‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?’
Jarrod stared at his computer screen in his dark office. Outside in the hall he heard the rumblings of the office shutting down for the day. It was six o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Most of the office staff had gone, but anyone who hadn’t left yet was sitting in front of his secretary Annalee’s desk, watching exactly what he was watching – the live feed from courtroom 10F.
‘Is he here?’ someone asked out in the hall. A nod and a point at his closed office door probably followed.
‘Wow. What a crazy case. Is he still with her?’ someone else asked.
A shake of the head probably followed. He had not told Annalee yet that he and Faith had separated, but the woman was very intuitive: she’d known about the affair long before everyone else had figured it out, including Faith.
‘Yes, Your Honor, we have,’ said a small voice off screen. The jury was not allowed to be shown on camera.
‘Madam Clerk, please publish the verdict,’ said the judge.
The packed courtroom fell silent.
‘We the jury in the county of Palm Beach and the State of Florida, on this the fifteenth day of May in the year two thousand fifteen, so hereby find the defendant, Derrick Alan Poole, not guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree in the death of Angelina Santri …’
The excitement simply could not be contained; the courtroom exploded in murmurs and not-so-shocked ‘Oh my God!’ whispers.
Jarrod rubbed his eyes in his dark office. It was over. It was finally over. But he felt no relief. And it wasn’t anger or outrage that he was feeling because the jury had reached the wrong verdict. It was fear.
He picked up the phone and called Vivian to tell her he’d be a little late picking up Maggie from her house. He had work to finish up.
‘Have you spoken with her?’ she asked.
‘No. I called and texted, but I haven’t talked to her. Have you?’
‘Not today. I spoke with her yesterday, but it wasn’t good, Jarrod. She was, ah …’
‘Drunk?’
‘I didn’t want to tell you. She’s had it so rough. But she has a problem and I don’t know how to get her to see it. She doesn’t want anything to do with me or Charity. She doesn’t want to come to the bakery. She won’t pick up the phone when the guard calls to tell her I’m at the gate.’
‘I called the rehab. They said she has to make the realization herself. That if she doesn’t want to face it yet, she hasn’t hit her bottom. They said some people never do. That they never climb out. How much longer can that be for her, Vivian? Do I have to wait till she drinks herself into a coma? Or I find her dead, asphyxiated on her own vomit?’ Now that Poole had been acquitted, at least there would be no more need for him to eliminate witnesses.
‘I’m sorry, Jarrod.’
‘I can’t watch this, Vivian.’ His voice caught and he started to lose it. ‘It’s so hard. So hard.’
‘Does she know about the verdict?’
‘I don’t know. I imagine she saw it too. I texted her to call me, but she won’t. She’s probably so far gone right now, or on her way, she might not remember watching it.’
‘Are you going over there?’
‘I don’t think so, Viv. I don’t know. Probably. Maybe. No. I don’t know. I’ll see.’
He hung up and stared out the window of his office at the almost empty parking lot. Annalee knocked on his door about twenty minutes later to tell him she was heading out and to ask if he needed a friend.
‘No,’ he’d quietly told her through the closed door as he studied the cars heading toward the Sawgrass Expressway, heading home en masse to spend the weekend with their loved ones. ‘I’m not going …’
Grief and jealousy overwhelmed him then, and he never did finish the sentence.