Tell Me No Secrets (6 page)

Jess shuffled through the darkened hallway to the kitchen, heading directly for the freezer. She opened it, recoiling from the sudden flash of light, and drew out a box of frozen pizzas, quickly tearing at the cellophane around one of them and popping the stiff disk into the microwave oven that sat on the side counter. She pressed the necessary buttons and listened to the soft whir of the micro rays as they circled their frozen prey, being careful not to stand directly in front of the oven.

Don had warned her against standing directly in its path when it was on. But surely these things are perfectly safe, she had argued. Why take chances? had come his instant rebuttal. He was probably right, she’d decided, adopting his precautions as her own. You never knew what harmful rays might be lurking about, just waiting for their chance to feast on larger game.

Jess watched the microwave silently ticking down its seconds, then defiantly thrust her body directly in its path. “Come and get me,” she cried, then laughed, feeling almost giddy. Was she really standing in her small galley kitchen at three o’clock in the morning challenging her microwave oven?

The timer beeped five times, announcing her pizza was ready, and Jess gently lifted the now hot pie into her hands and carried it into the large combination living and dining area. She loved her apartment, had from the first moment she’d walked up the three flights to its door. It was old and full of interesting angles, the bay windows of its west wall looking out onto Orchard Street, only a block and a half away from where she’d lived as a child, and a far cry from the modern three-bedroom apartment on Lake Shore Drive she’d shared with Don.

It was the sharing part of her life she missed the most: having someone to talk to, to be with, to cuddle up next to at the end of the day. It had felt nice to share big ideas, small triumphs, needless worries. It had felt comforting to be part of a couple, safe to be part of
JessandDon
.

Jess switched on a stereo that rested against the wall across from the old tie-dyed velvet sofa she’d found in a secondhand store on Armitage Avenue and listened as the ineffably beautiful strains of Cesar Franck’s violin and piano concerto filled the room. Beside her, her canary, his cage covered for the night, started to sing. Jess sank into the soft swirls of her velvet sofa, listening to the sweet sounds, and eating her pizza in the dark.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached your verdict?” the judge asked, and Jess felt a rush of adrenaline
surge through her body. It had been almost twenty-four hours since she had delivered her closing argument. The jury had deliberated for almost eight hours before deciding that no consensus was immediately forthcoming, and Judge Harris had impatiently ordered them to a hotel for the night, under careful instructions not to discuss the case with anybody. They had resumed their deliberations at nine o’clock this morning. Surprisingly, an hour later, they were ready.

The jury foreman said yes, they had reached their verdict, and Judge Harris instructed the defendant to please rise. Jess listened, her breathing stilled, as the jury foreman intoned solemnly, “We, the jury, find the defendant, Douglas Phillips … not guilty.”

Not guilty.

Jess felt a pin prick her side, sensed her body slowly losing air.

Not guilty.

“My God, they didn’t believe me,” Erica Barnowski whispered beside her. Not guilty.

Doug Phillips embraced his attorney. Rosemary Michaud gave Jess a discreet victory smile.

Not guilty.

“Damn it,” Neil Strayhorn said. “I really thought we had a chance.”

Not guilty.

“What kind of justice is this?” Erica Barnowski demanded, her voice gaining strength through indignation. “The man admitted holding a knife to my throat, for God’s sake, and the jury says he isn’t guilty?”

Jess could only nod. She’d been part of the justice system too long to harbor any delusions about its so-called justice. Guilt was a relative concept, a matter of ghosts and shadows. Like beauty, it was in the eye of the beholder. Like truth, it was subject to interpretation.

“What do I do now?” Erica Barnowski was asking. “I lost my job, my boyfriend, my self-respect. What do I do now?” She didn’t wait for an answer, fleeing the courtroom before Jess had time to think of a suitable response.

What could she have said? Don’t worry, tomorrow is another day? Things will look brighter in the morning? It’s always darkest before the dawn? How about, what goes around comes around? He’ll get his? If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be? Of course, there was always, tough luck, better luck next time, heaven helps those who help themselves. And for added comfort, give it time, you did the right thing, it only hurts for a little while, life goes on.

There it was in a nutshell, she thought: the wisdom of the ages condensed into three small words—life goes on.

Jess gathered her papers together, glancing over her shoulder as the defendant shook hands with each of the jurors in turn. The jury members carefully avoided making eye contact with her as they filed from the courtroom minutes later, the woman juror with the intelligent face and soft gray eyes being the only one to say good-bye to Jess. Jess nodded in return, curious as to what part this woman had played in the jury’s final decision. Had she been convinced of Douglas Phillips’s innocence all along, or had she been the reason for the lengthy deliberations, the final holdout for a guilty verdict, giving in only when her obstinacy threatened to force a mistrial? Or had she sat
there, impatiently tapping her foot, waiting for the others to come to their senses and see things her way?

Not guilty.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Neil asked.

Jess shook her head, not sure whether she was more angry or sad. Later there would be plenty of time to analyze and discuss whether they could have done things differently. Right now, there was nothing anyone could do. It was over. She couldn’t change the outcome of the case any more than she could change the facts of the case, and the fact, as Greg Oliver bad clearly stated the day before, was that no jury in the land was going to convict a man of rape when the woman wasn’t wearing panties.

Jess knew she wasn’t ready to return to the office. Quite apart from the unpleasant certainty of having to acknowledge Greg Oliver’s superior savvy, she needed time alone to come to terms with the jury’s decision, time to accept it before moving on, time to deal with her anger and frustration. With her loss. Time to get her mind ready for her next case.

Ultimately that was the biggest truth about the American justice system: One person’s life was just another person’s case.

Jess found herself on California Avenue with no clear memory of having left the courthouse. It was unlike her not to know exactly what she was doing, she thought, feeling the cold through her thin tweed jacket. The weather forecasters were still predicting the possibility of snow. Predicting a possibility, she repeated silently, thinking this an interesting concept. She bundled her jacket around her and started walking. “I might as well be naked,” she said
out loud, knowing nobody would be paying attention. Just another casualty of the justice system, she thought, a sudden impulse guiding her aboard a number sixty bus heading for downtown Chicago.

“What am I doing?” she muttered under her breath, taking a seat near the driver. It wasn’t like her to act on impulse. Impulses were for those who lacked control over their lives, she thought, closing her eyes, the steady hum of the motor vibrating through her.

She wasn’t sure how long the bus had been in motion before she reopened her eyes, or when she first realized that the woman juror with the auburn hair and soft gray eyes was sitting at the back of the bus. She was even less sure at what moment she decided to follow her. It was certainly nothing she had consciously planned. And yet, here she was, approximately half an hour later, exiting the bus several paces behind the woman, following her onto Michigan Avenue, trailing her from a distance of perhaps twenty feet. What on earth was she doing?

Several blocks down Michigan Avenue, the woman stopped to look in a jewelry store window and Jess did the same, gazing past the display of precious gems and gold bracelets, finding her shivering, quizzical reflection in the glass, as if her image were trying to figure out who she was. She’d never been into jewelry. The only jewelry she’d ever worn had been her simple gold wedding band. Don had given up buying her trinkets during their marriage when he found them inevitably consigned to the back of her dresser drawer. It just wasn’t her style, she’d explained. She always felt like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s things.

Her mother, she thought, realizing that the woman juror had moved on. How could she have considered, even for an instant, that the woman looked anything like her mother? This woman was approximately five feet five inches tall and 140 pounds; in comparison, her mother had been almost four inches taller and ten pounds heavier. Not to mention the differences in the color of their eyes and hair, or in the amount of makeup they wore, Jess thought, confident that her mother would never have worn lipstick that pink or blush that obviously applied. Unlike her mother, the woman was clearly skittish and insecure, her heavy makeup a mask against time. No, there was nothing similar about the two women at all.

The woman juror stopped in front of another shop, and Jess found herself staring at an ugly assortment of leather bags and cases. Was the woman going to go inside the store? Buy herself a little treat? A reward for a job well done? Well, why not? Jess thought, turning her head discreetly away as the woman pushed open the door and headed for the center of the store.

Should she follow her inside? Jess wondered, thinking she could use a new briefcase. Hers was very old; Don had bought it for her when she graduated from law school, and unlike his jewelry purchases, he certainly couldn’t complain about that gift’s lack of use. The once shiny black leather had grown scratched and smudged, its stitching frayed, the zipper forever catching on some wayward threads. Maybe it was time to give it up, buy a new one. Sever her ties with the past once and for all.

The woman emerged from the store with only the brown handbag she’d been carrying when she went in. She
gathered the collar of her dark green coat around her chin and stuffed her gloved hands inside her pockets. Jess found herself mimicking the woman’s actions, following several paces behind.

They crossed the Chicago River, the Wrigley Building looming high on one side of the wide street, the Tribune Tower on the other. Downtown Chicago was a wealth of architectural splendors, boasting skyscrapers by the likes of Mies van der Rohe, Helmut Jahn, and Bruce Graham. Jess had often contemplated taking a lecture cruise along Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. Somehow she’d never gotten around to it.

The woman continued for several more paces, then stopped abruptly, spinning around. “Why are you following me?” she demanded angrily, tapping impatient fingers against the sleeve of her coat, like a schoolteacher questioning an errant pupil.

Jess felt herself reduced in stature to that of a small child, terrified of getting her knuckles rapped. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, wondering again what she was doing. “I didn’t mean to …”

“I saw you on the bus, but I didn’t think anything of it,” the woman said, clearly flustered. “Then I saw you by the jewelry store, but I thought, well, everybody has the right to look in the same window, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. But when you were still there when I came out of that leather goods store, I knew you had to be following me. Why? What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. Really, I wasn’t following you.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, challenged Jess’s.

“I … I’m not sure why I was following you,” Jess admitted
after a pause. She couldn’t remember a time she’d felt more foolish.

“It wasn’t you, you know,” the woman began, relaxing slightly. “If that’s what you wanted to know. It wasn’t anything you said or did.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We thought you were wonderful,” she continued. “The jury … we thought what you said about a lack of common sense not excusing a lack of common decency, well, we thought that was wonderful. We argued about it for a long time. Quite vehemently.”

“But you didn’t accept it,” Jess stated, surprised by how eager she was to understand how the jury had arrived at its verdict.

The woman looked toward the sidewalk. “It wasn’t an easy decision. We did what we thought was right. We know that Mr. Phillips was wrong in what he did, but, in the end, we decided that to put the man in prison for years, to make him lose his job and his livelihood … for an error in judgment, like you said …”

“I wasn’t talking about the defendant’s lack of judgment!” Jess heard the horror in her voice. How could they have misunderstood?

“Yes, we knew that,” the woman quickly explained. “We just thought that it could apply to both sides.”

Wonderful, Jess thought, catching a gulp of cold air, finding it hard to appreciate the irony of the situation, harder still to exhale.

“We loved your little suits,” the woman continued, as if trying to cheer her up.

“My little suits?”

“Yes. The gray one in particular. One of the women said she was thinking of asking you where you bought it.”

“You were looking at my suit?”

“Appearances are very important,” the woman said. “That’s what I’m always telling my daughters. First impressions and all that.” She reached out and patted Jess’s hand. “You make a very good impression, dear.”

Jess wasn’t sure whether to curtsy or scream. She felt her heart starting to pound against the tweed fabric of her jacket.

“Anyway,” the woman was saying. “You did a very good job.”

How could someone with such intelligent eyes be so stupid? Jess asked herself, finding it difficult to catch her breath.

“I really should get going,” the woman said, obviously uncomfortable with Jess’s silence. She took a few steps, then stopped. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little pale.”

Jess tried to speak, could only nod, forcing her lips into what she hoped was a reassuring smile. The woman smiled in return, then walked briskly down the street, taking several quick peeks over her shoulder to where Jess remained standing. She probably wants to make sure I’m not following her, Jess thought, wondering again what had possessed her. What had she been doing trailing after this woman, for God’s sake? What was she doing now?