Murder in the Rue Ursulines by Greg Herren Page A

phone him and let him know you’re calling.” He nodded and shut the door behind him.
    I looked at the card.
    STORM BRADLEY, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
    I put it in my wallet. Feeling a little nauseous, I headed back to my car.

Chapter Six
     
    If you solve this case, you’ll be famous , I thought as I walked back to my car. I felt a little numb—and nervous. My heart was racing, and I recognized what could be the signs of an onset of an anxiety attack. My palms were damp, and I could feel wetness under my arms. My breathing was fast, so I tried to focus on slowing it down. Esplanade Avenue was deserted, no signs of life anywhere. Not even a car passing through an intersection in the distance.
    Glynis was dead; and according to Loren, I was all but arrested and charged for it.. But there had to be an up-side to this thing, right? 
    I let my imagination go. This could be the opportunity of a lifetime—solving one of the highest-profile murder cases in history. Whoever tracked down the killer would make headlines, would wind up being interviewed by the likes of Anderson Cooper and Larry King—and why shouldn’t that be me? Visions of fame and money danced through my head as I walked through the thickening fog.
     I could get a book deal, and it would surely be made into a movie or a mini-series—at the very least an episode of City Confidential or American Justice. The trial would air live on Court TV.
    Dream on, Chanse .
     
    There was a piece of it that was real, though. Sure, Loren was right--I was mixed up in the middle of the whole thing. But the best way to clear everything up really would be to prove that Freddy hadn’t killed his ex-wife—and neither had I.
    I was disturbed by the weak identification I was going to have to make to the police. It bothered me that Loren had so easily shaken my identification of the guy coming out of the house. I’d been completely sure it was Freddy at the time—it was only later that doubt crept in. And that doubt had been planted by Loren..
    It’s pretty much taken for granted that eyewitnesses make mistakes. Defense attorneys frequently hammer that point home to juries. We see what we expect to see. Our memories are filtered by our experiences and prejudices. I’d seen someone dressed similarly to the way Freddy had been at our meeting earlier that day, and with the same kind of build, coming down the front steps of his ex-wife’s house. It was entirely possible that all of those factors had added up in my mind to recognition.
    Had it really been Freddy?
    If Freddy was indicted and went to trial, his attorneys would dig into my past.
    Can your life bear that kind of scrutiny?
    I remembered how other witnesses in major murder trials had been treated by the press. I didn’t want to be another Kato Kaelin. They would dig up everything they possibly could on me, and make it public knowledge. They’d track down my parents in Cottonwood Wells, my brother Rory, my sister Daphne in Houston—and I could be relatively certain Daphne wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion. I could give a rat’s ass about my parents—I hadn’t talked to them in years.
    I imagined the look on my father’s face when some reporter asked him about his gay son, and it made me smile. The thought of how humiliated he’d be when everyone in that miserable little town found out that his big football star son was a big old homo was a very amusing one indeed. But Daphne—and my brother Rory—how would they feel about having their own lives intruded on? I hadn’t talked to Rory in years, either. I’d cut him off when I’d cut off Mom and Dad
    The thought of having all the stuff about Paul dredged up also worried me. Not because it made me look bad—it might, it might not. My therapist was always telling me that the situation wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be…but there was his family to think about. How would the Maxwells, who’d taken me in as part of their family, and maintained that tie after Paul