The Blame Game

Linda Rocker

Description

When her only son dies of an overdose, a distraught mother embarks on an obsessive crusade to destroy the pain doctor who gave him the pills that killed him. The Palm Beach Courthouse, and an ambitious prosecutor, become her personal tools for revenge. Charlie Graham sees this case as his bootstrap to unseat Judge Janet Kanterman and secure his future as a powerful member of the bench. But, Charlie has a history of miscues and mischief during the trial of major cases and this one will be no different.
Casey Portman, the judge’s bailiff; is in love with the handsome sheriff and sees a future with him that looks very much like the cover of a family magazine. She is completely unprepared for what life has in store for her, some of which will bring her close to the end of her life and to the edge of her endurance.
The ripple effects of the young man’s death will resonate from an elite country club to the inner circle of high end hookers, with murder on the minds of some seemingly ordinary people inside and outside of the courthouse. And through it all runs the trial of a respected neurosurgeon who retired to find a peaceful life in Florida and found the possibility of hanging from a noose, instead.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Thrillers
• The Blame Game
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728341842
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A LEGAL THRILLER
THE BLAME GAME
 
LINDA ROCKER
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2014 Linda Rocker. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  01/03/2020
 
ISBN: 978-1-7283-4186-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-4184-2 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020900447
 
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Blame : Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 39
Chapter 39
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Epilogue
Innocence : Prologue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Truth is not stranger than fiction. It is simply more painful. The events and characters in this book are fictional, but in every sense they are informed by what I read in the newspaper, hear about from electronic news sources and discuss with friends. While we cannot, you and I, walk in the shoes of people assailed by false accusations or threatened with imprisonment or death, we should be able to feel their terror, humiliation, desperation and panic. If empathy for those caught in the web of blame is denied us by the media or beyond our capacity to demand accountability by our systems of justice, then I pity us.
Blame is the sequel to Punishment – in all respects. It is not necessary to know all that happened in the earlier book. Most of the characters have crossed over, in a manner of speaking, and their distinctive traits and histories are threaded into the current book. You can always drop by the web page to refresh your recollections or untangle some character’s past.
This story, like Punishment, is a morality play without stage directions. My job is to expose the good, the bad and the very human aspects of our court system and the people who work in it. Your job is to have fun with the threads of a number of stories, to outwit me in anticipating how their stories will come together, and to draw some conclusions about where we need to change how we assign blame and the high price is making mistakes in doing so.
Thanks for being here with me.
Linda Rocker
BLAME
PROLOGUE
It is not true, as some observers of the human drama postulate, that blame is the handmaiden of punishment. The two are barely on speaking terms, especially in a court of law. The on-again, off-again connection between fixing responsibility for bad behavior, and devising a suitable punishment for such conduct, has bedeviled scholars of criminal law for centuries. It has also perplexed more than a handful of theologians and philosophers. It is not surprising, therefore, that the death of a young man, ostensibly in his prime, and for no apparent reason, has aroused the passions of residents of the Treasure Coast as they cast about searching for the source of this villainy.
Enter the prosecution. Charlie Graham has successfully prosecuted a baker’s dozen of major trials in his seven years as State’s Attorney for West Palm Beach. The Dogicide Case is the outstanding exception, although it is still on appeal. Despite what Charlie views as an almost perfect record of putting away the bad guys, he faces a serious challenge for re-election next year. Charlie needs a case with sex appeal, muscle, and a touch of mother’s milk. What better than the untimely demise of a victim of the notorious pain pill industry in southern Florida? The fact that the decedent came from a well-heeled family living in a gated community adds immeasurably to the appeal of the case-and its potential for serious campaign contributions.
Charlie’s wife, who dutifully attends all of his closing arguments at trial, has complained to her mother on more than one occasion that Charlie is so self-absorbed that he misses the big picture, to say nothing of her birthdays and their anniversaries. Her observation has merit, particularly as Charlie prepares his presentation to the Palm Beach County Grand Jury. This flawed peripheral vision of Charlie’s will once again result in his failure to anticipate the full measure of mischief that bringing an indictment for first degree murder in this case will cause. And that will be just the beginning of the spread of human harm that will flow from Charlie’s hubris, just the sort of harm that is the collateral damage of warfare in our justice system.
CHAPTER 1
T he buzz was wearing off. Jeffrey was beginning that downward spiral again, the dive into the black hole that his psychiatrist called Dante’s Inferno. His depression felt more as if an insatiable animal had taken possession of him, feeding on his thoughts until only the brittle bones of his despair and self-hatred remained behind.
Even if the insistent pain he suffered from his back injuries disappeared overnight, he knew that the internal injuries to his self-esteem were incurable. Long before the accident, the hospital, and the addiction to the pain pills, he had been diagnosed with intractable depression. A handful of shrinks had tried to convince him that his problems were treatable with the right medications. When he announced he was going to drop out of college, the guidance counselor had almost begged him to sign up for just one course so she could continue his therapy sessions. Everyone tried to help him, but no one had been able to succeed. Not now, not ever.
He reached over to the glass top table that served as his nightstand and grabbed two more of the dozen or so pill bottles that sat there. What he took or how much he took no longer mattered to him. It was almost boring. The pint of vodka had numbed him to any effect but the most obvious, and in this case, it was escape that was the most appealing consequence.
“Just get me the fuck out,” he whimpered, not wanting to alarm his parents, presumably asleep in the next room. “I hope everybody blames her. The bitch deserves it.”
It suddenly struck him that without a suicide note, they might not understand why he’d done this—that her betrayal was the last one he could or would bear. Stupid. How could he be so stupid as to run home and off himself without a fucking note! The bitch had dumped him at the altar and nobody would be sure he died because of it—because of her.
His chest began to heave as the panic set in. He raised himself up in the twin bed, but suddenly realized that his body had not moved. Now he was scared, really scared. But the booze and the pills made it seem like a movie playing in slow motion. It was time to cave, to call his parents and play out this ridiculous “from the precipice” scene again. Too bad he hadn’t had the guts to really go through with it.
He called out, but no sound came. He inhaled deeply or he meant to—an intention that curled like a smoky cloud blurring everything as the booze and drugs coalesced into one powerful poison. His eyes rolled up to look at the Spiderman figure that had hung from the ceiling fan since his childhood. The air moved it in a perfect arc. And then he died.
By the time the sheriff’s office got the call, Jeffrey Klausner’s body had passed through rigor mortis. He was not found until the morning after his suicide and, according to his distraught parents, it was not his failure to appear for breakfast, but the terrible stench emanating from his room that aroused their concern.
Deputy Simon Rivera and his partner sat in the kitchen with the parents while the teams of forensic people did their work upstairs. Although Simon had been in the Sheriff’s department for a decade, he continued to be amazed at the amount of time and detail involved in doing a proper job at a potential crime scene.
Once the detectives arrived, Simon could go back to the station and write the incident report, a seemingly benign name to describe an event that ended in someone’s death. He looked over at Mrs. Klausner and immediately regretted it. The woman returned his gaze and said in response to no one, “I knew it. I knew it and I begged him to end it. That girl was poison. Just like the