Tell No Lies (48 page)

Jack's voice broke with the last sentence and he collapsed back against his chair. Judge Lehman had given up on him and was now telling the bailiff to remove the jury from the courtroom. He called a recess and ordered everyone out into the hall. Jack knew he'd caused a quiet chaos to erupt, but it was all outside the little boxing ring he'd created in his head for himself and Sanders. The guard came around to the witness box and grabbed Jack's arm just above his elbow.

"I'm done." Jack jerked his arm away.

"Let it go, they're almost gone," he heard the judge say, and the guard stepped back.

The jury had been taken out quickly. For the first time, Jack let his eyes fall on the audience as they made their stunned way into the halls. They departed in relative silence, their voices low and respectful. Only a few were brave enough to turn around and steal a glance at him, to consider one last time if what they'd just witnessed was real.

And then he saw her. Standing in the corner next to the last window in the row, bringing up the rear of the spectators filing out from that side of the room. Her body was turned to the side, facing the crowd, but her head faced to the front; she'd been watching him. Mark was next to her, his arm around her, trying to lead her out. She'd dressed for work; she'd probably been at the university earlier, he guessed. She wore straight black trousers and a brown turtleneck. She'd obviously taken care not to stand out, so unusual for her.

In the instant they made eye contact, he lost his breath. He hadn't expected her to be there; indeed, he'd been certain she would stay away, wouldn't subject herself to listening to him rehash a night spent with another woman.

But there she was. Her hair had grown slightly since he'd last seen her; it was now just below chin length, one side tucked behind her ear, and her big, sad eyes pierced him, but the anger they'd radiated since she'd learned of his betrayal was gone. He searched to see if the anger had been replaced by forgiveness, but couldn't tell. He saw something new and struggled to identify it.

"Ma'am, you'll have to leave the courtroom during the recess." She started at the voice of the bailiff next to her, shooing them along. The shuffling crowd in front of her just moments before was now fifteen feet ahead, passing through the doorway. Neither she nor Jack had noticed. She nodded politely to the bailiff and made her way to the door with one last look in his direction.

Then, in an instant, he realized.  He slumped into his chair.

It was pity. That's what he'd seen in her eyes. Pity.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CLAIRE AND MARK were the last ones out of the courtroom. As soon as the bailiff closed the doors behind them, Sanders began screaming.

"I demand a mistrial, Your Honor!" he yelled as he paced just in front of the judge's bench. "What the hell just happened in here?"

Judge Lehman had had it with outbursts; he seemed to have even less patience with this one, since he probably suspected it was all for show. "Why don't you relax and go back to your seat, Mr. Sanders, and we'll see if we can figure it out."

Jeff headed back to the prosecution table before being told to, but Sanders kept on.

"First he starts spewing information that we haven't been told about, and then he has the audacity to make eyes at one of the jurors before he goes into a little monologue about his love for his wife! Not to mention this comes after his testimony about his tryst with the other one. This is simply unbelievable! It's like he's some fucking Lothario!"

"Mr. Sanders! You can watch your language in my courtroom. We might be at recess, but I can still hold you in contempt. Sit down!"

"Me? What about him?" Sanders pointed to Jack. "He's the one who needs to be held in contempt."

"For the last time—sit down."

He finally did, leaning over to Alex and quietly discussing his outrage with him.

The judge pushed his chair away from the bench and wheeled around to face Jack.

"Would you like to explain to us what that was all about?"

"He asked me a question. I answered it." Jack looked out into the empty gallery.

"I'll give you another chance, since I like you. Would you like to explain what that was about?"

Jack wondered if Claire was still in the courthouse.

"Jack?"

"I'm sorry, Your Honor," he said, looking up at the judge. "I don't have an explanation. I'm not trying to be smart, but I guess I think it was pretty self-explanatory."

"It might have been self-explanatory," the judge said, "but it was wholly improper, and you of all people know that. I expect better from you."

"I apologize, Your Honor."

He wondered if she would return when they let everyone back in. Maybe she'd seen enough.

"Did you have an improper communication with a juror?"

"No."

"What is Mr. Sanders referring to, then?"

"I looked at the jurors and one of them smiled at me. That's all."

The judge turned to Sanders. "Mr. Sanders, is that accurate?"

"He smiled back at her."

The judge grunted in exasperation and shook his head. "Is that it?"

Sanders stared at Jack; Jack sensed his frustration. "Yes, that's it."

"Well, here's what I'm going to do. Mr. Sanders, if you think you have cause for a mistrial because of whatever he said or because he smiled at a juror" —the judge rolled his eyes— "then you can submit any motions you'd like after the trial is over, if it's necessary. But frankly, I don't think anything he said tainted the jury beyond repair, so I'm not going to stop the trial at this point and make the State start all over with a new jury. I—"

"He called my client a murderer, Your Honor," Sanders interrupted.

"Well, that's what the case is about, so I don't think the word is too shocking for them."

"Judge," Sanders' voice rose, "what about all that stuff about Mr. Turner stopping by Ms. Dodson's house on the night of the murder?"

"What about it? He's
your
client. You had full access to that information." The judge paused for a moment. "You'll have the opportunity to question him about it." He turned to Jack. "Jack, would you like to take a few minutes before we get started again?"
 

"Yes. Thank you."

Judge Lehman nodded his permission. Jack stepped down from the witness box and strode purposely to the rear doors. He avoided looking at Alex; he'd already exerted the little bit of power he'd had left.

"Mr. Hilliard," the judge called to him from the bench, just as Jack was about to leave the courtroom, "you're still under oath."
 

"Yes, Judge," he acknowledged, and braced himself for the crowd outside as he pushed through the doors.

The noise of gossip dimmed as Jack stepped into the wide, open hall. Bodies stepped aside and eyes fell to the floor when he cut a path toward the bathrooms, as if everyone thought he carried some highly contagious disease. He scanned the small groups of people milling about to see if Claire was among them. He saw Mark and Earl standing together at the end of the hall; she wasn't there. They began to approach, but he shook his head to send them away. When he didn't see Claire anywhere, he walked down the hall near the elevators, face forward and pretending not to hear the murmurs. He passed through a door into the long corridor he knew led to the judges' chambers and to bathrooms more private than the ones in the front hall.

And that's where he saw the redheaded juror, the one who had smiled at him and caused Sanders to lose it. Her face lit up when he approached and she opened her mouth to speak. He raised his hand to stop her.

"I can't talk to you, ma'am. It could be cause for mistrial." He surprised himself by laughing a bit, thinking of Sanders' ridiculous outburst. Even as he attempted protest, he knew he was taking it too lightly. Very uncharacteristic of him. "On top of all the other sins I've testified to in there, I don't need to add tampering with the jury."

She laughed, too. He reached down to open the door to the men's room, but it was locked.

"My fellow jurors," she said, nodding at the door to the ladies' room. "I'm waiting, too."

He looked down at his feet. He knew he should retreat to the bathroom outside in the main hall and deal with the stares. If the bailiff caught him standing with her, there'd be hell to pay. He turned to leave.
 

"Your remorse is evident, even if you don't realize it, and she saw it, too. If you meant what you said in there, give her the time she needs to forgive you."

She spoke softly, almost in a whisper, but he heard it as clearly as if her lips had been an inch from his ear. He stopped, but kept his back to her. He wanted to pull her into an empty room and interrogate her. Who was she? What did she know? Why did she say these things? What did she see in Claire that he couldn't? He heard a toilet flush and knew he had to get out of there.

When he reached the turn in the hallway, he looked back at her one last time. She waved slightly, and he finally felt that if she was right, this impropriety, this blatant flouting of the rules of ethics, was perhaps one of the times when the ends could justify the means. If she was right. He mouthed
Thank you
and left to endure the crowd as they gathered by the courtroom doors, waiting for the rest of the show.
 

When he approached the witness box the second time, he was still thinking of the redhead's words outside the bathroom. At first he tried not to look at her, partly for fear of upsetting Judge Lehman but more for fear of losing it all over again. He finally gave in, though. When he was certain that Sanders wasn't looking, and suspected that Judge Lehman wasn't either, he glanced at her and was surprised to find that their brief eye contact comforted him. He searched the back of the courtroom for Claire but didn't see her. When Sanders resumed his questioning, Jack responded quickly. He'd accomplished what he'd set out to do and now he just wanted to get out of there.

When he'd finished answering Sanders' questions—which, to Sanders' dismay, included testimony about Alex touching the wine glasses and most likely being seen by the guy who delivered the Thai food—and the judge had finally excused him, he didn't wait around to hear more. He'd returned to the city only to play his small role in the trial. He hadn't really cared what ultimately happened—it had all seemed so irrelevant. Jenny was gone, Maxine Shepard was gone, and he'd believed his marriage to be irretrievably broken. He had testified merely because they had asked him to.
 

But the exchange with the redheaded juror changed things. It instilled hope somewhere deep inside him.

His impatience compelled him to hurry down the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. He jogged through the downstairs lobby and past security. The guard called to him, a cordial goodbye—some people stuck by you no matter what—but he merely waved as he pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the sunlight.

He was met with an omnipresent odor that hung over the city on certain days—yeast, hops, barley and rye—the sweet smell of brewing beer. He couldn't breathe without inhaling its moist weight. But it was March and the bulbs were in bloom; the yellow daffodils refused to be quieted by the persistent chill in the air. The tulips, though not yet gracing the streets with their brilliant colors, were pushing their green stalks through winter's protective mulch.

He scanned the area in front of the courthouse. He didn't see her, but he knew she was near, that she was waiting for him somewhere. He felt her pull like a magnet, and he was certain now that she felt his, too. It had compelled her to come to the courthouse, to sit through his testimony and find out just how bad it was. Why would she have bothered, if what the redheaded juror had told him wasn't right?

He'd parked in an open lot several blocks from the courthouse. As he walked to his car, he could think of nothing except seeing her, touching her, holding her. He didn't think about whether she'd be amenable to this; he didn't think about what he'd say to make it happen. It just seemed inevitable. His hope had grown to a spiritual certainty, a belief based upon nothing more than faith.
 

He was still on the sidewalk when he saw her, six rows deep in the middle of the lot, leaning against his car. A fence surrounded the lot and he quickened his pace, all the while keeping his eyes trained on her.

She watched him approach with the same expression she'd worn in the courtroom. He almost expected her to open her arms to him, but when he finally stopped a foot in front of her, she looked down and then to the side to avoid his eyes. He felt an inkling of doubt creeping in, but the pull was still there, leaving him no choice but to rely on its force.

"Claire." He said it not to get her attention or as a prerequisite to any other statement, but simply as an expression of relief that she was finally so close to him again, after so much time.

She looked up at him, and her eyes looked like an ice sculpture that had stood too long in the afternoon sun. So many times over the past year he'd stared into those eyes without really looking.

He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, pushing his hands into his trouser pockets and pulling them out again. In his haste to leave the courthouse, he'd left his coat in the DA's office. He crossed his arms to ward off the creeping chill, but he knew, and she knew, that he had nothing else to do with his hands anyway. Perhaps winter was not yet over.

He was afraid to ask the one question he needed to ask. Maybe the kind juror had been wrong. Maybe Claire had already discarded what might have been salvageable, tossing it into a heap of what was but is no more.

But if he didn't ask, what then? He'd never know where he stood.

"Why did you come?" His voice was barely more than a whisper.

She didn't say anything, but he thought he heard her swallow. She unzipped her purse and pulled out a manila envelope. The lawyer in him told him exactly what it had to be, and his stomach began to turn, his heart began to claw against the walls of his chest. Tricked. He took a step backward.