Tell Me No Secrets (4 page)

“Now, I don’t claim to be an authority on men,” Jess stated, and heard her inner voice laugh, “but I have a very hard time accepting that any man who has to hold a knife to a woman’s jugular honestly believes she’s consenting to intercourse.” Jess paused, choosing her next words very carefully. “I suggest to you that, even in today’s supposedly enlightened times, the double standard looms very large in Cook County. Large enough for the defense to try to convince you that the fact Erica Barnowski wasn’t wearing
panties that night is somehow more damning than the fact Douglas Phillips held a knife to her throat.”

Jess’s eyes traveled slowly down the double row of jurors and two alternates, all of whom wore a red adhesive strip with white letters that said
JUROR
. “Douglas Phillips claims he thought Erica Barnowski was consenting to sex,” she stated. “Well, isn’t it time we stopped looking at rape from the rapist’s point of view? Isn’t it time we stopped accepting what men are
thinking
, and started listening to what women are
saying?
Consent is not a unilateral concept, Ladies and Gentlemen. It cuts both ways, requires agreement from both parties. What happened between Erica Barnowski and Douglas Phillips on the night of May thirteenth was decidedly
not
an act of consensual sex.

“Erica Barnowski might be guilty of an error in judgment,” Jess said simply in conclusion. “Douglas Phillips is guilty of rape.”

She returned to her seat, gently patted Erica Barnowski’s surprisingly warm hands. The young woman thanked her with a hint of a smile. “Well done,” Neil Strayhorn whispered. No such acknowledgments were forthcoming from the defense table, where Douglas Phillips and his lawyer, Rosemary Michaud, stared resolutely ahead.

Rosemary Michaud was five years older than Jess but looked at least twice that. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a severe bun, and if she wore any makeup, it had been applied so subtly as to be invisible. Jess had always thought she resembled the stereotype of a maiden aunt, although this maiden aunt had been married three times and was rumored to be having an affair with a senior official in the police department. Still, in law, as in life, what was important
wasn’t the way things actually were, but the way they were
perceived
to be. Image, as the ads stated, was everything. And Rosemary Michaud looked like the kind of woman who would never defend a man if she truly believed him to be guilty of so vile an act as rape, or aggravated criminal sexual assault, as the state was now calling it. In her conservative blue suit and unadorned face, Rosemary Michaud looked like the very idea of defending such a man would offend her to the bone. Douglas Phillips had been smart to hire her.

Rosemary Michaud’s motives in accepting Douglas Phillips for a client were harder to fathom, although Jess well understood that it was not the lawyer’s job to determine guilt or innocence. That was what the jury system was all about. How many times had she heard argued, had
herself
argued, that if lawyers started acting as judges and jurors, the entire system of justice would fall apart? The presumption of innocence, after all; everyone was entitled to the best possible defense.

Judge Earl Harris cleared his throat, signaling he was about to deliver his instructions to the jury. Judge Harris was a handsome man in his late sixties, his light black skin framed by a close-cropped halo of curly gray hair. There was a genuine kindness to his face, a softness to his dark eyes, that underlined his deep commitment to justice. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” he began, managing somehow to make even these words sound fresh, “I want to thank you for the attention and respect you have shown this courtroom over the past several days. Cases like this one are never easy. Emotions run very high. But your duty as jurors is to keep your emotions out of the jury room, and concentrate on the facts.”

Jess, herself, concentrated less on the message being delivered than on how it was being received, her focus returning to the members of the jury, all of whom were leaning forward in their brown leather swivel chairs, listening attentively.

Which side’s vision of the truth were they most likely to adopt as their own? she wondered, aware that juries were notoriously difficult to read, their verdicts almost impossible to predict. When she first came to work at the state’s attorney’s office four years ago, she’d been surprised to discover how wrong she could be, and how often.

The woman juror with the intelligent eyes coughed into the palm of her hand. Jess knew that women jurors in a rape trial were often harder to win over than their male counterparts. Something to do with denial, she supposed. If they could convince themselves that what had happened was somehow the victim’s fault, then they could assure themselves that they would never meet a similar fate. After all,
they
would never be so careless as to walk alone after dark, accept a ride with a casual acquaintance, pick up a man in a bar,
not wear any panties
. No, they were much too smart for that. They were too aware of the dangers. They would never be raped. They would simply never put themselves in so vulnerable a position.

The woman juror became aware of Jess’s scrutiny and twisted self-consciously in her seat. She drew her shoulders back and lifted herself just slightly out of her chair before settling in comfortably again, her eyes riveted on the judge’s mouth. In profile, the woman seemed more formidable, her nose sharper, the shape of her face more convex. There was a familiarity about her that Jess hadn’t noticed
before: the way she occasionally tapped her lips with her finger; the way her neck arched forward on certain key phrases; the slant of her forehead; the thinness of her eyebrows. She reminded Jess of someone, Jess realized, drawing in an audible intake of air, trying to block out the thoughts that were taking shape in her mind, trying to banish the picture that was quickly developing. No, she wouldn’t do this, Jess thought, scanning the courtroom, a dreaded tingling creeping in her arms and legs. She fought the urge to flee.

Calm down, she castigated herself silently, feeling her breathing constrict, her hands grow clammy, her underarms become moist. Why now? she wondered, fighting the growing panic, trying to will herself back to normalcy. Why was this happening now?

She forced her eyes back to the woman juror, who was leaning forward in her chair. As if aware of Jess’s renewed interest and determined not to be intimidated by it, the woman turned to look her squarely in the eye.

Jess caught the woman’s gaze with her own, held it suspended for an instant, then closed her eyes with relief. What had she been thinking of? she wondered, feeling the muscles in her back start to uncramp. What could have possibly triggered such an association? The woman looked like no one she knew, no one she had ever known. Certainly nothing at all like the woman she had fleetingly imagined her to be, Jess thought, feeling foolish and a bit ashamed.

No, nothing remotely like her mother at all.

Jess lowered her head so that her chin almost disappeared into the pink collar of her cotton blouse. It had been eight years since her mother disappeared. Eight years since
her mother had left the house to keep a scheduled doctor’s appointment and was never seen again. Eight years since the police gave up searching for her and declared her the probable victim of foul play.

In the first few days, months, even years after her mother disappeared, Jess had often thought she’d seen her mother’s face in a crowd. It used to happen all the time: She’d be grocery shopping and her mother would be pushing an overflowing cart down the next aisle; she’d be at a baseball game when she’d hear her mother’s distinctive voice cheering for the Cubs from her seat on the other side of Wrigley Field. Her mother was the woman behind the newspaper at the back of the bus, the woman in the front seat of the taxi going the other way, the woman struggling to catch up to her dog as they ran along the waterfront.

As the years progressed, the sightings had diminished in frequency. Still, for a long while, Jess had been the victim of nightmares and panic attacks, attacks that struck whenever, wherever, attacks so virulent they robbed her of all feeling in her limbs, all strength in her muscles. They would start with a mild tingling sensation in her arms and legs and develop into virtual paralysis as waves of nausea swept over her. They would end—sometimes in minutes, sometimes after hours—with her sitting powerless, overwhelmed, defeated, her body bathed in sweat.

Gradually, painfully, like someone learning to walk again after a stroke, Jess had regained her equilibrium, her confidence, her self-esteem. She had stopped expecting her mother to come walking through the front door, stopped jumping every time the phone rang, expecting the voice on
the other end to be hers. The nightmares had stopped. The panic attacks had ceased. Jess had promised herself that she would never be that vulnerable, that powerless, again.

And now the familiar tingle had returned to her arms and legs.

Why now? Why today?

She knew why.

Rick Ferguson.

Jess watched him push through the doors of her memory, his cruel grin surrounding her like a noose around her neck. “It’s not such a great idea to get on my bad side,” she heard him say, his voice tight, his hands forming fists at his sides. “People who annoy me have a way of … disappearing.”

Disappearing.

Like her mother.

Jess tried to refocus, concentrate all her attention on what Judge Earl Harris was saying. But Rick Ferguson kept positioning himself directly in front of the prosecutor’s table, his brown eyes daring her to provoke him into action.

What was it about her and men with brown eyes? Jess wondered, a collage of brown-eyed images filling her brain: Rick Ferguson, Greg Oliver, her father, even her ex-husband.

The image of her ex-husband quickly relegated the others to the back corners of her mind. So typical of Don, she thought, to be so dominant, so overpowering, even when he wasn’t there. Eleven years her senior, Don had been her mentor, her lover, her protector, her friend.
He won’t give you room to grow
, her mother had cautioned when Jess first announced her intention to marry the brash bulldozer of a man who’d been her first-year tutorial instructor.
Give yourself a chance
, she’d begged.
What’s the rush?
But, like any
rebellious daughter, the more her mother objected, the more determined Jess became, until her mother’s opposition was the strongest bond between Jess and Don. They married soon after she disappeared.

Don immediately took charge. During their four years together, it was Don who picked the places they went, selected the apartment they lived in and the furniture they bought, decided who they saw, what they did, even what food she ate, what clothes she wore.

Perhaps it had been her fault. Perhaps that was what she’d wanted, needed, even begged for in the years immediately following her mother’s disappearance: the chance not to have to make any major decisions, to be taken care of, looked after, catered to. The chance to disappear herself, inside someone else.

In the beginning, Jess had made no objections to Don running her life. Didn’t he know what was best for her? Didn’t he have her best interests at heart? Wasn’t he always there to wipe away her tears, nurse her through each crippling panic attack? How could she survive without him?

But increasingly, perhaps even unwittingly, Jess had struggled to reassert herself, picking fights, wearing colors she knew he despised, filling up on junk food before they were to go out to his favorite restaurant, refusing to see his friends, applying for a job at the state’s attorney’s office instead of joining Don’s firm, ultimately moving out.

Now she lived on the top floor of a three-story brownstone in an old part of the city, instead of in the glassed-in penthouse of a downtown high rise, and she ordered pizza instead of room service, and her closest friend, outside of her sister, was a bright yellow canary named Fred. And if she was
no longer the carefree spirit she’d been before her mother vanished, at least she was no longer the invalid she’d allowed herself to become during much of her marriage to Don.

“You are here to see that justice is done,” Judge Harris was concluding. “It is only by your act of being fair and impartial, of refusing to be swayed by either sympathy for the victim or the accused, but by deciding the case strictly on facts, that you will turn this dark, dank, dreary building into a true, shining temple of justice.”

Jess had heard Judge Harris deliver this speech many times in the past, and it never failed to move her. She watched its effect on the jury. They filed out of the courtroom as if being guided by a shining star.

Erica Barnowski said nothing as the courtroom emptied out. Only after the defendant and his lawyer had left the room did she stand up and nod toward Jess. Neil Strayhorn explained that she would be contacted when the jury returned with a verdict, that it could be hours or possibly days, that she should keep herself available.

“I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I hear anything,” Jess said instead of good-bye, watching the younger woman walk briskly down the hall toward the elevators. Unconsciously, her eyes drifted toward Erica Barnowski’s full hips. (“I don’t see a panty line,” she heard Greg Oliver repeat.) Roughly, she snapped her head back, then shook it, as if trying to clear her mind of all such unpleasant musings. “You did a great job,” Jess told her second chair. “You were clear; you were focused; you gave the jurors all the facts they needed to take with them into the jury room. Now, go get your cold some chicken soup,” she continued before Neil could reply. “I think I’ll grab some of that fresh October air.”

Jess opted for the stairs over the elevator, despite the seven flights. She could use the exercise. Maybe she’d take a long walk, buy those winter boots she needed. Maybe she’d even treat herself to a new pair of shoes.

Maybe she’d just grab a hot dog from the vendor at the curb, then go back upstairs to her office to wait out the verdict and start working on her next case, she decided, walking across the granite floor of the foyer.