ALMOST emerging criminal defense attorney Sam Young has always known he had a gift. Or a curse. He thinks of them as minor psychic abilities. When Sam his hired by an attractive young nun named Camille Paradisi, he agrees to help discover the identity of a serial killer in order to prevent Camille’s pastor MORTAL from being exposed for not reporting the man after a confession – thereby allowing another murder to occur. While Sam’s psychic abilities increase as he investigates the case and gets closer to Camille, he realizes that the enigmatic nun is not revealing the complete truth. Camille shares an old journal anonymously mailed to the church, which she believes may have been authored by the killer/ confessor. The journal, which begins in Argentina in the 1940’s, purports to tell the life story of a man with mind control and other special powers who claims to be a descendant of the fallen angels cast out of heaven by God. As Sam learns more about the murders, the journal author, and Camille, he begins to realize the so called “Rosslyn Ripper” case may have ancient implications beyond his imagination. christopher Leibig christopher Christopher Leibig is a novelist and criminal defense lawyer who lives and works in Alexandria, Virginia. His first two published books, Saving Saddam (2008), and Montanamo (2010) were published by Artnik Books in London. Saving Saddam was re-released in the United States in 2014 by Traveller’s Playground Press under the title Blackrabbit. Chris also has several published short stories – Secret Admirer (The Cynic on-line magazine 2004) Coldcocked (Skyline magazine 2004), Fly (The Cynic on-line magazine 2009), Intervention (Traveller’s Playground Press 2014), and Paradise City (Traveller’s Playground Press 2014). Chris has also published numerous articles on criminal defense and related topics – including in the Huffington Postand The Examiner – and appeared as a legal expert FICTION: Thrillers/Legal regularly since 2009 in print and television media – including Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Sports Illustrated. In recent years Leibig has regularly handled high profile criminal cases in the DC area and travelled abroad to speak to law schools. Since 2012, Leibig and his colleagues have lectured on criminal TM $15.95 TM defense throughout Virginia, and in Scotland, köehlerbooks köehlerbooks Ireland, Trinidad, The Bahamas, and Jamaica. TM köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM TM köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM Almost Mortal by Christopher Leibig © Copyright 2015 Christopher Leibig ISBN 978-1-63393-179-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photo- copy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the excep- tion of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the productsköehlerbooks of the author’s imaginationTM and are not to be construed as real. köehlerbooks TM Published by köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM TM kö210ehlerbooks 60th Street Virginia Beach, VA 23451 212-574-7939 www.koehlerbooks.com a legal thriller Christopher köehlerbooks TM Leibig köehlerbooks TM köehlerbooks köehlerbooks TM köehlerbooks TM VIRGINIA BEACH CAPE CHARLES DEDICATION This book is dedicated to Janis Elaine Leibig. You shall have no other gods before Me. EXODUS 20:3 (NKJV) PROLOGUE AUGUST 13, 2015, HAVANA, CUBA Other than the famed Zapruder film of the JFK assassination, it was probably the most viewed video clip of a true-life murder in world history. Rarely had a killing been perpetrated at a moment when its victim was already the focal point of dozens of state-of-the-art cameras and thousands of curious eyes. The perfection of the angle, the crispness of the color, the starkness with which a viewer could watch the transformation of a human body from a vibrant vessel to empty flesh had never before been achieved—at least not publicly. All the networks—local and national—got the footage. But it was the local ABC 7 News that scored the ultimate prize—the shot that actually captured the eyes going blank a fraction of a second before the body collapsed. More spellbinding than the quality of the film, though, would be its significance. It was the mystery that made people watch the clip again and again. In the days since its making, the lawyer, despite having been a close eyewitness to the event, had never watched the clip. Nor 6 Almost Mortal had he taken part in the international debate, fostered mostly by cable news and religious groups, about whether the victim could possibly have survived the brutal bullet wound. People had survived being shot in the head—but not like that. The lawyer gazed across the Plaza Vieja. Three elderly women, evenly spaced, walked slowly across the square through a foraging flock of pigeons. He had never met or seen any of the trio before, but he instinctively knew that all three were widows who had probably been friends since childhood. He could tell from their strides, their pace, and the gestures of the chubby one in the middle, who was likely telling a boring old story about her deceased husband again. The lawyer looked down at his tablet. His finger hovered over the link that would show him the video clip of the famous murder. He may as well watch it now. The clock in the corner of the screen showed it was two twenty-five. He sipped his coffee and took a long drag from his cigarette. He wondered from which direction his guest, or guests, would approach. If at all. In any other similar situation, he would instinctively know whether someone was running late for a meeting, was not going to show up at all, or whether the person he planned to meet even existed. But here, he knew none of the above for certain. He opened the folder in front of him and saw the neatly clipped sheaf of papers the old priest had given him. He would read until his guests arrived, or until he figured out where in his past he had seen that writing before. CHAPTER 1 “I JUST SCOOPED HER—just kind of scooped her.” As he spoke, Jonathon P. Scarfrowe swung his arm slowly, as if to underhand a softball. He stopped for a moment and focused intently down at his twitching middle finger, which darted out from his hand like a practiced tentacle. Scarfrowe’s pursed lips and excited eyes revealed that he was reliving the event he sought to describe. Deputy Public Defender Sam Young watched Scarfrowe closely. He always marveled at how some of his clients, like Scarfrowe, knew with such utter certainty who they were. They simply lacked the ability to feel self-conscious. Scarfrowe, short and round with a boyish face and red hair, blinked innocently back. The lockup deputy, a beefy sheriff’s department veteran named Plosky, leaned against the wall with his arms folded and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. The dank, cement-walled room between the Bennet County, Virginia courthouse cells and the courtroom could barely hold the small group, given Plosky’s gut. Scarfrowe’s gesture had revealed so much more than he likely knew. His lawyers had merely asked him to explain how 8 Almost Mortal he knew the surprise witness, whose testimony they were about to face on the last day of trial. Yet Scarfrowe’s dismissive gesture operated as a confession of sorts— perhaps not to the crime for which he was on trial, but to a way of life. Scarfrowe had served time for rape at age seventeen and aggravated sexual battery at twenty-five. And now, at age forty-seven, he was on trial for tackling and groping a woman on a bike path. A quick grope, really, but the victim had described in detail how Scarfrowe’s practiced fingers had found their way down the front of her pants in mere seconds. Scarfrowe’s problem, aside from his criminal record—which set him up for mandatory life in prison, if convicted—was that he had worn a black ski mask at the time and was immediately apprehended by an off-duty cop out for a jog. To make matters worse, eight other women in Bennet County had recently reported similar groping by a masked little pervert in the same vicinity. Once tackled by the cop, Scarfrowe had apologized profusely for attempting to grab the woman’s purse. That piece of obfuscation laid the groundwork for his defense—that he was guilty only of simple abduction, not abduction with intent to rape—which would count as a third violent sexual assault and guarantee a life sentence. Scarfrowe was one of those who learned his true nature early and stuck with it, despite the costs. “I didn’t make me this way,” he once said. Sadly for Scarfrowe, the prosecutor had just come up with a surprise witness—a detective who had interviewed a twenty- four-year-old Scarfrowe after a grope and run at a local mall back in the early 1990s. Scarfrowe had similarly claimed an interest in the purse on that occasion—a statement belied by the victim’s testimony that Scarfrowe had spent considerable energy jamming his hand into her crotch; thus, the emergency lockup conference. Sam shook his head, glanced at the deputy, and made eye contact with his co-counsel, Amelia Griffin, a new public defender.