Read Online Sandrine's Case (9780802193520) by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online Page A

idea why Jane had chosen to attend my trial, and yet, at that moment, her presence suddenly suggested an as yet unrevealed aspect of my case, the key to a room I had not entered yet.
    â€œDad?” Alexandria called.
    â€œComing,” I said, then fell in behind her, moving quickly now, past the benches where reporters and spectators alike were gathering up their things, pulling on their coats and jackets, then more quickly still as I surged past them.
    Once outside the courtroom we headed toward the parking lot, the corridor filled with the flotsam that inevitably swirls about any small town courthouse, people under restraining orders or seeking them, people answering summonses of various kinds, people in debt, people in trouble, the twisted knots in which so much of life seems perpetually entangled.
    Ah, humanity, I heard in the low, sorrowful voice I had long imagined as Melville’s.
    â€œWhat is it?” Alexandria asked. “You look . . .” She stopped, then shrugged. “I don’t know . . . strange.”
    We were outside the courthouse now, the parking lot only a few yards away, and unaccountably I’d stopped dead at the top of the stairs.
    â€œDad?” Alexandria asked worriedly.
    I shook my head. “It’s nothing,” I assured her as I returned to myself.
    â€œAre you sure?”
    I nodded, then found my legs and headed down the stairs. “Nothing,” I repeated.
    But that was a lie. For it had indeed been something, a feeling I’d hardly recognized because it seemed so curious, a sense not of life’s sorrow but of its wrathfulness, the conviction that it was a coiled serpent forever striking here then there, a slithering, poisonous thing whose malice no one could at last escape.
    I glanced behind me, up the courthouse stairs, still shaken by this thought, fully expecting to see some B-movie river of blood cascade down those same stairs, red and thick, bent, consciously bent, upon engulfing everything.
    A panic seized me, one so fierce I thought I might surely break into a run.
    I knew better than to do anything like that however, and so I simply straightened my shoulders and headed down the stairs.
    â€œLet’s go home” was all I said.
    Home Bound
    â€œI’ll drive,” Alexandria said as we approached the car. She was reaching into her purse, searching for the keys, a gesture that told me she did not intend to argue the point. I’d just appeared mysteriously shaken, and so I was to be driven home, and that was that.
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    I’d learned by then that an accusation, any accusation, leaves the accused decidedly weakened. An accused person is a straggler in the herd. This is a recognition I’d come to slowly, and had fully understood only after the various local news media had labeled me a “person of interest” in regard to the investigation into Sandrine’s death. No charges had been made against me at that point, and certainly I’d not been arrested. But the accusation had been enough for Charles Higgins, the young, go-getter president of Coburn College, to summon me to his office and, while I sat silently and a little dazed by what I was hearing, request—unofficially, of course—my resignation. The college was in the middle of a fund-raising campaign to build a new sports center, he’d explained, and my “situation,” as he’d called it, might threaten its success.
    â€œAs you must know, Sam,” the president said gravely, “attendance at sporting events brings in a great deal of money.” As if this weren’t enough to sink the spear, he added, “And, of course, there’s always the question of alumni donations, which can easily drop off in the face of poor publicity.”
    Given all the damage I was doing the right course was clear. I should do my duty to dear old Coburn College and resign.
    Charley ran his fingers down his lapels and waited