I’d been in the Third Judicial District Courthouse three times, but when I walked in at ten o’clock Monday morning, it was the first time I didn’t want to tear off the stucco with my fingernails. I gave Will Yarborough credit for that.
I’d spent most of Saturday with him, going over every detail we could scrape up. He wrote each one on a card, including what I had already given him, and spread them out in a timeline on a table in his office conference room. Holes still gaped at us, gaps we couldn’t fill, but Will seemed to view each one as a challenge.
“I’m going to work with Dan tomorrow,” he said when we were wrapping up, “and take one more shot at talking to Jake. I want to interview Ian, too, but Dan says he’s out of town at a meet this weekend.”
My face tightened. “I really feel like he knows something, Will.”
“If he does, I’ll find out,” he’d said. ”Don’t worry.”
I did, of course, but not as much as I would have without him at the helm.
Sunday was Dan’s turn with him, while I spent the day with Alex.
As always, the kid charmed me—through the service at the soccer moms’ church and lunch at his “fave” Mexican restaurant and a catch-up soccer lesson in J.P.’s backyard, during which he informed me that I’d forgotten everything he’d taught me and we were going to have to start all over.
But a different little boy peeked out from behind the impish smiles. Every time I thought the moment was right to ask him what he knew that would help Jake, something stopped me. A furtive glance from under the bill of his too-big ball cap. An anxious gleam in his eyes if I was quiet for too long. A sigh that escaped when he didn’t know I could hear.
So when I tucked him in at J.P.’s Sunday night, I just kissed his forehead and laughed when he wiped it off with his fingers. Maybe J.P. was right. Maybe he didn’t need an interrogator. He needed a mom.
Even without getting anything new from Alex, I had a strong sense of hope as I slid into the row behind the defendant’s table. Will was already there, and so was Dan. As was Ginger, dressed in a scoop-necked gray jumper that should have had a blouse under it, hair up in a tumble of curls I suspected was an attempt to look serious and maternal. Just before I decided not to waste any energy on her, I sneaked a glance at her left hand, but it was hard to tell if she was wearing an engagement ring. There was at least one piece of jewelry on every finger.
“How’s Alex?” Dan whispered to me.
“Adorable,” I whispered back.
“Nothing?”
I shook my head.
Ginger tucked her hand through Dan’s arm and hugged it.
At the table in front of us, Will stood up and turned toward the side door, where a guard was ushering Jake in. He was dressed in black jeans and a white pullover sweater I recognized as one of Dan’s. He looked young and vulnerable and nothing like a killer, and I wanted to fold my arms around him.
A rustle from the other side of the aisle drew my attention, and my heart lurched in my chest. With the same grace and dignity she’d shown at the funeral, Elena Sanchez made her way to a seat behind the prosecutor’s table. Nina Hernandez stood up, as imperious and commanding as I remembered her from the preliminary hearing, and took both of Elena’s hands into hers. That was what I wanted to do—look into those warm eyes, see how she was surviving, assure her I would be there for her.
Instead, I had to slant my body away and hope she didn’t realize that the mother of the boy accused of murdering her son was her trusted Grafa.
Once the trial got under way, however, my mind attached itself in agony to the proceedings.
Will Yarborough had already told us the prosecution would present its case first, and that Nina Hernandez would paint the worst possible picture of our son and his alleged crime.
With her guidance, a solemn uniformed officer described a vicious crime scene, and the emergency room doctor listed Miguel’s injuries in excruciating detail. Levi Baranovic grimly reported facts about fingerprints and phone records, and made Jake’s refusal to answer questions sound like the boy was the next Son of Sam. Most damaging of all, as far as I was concerned, were Miguel’s teachers and his debate coach, who all portrayed him as the boy I knew he was, a boy who had never done anything to warrant the kind of brutal retaliation he suffered.
I refused to look at the jury, to see what they were believing. Will had warned us that the prosecutor’s case would appear to be airtight and that he wouldn’t be able to punch many holes in it with his cross-examinations. Without that preparation I might have stood up and grilled all of those people myself.
And yet I knew I would have maintained even sans Will’s coaching. As frustrated and frightened as I was, my focus kept flooding back to Jake, who sat straight-backed beside Will, scarcely moving except to rub the Band-Aid someone had put over his tattered mole. He was pale and terrified, but as much as I wanted to shake the truth out of him, I could see something brave in him, too—a stubborn refusal to give in to whatever would save him at the expense of someone else. I hated it, but I had to admire it.
We were getting close to noon, and I couldn’t imagine who else Nina Hernandez could put on the stand to disparage my son. Will had predicted that the prosecution would rest before the lunch recess, and when we came back he would give the opening statement he’d deferred earlier. He looked as surprised as I was when Hernandez asked permission to approach the bench, and both lawyers went forward. Jake was left alone at the table. I sat on my hands to keep from reaching for him.
“I know,” Dan whispered to me.
I looked up to see tears in his eyes. He did know.
When I turned back to Jake, he was writing on Will’s pad, and I wondered if that was against the rules. I also wondered what was taking so long with the judge, a big-shouldered man who looked more like a football coach than a jurist. He directed fierce eyes at Hernandez as she expounded on something with her usual high drama. I thought his hooded scowl might be a good sign, until he nodded at her, and Will’s shoulders ever so slightly sagged.
“This case will be continued until Friday, October 16, at 10:00 a.m.,” His Honor said to the courtroom. “Court is adjourned.”
Will put his arm around Jake and murmured into his ear. The guard waited until Will gave him a final pat before he led Jake away.
I was on Will before the door closed. “What just happened?”
He beckoned us to lean in. Although the invitation didn’t include her, Ginger leaned too.
“Hernandez has one more witness, but she hasn’t had time to prep him—her—whoever. She asked for two days—it looks like stalling to me, although I don’t know why she’d do that. Maybe just to throw off my timing.”
“Two days is Thursday,” I said.
“The judge had a conflict.”
“So Jake has to spend four more days in that place because she couldn’t get her act together and he has something else to do?” My voice was spiraling. “That’s not right!”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “But it does give us a little more time.”
“For what?” Ginger said.
Will looked at her as if he hadn’t noticed her before, which, unlike most men, he probably hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You are—?”
“Ginger Tassert,” she said, offering one bejeweled hand.
“You know, maybe we shouldn’t talk here,” I said. I widened my eyes at Will, and he nodded.
“The prosecution has to disclose the name of the witness,” he said, “so as soon as I know who it is, we’ll put our heads together again.”
He shook hands with Dan and waited while he steered an obviously reluctant Ginger up the aisle by the elbow.
“Who is she?” Will said.
“She’s nobody,” I said and then shook my head. “She’s Dan’s fiancée. And Ian’s mother.”
Will gave me a long look.
“What?” I said.
“I was going to tell you this morning, but I got sidetracked. I got a look at the visitor’s log from lockup. The person who visited Jake just before us Friday signed in as Ginger Tassert. I didn’t know she was Ian’s mother.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Dan would have known if she went to see Jake. He was as surprised as we were that Jake had any visitors besides us.”
Will folded his arms. “You think it means anything?”
“It means she’s a conniving little wench.”
His mouth twitched.
“Actually, she wants to insinuate herself into my son’s life, make Dan think she cares about his family.”
“Then why wouldn’t she tell Dan she was going?”
I was already nodding. “You’re right—if that’s what she was up to, she’d have come back to him sobbing about how terrible it all was in the jail and how sorry she is and how she’s going to—” I put up my hands to stop myself. “I don’t even want to go there.”
“Then it could mean something,” Will said.
“Something about Ian?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to try to see him after he gets out of school today. So far I haven’t gotten any answers to my phone calls to his mother. I had her down as Virginia Iverton, though—I think. Let me check.”
He picked up his legal pad and did a double take at the top page, which was folded up from the middle.
“Jake was writing on it while you were talking to the judge,” I said.
“Then I think this is for you.”
Will tore it off and handed it to me. The word Mom was printed on the front in shaky block letters.
Don’t worry, Jake had written inside. I think what I knew all along wuold happen is going to atfer all. Hang in til Friday and it will be ok. I’m sorry to put you thru this, but I had to portect you and Alex. Loev, Jake
I read it three times and pressed it to my lips before I said, “Will, I think you should look at this.” I held out the paper and let him read it over my shoulder.
“When did you say he wrote this?” he said.
“When you and the DA were at the bench.”
“Could you hear what we were saying up there?”
“Snatches. Nothing I could put together.”
“But Jake could have.”
“Where are you going with this?” I said.
“Probably nowhere, but if he got the gist that there’s going to be a new witness Friday, that could be why he thinks it’s going to be okay.”
“But how does he know who the new witness is when you don’t even know?”
Will tucked the pad into his portfolio and snapped it shut. “Like I said, there’s probably no connection. Just trying to explore every option.” He patted my shoulder and left me to pore over the small piece of my son I held in my hand.
We could be grasping at straws, but I didn’t think so. What I did think dropped in like one of my images.
Jake was trying to tell me something else. When I told him before that he couldn’t have written the note they found at the scene because he was dyslexic and couldn’t spell, he wouldn’t prove me wrong. I pressed the note to my chest. And now he had.
Harlan Snow had marched his short, tough-faced self into the prisoner/attorney meeting room Saturday morning wearing a black pinstriped double-breasted suit and a starched white shirt whose collar cut into his ruddy jowls. He’d listened closely enough to Sully’s story, nodding a head of thick, wavy black hair in all the right places, but he hadn’t asked many questions, and his conclusions had seemed somewhat cavalier.
“The DA doesn’t have squat,” he said. “Around here they can get a ham sandwich an indictment.”
“Excuse me?” Sully said.
“Their solve rate is down on murders, so they’re looking for a slam dunk. Baranovic’s also up for a promotion. You go down, and that puts it in the bag for him. Don’t worry, they’re just dreaming.” He lifted his chins at Sully. “You want to know about your bail.”
Sully did. He’d also like to know that his lawyer thought he was innocent.
Snow was consulting his BlackBerry. “So this Healing Choice Ministries is putting up the bail in their name, rather than going to a bondsman.” He shrugged. “That’s a show of faith on their part, but you’re going to have to wait in jail for a source hearing—so the court knows the money’s really there. Could take a week.”
“A week?”
“The DA’s office will try to drag it out,” Snow said. “They figure you won’t be able to tolerate being in there, and you’ll break down and give them a confession.”
“There’s nothing to confess!”
“So you’ve told me everything.”
“I’ve told you. I’ve told the police.”
“Good. Then hang in there, and we’ll see what they have to say in our discussion Tuesday.”
But it was only Monday afternoon when the guard pulled Sully out of the cell for “a meeting with the lawyers.”
And there, Sully’s second impression of Harlan Snow was of somebody from the diplomatic corps.
It was “Ms. Hernandez” this and “ma’am” that, in a subdued voice that tiptoed around the power of the prosecutor. She, on the other hand, was brusque and dismissive. She had clearly not come for a discussion.
“Thank you for seeing us today instead of waiting until tomorrow,” Snow said. “My client has already been in jail for three days.”
“I had a cancellation,” she said. “And I wanted to get this done.” She took a survey of Sully with small, dark eyes and consulted her notes.
“You’re both aware that we have enough physical evidence to convict. What you may not be aware of is that one of your associates has reported that you have been distracted for several weeks. Not attending to critical issues, obviously focused on something outside the office.”
Sully searched his mind. It didn’t take long to come up with Martha Fitzgerald.
“Do you deny that you were actively looking for Belinda Cox?”
“No.”
“Or that you were concerned about what you might do when you found her?”
Sully stared. Where had that come from? He’d thought it, but who had he shared that with?
Before he could come up with an answer, she stunned him again.
“We know about your wife’s suicide, Dr. Crisp. We also know that the deceased was her counselor, and that you hold her responsible for your wife’s death.” Hernandez gave him a look that he guessed was supposed to be empathetic. “I can actually understand that motive. Doesn’t make it right, but it could work in your favor if you’re willing to take a plea.”
“What are we talking?” Snow said.
“I could get it down to—”
“Wait a minute,” Sully said. “Belinda Cox had enemies. Her own neighbor wanted her gone because she was stirring up trouble in Mesilla.”
“Maybe so,” Hernandez said. The empathy faded. “But none of them left pieces of themselves at the scene. Without a confession, you’re looking at first-degree murder.”
Sully felt like a tuning fork, struck and still vibrating, painfully, down to his teeth.
First-degree murder.
Premeditated. Planned with malice and forethought.
A crime he could be hanged for. A crime he didn’t commit.
But someone else did. Someone who planted traces of him at the scene. Someone who wanted him to go down for this.
The pain went beyond his teeth and his bones. Betrayal was a pain of the soul.