They would use every trick, every legal maneuver that lawyers could concoct, twist the truth, make him the real culprit. They would find him guilty of malfeasance in office. He would taste public disgrace, humiliation. Maybe even go to jail. It didn’t matter. In the end, he would be free of them, free of the nightmare of the eyes. Cleansed. One thing he knew, he’d go down kicking and screaming. He was on the side of the angels now. And he still had Gladys and his boys. They would understand.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Barney said, as if sensing what was going through his mind. “It’s not your fault.”
“Whose then?”
“I’ll take some of that. I overreacted. I should have known after I saw what they did to Charlotte. We’re all vulnerable, I’m afraid, all victims.” He pulled out the notebook he had stuffed behind his belt. “I’ve written it all down. Everything I did. Everything we went through. I’ll get the word out.”
“You don’t look very concerned, Harrigan,” the Sheriff said.
“Tell you the truth, I’m not.”
He glanced toward Naomi.
“I don’t know what to say,” Naomi said. “It’s awful.”
“Yes, awful,” O’Hara said. “I know. Morality. Free choice. Civil rights. All the goodies of a civilized society. These people once owned all these things you cherish. Somebody deliberately stole them, absconded with their minds. Look at them now.”
“Shit happens,” Roy said.
“As good an explanation as any,” O’Hara said.
“Better make my call,” the Sheriff said. He started toward the administration building, then he remembered that Jeremiah had a cell phone on him. He bent over his body and pulled it off.
“Who really gets the blame for this one?” he muttered to no one in particular. He looked at the bodies lying in their supine circles. Then his eyes drifted to the shattered poster of Father Glory.
More Thrillers from Warren Adler
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FICTION
Banquet Before Dawn
Blood Ties
Empty Treasures
Flanagan’s Dolls
Funny Boys
Madeline’s Miracles
Mourning Glory
Natural Enemies
Private Lies
Random Hearts
Residue
Senator Love
Target Churchill
The Casanova Embrace
The David Embrace
The Henderson Equation
The Housewife Blues
The War of the Roses
The War of the Roses: The Children
The Womanizer
Trans-Siberian Express
Treadmill
Twilight Child
Undertow
We Are Holding the President Hostage
THE FIONA FITZGERALD MYSTERY SERIES
American Quartet
American Sextet
Death of a Washington Madame
Immaculate Deception
Senator Love
The Ties That Bind
The Witch of Watergate
Washington Masquerade
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Never Too Late For Love
New York Echoes
New York Echoes 2
The Sunset Gang
PLAYS
Dead in the Water
Libido
The Sunset Gang: The Musical
The War of the Roses
Windmills
About the Author
Acclaimed author, playwright, poet, and essayist Warren Adler is best known for The War of the Roses, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce adapted into the BAFTA- and Golden Globe–nominated hit film starring Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner. Adler’s internationally acclaimed stage adaptation of the novel will premiere on Broadway in 2015–2016.
Adler has also optioned and sold film rights for a number of his works, including Random Hearts (starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas) and The Sunset Gang (produced by Linda Lavin for PBS’s American Playhouse series starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould, and Doris Roberts), which garnered Doris Roberts an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries. In recent development are the Broadway production of The War of the Roses, to be produced by Jay and Cindy Gutterman, The War of the Roses: The Children (Grey Eagle Films and Permut Presentations), a feature film adaptation of the sequel to Adler’s iconic divorce story, Target Churchill (Grey Eagle Films and Solution Entertainment), Residue (Grey Eagle Films), Mourning Glory, to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins, and Capitol Crimes (Grey Eagle Films and Sennet Entertainment), a television series based on his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series.
Adler’s works have been translated into more than 25 languages, including his staged version of The War of the Roses, which has opened to spectacular reviews worldwide. Adler has taught creative writing seminars at New York University, and has lectured on creative writing, film and television adaptation, and electronic publishing. He lives with his wife, Sunny, a former magazine editor, in Manhattan.