“So was Dr. Gary Lasch. He was a good administrator too. Lasch Hospital has a top-drawer reputation, and Remington Health Management isn’t like so many of the cockamamie HMOs that are going bankrupt and leaving patients and doctors high and dry.” Gus smiled briefly. “You knew Molly and you went to school with her, so that gives you some insight. Do you think she did it?”

“There’s no question that she did it,” Fran said promptly. “The evidence against her was overwhelming, and I’ve covered enough murder trials to understand that very unlikely people ruin their lives by losing control for that one split second. Still, unless Molly changed dramatically after the time I knew her, she’d be the last person in the world I would have said was likely to kill someone. But for that very reason, I can understand why she might have blocked it out.”

“That’s why this case is great for the program,” Gus said. “Get on it. When Molly Lasch gets out of Niantic Prison next week, I want you to be part of the reception committee welcoming her.”

2

A week later, the collar of her all-weather coat turned up to cover her neck, her hands shoved in her pockets, her hair covered by her favorite ski hat, Fran waited in the cluster of media people huddled at the gate of the prison on a raw March day. Her cameraman, Ed Ahearn, was beside her.

As usual, there was grumbling; today it was about the combination of the early hour and the weather-stinging sleet, driven by gusts of icy wind. Predictably there was also a rehashing of the case that five and a half years ago had made headlines across the country.

Fran already had taped several reports with the prison in the background. Earlier that morning she had done a live report, and as the station ran tape over her voice, she’d announced, “We are waiting outside the gate of Niantic Prison in upstate Connecticut, just a few miles from the Rhode Island border. Molly Carpenter Lasch will emerge shortly, after having spent five and a half years behind bars following her manslaughter plea in the death of her husband, Gary Lasch.”