Silent Witness by Richard North Patterson EPUB & PDF– eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Richard North Patterson
- Language: English
- Genre: Small Town & Rural Fiction
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Silent Witness
Richard North Patterson
Prologue
Gina Belfante murdered her husband at one-fifteen on a Tuesday
morning. By Tuesday afternoon she had lied to the police; by Thursday, the
police and the medical examiner had concluded that Donald Belfante, who
had been shot to death while sleeping in his own bed, had not been killed by
an intruder. The police did not find the prenuptial agreement—giving Gina a
pittance should the Belfantes ever divorce—until Monday. The next day,
after they charged Gina Belfante with murder, the lawyer she had consulted
about a divorce posted bail and referred her to Anthony Lord.
Although San Francisco was a small city, and the wealthy society in
which the Belfantes moved was smaller yet, Tony Lord did not know her.
But, inevitably, Gina knew Tony Lord; she had seen him at the Oscars, she
told him brightly, on the night that his exquisite wife, Stacey Tarrant, won an
Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Sitting behind his desk, Tony let Gina
chatter nervously, without appearing to watch her as closely as he did.
Finally, he asked a few questions; it was several hours later—well after Gina
Belfante had tearfully admitted putting a bullet through her husband’s brain
—that Tony learned she was a battered wife and had doctors’ records to
prove it. That, he decided, would be his defense.
It was not simple. Given that Donald Belfante had died without waking, it
was hard to argue that Gina had felt in imminent danger of violence. The
prenuptial agreement made matters worse yet—in terms of money, it
rewarded murder and punished divorce. There were almost no witnesses: like
many abusive husbands, Donald Belfante had usually beaten his wife’s body,
often in ways both sadistic and intimate, while leaving her face unmarred;
like many abused wives, Gina Belfante had lied to everyone save her doctor.
And a society woman who stood to inherit twenty-five million dollars would
not strike most jurors as so helpless that she had shot her sleeping husband in
fear and desperation. His only choice, Tony knew, was to put her late
husband on trial.
Donald Belfante had been a large man; like many entrepreneurs who
retained absolute power over his own creation—in this case, a company that
made computer disk drives—he was charming, egotistical, sensitive to slight,
and a bully. If Gina was to be believed, he beat her often, and at random: he
had beaten her four hours before his death, and had she not killed him when
he stirred awake, he would have beaten her right then. It did not take much to
anger Donald Belfante, and he enjoyed his anger; Gina lived in fear of each
new beating, and of that final day—vivid in her imagination—when he would
go too far and kill her. The prenuptial agreement, she insisted in tears, was
not an incentive: it was the symbol of his unfathomable rage at the idea that
she might leave him.
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