“How long has this been going on?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“You’re not getting any sleep at all, are you?”
Biting on her lip, she grabbed my hand. “I’m all right,” she insisted. Peering into my eyes, she tried to convince me it was true, but before she could say anything, she started to cry.
I tried to comfort her as best I could. “Everything is going to be all right. Nothing is going to happen to you,” I promised.
She held me as tight as she could, her body tense and trembling, gasping for breath between her sobs. After a while her fingers loosened their grip around my neck and, laying her head on my shoulder, she started to breathe normally.
“Sorry,” she said as she sat up and wiped away a tear. “I don’t know why I did that. I feel fine, just fine.”
“You don’t have to lie to me about this,” I told her. “There’s something wrong, and we have to deal with it. You need to see a doctor.”
I helped her up, and with my arm around her waist we climbed the stairs and went back to bed. She lay with her arm across my chest and her face next to my neck, and until the first rose-colored light of morning I held her while she slept, listening to her soft, peaceful breath, and never once closed my eyes.
Jennifer drove me to the courthouse a little before nine under a seamless blue sky. The streets in the city were jammed with cars and the sidewalks were crowded with brisk-walking men and women hurrying to work. The air was crisp and clean, filled with the sunlit smell of summer, and Mt. Hood, miles away, seemed to be just the other side of the river.
She passed the courthouse, turned the corner, and pulled over next to the park. Whatever had happened to her during the night had to have been an aberration brought on by sheer exhaustion.
She was fine now; there was nothing wrong. She looked at me with that same mischievous self-confident sparkle in her eyes as she leaned back against the door, waiting for me to reach over and kiss her goodbye.
“You’ll see the doctor today?” I reminded her as I started to get out.
She dismissed it as unimportant, but finally promised that she would. I stood watching her drive off, and found myself wondering if she really would. It was the first time she had ever told me anything I did not quite believe.
Twenty-five
The sound of his name still echoing in the hushed stillness of the crowded courtroom, Morris Bingham stepped quickly to the bench. Always pleasant, always polite, he glanced at me, and then at Cassandra Loescher. Neither the defense nor the prosecution had anything to bring before the court. A brief nod told his clerk she could bring in the jury.
While we waited, I turned to Danny and admired the way he looked, all dressed up in a dark blue suit and tie. “You’re looking very sharp today, Danny,” I assured him.
He sat with his shoulders hunched forward and his hands plunged between his legs. He looked at me with a bashful smile and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said, letting it out.
Under the watchful gaze of several hundred strangers, the jury came in, wearing solemn faces and a dignified air, twelve normal people who seemed to have no hesitation about deciding whether someone else would live or die. Some of them stood waiting while the others squeezed past them to get to their places in the jury box. I looked down at the table and ran the palm of my hand over the smooth leather surface of the attache case Jennifer had given me.
“It’s very nice,” said a voice on my right. “It looks brand-new,”
Cassandra Loescher said. She leaned closer. “I’ll bet I know who got it for you.”
The jury was seated and Bingham greeted them by reminding them where we had left off and what was coming next.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, we finished with the opening statements. Let me remind you again that what the attorneys say in their opening statements is not evidence of anything. The only evidence you are to consider is evidence introduced by the testimony of witnesses. This morning, the prosecution will begin its case by calling its first witness. Ms. Loescher, who is the prosecutor in this case, will examine each witness she calls by asking that witness specific questions. This is called direct examination. When she has finished asking questions of her witness, Mr. Antonelli, the attorney for the defense, may, if he wishes, ask questions of his own. This is called cross-examination.
At the end of the prosecution’s case, the defense will have an opportunity to call witnesses of its own. The defense will then ask questions first and the prosecution will be allowed to cross-examine.”
Pausing, he tilted his smallish round head slightly to the side in the attitude of someone about to impart something of particular importance.
“There will be a time-and you witnessed several occasions during opening statements-when an objection will be made either to a question that is asked or an answer that is given. These objections raise issues of law, issues which it is my responsibility to decide. Sometimes you will hear me sustain an objection; sometimes you will hear me overrule an objection. You should not assume that these rulings mean that I have in any way formed an opinion about the merits of this case one way or the other. You certainly must not assume that I have any feelings either of an-imosity or partiality toward either of the lawyers. Just because I disagree with an argument made by one lawyer or the other does not mean that I think he or she has the weaker case.”
He let them consider the meaning of what he had said while he arranged some papers he had brought with him. “Ms. Loescher,”
he asked, looking up, “is the prosecution ready to begin?”
She was wearing a blue print dress. Her hair was pulled up from behind her neck and stacked on top of her head. “Yes, your honor,” she said as she rose straight up from her chair.
“You may call your first witness.”
She turned her head toward the door at the back of the courtroom. “The prosecution calls Sharon Arnold.”
In her early thirties, with long black hair and dark, flirtatious eyes, the first witness had worked as Quincy Griswald’s judicial assistant for a little over four years. She had found his body in the parking structure, slumped against his car.
“How did you happen to be in the parking structure at that particular time?” Loescher asked in a calm, steady voice.
One leg crossed over the other, Sharon Arnold waited until Loescher’s eyes left the jury and came around to her. “I didn’t have my car that day. I left it at the dealer’s that morning for servicing. Judge Griswald was giving me a ride.”
With her hand on the railing of the jury box, Loescher tried to fill in the gap. “Were you going to meet him at his car?”
The question was met with a blank look. Then, when she realized what she had left out, she went on as if she had not forgotten a thing. “We left the office together, but when we reached the door to the outside, he asked me if I’d go back and get something he wanted to work on that night at home.”
Quincy Griswald had not been the only judge to depend on his clerk to keep track of where everything was and to make certain everything was done on time. The clerks ran the courthouse, and after enough years doing it some of them knew more about the law than did the judges for whom they worked. It made sense that Griswald would ask her to go back for the court file he wanted: He would not have known where to look had he gone himself.
Loescher remained next to the jury box, at the end opposite the witness stand. Each time she asked a question, the faces of the jury turned toward her, and then, when she was finished, swung back to watch as Sharon Arnold gave her answer.
“And so you went back to the office to get the court file he had asked for. Approximately how long did it take from the time you left him at the doorway until you found him?”