Chapter Eighteen
I arrived at the courthouse during the morning rush and looked up at the utilitarian hunk of gray concrete that punched a bleak hole in the sky. I remembered when the city built it, and how my father had grumbled about it.
“The old red courthouse was just fine. I can’t find my way around in that new place,” he’d said on the way into the kitchen, where Mom was cooking dinner. He’d tried to swipe a piece of chicken-fried steak. She’d swatted his hand and smiled.
She took us to see Dad testify in the new building once when Collin and I were in high school, but I don’t remember much of it. The earth rotated around me in those days. Going to court had irritated me, had interrupted my all-important social life. The courthouse seemed like a prison, with inmates allowed to roam free in its crowded halls. It must have been a big case, for her to pull us out of school. Collin always said that was the day he decided he would follow in Dad’s footsteps. As I walked into the building, I wished I could remember more about it.
Even more desperate souls roamed the halls today than on that first visit years ago. Their odors mixed into a smell at once indefinable and yet absolutely recognizable to me as court. Stress. I touched my purse-sized Lysol antibacterial spray and Clorox wipes for reassurance. I studied the blank faces streaming past me. How many people had passed through this building on their way to a life sentence? How many had walked out free? The building stood impervious to all the drama. Cold, distant, aloof.
I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, to the courtroom of Judge Hutchison, who would preside over our trial. I’d met him at a party once, and he had a reputation for being unpredictable. Hopefully he would be unpredictable in a way that was good for us. He had assigned us three days on his docket, and he dang well expected us to use that and nothing more. Three days of purgatory for me. It was a tight schedule, but I was glad for it.
This courtroom looked almost exactly like the one I remembered from my visit as a teenager. The monochrome room had wooden benches for the spectators, a paneled jury box, and a large area for wooden benches. Dad had sat in a paneled witness box to the left of the judge, just like the configuration in this courtroom. The décor was stark. No paintings hung on the walls. The two tacky pre-fab counsel tables loaded with high-tech equipment gave the courtroom an unintended flea-market ambience.
The only thing in there that looked really good was Nick. He was wearing a navy suit with a blue shirt—standard trial attire for men—and a navy tie with angular shapes in yellow, white, and black. It looked like a geometry quiz question. He’d tamed his unruly dark hair, but I knew it wouldn’t take long for it to reassert its independence.
Focus, you idiot, I told myself, and I pretended to review notes from my file.
Opposing counsel arrived and set up at their table. Since this was my first and hopefully last criminal trial, they were new faces to me, prosecutors for the state. The older prosecutor walked over and introduced himself, a young woman right behind him.
He leaned in and made sincere and meaningful eye contact. “Mack Duncan,” he said, putting my hand into a vise lock as he pumped it. I winced. He’d have to loosen his killer grip before he ran for public office. He handed me a business card with his free hand. How ambidextrous of him.
“Junie. Junie Timms,” second chair said, shaking my hand without inflicting violence.
I’d seen a lot of Macks in my day. He couldn’t hide his small-town Texas roots, nor did he try to. His accent would work well with the jury, as would his graying blond hair cut with military precision. Junie looked fresh out of law school. Her ginormous emerald-cut diamond engagement ring dominated both my first impression and all of her attention. The sucker shined like a disco ball, so it wasn’t surprising she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. I wondered how much longer until she turned in her resignation.
“Nice to meet you both,” I said.
“I knew your father, and I’m sorry for your loss. We worked together many times. He was a great man,” Mack told me.
My eyes burned. “Thank you very much,” I said.
Junie turned to Mack, confused. “Did I know him?” she asked.
His jaw bulged, but he answered her with no trace of irritation. “Chief of police for Dallas for ten years, Frank Connell.”
Junie’s jaw dropped. “Oh,” she said. She looked over at McMillan.
I straightened my posture.
“Honestly, I was surprised to see his daughter had taken this case,” Mack added. He paused to give me time to say something stupid or angry, but I just thought it instead. “Almost as surprised as I am that McMillan hasn’t taken a deal. The plea bargain offer stands. Five years for sexual assault. He could be out in less than two years, if he’s a good boy.”
I held up my hand to stop him. I had called Zane last night, and he gave me emphatic instructions on plea offers. “Mr. McMillan is unwilling to enter any plea bargain agreement that results in a felony on his record or jail time. Your offer to him includes both. Unless you’ve got something better, his response of no still stands as well.”
“He’s making a big mistake,” Junie piped in.
Now there was no mistaking the irritation on Mack’s face, but he reined it in, as before. “This offer is withdrawn, then. Any further plea discussions will start from a clean slate.”
“Understood. Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to resume preparation for voir dire.”
I lied. I wasn’t preparing for jury selection. I was trying not to throw up. I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I told myself, “You didn’t create this mess, you just have to get through it. Double fees. Focus on the double fees.”
When I returned, the bailiff was leading in the potential jurors. They soon overflowed the spectator benches. This was the type of case people try to get picked for. Normally, the excuses to get out of jury duty are numerous and weak. Everyone has sick kids and nonrefundable airfare on jury selection day. Ah, the power of celebrity.
Nick sat on one side of me, Emily on his far side. Zane sat on the other side of me. His large body lounged uncomfortably close. He was also dressed up for court, but, despite my instructions yesterday to tone it down, he had chosen a shiny black suit with fat white pinstripes, a white shirt starched to pop, and a sparkly red tie that looked like he’d dunked it in a vat of glitter glue. He had arrived with a black bowler perched over his shaved head. It now sat in front of him on the table, but only because I’d made him take it off. His black oxfords, size seventeen, were squared off at the toe box. Maybe this was his conservative outfit.
No matter what he wore, the result would have been the same. Every eye in the room locked onto the effervescent grin on Zane’s face. He just didn’t get it. I’d already had to stop him from signing autographs for the court staff.
Nick whispered in my ear, his breath rustling my hair, “He’s not impressing the juror candidates. Can you do anything?”
I resisted the urge to lean into Nick’s breath. Instead, I passed Zane a note: “No smiling. Look serious.”
He flashed the grin at me, crumpled my note in a ball, and did a pretend jump shot from his seat to deposit it in the trash can at the end of the row of counsel tables. He raised his arms triumphantly and mouthed, “Three pointer.”
Lord help me not kill this man before the jury reaches a verdict.
Judge Hutchison entered the courtroom, and we all rose until the bailiff asked us to take our seats. The judge preferred things to move crisply, and within minutes he had delivered his opening speech to the jury pool. Voir dire had begun.
Once again, Nick and I had to lean close to speak. I felt my breath mix with his. Heaven. “Strike number four. I don’t like the way he’s looking at Zane,” Nick said.
“I think we should keep number eleven. He sounds like he has an open mind,” I said.
Nick was as professional as always, sharp and on top of his game, but one thing was markedly different from the Burnside trial. He was dis
tant. He might be sitting next to me, but he stayed ten million miles apart in all the ways that counted. His physical nearness was torturing me, intoxicating me. I wanted it to end, I wanted it to last forever. The “last forever” part won out, and I worked as slowly as I dared, debating issues with him far longer than necessary. I couldn’t stop myself. It hurt so good.
As we neared the end of voir dire, I tried to think of excuses to get him to stay and help with the trial. But I couldn’t. I had Emily, and he wasn’t a paralegal. I knew it, and he knew it. My stomach ached. I barely even registered when we got the jury we wanted. Yay us. Woo hoo. Nick would leave now.
The judge dismissed us all for lunch. “Do you want to grab a bite with us before you take off, Nick?” I asked.
“No, I’ve got to get going,” he said. He was packing his notepad and pen into his briefcase as he spoke, and he didn’t meet my gaze. My hopeful, pleading gaze. My limpid, longing gaze. I had put myself together that morning, too, hoping to impress him. A classic black Worth pant suit that Emily told me made my butt look good. Black slingbacks instead of traditional pumps. My long wavy hair in a loose French twist with the perfect number of tendrils escaping around my face. All for naught.
He stood up and walked away.
It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? To get up and walk away? Innocuous, impersonal. And so final. I was nothing to him. Nothing more than a lawyer at the firm that paid him. And he was so close to everything to me.
“Honey, are you all right?” Emily asked. She put her hand on my forearm. “You’re pale as a bedsheet.”
“Migraine,” I lied.
“I’ll get your Immitrex and the emergency bag of Lay’s,” she said, leaning over to dig in my briefcase for pills and potato chips. Her bangs knocked the edge of the table as she bent over, but her head missed it by two inches.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Thank you for letting me lie to you and pretending you believe me.
The afternoon might have gone fine except that the post-Nick migraine I’d lied to Emily about slammed into me like an eighteen-wheeler for real, right when we started opening statements. Unfortunately, my migraine drug makes me into a drooling zombie with no control of my lips. Not good when you’re making your big impression on the twelve people who will decide your client’s fate. So I held off from taking my big white pill as long as I could, only swallowing it toward the end of Mack’s predictable yet well-delivered opening statement. I took my turn after him, fighting not to let the jury see my pain, willing my tense shar-pei face to smooth out into a golden retriever calm. I had rehearsed my opening statement late into the previous night, so I was able to deliver it from memory, even if I couldn’t dial up as much passion and conviction as I’d hoped. When the deadening side effects of my meds hit with full force about the time I finished speaking, I slumped back into my seat. My heavy head felt like it pulled my body into a sideways list.
Luckily, the state put on its case first. All I had to do was lodge the right objections and cross-examine the witness. Two more hours and the judge would send us home. I could do this.
Mack first called to the stand the officer who had responded to dispatch after Tabitha’s call to 911. I could barely follow the questioning through my brain fog, but thankfully Emily was no stranger to the impact of my Immitrex. Whenever Mack did something particularly offensive to the rules of evidence, she knocked her knee into mine and whispered the appropriate objection under her breath, sending me leaping to my feet and slurring, “Hearsay. I object, Your Honor.” Judge Hutchison cocked a bushy eyebrow the first time this happened, but he didn’t remark on my odd behavior. Still, I didn’t win many objections. Emily and I continued our Abbott and Costello act through the rest of the afternoon and the state’s witnesses.
As soon as the judge dismissed us for the day, I made my goodbyes and got the hell out of there. I didn’t want to imagine what the two prosecutors were thinking about me. I was too sick to care and too sick to drive. I took a taxi home and left my car parked in the downtown garage.
At my condo, I managed to stay upright long enough to prepare for the next day, then I took another migraine pill and flopped onto my bed, hoping to sleep it off. No such luck. The pain kept me awake. If I didn’t take my meds early enough in the migraine cycle, then nothing could stop the train. And the train was here, blowing its whistle so close to my head that my eardrums collapsed inward and my brain was threatening to explode.
Finally, about two a.m., the migraine broke and I fell asleep. Almost as soon as I’d drifted off, I jerked awake with the after-image of the young black woman from Annalise seared into my cerebral cortex, beckoning me from the front door of the house, standing between my parents. Shit.
“Leave me alone. Torture the jerk that bought the house out from under me.”
I stared at the ceiling until I dozed again. It felt like only moments until I jerked awake a second time, now with visions of Nick taking over my dreams. But it wasn’t just any dream. These were my spontaneous combustion dreams. The kind that are great if you’re a teenage boy, but aren’t so great if you’re a thirty-five-year-old woman rejected by the object of your desire. Over and over, I woke up sweating and thrashing, orgasms ripping through me.
“Stop it,” I cried. I turned on the lights. I leaned against the headboard.
At six thirty, my alarm woke me. I was still sitting upright in bed, and I was a wreck, a literal freakin’ sleep-deprived wreck. I forced myself into an icy-cold shower and let the needles of water pierce my consciousness. I had a criminal defendant counting on me, never mind that he was an asshole that I couldn’t stand and who I suspected was guilty of something horrible, maybe even the rape in question. I had no backup, there was no second chair attorney waiting in the wings. I had to get into a taxi, wobble into that courthouse, and zealously represent him. Period.
I needed a power outfit. I jumped out of the water and into my black Salvatore Ferragamo pumps. I zipped up a black Ellen Tahiri dress and topped it with a white jacket, conservatively mirroring Zane’s obnoxious look from yesterday. I ran from my lobby to the waiting taxi I had scheduled the night before, and we sped to the courthouse.
I could do this. I had to do this.
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