come to this? This victory tarnished all the others, all the cases she'd been proud to win, all the cases that had earned her a full partnership at her law firm in record time.

Heartsick, she'd been locked away in her apartment for nearly twenty-four hours now, refusing to answer the phone, refusing to go to the door. She'd given a brief press conference, declaring that she was stunned after the debacle in the courtroom, then gone into hiberna

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tion to avoid the inevitable media frenzy over that disturbing courtroom spectacle.

Right now she couldn't imagine ever showing her face again, but realistically she knew that the desire to hide would eventually pass. She was a fighter by nature. She just wasn't ready for battle quite yet. She needed time to lick her wounds in private.

Unfortunately her sisters all had keys to her place, and not five minutes ago they'd arrived en masse to offer her comfort and support. Ashley appreciated the gesture, but it was wasted. She'd gotten a murderer off scot-free, and she was going to have to live with that for the rest of her life. It pretty much made a shambles out of the pride she'd always taken in her success.

"It's not your fault," her sister Jo said quietly, once they were all seated with coffee that Maggie had brewed from the gourmet beans she'd taught them all to appreciate. "You were doing your job"

"A helluva job, isn't it?" Ashley said grimly, lifting her coffee cup in a mocking toast.

"Stop it," Maggie ordered irritably.

Maggie and Melanie had driven up from Virginia the minute they'd heard what happened in the courtroom the day before. They'd picked up Jo on their way into downtown Boston. Ashley had little doubt that they'd planned this gathering down to the last detail on the ride over.

They were seated in Ashley's penthouse apartment with its expensive modern art on the walls and its sweeping panorama of the Boston skyline outside. At the moment, none of it meant a thing to Ashley, not even the loyal support of her sisters. Loyalty was a D'Angelo

family trait. They would have been here for her, no matter what she'd done.

"Jo's right. You were doing your job," Melanie said emphatically. "Not everyone who says they're innocent is, not everyone who's accused is guilty, and everyone is guaranteed a right to a complete defense and a fair trial."

How often had she said exactly that? Ashley wondered. She had believed it, too, but knowing that she'd been responsible for putting a violent, totally amoral man back on the streets made her sick.

Having been validated by numerous acquittals from juries, Ashley had gotten used to believing she was always right. She'd grown comfortable looking at the law and its loopholes more intently than the crime and its victims. Maybe that was sound law and a solid defense tactic, but she was beginning to question whether it had anything at all to do with justice.

"The man made a complete fool of me," Ashley told her sisters. "How am I ever supposed to trust my own judgment again? How can anyone else? After this, if I said it was sunny, I'd expect people to check for a second opinion. And what client would want me, knowing that every jury is going to regard me with total skepticism from the outset? It's hard enough to fight the evidence in most cases without the added liability of having a controversial lawyer."

"This was one case out of how many?" Maggie asked, regarding her sister worriedly. "Stop beating yourself up. You have an excellent track record, Ashley. The papers describe you as brilliant, relentless, passionate about the law."

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"Not today," Ashley retorted, gesturing toward the stack of newspapers on her coffee table, She'd read them all with a sort of morbid fascination, just as she'd watched every newscast. "Today they're asking questions about how many other criminals I've helped to set free. I have to admit, I've been wondering that myself."

Jo regarded her indignantly. She was the quietest of the D'Angelo sisters, the most sensitive, but when she felt strongly about something, she could make herself heard above their nonstop boisterous chatter.