“He has a record as a juvenile,” she argued. “He turned his life around. He’s working and it’s all in his past. He was out looking for his cat. I mean, let’s be real. Everyone I interviewed said that Dave’s cat got out all the time and he was always looking for it on the trail.”
“But this time he was doing it when someone was assaulted.”
A college student spending the weekend hiking with friends. Dave lived close to the trails. One girl was on a run early in the morning and was grabbed from behind, dragged into the bushes where she fought her attacker off and got away.
No way she got a good look at the person with a baseball hat on their head, the sun barely up, and the urgency of the situation.
On top of that, there wasn’t one human scratch on Dave’s body. Not one bruise. Nothing.
Sheryl Hinders fought off her attacker. If she didn’t draw blood, she at least left marks and bruises and had admitted to making contact on the other person’s body.
Dave had not one mark on him except a scratch from his cat, that he’d found in the bushes and retrieved. The cat was not happy to return home and left four claw marks on his forearm.
But the damn deputy saw that in connection with Sheryl’s descriptions and others saying Dave was in the area.
“You know as well as I do Dave doesn’t have it in him to attack anyone. The guy doesn’t even raise his voice at that dumb cat that jumps out of the second-story window to go for a walk.”
Ford laughed. “True. And now it’s your job to get a jury to believe it all. You know how. You do it all the time and you do it well.”
Her shoulders gave a little wiggle. Maybe she needed a pep talk over her frustration with this.
Too many times she’d witnessed people’s lives being ruined over false accusations.
It’s why she was an attorney in a small town.
To stop the crap if she could.
Mistakes happened. Sure. It was natural. But a person’s life shouldn’t be destroyed because of it.
“Thanks. He’s nervous that he’s going to lose his job. He’s in a good spot in life. You know how it is.”
Ford sighed. “I do. And you can’t change that, but he can sue if that happens. He’s got an attorney.”
“I’m just sick of lives being damaged over this shit.”
“I know,” Ford said.
“Cooper was never the same. It wrecked his family and his life. He had to move and that shattered Dad. You know how close they were.”
“I can’t believe you’re still carrying that,” Ford said.
“And you’re not? He was one of Dad’s closest friends. He was accused of murdering a girl the same age as his daughter. Cooper was one of the gentlest men we knew.”
“He was found not guilty. They had nothing on him and they were never going to. No way he did it.”
“Half the town who knew him believed it, but the other half found him guilty. They lost everything. Their home, their jobs, their dignity.”
Few would hire Cooper as a handyman after that. Their house had a lien on it for the legal fees. His children faced ridicule and torment and stopped going to class.
Months after the verdict, they paid off what debt they could and moved out of state.
It wasn’t only what happened to her father’s friend that she couldn’t move past, but the unsolved murder of a girl barely a year older than she’d been at the time.
A teen strangled, her neck snapped, the girl discarded like a piece of trash in the bushes. No effort to conceal her, one bare leg caught on a branch, her shorts littered with leaves that had broken off, and her sandals tossed aside as if even in death she was denied the dignity of having shoes on.
They most likely had fallen off during the rage-filled crime, then were picked up and tossed carelessly out of sight.
“You know I hate it as much as you,” Ford said. “But there are a lot of injustices in the world. He had an excellent attorney andthat is what matters. Be that excellent attorney for Dave now.” She was still watching the guy walking around taking pictures as Ford talked. “Gale?”
