Intimate Betrayal by Linda Barlow Read Free Book Online

crime stories to hit the country in recent years.
    “You mean they’ve acquitted him?”
    “They haven’t announced the verdict yet, but it looks like the judge is about to say something.”
    The panel of eight women and four men were shown seated in the jury box, and the judge, a middle-aged woman who had been profiled
     by all the local and national TV stations and newspapers, was speaking to the bailiff. It had been a long trial, and every
     argument made by both the defense and the prosecution had been analyzed endlessly in the press. The closing arguments had
     been presented to the jury several days ago, and since then they had been deliberating.
    Annie had had mixed feelings about the trial from the beginning. It was as if two completely separate processes had been inextricably
     linked to one another—the building of the cathedral and the trial of Matthew Carlyle. Because Francesca Carlyle had been the
     prime mover behind building the cathedral, her violent death and her husband’s subsequent trial had thrown a pall over the
     project.
    Ironically, as the cathedral had been slowly constructed stone by stone, Matthew Carlyle’s reputation and credibility had
     been deconstructed in the same slow manner. There was no doubt about the outcome of Matthew Carlyle’s trial in the press:
     In their view, he had already been judged and found guilty.
    At least with the cathedral, something was being built rather than torn down.
    The camera shifted to the defendant, who was sitting stiffly beside his attorney, his face was drawn, and there were visible
     lines around his mouth that Annie was sure hadn’t been there that day two and a half years ago when he’d crushed herhopes of saving Fabrications.
How the mighty are fallen,
she thought.
    According to the prosecution, it was Carlyle who had inflicted the heavy blow to Francesca’s face that had caused her to fall
     and strike her head. Afterward, he’d thrown her unconscious body over the side of the yacht and in the Bay, where she drowned.
    Carlyle’s motive, said the district attorney, was simple: If Francesca had carried out her threat to divorce him, he would
     have lost half of his $4 billion fortune.
    As Annie settled down on the sofa to watch the verdict, she focused on Matt Carlyle’s face. She was amazed to feel a pulse
     of sympathy for him. How awful it must be to sit in a courtroom waiting to hear yourself judged by twelve strangers.
    Dressed in a conservative dark suit and tasteful tie that his jury consultants had no doubt recommended, he sat upright, a
     model of restraint and self-control. His face was expressionless, but every now and then the camera caught a flicker of anguish
     in his eyes. It seemed to Annie that it was all the more vivid because of his efforts to hide it.
    He doesn’t deserve my pity,
she reminded herself.
If I must feel sorry for someone, it should be for Francesca.
    “Has the jury reached a verdict?”
    “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”
    Annie felt her heart rate accelerate. Had he done it? He was certainly ruthless enough.
    “We find the defendant, Matthew Carlyle, not guilty,” the jury forewoman said.
    The courtroom erupted in pandemonium.
    “You see, I told you,” Darcy said with disgust. “A richman can get away with anything in this country. So much for the American system of justice. Francesca Carlyle lies unavenged
     in her grave because the law will always side with the members of the power elite.”
    Annie couldn’t think of much to say. Essentially she agreed with Darcy, although she didn’t think the verdict indicated a
     social conspiracy. “I guess that as far as the jury was concerned, the prosecution didn’t prove its case. At least not beyond
     a reasonable doubt.”
    “Of course it did! Anyway, who else had any reason to kill her?”
    “I don’t know,” Annie said. “Maybe the man she was having the affair with.”
    “If
she was having an affair.”
    Carlyle’s high-priced defense team had