The Fall Girl

Marcia Clark

Description

• Has a core crime fiction fanbase

• This is a stand alone legal thriller that features new characters outside of her existing series

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Thrillers
• Crime
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Bird Books
• Date de parution: 13 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781644283264
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ALSO BY Marcia Clark
Novels
Guilt by Degrees
Blood Defense
Killer Ambition
Guilt by Association
The Competition
Moral Defense
Snap Judgment
Final Judgment
Nonfiction
Without a Doubt




this is a genuine rare bird book
Rare Bird Books 6044 North Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90042 rarebirdbooks.com
Copyright © 2022 by Marcia Clark
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address: Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department 6044 North Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90042
Set in Dante
epub isbn : 9781644283264
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Clark, Marcia, author. Title: The fall girl / by Marcia Clark. Description: First Hardcover Edition. | Los Angeles, Calif. : Rare Bird, [2022] Identifiers: LCCN 2021058162 | ISBN 9781644282656 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781644283264 (ebook) | Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction. Classification: LCC PS3603.L3653 F35 2022 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058162


Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Acknowledgments



Chapter One
I emptied the last bag into the pit and stared down at the tangled heap. The pale pink cashmere sweater, the engraved leather briefcase, the cowskin pillows—every gift he’d given me, and everything I’d worn, read, or shared when we were together.
Together. The word itself filled me with pain and self-loathing.
I poured the whole can of Kingsford lighter fluid onto the pile and tossed it into the pit. Then I pulled the box of kitchen matches out of my pocket, struck one, and dropped it.
The heat seared my nostrils as I watched the fire swallow up my old life. I held the last two items in my hand: my driver’s license and my ID from the Chicago Public Defender’s office.
Do I really want to do this?
But the truth was, I didn’t have a choice. If he found me, he’d kill me. And although I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I deserved to live, I wasn’t ready to accept that fate…yet. A fist squeezed my heart as I threw my IDs onto the flaming pile.
Goodbye, Lauren Claybourne .
No one would miss her. Certainly not her family, who’d cut her out of their lives like a festering tumor. Not that I blamed them—not after what’d happened.
I waited until all that was left were smoldering embers. Then I went to my car, opened the glove box, and pulled out my new driver’s license. It was my face…but it wasn’t. Amazing what a pair of blue contacts and blonde hair dye can do. I stared down at the name and repeated it out loud: “Charlotte Blair. Charlotte…Charlie—Blair. Charlie Blair.”
Driving off, I felt like an astronaut whose tether had been cut, like I was floating out into space. I had no idea I was driving straight down the collision course that would lead me to the Hansen case—and the very peril I’d hoped to escape.


Chapter Two
Three Months Later
E rika leaned back in her chair and watched the piece-of-shit defendant yuck it up with his lawyers, his sneering arrogance on full display. It was a view the jurors never got to see, thanks to some very intense coaching by his team. Unlike so many other defendants, he was smart enough to go along with it. Blake Steers was a sociopath, but he was no dummy.
Erika gave a quiet snort of disgust and whispered to her lead detective, Skip Arneson, “I hope his lawyers are bleeding him dry.”
Skip glanced at Steers, then at the quartet of bespoke suits that flanked him. “If they don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.”
It was small consolation, but given what they’d been through for the past month, she’d take it. The case had been an uphill battle from the start. Not because the evidence wasn’t there, but because the hideousness of the murder didn’t jibe with the charming golden boy the jury saw at counsel table every day.
Erika glanced down at the coroner’s photos on the table in front of her. Beautiful young Natalie Hemingsworth was almost unrecognizable. The bloated face, the wire around her neck embedded so deeply it was barely visible, the bruises on her breasts and stomach in the shape of the lead pipe used to beat her.
She glanced at Blake Steers again. Handsome, charismatic, a highly successful and adored celebrity chef. Erika knew the jury was having a hard time squaring one set of images with the other.
But her biggest problem was that another man in Natalie’s life—T. Rayne, a notoriously degenerate DJ—fit the bill perfectly. When Steers’ lead lawyer held up T. Rayne’s photo during opening statements, showing him mid-snarl, his pierced nose and earrings glowing red in the colored stage lights, Erika could practically hear the jurors thinking, Yeah, that’s more like it.
It didn’t matter that there was no physical evidence linking T. Rayne to the murder or that they had plenty on Blake: his prints on the lead pipe, his DNA in the bathroom sink. He had motive, too; Natalie had just broken up with him, and both the housekeeper and Blake’s assistant had been there to see him go berserk. He’d thrown a marble bookend at Natalie. If his aim had been better, it might’ve killed her then and there. When she ran out the door, he trashed the living room. And days later, when he found out she was seeing T. Rayne, he’d “gone postal,” according to his trainer. Correction: former trainer.
No, evidence wasn’t the problem. The problem was the optics. Blake didn’t look the part. T. Rayne did. Stories of his raucous parties, of trashed hotel rooms across the country, of confrontations he’d ended with his fists—with both men and women—were legion.
But what almost no one knew was that glittery wunderkind Blake Steers was every bit as abusive—and then some. Natalie’s closest friend, Jennifer, had told the jury about the physical and emotional abuse Blake had inflicted on Natalie. But Jennifer had been the only one who could testify to it because Natalie—embarrassed that she’d let herself be treated that way—had sworn her to secrecy.
Unfortunately, that made it easy for the defense to dismiss Jennifer as biased and unreliable on cross-examination. Erika had seen a few of the jurors frown when the lawyer got Jennifer to admit that she hadn’t told anyone about the abuse until a month after Natalie had died.
At first, Erika had assumed Natalie was one of those women who gravitated to violent men. But ironically, by all accounts, T. Rayne had been good to her. And according to Jennifer, Steers was the only man who’d ever assaulted Natalie. It seemed she’d simply had a thing for big personalities.
But playing right into the hands of the defense, T. Rayne had no alibi. He’d been home alone on the night of the murder. Erika’s interview with him was still fresh in her mind. It’d been like pounding on a brick wall—a hostile, heartless brick wall. Multiply pierced and grotesquely tattooed, T. Rayne hadn’t so much sat as sprawled in the chair in front of her desk, his legs stretched out, bare feet crossed at the ankle. “What do you want, Ms. Prosecutor?” His smirk reeked of misogyny, condescension—and weed.
Erika had known he’d be an ass. Skip had warned her. But this was worse than she’d expected. Still, she kept her voice calm. “I need you to tell me every move you made that night.”
“What the fuck difference does it make?” He nodded at Skip, who was sitting next to him. “I told your guy I was chillin’ at home. How long is this gonna take?” He glanced at his cell phone. “I’ve got shit to do.”
Erika gritted her teeth. “Right. But you were alone, so we need to prove it. The question is, what were you doing while you were at home alone?”
His lip curled—that familiar sneer. “Probably got high, watched some porn, jerked off.” He glanced at Skip. “Same as you. Right, my man?”
Erika wanted to slap the leering grin off his face. But she needed something—anything—that would corroborate his alibi. They’d checked the surveillance cameras in his neighborhood, his cell phone records, and canvassed the houses near his, hoping someone had spotted him through his living room window. Nada. “What channel were you watching?”
T. Rayne blew a raspberry. “What channel? The fuck should I know?”
“Listen, the defense is trying to hang you for Natalie’s murder. You might think that’s funny now, but if people buy their bullshit, they might start canceling your gigs.”
He shrugged. “Nuthin’ I can do about what people think. Long as y’all know I didn’t kill her, I’m golden.”
Erika stared at him, disgusted. “You’ve been claiming you loved Natalie. At least, that’s what you told the tabs. Or was that just for publicity?”
He looked away, his voice—finally—somber. “Yeah, sure. I cared about her. She was a doll.”
Erika could tell he meant it. “Then how come you don’t seem to give a shit about getting her killer?”
His expression hardened; the brief window of humanity slammed shut. “Look, lady, she