Steven Womack - By Blood Written

This , Taylor thought, as the afternoon wore on, this is the tedious, boring part . Enjoy it.

Hank Powell sat in the back of the courtroom as the testimony droned on all afternoon. Trying a homicide case was anything, he knew, but drama. It was tedious, dreary work, almost as dreary and tedious as investigating a homicide case.

But Hank wasn’t bored. He was worried. He was worried because he knew the case against Michael Schiftmann was essentially circumstantial and weak. The DNA tests had come back from the lab inconclusive. Michael’s DNA matched none of the samples left behind at the crime scene or on the bloodied clothes, or even in the trunk of the rental car.

The case was made even weaker by the fact that the jury would never hear the truth about Michael Schiftmann, the truth that the two girls murdered in Nashville were only the latest in a long string of murders that had taken place over the last five years. Collier had fought like hell to get the testimony of the old lady, the retired schoolteacher who’d figured all this out in the first place, admitted. But of course, he hadn’t. Then when Collier tried to get the judge to allow Maria Chavez on the stand to testify how she’d tied all this together, Schiftmann’s lawyers had thrown a conniption.

It had been a long shot, Powell knew. No judge would let a homicide investigator or anyone else on the stand offer as proof to one crime a supposition that others similar to it had been committed by the same person. He’d have to be convicted of the other crimes before that could be brought in, and even then, only in the sentencing phase.

But without that supposition, the evidence against Schiftmann-what there was of it-somehow looked weaker.

Not that it was hopeless, Hank thought. When the jury saw the chain of evidence that conclusively and inextricably linked Michael Schiftmann’s rental car to the Exotica Tans murder scene, then the defense would have to do some serious shucking and jiving to get out of that.

Hank was relieved when Judge Forsythe called a halt to the trial at five-thirty that afternoon, with the prosecution’s case probably half complete. The trial moved more quickly than anyone expected because the defense offered, in most cases, only a perfunctory cross-examination. Since nothing that detrimental to the defense had been presented yet, there seemed little point.

Hank had taken a room in the Doubletree Hotel on Fourth Avenue, just a few blocks from the courthouse. He’d decided that morning to leave his rental car and walk rather than struggle for parking. As he walked out of the courtroom, through the crowd of spectators and news crews, he felt like he was walking through a madhouse. The January sun had almost completely set, throwing a sulfurous orange glow over the western horizon that melded into the lowlying scud that filled the rest of the sky.

The air was cold, with a bite to it. Powell ducked his head, pulled his overcoat tightly around him, and worked his way through the crowd toward the sidewalk, grateful that no one would ever recognize him.

Back at the hotel, he loosened his tie, threw his jacket across the back of the sofa, and went down the hall to the ice machine. He came back and turned on the local news as he scooped up a glassful of ice. The NBC affiliate station was doing a live remote from the steps of the courthouse, with the young woman reporter with the long black hair and the fashionable red glasses speaking directly into the camera. Hank remembered her sitting in the courtroom a few rows up from him. He raised the volume on the television, then opened the hotel minibar, and pulled out a tiny bottle of vodka.

“The prosecution opened today,” the young woman began, “with a series of witnesses who described in graphic and often hard-to-watch detail the murder scene at Exotica Tans on Church Street last February.”

The station cut to the news film of that night as the reporter continued in voice-over. “Nineteen-year-old Sarah Denise Burnham and twenty-two-year old Allison May Matthews were working that Friday night …”

Hank found himself not wanting to hear it all again. He muted the television, then opened the three-inch-high mini-bottle and poured the vodka over a tumbler of ice. He sat down in an overstuffed chair, took a long sip of the drink, and glanced at his watch-six-fifteen in Nashville, an hour later in upstate Vermont. Dinner should be over by now at the Butler School.

He picked up the phone, dialed a 1-800 number, then his calling card number, then a series of ten more numbers.

God , he thought, how do I remember all of it?

Then his daughter, Jackie, answered, and he knew how he could keep all those numbers in his head. They were the numbers that got him to this voice.

“Hello?”

“Hi, baby.”

“Daddy!” she said, excited. “How are you?”

“Fine, I’m in Nashville. Got in last night.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice becoming more serious, “you’re at that trial. That murder trial. We saw a report today on CNN.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a zoo.”

“So how is it?”

“It’s interesting. Sort of getting off to a slow start, but I think it’ll speed up.”

“Dads,” Jackie said, “I thought you weren’t going to go. I thought the guys in the front office didn’t want you to.”

“What gave you that idea?” Hank caught his image in the mirror across the room. He looked tired, he thought. And he missed Jackie. She’d only been back in school a week after Christmas vacation, and already he missed the hell out of her. It was going to be a long semester.

“I heard you talking in your office that day. You were talking to somebody on the phone. You sounded upset, like the guys upstairs were really giving you a hard time on this.”

“Okay, pumpkin,” he said after a moment. “You caught me. They didn’t want me to go. I’m not testifying. I’m not an active investigator in this case. I’ve just acted in an advisory capacity on this, so my supervisor didn’t think there was any point in my being here.”

“So how’d you get there?” Jackie demanded.

“I took some personal time, vacation. I had it coming.

And I’m footing the bill myself, although the hotel did give me the government discount.”

“Daddy!” she said, exasperated. “I worry about you. Over the holidays, you looked exhausted the whole time.”

“I did not,” Hank shot back. “We had a great time. We had a wonderful Christmas.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re overdoing it.

You’re working too hard and you’ve got too much crap to deal with.”

“Hey, hey, watch the mouth there,” Hank said, smiling.

“Besides, I’m fine.”

There was a long moment of silence, then Jackie spoke again. “Dads, be honest with me. How much trouble are you in at work?”

“Hmm,” Hank said, wondering how candid to be. “Truth is, I’m dealing with a lot of crap right now. But not any more than I can handle.”

“I hope not,” Jackie said. “Oh, wait, Daddy, I’ve got to run. We’ve got a hall meeting at seven-fifteen.”

“Okay, dear, I’ll call you the next couple of days, okay?

You stay warm up there.”

“I love you,” she said.

Hank grinned. “I love you, too. Take care.”

There was a click on the other end of the line as Jackie hung up. Hank held the phone a moment, then placed it back on the cradle and took a long sip of the vodka.

“Not any more than I can handle,” he whispered. “Hope I wasn’t lying to her.”

Thursday afternoon, Nashville

“General Collier, anything on redirect?” Judge Forsythe asked.

Collier stood and faced the judge. “Nothing at this time, Your Honor, but we reserve the option to recall.”