“Val, you won’t be there alone. My entire firm is rooting for you and my team will be in the courtroom with you. Along with the cameras. This is going to make the national news. Honestly, it already has. Take a look at the papers. I’ve made sure they’ve mentioned you as the star witness.” Val could feel the hook come firmly into her mouth on the sentence.

Great. National news. They’ll all congratulate Val for putting a serial killer behind bars. No one will pat her on the back for letting a potential one go by not testifying. She was definitely stuck between the rock and hard place. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

She listened for her instructions, then hung up. Haywood would start prepping Val for the stand in the next couple of weeks. He’d send her the questions he’d ask on direct examination; she’d give her answers; and then Haywood would run her through a mock cross-examination. They’d practice as many times as Val needed. Her stomach twisted. This was real and there was no turning back.

She pushed all this from her mind. She had to. Jack was waiting for her. The trial for Dennis Tate may be next month but the Gabrielle Morgan case was in full swing right now. Val quickly ran to the women’s changing room to get out of her scrubs. Jack was picking her up in fifteen minutes. She was eager to hear what the Ballards, Gabrielle Morgan’s next-door neighbors, had to say.

12

It was just past 6pm and already dark when Val and Jack parked in front of the house Gabrielle Morgan owned in Amherst, NY. The street consisted of small Cape Cod and ranch-style homes. It was a normal middle-income neighborhood and the suburb had been voted for a number of years as one of the safest in the country. The fact that Gabrielle and her son died in Clarence, less than fifteen miles away, and not at her home in Amherst helped to maintain that record.

“This is a far cry from the place she grew up in,” Val said.

“Certainly is,” Jack said. “I drove by her parents’ place a couple of days ago. Pretty impressive. Beats the two-story brick detached house I grew up in back in the UK. In Surrey.”

Val eyed the tiny ranch Gabrielle was living in. “So, she gave up money… lots of money… for…” Val struggled for the answer. “Love? For Perry?”

“When facts in a case don’t make sense, they’re usually not facts but rather fallacies instead.” Jack shook his head. “No. I don’t buy the love angle. Giving up profound wealth for love only works in story books. In real life, we bite off our noses to spite our faces for something like revenge. Not true love.”