Read Online Speaking in Tongues by Jeffery Deaver - Free Book Online

call my mother?”
    “No,” Bett said. “Let’s give it a few days. I don’t want to upset her unnecessarily.”
    “What about your sister?”
    “Definitely not her.”
    “Why not?” Tate wondered aloud. He knew Susan cared very much for Megan. More than most aunts would for a niece. In fact, she’d always seemed almost jealous that Bett had a daughter and she didn’t.
    “Because we don’t have any answers yet,” Bett responded. Then, after a few moments, she sighed. “This isn’t like her.” She glanced at the letter in her hand. Then shoved it deep into her purse.
    Tate studied his wife’s face. Tate Collier had inherited several talents from the Judge. The main gift was, of course, a way with words, and the other, far rarer, was the ability to see the future in someone’s face. Now he looked into his ex-wife’s remarkable violet eyes, saw them narrow, alight on his and move on, and he knew exactly what was going through her mind. Debate is not just about words, debate is about intuition too. The advocate who can see exactly where his adversary is headed will always have an advantage, whatever rhetorical flourishes the opponent has in his repertoire.
    He didn’t like what he now saw.
    Bett stepped determinedly off the porch and into the backyard, toward the west barn, where her car was parked. He followed and paused on the shaggy lawn, which was badly in need of a mowing. He stared intently at the white streak of the energetic Dalmatian, which had finally forsaken the bone and was zipping through the grass like a greyhound.
    Tate glanced at the old barn, alien and yet very familiar. Then his eyes fell on the picnic bench that he and Bett had bought at one of the furniture storesalong Route 28. They’d used it only once—for the gathering after the funeral fourteen years ago. He remembered the events with perfect clarity now. It seemed like last week.
    He saw Bett looking at the bench too. Wondered what she was thinking.
    That had been an unseasonably warm November—just as odd as this April’s oppressive heat. He pictured Bett standing on the bench to unhook a Japanese lantern from the dogwood after the last of the family and well-wishers had left or gone to bed.
    Today, Tate paused beside this same tree, which was in its expansive, pink bloom.
    “Are you busy now?” she asked. “Your practice?”
    “Lot of little things. Only one big case.” He nodded at the house, where a paralyzing stack of documents for the Liberty Park argument rested. When they were married the house had been littered with red-backed legal briefs, forty or fifty pages long. The Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Many of them were for death penalty cases Tate was prosecuting. Although he’d been the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Tate had often argued down in Richmond on behalf of other counties. “Have voice, will travel,” his staff had joked. His specialty had become special-circumstance murder cases—the official description of capital punishment cases.
    These assignments and his eagerness to take such cases were a source of friction between husband and wife. Bett was opposed to the death penalty.
    Death, Tate reflected, always seemed to lurk behind their relationship. Her sister Susan’s continual battlewith serious heart disease, and the suicide of Susan’s husband, Harris. Then the death of Bett’s parents and Tate’s father and grandfather, all in the tragically short period of three years.
    Tate kicked at piles of cornstalks.
    “I have this feeling, Tate.” Bett’s hands lifted and dropped to her sides. “Do you understand what I mean?”
    No. He didn’t. Tate was dogged and smart, but feelings? No, sir. Didn’t trust them for a minute. He saw how they got the people he’d prosecuted into deep, deep trouble. When they’d been married Bett lived on feelings. Intuition, sensations, impressions. And sometimes, it seemed, messages from the stars. Drove him crazy.
    “Keep going,”