Was she ready? Jane tried not to laugh out loud at the judge’s question. This was the world’s most horrible idea, Jane sitting in open court, faced with six dozen spectators, and expected to point to the driver in a hit-and-run accident. Ready? Yeah, she was ready. Ready to bolt straight out that big double door, uniformed guards or no, and head for the hills.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Jane said. “I’m ready.”
“Mr. McCusker?” Judge Scapicchio pointed a scarlet fingernail at the assistant DA.
Jane watched McCusker stand, slowly, and smile at her, the practiced expression of reassurance he must have used before on countless nervous or reluctant unfortunates in her position.
Jane heard a low rumble from the audience, as a few dozen people murmured what they probably thought was softly to each of a few dozen others.
“Spectators, you will remain silent during this hearing,” the judge said. “Any outbursts, any discussion or reaction, and I’ll have you removed from my courtroom. And held in contempt. Am I clear?”
Silence.
“Thank you, Your Honor. Now. Ms. Ryland.” McCusker turned some pages in his loose-leaf binder.
Jane waited, her world on pause, wondering how she must look to the spectators, each and every one of whom was staring at her. Well, all but one, and he was looking at the judge. She felt herself gulp, and tried to pretend she wasn’t nervous, because there was no reason to be nervous. Except, there was.
“Ms. Ryland,” McCusker said again. “Where were you on the past Monday morning at approximately nine-forty?”
Jane swallowed, wished for water. Her brain was somehow short-circuiting on this simple question. What did he mean by “where”? Did he mean—in a car? In Boston? On O’Brien Highway?
“I was in a car, on O’Brien Highway.” She heard the quaver in her voice. Get a grip, Jane. “On the Boston side,” she added, sitting up straighter. She wasn’t on trial, after all.
“Were you driving?”
Just answer what you’re asked, the station’s attorney had instructed her. “No.”
“You were a passenger.”
“Yes.” This would be over soon, just a memory, and she and Jake would laugh and go on with their lives. The dark-haired defense attorney, still seated at her table, appeared to be listening intently, fiddling with a hoop earring. But Jane could see the woman had a cell phone in her lap. On. Was she texting?
“What was the weather?”
“Sunny.”
“And did you see anything unusual?”
Unusual? Well, was a fender bender unusual? Not in Boston, that’s for sure. Just answer, you dingbat, she told herself. “I saw a car rear-end a van. There was a red light, and the van had stopped, and we had stopped. And then the car hit the stopped van.”
“How did you see that?”
“I looked out the windshield. And then out my window. The passenger-side window.”
“I see.” McCusker nodded. “The window was open?”
“Not at first, but then I opened it.”
“And what kind of a car, if you know, did you see hit the van?”
“A Cadillac. I recognized the—” Just answer the question. “A Cadillac.”
“Color?”
“Silver.”
“And you took the license plate.”
“I did,” Jane said. She heard the audience murmur, saw a few people whisper to their neighbors behind raised palms.
“Why was that?” McCusker raised an eyebrow, smiling.
“I’m a reporter,” she said. “I guess it’s habit.”
“I see. What did the driver do then?” McCusker’s voice was smooth, and he ran a finger down his yellow pad.
“He…” Jane paused, picturing it. “He sat there for a moment, in the front seat. Then he drove away.”
“A hit-and-run,” McCusker said.
“Mr. McCusker.” Judge Scapicchio’s voice did not conceal the rebuke. “There’s no jury here. And no need to characterize.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” he said. “Ms. Ryland. Did you see the driver of the silver Cadillac? Did you look at him?”
“Yes.” Her heart started beating, so fast it surprised her, so hard it almost made her gasp. Say no more, she thought. Right. It was about to hit the fan. And no question that lawyer was texting.
The audience murmured again, as if they, experienced courtroom observers, knew precisely what had to be coming next—the big climax, the big identification, the pivotal Perry Mason moment.
But then the door to the courtroom squeaked open, and all eyes turned left, all heads swiveled to watch the late arrival. A prune-faced man in a dark suit hustled past the court officers, scanned the audience, quickly, then slid into a pew close to the door. A broad-shouldered court officer took a tentative step forward. He approached the newcomer, then seemed to decide there was no problem. Prune-face wasn’t the driver, Jane thought, though he had gray hair and looked kind of familiar. Lawyer, maybe.
“Now, Ms. Ryland?” McCusker cleared his throat, and the audience’s attention swiveled back his way. “Without pointing to him or her, if the person you saw driving the car in question, the silver Cadillac, is in this courtroom, could you please tell me that?”
The audience leaned forward, as one, anticipating, as if the closer they were to Jane, the sooner they’d hear the answer.
“And,” McCusker continued, “again, not by pointing, but by simply saying yes or no.” The ADA smiled once more, swept a hand toward the audience behind him. “We don’t want any mistaken identities.”
Jane narrowed her eyes, wondering if that was some kind of crack. She’d been fired from a TV job because she refused to reveal the name of a source—and as a result, most of Boston believed she’d made a mistake in publicly identifying a bad guy. Since then she’d worked to redeem her image, and thought she’d finally succeeded. All she needed now was McCusker reminding the whole world about one of the worst moments of her life.
But maybe that was her own paranoia. No reason for McCusker to needle her, after all. She tamped down her probable overreaction, wondering how she must look to the spectators, each and every one of whom was staring at her. The defense attorney, too, as she fiddled with her other silver earring.
“Go ahead,” McCusker said. “Please take your time.”
Now or never. Jane scanned the audience, left to right, squinting a bit in the spackled lighting of the verging-on-seedy courtroom. The state moguls had slashed funding for courthouse renovations before they got to this one, and as a result, the walls were dingy, the curtains dingier, and the lighting even dingier. The driver wasn’t black, or Asian, not dark-skinned, not female, so those people she could easily skip. She took herself back to that moment on O’Brien Highway, imagined herself looking out the right-side window of the Channel 2 car, seeing the man with his hands on the wheel. Middle-aged, Caucasian, widow’s peak, grayish hair, pointy cheekbones, thin lips, clean-shaven.
But here in courtroom 206, in the rows of lined-up possibilities, she saw middle-aged but not gray hair, Caucasian but chubby, widow’s peak but wide lips, face after face the wrong shape or the wrong color or the wrong gender. Face after face, linking their eyes with her, as eager with anticipation as a—
“Ms. Ryland?” McCusker interrupted her thoughts. “Have you—”
“Let her look,” the judge interrupted. “This is your show, Mr. McCusker. We’re in no rush here. This is the justice system.”
Jane looked again, right to left. Scanned every face, chanting her description mantra silently to herself. She dismissed the professorial type in the blazer. The white-hair in the short-sleeved madras. Could any human being reliably do this? Recognize, without mistake, a stranger they’d seen for less than a minute? Maybe she’d been too quick to rely on her own perceptions. She kept looking, examining each face, feeling all those eyes on her. It wasn’t the fidgeting teenager. Not the preppy with the popped collar. Not the bespectacled pin-striped suit.
He’s simply … not there, she realized. And of course he wasn’t. They’d told her the driver might not be there, explained that’s what made the identification fair. Were they trying to trap her? Seeing if she would choose someone who looked similar, and thereby prove she was unreliable so they could righteously nail the person who’d confessed? But she was reliable, and as certain as anyone could be of what she’d seen. Not recognizing anyone proved she really did have the correct description.
All eyes were still on her, each person leaning forward at exactly the same angle, hands on thighs, and with exactly the same expression, eyebrows raised and mouths slack, as if awaiting the announcement of a lottery winner. Or in this case, loser. Even the defense attorney had turned to look at the spectators. Courtrooms were theater, Jane realized, the theater of reality, and the same way spectators gawked at crime scenes and rubbernecked car accidents, this audience had gathered in this courtroom to watch whether a fellow citizen would be pointed out as criminal.
But wait.
She tried not to smile as she looked at the only person who now was stolidly not looking back at her. As if that ostrich technique would avoid her scrutiny. Pale brown hair, curly, a baby face. Even from here she could see freckles. She’d taken Psych 101. Easy enough to figure that was McCusker’s not-guilty guilty kid.
Wait, Jane thought. He’s confessed. For whatever reason, he wants us to think he’s guilty. So what she was really doing here was providing evidence that the person who’d confessed wasn’t the real driver. In this peculiar reality, the point was for her to help the DA prove the defendant was not guilty.
“Ms. Ryland?” The judge leaned forward from her higher perch.
Jane turned to her, smiling apologetically, then tried to erase her expression. She wasn’t supposed to feel any emotion about this. It was a simple question: Was the driver here in the courtroom? And the answer was simple, too.
“Sorry,” Jane said. “But I don’t—”
“Objection!” The prune-faced newcomer jumped to his feet in the audience before she could finish, his face reddening, even his scalp turning red under his thinning white hair. “Objection!”
The judge banged her gavel. The court officers moved forward, one putting a hand on his holstered weapon. The crowd buzzed, a million cicadas, all eyes now riveted on the man. Jane turned to McCusker, her eyes widening with her question. Who is this guy? The man had taken a few steps toward the bar separating audience from courtroom. Fifteen seconds had passed, less.
“I’m Randolph Hix, Your Honor, and Mr. McCusker knows perfectly well who I am and precisely why I’m here.” He turned, faced down the court officers, pointed at them with an accusatory forefinger. “And you two know me perfectly well, too. Thanks to my colleague Ms. Obele here”—he pointed to the dark-haired lawyer—“I’m here to insist we call this train wreck to a halt. Your Honor, I refuse to point out my client, for reasons that are more than obvious, and if Your Honor is a party to this, this manipulative charade and complete travesty of—”
Whatever else he was saying was lost in the crashing of the judge’s gavel and the now-unrestrained curiosity of the chattering audience. Jane clutched the sides of her chair, watching whatever drama this was unfold, deeply wishing she could pull out her phone and roll some video of this whole thing. Randolph Hix, that’s who that was. She hadn’t recognized him instantly. The once-headline-happy attorney had dropped off the legal radar several years ago. Maybe made all the money he needed. So what was he doing here? Who was the woman lawyer? Jane looked again at the curly-haired, baby-face kid who’d ignored her. He’d now fixed his sights on the protesting Hix. But then, so had everyone else.
McCusker turned to the judge’s bench, entreating, his voice raised to trample Hix’s demands.
“Your Honor, talk about a travesty!” McCusker’s voice, plump with scorn, escalated into outrage. “Bursting into your courtroom like this? With proceedings under way and a witness sworn? This is—”
Hix waved him off, infinitely dismissive. “This? Is clearly actionable. To the fullest extent, Your Honor. Learned counsel never…” Hix continued with his objection, now jabbing his finger at McCusker, his voice heavy with sarcasm, a twinge of a Boston accent thickening “never” into “nevah.” He paused, eyes to heaven, as if the whole episode were simply too egregious to comprehend. “We understood, we were assured, by Mr. McCusker himself, that Ms. Ryland was here only to—”
Scapicchio’s gavel continued its drumbeat, but the audience hubbub and babble went on unabated. Finally the judge stood, still banging, eyes shooting flames.
“Not. Another. Word. From either of you.” She pointed to the audience with her gavel. “Nor from any of you. Am I making myself understood? Or I will clear this room.”
The courtroom hushed, including center-ring combatants McCusker and Hix. Each man’s chest was rising and falling. It was impossible to decide whose face was redder. The audience seemed to settle in, perhaps hoping they’d get a better show than they’d expected.
“Approach please, counsel.” The judge, with an edge of disdain, gestured the two seething lawyers toward the bench, including the no-longer-texting Ms. Obele, then turned and nodded at Jane. “I apologize, Ms. Ryland. You’re excused.”