Title: Trust Me
Series: Lies and Misdirection Book Four
Author: K.J. McGillick
Genre: psycho-legal thriller
Release Date: February 19, 2019
Sex. Power. Murder.
Dr. Gabriel Blackwell and his wife Sandra Blake have it all. He’s a brilliant thoracic surgeon. She’s a high-powered attorney with family money. Their lives are as loving as they are glamorous.
Or are they?
When a nurse Dr. Blackwell works with is brutally murdered, the questions fly. Who would want to kill this woman and why? When an autopsy reveals the woman was pregnant, all signs point to Dr. Blackwell. Just what was her relationship with him?
Whispers about a scandalous sex club surface. How many other lovers are there? Are any of them safe? How far would he go to protect his reputation?
Tragedy strikes again as Sandra Blake is found dead floating in their pool. Dr. Blackwell now finds himself on trial for two murders. Facing life in prison, Dr. Blackwell will grasp at any straw to preserve his freedom.
Any straw.
Is anyone innocent? Is anyone safe?
Trust Me is a fast-paced psycho-legal thriller that can be read as a standalone, or as the fourth installment of the Lies and Misdirection series.
Dalia handed me the news articles of the husband and the wife which she had retrieved from the printer.
I studied the reports with fascination. Something about the husband's posture struck me as arrogant and cocky, and the wife's as a bit self-conscious. He appeared to be about forty, and she looked older, around fifty. That was just a guess. The man had a face that Leonardo DaVinci would call symmetrical and balanced, clearly someone who enjoyed being captured by the photographer. I would label him not only well built, a man who knew his way around a gym, but he also had an exotic mystery about him. I wanted to know more about this man.
“Why him? I mean, why question him?” I asked them.
“From the few discrete inquiries we made, we found Dr. Blackwell has a reputation as a serial philanderer. He's been in and out of trouble with the hospital, and until this point, they have kept things under wraps,” Dalia responded.
“What sort of trouble?”
Was I a bad person because I wanted juicy details?
Dalia appeared to be crafting a thoughtful response and Mary jumped in.
“Two problems this year alone,” Mary interjected leaning forward in her chair. “The first happened in March when the hospital administration discovered him having sex with a nurse at night in the O.R. suite. Neither knew the hospital had recently placed cameras there because of a theft problem. In reviewing the tapes, the administrator discovered them using the O.R. table for their liaisons. Moreover, it was happening with such frequency that the chief of surgery had to address the issue. To make the problem disappear, Dr. Blackwell offered the hospital a twenty-thousand-dollar donation; the nurse wasn't so fortunate. The director of nursing disciplined the nurse for leaving her station, and then the hospital administrator fired her for cause. Somebody leaked the tape, and it found its way into circulation. Not onto the internet or YouTube, but it's public none the less.”
Well, that's awkward.
“And the other problem?”
As if that wasn't enough.
“An eighteen-year-old granddaughter of one of his patients accused him of sexually harassing her which escalated to stalking,” Mary added. Her tone was judgmental, and I suppose with good cause.
“Dr. Blackwell describes himself as a sex addict that has sought treatment. However, it appears he claims this only in response to problems arising from litigation and when a discrete monetary offer couldn’t settle the issue. Two of his office personnel left under a cloud of having an affair with him, and an office manager from another practice made it public they were carrying on as well,” Dalia interjected.
Judgmental. That's what I was, judgmental. Not only did I judge the doctor, but also the lawyer wife who put up with this aberrant behavior. I realized that thought would have to be compartmentalized.
“So how can I help?” I asked.
“He is being brought in for the second round of questioning by the police tomorrow. I scheduled us to meet with him later this morning to talk to him and decide if we want to take the case,” Dalia said. “I'd like you to sit in on the interview and Mary will give you her file to review so you can get up to speed. It's an ugly case, and it certainly will be high profile if the police make him a target. Take a look at the incident report,” she said.
Mary moved a few papers on Dalia's desk and retrieved what looked like a preliminary police report and handed it to me. I skimmed it for the vital information, and my stomach turned.
The police found a young woman, thought to be in her middle twenties beaten and left for dead in her car. Her face was crushed by some object that displaced her nose to the right, knocked out her front teeth and she also sustained a gaping wound across her forehead. Her roommate reported her missing, and forty-eight hours after the last shift, the police found her in an abandoned lot. The victim was dressed in a nurse's uniform with a name pin identifying her as the missing woman. The cause of death appeared to be blunt force trauma. Her pocketbook and telephone were missing, and from the blood spatter pattern, the phone and purse might have been covered with the victim's blood and possibly the assailants. The police hadn’t determined yet if there was a sexual assault.
Kathleen McGillick is a fiction writer in the Mystery Thriller Suspense genre. She was born in Manhattan and lived in Florida while she attended the University of Miami School of Nursing. After twenty years of teaching nursing in New York, she headed south leaving the snow behind. She has lived in Georgia over thirty-five years and is a practicing attorney in Cherokee County.
Her passions are international travel and art. And much like a CIA agent she has a "GO" bag packed to leave for a trip whenever possible. It's not a reach to realize her stories are culled from her travel adventures and there are tons of adventures to share. Her favorite place outside the US is the UK but her love of art was born at the Louvre requiring return pilgrimages to rejuvenate her soul. You can follow her travels at travelingesquire.smugmug.com/
A grandmother of two and lover of her cats she enjoys writing her books much like Lee Child, by the seat of her pants. Her characters are flawed, her plots twist and turn and the endings you never see coming.
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