Mittman, Stephanie (44 page)

She
pushed her way out the courtroom door, grateful that the arguments were over
for the day and she'd have time to regroup. Cabot had asked for no help on
Ash's case and offered her no pointers on Virginia's. Kathryn said she felt
like a messenger sent behind enemy lines wherever she went and whenever she
spoke to either of them.

Outside
the courtroom, the buzz of the crowd pressed against her until she couldn't
make out what anyone was saying. There were some words of praise, she thought,
from someone standing too close to her. Others called from farther back for her
to be banned from the courthouse along with her client.

"This
way," a man said, and grabbed at her just as an egg went sailing past her
ear. He yanked on her arm with authority. "I said come this way!"

"I
don't care what you said," Charlotte answered, trying to shake him off.
"Let go! I'm not—" A tomato hit the wall inches from her.

"Your
carriage is waiting out back," he said, turning so that she could get a
look at his face. Cabot's private investigator, and apparently he had no
patience for the likes of her. "Come on!"

"But
I wanted to—" she said, pointing to the courtroom in which her husband was
picking twelve men to decide whether Ash would ever hold her again. She doubted
that would be exactly the way Cabot might have described the point of the jury
selection. Doubted, but didn't rule it out entirely.

"He's
already been returned to his cell, Mrs. Whittier," the man said, sending a
chill down her spine. Was she so obvious that a stranger knew where her heart
was headed? Or did he just mean that court was over for the day? "And your
husband's waiting in the coach."

"Let
go of my arm," she said, yanking her elbow from his grasp. Something hard
thudded against her shoulder, catching the bone and sending an unpleasant
tingling down her arm. Yellow slime ran down her brown jacket in a slow rush
toward her skirts. If an egg was hard enough to hurt, and it was, why then did
it break so easily?

"Oh,
he's going to love that," the man said, rubbing against her chest with his
sleeve in an attempt to get rid of the evidence. He pushed her against the wall
and shielded her as several apples splattered and splintered around them, then
shoved her out the back door in front of him, nearly dragging her to the
carriage. Arthur helped her up and around Cabot, who pressed her to his far
side, ail but hiding her with his bulk.

Cabot
gave the man a quick nod while Arthur climbed in and shut the door behind him,
"Let's go!" he yelled up to the driver, and Charlotte was thrown back
against the seat as the horse took off like his tail was on fire.

When
they'd cleared the courthouse area and the businesses around them changed to
grander and grander estates, Charlotte began to breathe again. Allowing her
gaze to meet Cabot's, she found him staring at her with tired, sad eyes. Still,
when he sensed her studying him as well, he smiled softly.

"And
how was your day?" he asked, reaching into his breast pocket and taking a
quick dose of his least favorite bitters. "Things went well for you, too,
I trust?"

Jury
selection took two long days. Days in which Ash, like a dying man, saw his life
flashing before him. References were made to his penchant for wine, women, and
song, or more accurately Scotch, whores, and bird calls. His business pursuits
were bandied about; the fact that he had no real home was noted. While Cabot
fought to keep his prior run-ins with the law from the jury, Brent managed to
ask potential jurors enough questions about brawls and knives to more than
pique their interests and suspicions.

Another
full day was spent on what Cabot called opening arguments. Ash dubbed them
eulogies, and much preferred Cabot's to Brent's, though the man the district
attorney described was far more interesting (and an awful lot closer to Ash)
than the paragon of virtue (who read stories to his mother and mended wounded
animals) Cabot's client was portrayed to be.

The
meat of the trial started on Friday, with the prosecution's case. By lunch even
Ash was convinced he'd set two fires and killed four people, one of whom he
regularly had dinner with.

"I
know it looks bad," Cabot told him as they shared a lunch from home in a
small locked room in the courthouse. "But you are not to worry. The
advantage is ours."

Ash
played with the food on his plate, pushing it around without eating it.
"How do you figure?" he asked.

"Law
is a game, not unlike baseball or soccer. Just as in sport the right
combination has been worked out to give one team the advantage. In baseball the
home team has last licks. Just so, the defense has last licks in the law."

"It
seems to me I haven't even gotten to bat yet, and I'm already out of the game,"
Ash said.

"Not
necessarily," Cabot said. "It just seems that way because the
prosecution gets to go first and lay out its entire case. The jurors believe
most of what they are told and are ready to hang you." He paused, waved
his fork in the air as if to erase the words, and then continued.
"Metaphorically speaking, of course. Then we get to present our side of
the case. We refute all their claims and show the jurors how you couldn't
possibly have committed the crimes, how someone else could have, and they then
believe us. Well, the prosecution's shot its wad, so to speak, and can only
bring up issues they've already discussed. We get to rebut those, and then they
close first, leaving us to convince the jury in the end and win the case."
He dusted off his hands and tossed his napkin over his plate.

"And
all we need to hit is a six-run homer," Ash said. "Great. Too bad
that's impossible."

"There
are very few things I've found impossible," Cabot said. Both of them
stared at his inert legs.

"Can
you prove I didn't commit these crimes, that I didn't kill Selma, for God's
sake, and get me out of here so I can find who did?"

Cabot
sucked at the comers of his mustache. "Working on it," he said.

"Can
we offer them someone else? Greenbough? Some customer? You know Moss and
I—"

Cabot
nodded. "Charlotte's working on it. She's got Sam nailed to the wall, and
enough other innuendoes to confuse the jury even if we can't quite convince
them. She should wind up the last of the arguments on that damn Halton case
today, and she'll devote the weekend to it."

"Don't
put it all on her shoulders, Cab," he said. "If— hell—
when
I
go down, I don't want her feeling she helped dig the hole."

"Worried
about her feeling guilty?" Cabot asked. He was digging through papers in
his briefcase and didn't look at Ash.

"She
has nothing to feel guilty about," Ash said. He could still see the moon
shining on her skin as she lay waiting for him, her wide frightened eyes intent
on trusting him even while she'd bitten nervously at the corner of her lip.

"She'd
like to come to your trial when her case is over," Cabot said. He fished
out a small envelope and held it in his hand.

"No."

"I
can't bar her from the courthouse," Cabot said. He seemed genuinely sorry
that he could not. "I've even agreed to her taking the boy's
appeal...."

"You
think she won't win it?"

"It's
a risk I don't really want to take. If I didn't believe I could buy the father
off if we lose, I wouldn't even consider it."

Ash
felt his jaw fall. "You think you can buy Davis?"

"You'd
be amazed what you can buy if you have to," Cabot said. "And last
resorts are always a risky business."

"So
you think you can buy a kid," Ash said. His brother's moral code struck
him as very bizarre. After all the years of looking up to him, all the years of
comparing himself and falling short, Ash was finally beginning to see the true
Cabot Whittier. And the more he saw, the less he admired. And the less he
admired, the more he seemed to find sympathy for. Perhaps after all the years
of thinking otherwise, he was learning that his brother was simply a man.

"Would
you prefer Charlotte in your courtroom or down the hall?" he asked.
"I can't lock her in her room, Ashford."

"What
if she loses?"

"I'll
take care of it," Cabot said. "I've been taking care of her since her
grandmother died, and before that as well. And I'll keep taking care of
her."

"Promise
me this," Ash said softly, "—that won't change if we lose this
thing."

"Win
or lose," Cabot agreed with a nod, "nothing will change."

***

It
was in the judge's hands now, and while Charlotte wasn't sure she'd won, she
was sure she'd put forth the best argument that could have been made for the
case. By anyone. And that felt good.

Good,
too, was the fact that Moss Johnson was waiting for her at the back of the
courtroom, ready to escort her next door. If she couldn't help defend him, she
could at least show herself in Ash's corner. And there was a good chance that
their case would have broken for lunch and she would be able to at least see
Ash and thank him for the teacup. Tell him how much it meant to her in person rather
than settling for the little note she'd had to write so carefully, lest anyone
get hold of it.

"I
think you done real good," Moss said when she'd gathered up her belongings
and found him at the back of the room. "Real good."

There
was something about the way he said it, some underlying something that made it
sound like compensation. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"And
you is smart too," he said. "No question about it."

"What
is it, Moss?" she demanded. She didn't need compliments, she needed facts
to deal with, and overcome somehow.

"Mr.
Greenbough," Moss said, grimacing. "He done broke his leg."

Charlotte
shrugged. It was too bad he hadn't broken his head. And she knew Moss felt the
same way. So then... "When?" she asked, realizing the significance.

Moss
nodded with his whole body. "Week and a half ago. Hasn't been outta bed
since."

"So
I can prove he was cheating Ash blind, and it won't do us a bit of good.
There's no way he could have set the second fire. Is that what you're
saying?"

Moss
continued that same nodding of his body that she'd seen the men do at Selma's
shivah. It was as if he were already mourning for Ash. She put a hand on his
arm and steadied him.

"Then
we have to find someone else," she said firmly. "I know we're missing
something here, Moss. And it's so obvious that we just don't see it."

"Yes,
ma'am," Moss agreed, but without any conviction at all.

"We
just have to widen your list," she said, pulling a hankie from her skirt
pocket and dropping out the card she'd prevented Eli from seeing at the
hospital. The one she suspected was from Ewing Flannigan.

***

He
saw Moss Johnson slip into the courtroom out of the corner of his eye, trying
to hide Charlotte with his bulk.
Damn!
He'd begged her not to come. Told
Moss he was to take her directly home. He hated that he couldn't just get up
and go back there to where she sat and demand she leave. He hated that he had
to sit impassively at the big oak table and simply take notes on what Cabot
might miss.

She
was back there and it all but stopped his ability to breathe. The pencil in his
hand, which he had forgotten, broke in two and he stared down at it, surprised
to find how hard he had been clenching it.

"So
then you're saying that from the angle that the canister was thrown, it would
be your guess that the man who set the second fire was left-handed?" Brent
asked, hurrying with the question so that the jury would no doubt see the
broken pencil in Ash's left hand.

"Your
wife is here," he whispered to Cabot, putting down the pencil as
inconspicuously as he could.

"I
don't care if Lillie Langtry is here," Cabot responded. "You had to
be a lefty, didn't you?"

"Get
her out of here," he said, imagining her last memories of him tainted by
accounts of his illicit affairs.

"Don't
worry about it," Cabot said. "It's not likely she'll hear anything
that isn't true."

Ash
studied the man next to him as he busily took notes. Naturally it wouldn't
bother Cabot if Charlotte were to hear the worst. He reminded himself that this
was the man who had let him believe that he was responsible—at six, yet!—for
crippling his brother. This was a man who would offer a father money in
exchange for his son.

Slowly
he stood up and waited for the judge to take notice of him. In the meantime he
glanced back and looked quickly at Charlotte, enough for her to realize what he
was doing and yet leave everyone else in the dark as to why.

She
shook her head, that sweet little mouth opening in horror.

"Mr.
Whittier?" Judge Hammerman said. "Is there something...?"

"Yes,
Your Honor," he said, clearing his throat to give her a moment. "I'd
like to change—"