Anyone who’d still been in the Graham Building was now heading over across the street to the courthouse. TV trucks from every station with their forty-foot antennas lined the streets and circled the block. MDPD cars and City of Miami cruisers completely blocked off 14th Street, and more were busy setting up a perimeter around the building, their blue and red lights spinning. On the courthouse steps, a large, frenzied crowd of reporters swarmed around Rick Bellido as he tried to make his way across the street and into the building. Of course, Rick never took the entrance under the courthouse. And, of course, he never turned down an opportunity for an impromptu press conference. She heard his voice on the TV as she watched him out her window.
Julia had gotten dozens of verdicts back in her career as a prosecutor. Even when it was just a simple County Court misdemeanor jury she was waiting on, there was always this incredible, sickening, exciting rush of adrenaline that filled her whole stomach the second the phone rang in her office and she heard the clerk’s voice tell her to head over, because her jury was back. The feeling wasn’t unique to just Julia, either; she knew every prosecutor felt it. Getting a verdict was probably the most thrilling, nerve-wracking part of the job. The excitement would build on the elevator ride downstairs, the walk across the street, through the courthouse. It was always a bit contagious, too, as word spread to others. Like little children blindly following the Pied Piper through town, people who didn’t know you or your case would fall in behind as you made your way to the courtroom. Even if the case wasn’t important or newsworthy, the jury had a verdict.
Julia had that sickening, exciting feeling now. She looked at her watch. It was only 5:18. They’d been out officially only three hours. A quick verdict couldn’t be good for the defense in an insanity case, not with all the issues they had to consider. She paced her office for a long while, feeling her heart race, as that familiar shot of adrenaline hit her bloodstream. Now would be a good time to throw the rest of her desk in a box, she thought. Take her diplomas and her Bic pens and hightail it the hell out of Dodge while everyone was busy looking the other way.
But she couldn’t.
She looked out her window again and across the street. The steps of the courthouse were virtually empty now. Everyone had already gone in.
This was her case. Her last verdict. She wanted to take that walk across the street one last time. And she wanted to see the faces of the jury she had picked. She wanted to look in their eyes and know what they were going to do before the clerk announced it to the world. And perhaps, most importantly, she wanted those three men and nine women to see her there, too. She wanted them all to know it was not just another case for her. It never was. She left her boxes on her desk and headed across the street.
No one paid any attention as she slid in the very back of the packed courtroom, because everyone – every correction officer, every police officer, every camera, every microphone – was trained on the somber-faced jury that was filing back into the box from the jury room. None of the jurors looked up from the floor or out at the crowd. None of them, she noticed, looked over at the defendant.
Lat came from somewhere and stood next to her in the back of the courtroom. Without a word, his hand found hers, grasping a pinky and rubbing it gently. Her palms were drenched in perspiration.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I understand you’ve reached a verdict,’ said Judge Farley, folding up the verdict form he’d just read to himself. He passed it back to the clerk.
‘We have, Your Honor,’ said the red-faced foreman, swallowing the back half of his words as he finally looked up and spotted the wall of cameras trained on him from every angle in the courtroom.
‘Will the defendant please rise,’ said Farley, looking over at David Marquette.
Want to get out of here?’ Lat whispered in her ear. We don’t have to stay …’
‘I want to hear,’ she whispered. She swallowed hard. ‘I want to hear them say it.’ She never took her eyes off the foreman.
A somber-faced Mel leaned in and whispered something into his client’s ear before they both stood. Mel straightened his jacket and buttoned it, but David stared straight ahead, his hands held behind him. Julia noticed they were shaking ever so slightly.
‘Will the clerk please publish the verdict, then,’ said the judge.
Ivonne nodded and stood herself. She put on her reading glasses and opened the verdict form. We the jury,’ she began, ‘in the county of Miami-Dade, Florida, on this the twenty-fourth day of March, two thousand and six, as to count one of the indictment, to wit, the death of Jennifer Leigh Marquette, find the defendant, David Alain Marquette—’
The clerk gasped just a little as her eyes rolled over the words before her mouth spoke them. She looked up into the cameras, her eyes wide. She finally stammered out what the entire world was waiting to hear.
‘We find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity …’