Good news! The ebook version of Mirror, Mirror is now for sale on Amazon, here is the link: amazon.com/dp/B0757GSP35/ref=sr_1_3
And here is the opening scene:
PROLOGUE
Friday, May 20, 2016, 10349 New Salem Street, Mira Mesa, San Diego
Thunderous pounding on his front door. Jeff Ryder struggled out of sleep and picked up his cell phone. Six a.m. He had to be in court at 8:30 for a client who was accused of possession of methamphetamine for sale. His fee had been all of one hundred bucks, but it was all the two-bit dope dealer could afford; and Jeff needed the money. The days of pulling down $800 an hour as a Warrick, Thompson senior associate were over thanks to Professor Marian Pappas of the Southern Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law. She’d made his graduation from Berkeley in the top five percent of his class worthless. All those years of work obliterated by a bleeding-heart, liberal academic who didn’t know a thing about being a prosecutor.
The pounding grew louder. He sighed. Some drunk couldn’t find his way home. It had happened before in this flea-bag apartment building in the low-rent district of Mira Mesa Boulevard.
Wearing only his boxers and his t-shirt, he headed through the tiny hall of his one-bedroom walkup toward the front door. It sounded as if the drunk were about to break it down. Jeff prepared to give the guy a piece of his mind as soon as he opened it.
But just as he reached for the door handle, the flimsy wooden door cracked and then fell onto the floor just as he stepped back to avoid being hit as it collapsed. Four policemen in uniform and one in plain clothes, all wearing body armor that said “POLICE” in large yellow letters, burst into Jeff’s tiny, nearly empty living room, shoving their handguns in his face. His heart was in his mouth. He tried to find the words to tell him he was an attorney, and they were in the wrong place. But his lips wouldn’t move.
“Police! Hands up!” one or all of them bellowed, and he obeyed, as he stared down the muzzles of those five guns.
“Jeffery Matthew Ryder,” the one in plain clothes said, “I am Detective Charles Erwin, and I am arresting you for the murder of Professor Marian Pappas.”
This had to be bad dream, Jeff thought. I’ll wake up any minute now. “Murder?” his dry mouth finally allowed him to say. “But—”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the detective began to recite as Jeff felt the cold steel handcuffs close around his wrists. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right—”
“Damn it! I know my rights. I’m a lawyer! I didn’t kill Marian Pappas or anyone else for that matter.”
But the familiar litany continued. “You have the right to talk to a lawyer and to have him present with you while you are questioned. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements.”
“I didn’t kill Marian Pappas,” Jeff tried to speak more calmly this time, hoping they’d be willing to listen now that the Miranda formalities were out of the way. “She was alive the last time I saw her.”
“Which was when?”
“Uh, a week ago.” Jeff spoke with as much dignity as he could, standing before five armed officers while handcuffed in his skivvies.
“Right. When you went to her office and threatened her with a gun. And that was after last December when you went to her office and threatened her because she testified against you in State Bar Court,” Erwin sneered.
“I didn’t kill her.” “Then why was your car at her house last night at 2 a.m.? And why is the bullet the surgeon took out of her head in the ER going to match the ammunition in your gun?”
“I wasn’t anywhere near her house last night. And neither was my car or my gun. Blue Honda Civics are a dime a dozen.”
“Maybe. But not the ones with this license plate number and this dent in the back quarter-panel.” Detective Erwin pushed a photograph under his nose, and Jeff saw his car parked at a location he did not recognize.
He stared at it in disbelief. “That’s my license plate, but I didn’t drive my car there. And I haven’t the slighted idea where that picture was taken.”
“Of course you do. That’s 1659 Tangier Drive. That’s Marian Pappa’s house.”
“I’ve never been to her house. I don’t even know where Tangier Drive is.”
“Well, your car does. As this picture proves. Come on guys, let’s get this jerk downtown.”
“No, wait!” Jeff stiffened as they tried to move him through the gaping hole where his front door had been.
“We can add resisting arrest to the charges,” Detective Erwin said sarcastically.
But I have an alibi! Jeff had started to say. I was with someone last night. And then he realized that he had an alibi. But using it would destroy the woman he loved.
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