Order in the Court (5 page)

To hear my mother say it made it even more real. I took a few burning gulps of my hot chocolate just to have something to do. I had thought it was over.

“So what does that mean?” my dad asked. “What’s going to happen now?”

“It means I’m going to have to testify,” I said, finally realizing for myself what that would actually entail. “I’m the best shot they’ve got at a conviction, and I’m not going to let him go free.”

“HOW LONG
were you in the bathroom?” Haywood asked.

“I don’t know.” I had to remind myself to be honest, and not to take a guess. “For at least several minutes. I waited until I heard him leave, and then I waited some more. I was too scared to move, or breathe.”

“What did you do after you were sure the killer was gone?”

I risked a glance at the jury again. The majority of them were leaning forward, attentively listening. One woman in the back row had her hand over her mouth.

“I walked out of the bathroom. My foot was wet because it slipped into the toilet while I was hiding, so I left a trail of water on the floor. There were bloody footprints across the floor, right up to the stall where I’d been hiding.” I had come so close to death. One ill-timed sneeze and I’d be dead.

“What did you see when you left the bathroom?”

“I saw Jake’s body first. I could tell he was dead so I walked around him.”

“How were you sure he was dead?” Haywood prompted. He wanted every detail, every horrid detail. The jury needed to know everything, needed me to say it so that when the coroner testified our stories would match.

“There was nothing left of his face. His brains were all over the wall behind him. So I moved on.” Another glance to the jury—the woman with her hand over her mouth had let it fall, her lips formed a little “o” of surprise and horror. A few members looked like they might be sick.

“What did you do next?”

“I went to the girls to check for pulses. I went to Jessa first. She was in the middle of the floor, like she’d gotten out of the booth and made a run for it. She’d been shot in the back.” I paused, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “She didn’t have a pulse.” My stomach rolled over, but I plowed on. “Ricky was still in the booth, with her arm hanging over the table. I checked her for a pulse next and didn’t find one.”

“Where was Katherine?” Haywood pressed, filling in the short silence I had unwittingly created as I tried to steady myself.

“She was on the floor next to the booth,” I said, my lower lip wobbling. I sucked it between my teeth to make it stop. It didn’t help. “I kneeled beside her. I didn’t even notice all the blood, it was so surreal. I felt for a pulse in her neck. It took forever because I kept thinking I felt one, but it was just my own heart racing.” I closed my eyes. “Her mouth was open, and her eyes—she looked so scared.”

Someone, possibly a jury member, heaved a sob. I didn’t open my eyes. “I closed her eyes. I was so worried about smudging her makeup.” I couldn’t help it. A tiny, choked sob escaped my chest. “She spent so long getting it perfect for prom pictures, and I messed it up. But I couldn’t leave her like that.”

“What happened next?”

“I got Ricky’s phone out of her purse, and I called 9-1-1. I told the dispatcher what I knew and then I got up and went back to the bathroom.”

“I’d like to enter into evidence the 9-1-1 dispatcher recording of that phone call,” Haywood said, “to corroborate the witness testimony.” Haywood retrieved an ancient cassette player from his desk and held it up for the jury to see. “May I play it now for the benefit of the jury?”

Judge Gillis glanced at his notes, nodded, and then said, “You may proceed.”

Haywood pressed Play. The scratchy voice of the dispatcher identified herself as 9-1-1 and then asked what my emergency was. I barely recognized my own voice saying, “
Four people are dead… four people have been murdered
.”

“
I’m sorry, did you say that four people are dead? What is your location?
”

“
We’re at Sparky’s. Sparky’s Diner—
” There was the sound of me choking on my own tongue, gagging. Had I just put my hand in the pool of blood? I couldn’t remember.

“
I’m dispatching help to your location.
”

My voice was quiet on the recording, but it was just possible to make it out through the background noise: “
He had a shotgun. I hid in the bathroom.
” I heard myself clear my throat, repeat the second phrase louder, “
I was hiding in the bathroom
.”

“
Are you hurt? Is anyone hurt?
”

“
They’re dead. He blew their brains out. He didn’t find me—I was hiding in the bathroom.
”

The background noise got louder, thumping and clattering as the dispatcher continued to ask me questions, but I didn’t answer again. I had dropped the phone. The call cut out after another minute of patient prompting from the dispatcher. Haywood hit the Stop button on the cassette player.

“Corinna, can you identify your voice in the recording?” Haywood asked.

“Yes, that was my voice.” It didn’t sound like it at all, but I recognized the words and the panic in the voice. “I made the 9-1-1 call.” The disembodied voice on the recording sounded nothing like me.

“Why did you go back to the bathroom?”

“I felt sick to my stomach. I knew I was going to throw up, and I didn’t want to mess up the crime scene. I watch
CSI
.”

Somebody laughed, and then stifled it into a cough. I ignored them.

“I went to the bathroom and I threw up. The next thing I know, a paramedic is pulling me out of the bathroom and checking me over. I was covered in so much blood they thought I’d been shot, but I told them it wasn’t my blood.”

“Whose blood was it?”

“I think it was Kate’s. I don’t really know. I touched Jessa’s body, and Ricky’s, and Kate’s. I thought maybe one of them was still alive. I hoped.” I twisted the handkerchief in my hands, trying to scrub away imaginary traces of blood from between my fingers.

“When did you next see the defendant?” Haywood redirected smoothly, drawing me out of the nightmare.

“On the day of the funeral. Right after the funeral service, at the burial. He was wearing the same baseball cap he wore during the murders. That’s when I knew for sure it was him.”

“What happened when you saw him at the cemetery?”

“I freaked out. I started screaming that it was him, that he had killed his own sister. He made a break for it, but someone grabbed him to stop him from running before the cops arrived.” I shook my head. “I don’t really remember what happened after that. I might have fainted. I woke up at home, and they told me he’d confessed to the murders. I thought it was over. I was so relieved.”

Haywood stepped up right close to me in the witness box, looking for all the world like a man that my mother could love and not at all like a prosecuting attorney. He had kind eyes. “In your honest opinion,” he said, his voice like smoke in the air between us, warm and smooth, “do you think the defendant, Dustin James Adams, should be convicted of first-degree murder and sent to prison for his actions on the morning of June twenty-seventh?”

I could not see Dustin through Haywood. He was standing too close. So I was not looking him in the eyes when I said, “I do.” And I was glad I did not have to look into his eyes, eyes that were so much like Kate’s. Because as much as he deserved to never see the light of day again, one look in those eyes might have made me hesitate for a moment, and my confidence in his guilt might have shaken, and the jury might have heard it shake, and he might have been acquitted.

Haywood stepped back. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

I could see Dustin after Haywood stepped back. He had his head down and his hands clasped in front of him, as though in prayer. This was a man who had never been to church in his life. This was a man who had murdered four people in cold blood. This was a man I wanted to rot in prison, and then, after he had withered away to nothing, to rot in hell.

THE LEAVES
were starting to change. It felt too soon. In my head it was still summer. It was still the summer my friends had been murdered. This would be my first autumn without them, the first autumn they wouldn’t see. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

Mr. Haywood’s office had a south-facing window in a limestone building in East Bayside, out of which one could see a lovely view of a little green park but not the water. You could smell it, though, the salty smell-taste of water close by. It permeated the fabrics and the wallpaper of the office building and made everything feel perpetually damp, though you know that it isn’t actually.

I sat in a chair that faced the window. Mr. Haywood’s desk was immediately in front of it, facing the door. His office was lined with bookcases holding important-looking leather-bound volumes of considerable size and weight. One shelf had a bend in the middle, a crooked smile of too-heavy book teeth. On his desk was an emerald-colored plaque that read
HARRY HAYWOOD, ESQUIRE
, in boldface white lettering, which he straightened after my mother and I sat down.

His pale gray suit made his skin look sickly and pallid, nearly the same colorless quality that his hair had, gray but maybe blond, and his eyes, gray but maybe blue. In his office of dark woods, crimson carpet, and taupe and olive wallpaper, he looked like a ghost.

“Thank you for coming today,” he said, and his voice was not the ghostly murmur I expected, but a lively tenor of musical quality. I relaxed a little in the fat, olive armchair. “Clearly, there’s been an unexpected change in proceedings, and we’re starting from scratch in building a case fit for trial.”

“How can they do this?” my mother demanded, ferocious on a Monday afternoon. “How is this legal?”

“Adams’s attorneys have probably been planning this all along,” Haywood admitted. “He confessed before his mother could get him a lawyer, accepted a deal he didn’t really understand. His lawyers have probably convinced him that to testify against his former bosses would mean certain death for him, and he’s not eligible for witness protection because of his pending case. He waits until the case has been set aside and then breaks his agreement with the district attorney, claims coercion—it’s not a bad tactic. It’ll confuse a jury.”

“So there’s going to be a trial, then?” I cut in, adding, “With a jury and everything? Like on
Law & Order
?” I felt young and stupid the moment I said it, but it was too late to take it back.

Haywood laughed. “If he enters a plea of not guilty at his hearing next week, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Though I’m not sure how accurate a portrayal a television program can provide.” He began flipping through a thin file, pulling from it a photocopy of the written statement I’d provided for the police after Dustin’s arrest. “We don’t have much to go on for a criminal trial. In fact, without your statement, the case is pretty much built on circumstantial evidence. I would blame shoddy police work, but in a small town, there’s not much more that can be done but outsource.”

“So what you’re saying is, if my daughter doesn’t testify, the Adams boy has a real shot at exoneration?” my mother asked, shaking her head. “Why?”

“Well, it took several days for Adams to be taken into custody. During that time he probably destroyed a great deal of evidence that could have been used to convict him,” Haywood admitted. “They didn’t find the murder weapon or the boots he had been wearing. Shoe size points to him, but you can’t arrest a man for being a size eleven. The clothes you saw him wearing were not among the things found in the Barrett home after the arrest. There were no usable fingerprints left at the scene….”

“So basically, we’ve got nothing,” I said, my heart sinking.

“No, we do,” Haywood assured me. He reached across the desk and grabbed me by both of my hands. Squeezing them between his own two hands, which were warm and solid, he added, “We’ve got
you
.”

“THIS IS
incredibly unorthodox,” the judge said after we had all been asked to rise and sit again. My mother was a sturdy presence by my side, but my father was shaking like a leaf. I put my hand over his and squeezed it gently, feeling under my fingers the knobby bones forged from a lifetime of typing up reports.

“I am aware, Your Honor,” said the defense lawyer, tucking her long hair behind her ears and then shuffling some papers on the desk in front of her. “But there are extenuating circumstances that cannot be overlooked in this case.”

“All right, Mrs. Kovač, you have the floor.”

The judge was a broad-shouldered, soft-voiced old man with a short white beard and twinkling blue eyes. His name was Judge Theodore Sheridan, and he wouldn’t have looked out of place dressed as Santa Claus in December, seating toddlers on his lap for photographs. Haywood had told me, when we learned who was presiding over the arraignment, that you “couldn’t get a judge fairer than old Teddy Sheridan,” but I was not reassured. I didn’t want fair. I wanted harsh and stern. I wanted Dustin’s second plea to be thrown out, his charges of coercion laughed out of court.

“My client, Dustin James Adams, was violently coerced into signing a confession and entering a guilty plea at his first arraignment. His agreement signed with the district attorney was not done in good faith but in fear for his life and liberty. The plea, thus not made ‘knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently,’ to borrow phraseology from Supreme Court case 304 U.S. 458, is clearly inadmissible.”

“Those are some serious accusations, Mrs. Kovač,” Judge Sheridan said. “Do you have any evidence to back up your claim of coercion?”

“Photographs of my client on the night of his arrest show bruising to the face, neck, and arms, and the clothing he was wearing during his interrogation reveal traces of blood and urine, both my client’s own. He was physically intimidated by violence, so much so that he lost control of his bladder.”