I 've Heard That Song Before

76

Barbara Krause and Tom Moran had stayed in the office long after the rest of the prosecutor’s staff had said good night and scurried away for the weekend. After Barbara received the phone call, she told Moran to get out the Susan Althorp file so that they could review the statements Ambassador Althorp had made at the time of his daughter’s disappearance.

The ambassador had phoned Barbara, asked for the appointment, and said it was necessary to make it that late because his lawyer would be accompanying him.

“We always considered it possible that he was the one who did it,” Moran said, “although it seemed only remotely possible. But now that his wife is dead, maybe he needs to come clean. Otherwise, why would he bother to bring a lawyer with him?”

Promptly at eight o’clock, Althorp and his lawyer were escorted into the prosecutor’s office. Krause’s first impression of Althorp was that he looked sick. The ruddy complexion she had remembered when she last saw him was now pasty, and his face had become jowly.

He looks like a guy who just suffered a blow to the solar plexus, she thought.

“My wife has been buried,” Ambassador Althorp began abruptly. “I cannot protect her any longer. After the funeral, I told my sons something that I have kept secret for twenty-two years. In turn, one of them then told me something that Susan had confided to him the Christmas before her death, and this new information changes everything. I believe that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice, and I share responsibility for it.”

Krause and Moran stared at him in stunned silence.

“Ambassador Althorp wishes to make a statement,” his lawyer said. “Are you prepared to take it?”