The Last Plea Bargain (41 page)

Regina paused for a long moment to keep her emotions under control. Her struggle brought my own emotions to the surface. Masterson had been like a second father to me, and I felt my eyes tearing up. I recalled the chest of my natural father, rising and falling as he took his last breaths. And I had that same feeling now, like I was losing a second father. I had watched Antoine Marshall's execution with this man, and now, if Regina Granger was successful, Bill Masterson would someday be on the other side of the glass.

I reached over, and Mace James took my hand. He had no sympathy for Masterson. He held Masterson responsible for Antoine Marshall's execution and for all the other deaths that had occurred in Milton County just to advance Masterson's political ambitions. “There's a special place in hell for men like that,” Mace James had said.

But now he squeezed my hand to comfort me.

“Bill Masterson was a friend and a mentor,” Regina Granger said. “We worked together on many cases—even risked our lives on a few. But nobody is above the law. These are capital crimes. And they deserve the ultimate penalty. When you get your copies of the indictment, you will see that we are asking for that.”

Regina closed her eyes for a moment, and hands shot up. The five reporters sounded like twenty, but Regina, true to her word, wasn't taking any questions. She set her jaw and walked away from the podium.

“God have mercy,” I said.

“I hope he gets the needle,” whispered Mace.

Acknowledgments

During my younger and more abrasive days as a lawyer, I once wrote that an opponent's legal brief was “a parade of sentences vainly in search of an idea.” I'm afraid that the same might be said of my stories without the help of the literary drum majors listed here.

I'll start with Lee Hough, who is both agent and friend, and who always gives great advice at the concept development stage. Thanks also to Michael Garnier, Mary Hartman, and my wife, Rhonda, who helped work on this story even before Tyndale did the heavy editing. I wouldn't even try to do this without you. On this book, I tapped the expertise of Andrew Hall, one of Georgia's finest criminal defense lawyers, who helped this Virginia attorney fill in the cavernous gaps in his understanding of Georgia criminal procedure. All of that is before the editing magicians at Tyndale take over.

Thank you, Karen Watson, for asking the tough and probing questions at the concept stage. (Have you ever considered law school?) As always, your insights (and encouragement) were invaluable. Thanks to Jeremy Taylor for bringing the story into sharper focus and the characters into another dimension. And thanks to Stephanie Broene, the third member of the Tyndale triumvirate, who provided reams of encouragement with just the right touch of constructive critique.

But that's not all. Sometimes, a book is inspired by real events, by people who are larger than life. That's the case here. And I need to thank them too.

Poison. The suspicious death of a spouse. The loss of a father. The pursuit of justice. These are the themes of
The Last Plea Bargain
. They did not come from thin air.

I am indebted to Ginger Somerville-Grant, Sara Somerville, and Alita Miller for allowing me to represent them in their nine-year quest to avenge their father's death. Your fight for justice inspired many of the themes I tried to capture in these pages. Thanks for never giving up. Sometimes, the good guys win.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

ROMANS
12:21

About the Author

Randy Singer is a critically acclaimed author and veteran trial attorney. He has penned eleven legal thrillers and was recently a finalist with John Grisham and Michael Connelly for the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction sponsored by the University of Alabama School of Law and the
ABA Journal
. Randy runs his own law practice and has been named to
Virginia Business
magazine's select list of “Legal Elite” litigation attorneys. In addition to his law practice and writing, Randy serves as a teaching pastor for Trinity Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He calls it his “Jekyll and Hyde thing”—part lawyer, part pastor. He also teaches classes in advocacy and civil litigation at Regent Law School and, through his church, is involved with ministry opportunities in India. He and his wife, Rhonda, live in Virginia Beach. They have two grown children. Visit his website at
www.randysinger.net
.