Chapter One
Raymond
The courthouse in downtown Bahia Beach, Florida, seems a pale, cool place to
hold the evidence of so much passion. Divorces. Rape. Murders. Arson. Assault.
Abuse of all kinds, by all sorts of people, upon all sorts of people. Daily, it
parades past these bland, blond walls of the Howard County Courthouse, in
Florida's Twenty-first Judicial Circuit. This is a place of stark contrasts and
painful paradoxes, of quiet ironies and violent surprises. Outside the long
narrow windows of the courthouse, the south Florida sun burns hot enough to
scorch a tourist's skin, but inside, it's all shade and air-conditioning.
My fingertips feel dipped in ice water as I write these words.
They seem to promise a surprise or shock of some kind, although nobody in this
courtroom is expecting one. We're expecting the jury to deliver a guilty verdict
today, and we're all expecting to troop back in here in a couple of weeks to
hear this same jury recommend the death penalty.
And yet, my own words seem to foreshadow something else.
Strange, but I don't have any idea of what that could be.
For the ten days of the trial of Raymond Raintree for the kidnapping and murder
of Natalie Mae McCulle ... read full excerpt from The Whole Truth ebook
