‘Open mind,’ his wife muttered. ‘You think she’s innocent. You’ve said so from the beginning. Did you tell the judge that?’
‘I never said anything like that!’ he protested. ‘I’ve always said I don’t know what happened. You’re the one who convicted her from day one. You and your friends at the grocery store. What is it about her that drives you crazy, Carol? Is it that she’s everything you’re not?’
The words were out of his mouth before he could take them back, and the implication hung in the air, as toxic as poison. Janine Snow was rich, successful, and beautiful. Carol Marlowe was none of those things. His wife went from angry to hurt in the blink of an eye. She pushed back her chair, which toppled behind her, and stood up with the rigidity of a statue. He wanted to apologize, but he didn’t. She stalked to their bedroom in silence and slammed the door, making the house shudder.
‘Oh, hell,’ he hissed.
Annie leaned over and whispered, ‘That’s a bad word, Daddy.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Is Mommy mad?’
‘I guess so.’ He added: ‘Are you done with your dinner? You can go watch television.’
Annie hopped out of the chair. He cleaned up the dishes, and then he sat in the living room by himself. The smart thing to do was go to their bedroom and apologize, but he knew it would just prompt more anger and more yelling. He didn’t have the strength for another fight with Carol.
Howard left the house to clear his head. It was dusk in the neighborhood, but it was summer, and he heard the noise of kids squealing in the nearby yards. He sat in his Chrysler in the driveway with the windows rolled down. Humidity made his neck sticky. Bugs flew inside. He smelled the overgrown lilac bushes on the side of their house.
He thought: Carol’s wrong. She didn’t understand what was at stake. She didn’t realize how hard he was trying to do the right thing. Block out everything he knew about the case. Ignore the attraction he felt to Janine Snow and the fascination he felt for who she was. Listen to nothing but the evidence.
There had been more witnesses at the trial.
They’d heard from a ballistics expert who talked about the bullet recovered from Jay Ferris’s brain and about the gun Jay wore in the photograph provided by his brother. Yes, the two were consistent. No, they couldn’t be matched without the gun itself. Yes, it was one of the most common guns sold in the country.
They’d heard from the private detective. Melvin Wiley. Yes, Jay knew about the affair and had witnessed Janine’s prescription drug use on the videos. Yes, he’d sworn to get even with his wife.
They’d heard from an attorney named Tamara Fellowes. Yes, she worked for a law firm that was suing Janine Snow over the death of a patient. Yes, she knew Jay Ferris, and yes, Jay had called her in December. No, she would not discuss the contents of the conversation, but she did testify about what she’d heard in the background of the call — a woman’s voice screaming at Jay.
‘Don’t do this to me, you bastard! Don’t you dare do this!’
Did she recognize the voice?
Yes, it was Dr. Janine Snow.
Howard backed onto the street and drove. He headed east out of his Piedmont Heights neighborhood and soon found himself on Skyline Parkway, with the green fairways of the golf course on his left and the steep pitch of the hillside on his right. The Enger Tower loomed above him. He turned at Hank Jensen Drive and made his way up to the parking lot at the base of the monument. There were other cars there, from people enjoying the summer evening. In a Ford Taurus, two teenagers groped each other, kissing, their clothes askew. When the girl saw Howard watching them, she extended her middle finger. He looked away.
Everything made him think of the trial.
A teenage boy had driven here with his girlfriend on January 28, just like the boy and girl in the Taurus. They passed a Rav4 on the way to the tower but couldn’t say exactly when or where.
Howard left the parking lot and kept driving. It was as if he were on autopilot, not setting a course. He was back on Skyline Parkway, and moments later, his LeBaron drifted to a stop at a spur road that climbed sharply up the cliffside to his left. At the summit of the road was the mansion belonging to Janine Snow. He knew he shouldn’t be here, but he turned the wheel and drove slowly to the top of the hill.
There was Janine’s house. He recognized it from the television reports and from the photographs at the trial. What an amazing place, like a palace built on the roof of the world. Lights were on. She was home, the defendant out on bail. There were no cars around. He wondered if she was alone. Just her, sitting amid the ruins of her perfect life. And Howard only a few feet away.
Judge Edblad had told them: You are not investigators.
Even so, he couldn’t restrain his imagination. He sat in the car with the engine running, and he realized that this was the very place where everything had happened. On January 28, inside that door, behind the glass windows, Jay Ferris had been murdered. If Howard had been here then, he would have heard the shot.
What would he have seen? A stranger running away?
Or Janine Snow pulling out of the garage in her husband’s Hummer to hide a gun?
Howard realized that what he wanted more than anything was to hear the story from Janine’s own mouth. He wished he could talk to her, look into her eyes, and listen to her answer every question. The frustrating thing was that he knew he never would. She wouldn’t take the stand. Defendants hardly ever testified. She was the one person who really knew the truth, and he would never hear her say what it was.
Somehow, his car engine turned off, and his door opened.
He didn’t think it was him getting out and walking toward the house. It was someone else. He felt his feet on the walkway, heading toward the front door. That was what a stranger would have done, coming to murder Jay Ferris. If there was a stranger.
Howard stood at the door. Janine’s door. He felt dizzy. His finger quivered; he wanted to stab the doorbell. If he did, she would come. He’d see her appear behind the glass. She would open the door — and that would be the end of everything.
He would have crossed a line from which there was no going back. Wheels would be set in motion. Attorneys would talk, and he would be called in front of the judge, and he would be admonished and dismissed, and one of the two alternates sitting in the jury box would take his place.
Howard Marlowe would be just Howard Marlowe again. A footnote in the newspaper, soon forgotten.
Carol would laugh at him.
He felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. He turned and ran back to his Chrysler, needing to escape before he was seen. Before the police spotted him. Or the media. No one could know he’d ever been here. He got into his LeBaron and shot down the steep street.
Janine watched him go.
She sat in her office, where the security camera at her front door fed video to her computer. She’d installed the camera months ago when she had a parade of unwanted visitors coming to her house after the headlines brought notoriety.
She recognized him, of course. Juror #5. He was the one who sat closest to her in court. She hadn’t missed the fact that he liked to watch her. He tried to be discreet about it, but she caught his wandering glances in her direction. At first, she’d written it off as curiosity, but now she realized it was something more. She’d understood men all her life, much better than she ever understood women. This man was in love with her.
She knew she was attractive. Men had fallen for her since she was a high school girl in Texas growing up fast. This was different. Since the murder, men had sent her e-mails, proposals of marriage, and naked pictures. All types of men, married and unmarried, black and white, old and young, from across the country. For the stalkers, she’d become an object of fascination. And now, it seemed, one of those stalkers had made his way onto her jury.