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PROOF OF INTENT (Thomas Dunne Books)
by William J. Couglin and Walter Sorrells
Notorious tough-guy author Miles Dane has a dead wife and a bad alibi. Enter defense attorney Charley Sloan, who soon wishes he’d never taken the case. Problem is, Miles seems dead set on sabotaging his own defense. He can’t even keep his facts straight. As soon as the trial begins, Charley starts to piece together the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the shocking conclusion to this spellbinding courtroom drama. “Sorrells takes . . . the late Coughlin’s Charley Sloan and puts him back in court with the same clever . . . style.”—Publishers Weekly
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Excerpt from Select Editions’ Proof of Intent
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Later the address would become familiar to everyone in America, a phrase on everyone’s lips. Just like “the Rockingham estate” or “the compound at Waco.” But at the time, 221 Riverside Boulevard in Pickeral Point, Michigan, was just a big house I’d never visited before, dark and unfamiliar at that dead hour of the night.
And so at first I didn’t see him. As I’d been instructed on the phone, I had come in the back door. The moon was throwing a white patch on the dark floor.
As my eyes adjusted, a dark blob in the middle of the large, empty room slowly resolved itself into the form of Miles Dane. He was sitting on his haunches, head bowed, eyes shut, lips moving silently. Meditating maybe? He wore a robe of liquid white silk.
He didn’t look at me, didn’t stir, just sat there with his lips moving, something glistening on his face. I figured, okay, maybe the guy was a flake, but since he was a potentially big client, too, I’d wait. Even if it was a couple minutes past four o’clock in the morning.
After a moment or two the moon went behind a cloud. Miles Dane stood abruptly and walked across the straw-mat floor, through a doorway, and down a long, dark hallway. I followed. He was a short man with the physical vigor and build of a wrestler.
We walked silently up a flight of deeply carpeted stairs, down a long hallway, into a bedroom with an expensive view of the river.
“There,” he said, pointing.
“What?” I thought he was pointing out the picture window. The dark, mottled water looked like hammered lead.
“No, Charley. There.”
Then I saw her. She lay in the bed as though sleeping. The moon came out from behind the cloud, and a pale light washed the floor, revealing both her ruined face and the black blood that suddenly seemed to be everywhere.
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