James Grippando - Hear No Evil

“I put flowers on her grave. Big damn deal.”

“Flowers my ass. I know what you did there.”

Torres went rigid. He clearly had grasped the meaning of that last remark, knew that Jack had spoken to his ex-wife. “I don’t have to listen to this crap.”

Jack grabbed him by the lapel, shoved him against the wall.

“What are you gonna do, hit me? Is that what you want to do?”

Jack tightened his grip. He did want to hit him. He wanted to hit him hard enough to knock him back to Cuba.

Torres was having trouble breathing, Jack was pushing so hard against him. “What good would it have done?” the prosecutor said, his voice strained. “What if I had let that doctor tell your mother not to have any more children. Where would that leave you, huh, Jack? You would never have been born. You got nothing to hold against me. You should be thanking me.”

There was truth in what he said, but not the kind of truth that made Jack want to forgive him. Jack, however, wasn’t sure how it made him feel. There was just a surge of emotion. The sadness of his never having known his mother. The frustration of pulling snippets of information from his father and grandmother over the years. The utter dismay of learning that he hardly knew anything important about her. But mostly he felt anger-anger over the fact that, with or without Hector Torres, there had never been a chance for Jack and his mother to enjoy any kind of happy ending. At least not in the 1960s. One of them was destined to be buried, Jack or his mother, his mother or Ramón. There was still no one to blame, no clear culprit. Just this pathetic excuse for a human being standing before him.

Jack cocked his arm, ready to paste one on that ugly puss. Torres recoiled-hardly a defense-but a quick knock on the door stopped Jack cold.

The door opened. Sofia entered, and her eyes widened with surprise. “What’s going on?”

Jack released the older man. Torres straightened his wrinkled lapels and said, “Just a little disagreement, that’s all.”

Sofia looked confused, but she didn’t pursue it. “Jury’s back again. This time it’s for real. They have a verdict.”

It took a few seconds for the message to sink in, to bring them back to the reason they were there in the first place.

Torres grabbed his briefcase and started for the door. Then he stopped and looked back at Jack. “Just to finish up our conversation, Counselor. And I suppose this bit of advice applies equally well to the jury verdict as it does to what we were talking about earlier.” His eyes darkened, and his expression turned very serious, almost threatening. “Live with it, Swyteck. You’re just gonna have to.”

It had been a long time since Jack had felt such hatred toward anyone. The prosecutor turned and was gone, but Jack could almost feel the heat rising from his own skin.

Sofia seemed reluctant to say anything, but finally she had to. “Jack, we should go. Lindsey’s waiting.”

He took a moment, then gathered himself. Lindsey. How strange it felt just to hear her name. How strange it was to know that her fate had finally been decided.

Without another word, he started down the long corridor with Sofia at his side.

Jack returned to a packed courtroom. Someone had done a crack job of alerting the media of an impending verdict, and Jack suspected that his initials were H.T.

Hector Torres was seated at the table nearest the jury box, drumming his fingers expectantly on the tabletop. Lindsey sat impassively between her two lawyers, saying nothing. The galley was filled nearly to capacity, fuller than it had been on any day since the first day of trial. A few journalists had fired questions at Jack and Sofia as they entered the courtroom. How was their client doing? What was Jack’s prediction? As if any of that mattered. The fat lady hadn’t quite sung, but she was at least exercising her voice. Is was all over but for the reading of perhaps one, hopefully two, simple words from a slip of paper. The verdict was in the can. Lindsey’s life was in the balance. The rest of Brian’s life would be forever changed, one way or the other, for better or for worse.

Jack wished only that he knew with greater certainty which way was better and which way was worse.

“All rise!” shouted the bailiff.

The crowd was quickly on its feet, and the mull of numerous conversations ceased. A side door opened, and Judge Garcia entered the courtroom from his chambers. He climbed to the high-back leather chair atop the bench and instructed the bailiff to bring in the jury. Seven men and five women entered the courtroom in single file, each taking his or her assigned seat in the jury box.

“Please be seated,” the judge told the rest of the courtroom.

Jack glanced over his shoulder as he took his seat. Alejandro Pintado and his wife were behind the prosecutor in the first row of public seating. They were holding hands and locking arms, so close together they were practically one person. Jack couldn’t help but note the contrast: the pain and emotion all over the faces of the victim’s parents, the complete lack of expression on the face of the accused. Jack knew it wasn’t because Lindsey didn’t care. She was emotionally and physically drained from too little sleep and too many worries. At some point, the body’s defense mechanisms took over. Numbness was always the last defense, the place people landed when they were just too weary to fight any longer.

The judge said, “Madam forewoman, has the jury reached a verdict?”

A middle-aged woman in the first row stood and said, “We have, Your Honor.”

A flurry of thoughts ran through Jack’s mind. The jury had chosen a fore woman. A good thing or a bad? Less likely to convict in a death penalty case? More sympathetic to an abused wife? Full of venom for a slutty mom who cheated on her husband? It was pointless to speculate. It was simply time to hope for good news and to brace for bad.

Jack took Lindsey’s hand, but she pulled away, as if she preferred to handle this on her own and in her own way.

The written verdict almost seemed to float across the courtroom, passed from the forewoman to the bailiff, from the bailiff to the judge. Judge Garcia adjusted his reading glasses, looked down, and read the verdict to himself. In hundreds of trials, Jack had never been able to tell which way a verdict had gone by reading the judge’s face as he inspected the verdict. Judge Garcia was the typical model of stoicism. He passed the verdict back to the bailiff and said, “The defendant will please rise.”

Lindsey was slow to find her footing. Jack stood on her left, Sofia on her right.

“Madam forewoman, please read the verdict.”

The air in the courtroom suddenly seemed too thick to breathe. Jack glanced one last time at the Pintado family in the first row. Mrs. Pintado was leaning into her husband, unable to watch. Mr. Pintado was drawing short, anxious breaths. Most of all, however, Jack noticed that their grandson wasn’t there.

A good thing, thought Jack. Either way, that was a good thing.

The forewoman took the verdict from the bailiff, unfolded it. Her hand shook as she read it aloud. “In the United States of America versus Lindsey Hart, Case Number 02-0937, we the jury, find as follows. As to Count I, violation of chapter eighteen, United States Code, murder in the first degree, we find the defendant…”

She paused, and Jack felt a lump swelling in his throat.

“Guilty.”

Lindsey gasped as she collapsed into her chair. Jack went down with her, trying to hold her steady, though he too felt as if his knees had been cut out from under him. The courtroom was immediately abuzz with surprise, approval, and even some heartfelt dismay. Jack shot a quick glance toward the jurors, but none of them would look in his direction. Behind the prosecutor, tears were flowing. Oscar Pintado’s mother had let out a shriek, neither of delight nor despair. It was just an outburst that seemed to tell the world that justice had been done.