The trial of Lieutenant Robert Smith lasted fifteen days. It would have taken longer, but he refused to defend himself.
Without his cooperation, his lawyer struggled, and the process was brief and merciless.
The case was followed in breathless detail by the Daily News courthouse reporter, Ed Lasterson, who did, everyone agreed, a pretty good job, given the newspaper’s own involvement in the story.
On the stand, Smith looked smaller and grayer – as if jail were diminishing him day by day.
His wife, Pat, gaunt and tight-lipped, was in the courtroom on the first day with Kyle. They sat on the front row. Pat wept quietly. Kyle did not. He sat straight, his shoulders square and stiff, braced to take the punch as prosecutors accused his father of the worst crimes.
After that they never came back again. So they weren’t there when Harper took the stand, one arm and shoulder still encased in a stiff medical sling.
She was glad of that, at least.
When she told the court how she’d unraveled the case – deciding it had to be a detective, and eventually stumbling across that photo – she remained controlled.
The only time her voice broke was when she described what she remembered from The Watch.
‘I don’t think he meant to shoot me,’ she said, looking at Smith. ‘I think he meant to shoot himself.’
Sitting with his lawyers, Smith kept his gaze lowered throughout her testimony, but in that one moment their eyes met, and she saw only emptiness there.
The video Miles made was played during the trial, although the audio was found inadmissible by the judge. So the jury watched a silent film of Harper and Smith – turned an otherworldly green by the night-vision lens – arguing. They saw Smith point a gun at her. Watched her stand up to him. And saw Luke appear from the trees like a vengeful hero from a western, gun already in his hand.
The camera was behind Smith when he raised his gun to his head, so his expression couldn’t be seen as Harper flew across the mud to knock the weapon from his hand.
Only when she watched that video did Harper see the sheer terror on Luke’s face when she ran to Smith. And only then did she know that he was running right behind her the whole way.
She watched herself grab Smith’s arm. Saw his hand jerk back from the force of the gun’s recoil.
Saw her own body twist and fall backward to the ground.
She watched as Luke punched Smith so hard the lieutenant spun sideways, the gun flying from his fingers.
Luke was handcuffing him as the first uniformed officers ran into view.
That was when the film ended.
But Harper knew what happened next.
The ambulance rushed her to the hospital and straight into surgery.
When she woke from the anesthesia, Luke was asleep on the chair next to her bed, clad in incongruously bright turquoise scrubs he must have borrowed to replace his blood-soaked clothing.
Even in sleep his face was creased and tense.
Groggy from drugs, she lay still, watching him for a long time, waiting for him to wake so she could thank him. At some point, she drifted off.
When she woke up that afternoon, the chair next to her bed was empty.
She moved to sit up, to look around for him – but every motion sent burning pain slicing through the left side of her body.
Sweating, she lay still again.
That was when the surgeon appeared in her doorway, along with a cluster of medical students who stared at her with worrying interest.
‘Oh good,’ the surgeon said, grabbing her chart. ‘You’re up. How are you feeling?’
‘Like someone shot me in the shoulder.’ Harper’s voice was hoarse.
‘Well, it turns out that’s exactly what happened,’ the surgeon agreed jovially.
He checked the dressing on her wound, studied the numbers on the heart monitor with interest, while keeping up a solid line of patter for the students. When he’d finished, he set the chart down.
‘You know, Miss McClain, you didn’t make it easy for me. The bullet missed your heart by three inches.’ He glanced at the students with a modest smile. ‘Luckily that’s plenty of room.’
When they were gone, Harper located her phone on the bedside table. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she reached over to pick it up.
When she called Luke, though, the call went straight to voicemail.
The same thing happened that night. And the next day.
After a while, she stopped calling.
She thought she knew why he didn’t want to talk. The fact that he’d saved her life didn’t make their problems disappear. He believed she’d betrayed him by breaking into the records room over his objections. He’d asked her not to take that chance and she did it anyway.
The trust between them was still damaged.
She would always have her job, and he would always have his. And their jobs were designed to conflict. He was making a decision for both of them.
Still, she had to fix this. Somehow. She would make this better.
Because in her mind she still heard his voice, that night out at The Watch.
Don’t you dare give up.
On her last day in the hospital she received a text from Sterling Robinson. All it said was:
You have rare gumption. I insist you survive. S
When she was taken down to the bill payment department later that day, the woman at the counter told her, ‘Someone’s covered all your medical costs. In cash.’
She knew it was him.
Smith’s lawyers fought valiantly, trying to get him off on grounds of mental incompetence. Pleading guilty to murder, it seemed, made you crazy.
But Smith undermined this at every turn.
He insisted on testifying against himself. After a legal struggle, he took the stand and told the court he had indeed been Marie Whitney’s lover.
They’d met after she was mugged – that earlier crime report Harper had glimpsed in the police files. Within weeks, they were sleeping together.
He’d given her money and expensive gifts until she became too demanding. Then things went sour between them. When he broke it off, she blackmailed him. She had photos of the two of them in compromising positions, proof of everything he’d given her. She threatened to present this evidence to the chief of police and Smith’s wife.
Afraid of what the news would do to his family and his career, Smith had continued to pay her for months, until his retirement account was drained. Even then, he said, Whitney wouldn’t back down. Her demands grew increasingly strident.
Losing control of the situation, and desperate to protect himself, Smith stole money from the police department – redirecting payments of public funds to give to her, until someone in his office started wondering what was going on.
When Whitney renewed her threats of exposure if she didn’t get more money, he’d panicked.
‘I think I had a complete breakdown,’ he’d told the jury, head bowed, shoulders hunched, ‘I cannot otherwise explain how I allowed myself to do what I did.’ He’d stared down at his hands, knotted together on the polished wood of the witness stand. ‘I can almost not remember that day at all. I don’t want to remember.’
From then on, the outcome of the trial was preordained. It was purely a matter of going through the legal paces.
When the jury went out to deliberate their decision, Harper offered Ed twenty dollars to call her the second they returned. He refused the cash.
After four hours of silence, he called her at six o’clock that night.
‘They’re coming back.’
She was there, sitting in the last row, her good hand gripping the wooden seatback in front of her, when Smith was found guilty of the murder of Marie Whitney, and sentenced to life in prison.
Only when he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom did Harper finally let herself cry. Sitting on the wooden pew, her face buried in her hands.
She cried for Camille Whitney. For both their mothers. And for herself.