Read Online A Picture of Guilt by Libby Fischer Hellmann - Free Book Online

I could see Brashares stiffen, but Ryan’s smile broadened, as if he knew he’d won big. “Let’s see. The tape was fine after you screened it, but now, a year later, it shows significant damage. And you testified that it’s been stored in a locked room at your director’s studio for over a year, isn’t that right?”
    “Yes.” I cringed. I knew what was coming.
    “So, you don’t know where the problem came from, and it’s been a year since you looked at it. Yet you still maintain there’s no possibility the tape has been tampered with.” He didn’t wait for my response but whipped around to face the jury. “Thank you, Miss Foreman. I have no further questions.”
    I sat on the stand for a moment, unsure who and where I was. Then I looked around the courtroom. A few faces looked back at me with sympathy, but most were curious, almost expectant, as if they were waiting for me to have a meltdown then and there. After all, I’d just been bushwhacked. Discredited. Hammered.
    My father leaped to his feet and made his way to the door. In the space he’d occupied, I caught a glimpse of a man sitting behind him. Young, dark, somewhere in his twenties, he had crisp features with high cheekbones. Curly black chest hair poked through an open-necked shirt, and one arm was draped over the back of the bench. Even through my humiliation, I registered that he was sexy in a dark, Mediterranean kind of way.
    I looked at him, hoping for a sympathetic nod or smile. He returned the look, but something on his face, a lilt of one brow perhaps, a narrowing of the other, gave me the feeling he could see through me and had decided there wasn’t much there. A twinge of uneasiness passed over me. Averting my gaze, I stepped down from the box.

C HAPTER T EN
    I testified on Wednesday, and the case went to the jury on Thursday. Ryan skewered me in closing arguments, implying I was the stupidest, most naïve documentary filmmaker in the world. Why hadn’t I come forward sooner? How did I know the tape hadn’t been tampered with? Why couldn’t I adequately explain the damage on the tape? Was I that technically incompetent? Either that, he said, or something else, something more sinister, was at work.
    In either case, he declared scornfully, this was not an alibi. I might have seen Santoro at Olive Park, but what was to stop him from having traveled to Calumet Park either before or after? The tape was no more than a description of where Santoro ended up at a specific point in time. Indeed, when you added up the fingernail scrapings, the lovers’ argument, and the fact that Mary Jo’s body was found near his car, there was no way twelve intelligent jurors could possibly buy my story.
    They didn’t. On Friday they convicted Santoro.
    The phone rang all afternoon—reporters, mostly, looking for a sound bite. Something that would sum up the conflict in ten seconds. Preferably at my expense. I decided I’d be damned if I’d give them one, and after a slew of calls during which my polite refusals to comment apparently weren’t enough, I tried a new approach.
    “Ellie Foreman?” a voice asked.
    “Sí?”
    “Is this Ellie Foreman?”
    “Sí?” I stretched out the word.
    “Uh—I’m looking for the video producer, Ellie Foreman. Is she there?”
    “Meesus not home.” I slammed down the phone before a fluent stream of Spanish could come back at me.
    Small victories.
    I was watching myself on TV when David unlocked the front door. I’d had no intention of turning on the tube, but, after polishing off half a bottle of wine, something drew me to the coverage—the same thing that draws gapers to an accident, perhaps. Or possibly a latent streak of masochism.
    David took one look at me and went into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened, a cabinet drawer closed. A minute later, he came into the family room carrying a plate of bagels, lox, cream cheese, and onions. He sat down on the couch.
    “You haven’t eaten today, have