About That Night

Fifteen

“I HAVE NO further questions, Agent Wilkins.”

Rylann looked over her shoulder at the twenty-one people sitting behind her in three-tiered rows. Everyone was still awake, which was always a good sign. “Does the grand jury have any questions for this witness?”

There was a pause. Up front, next to the witness stand, sat the jury foreman and the recording secretary. The foreman shook his head no.

Rylann nodded at Sam. “You may step down, Agent Wilkins. Thank you.” She turned and watched him leave the room, stealing another peek at the jurors. She could tell from their expressions that they’d liked him, and they had every reason to. He’d been engaging, professional, and prepared, not once needing to look at his investigative reports while testifying. If the case against Quinn went to trial—which, in reality, was unlikely—she had no doubt that Sam would make an excellent witness.

Her job today, simply, was to tell a story. Granted, because this was a grand jury proceeding and not a trial, she could eliminate many of the details of that story, but through her witnesses she needed to convey the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the crime. This particular story had three acts: Agent Wilkins, Kyle Rhodes, and Manuel Gutierrez. At the conclusion of the witnesses’ testimony, she would hand the jury a proposed indictment that laid out the charges against Quinn. Then the rest was in their hands.

Today she would be asking them to indict Quinn on two counts: second-degree murder and conspiracy to violate the civil rights of a federal prisoner. Since she had no direct proof that Quinn had instigated Watts’s attack on Brown, she was asking the grand jury to infer that connection based on circumstantial evidence. It was not a perfect case, but it was one she believed in regardless. And all she needed was sixteen of the twenty-three men and women sitting in that room to believe in it, too.

When the door shut behind Agent Wilkins, Rylann looked over at the jury members. Since there was no judge in the room, the assistant U.S. attorney ran the show. “Why don’t we take a ten-minute break before our next witness?”

She waited until the jurors and court reporter left, then she made her way to the witness room across the hall. She paused momentarily at the door, then pushed it open and found Kyle looking out the window at the view of the building most Chicagoans still refused to call anything but the Sears Tower.

“It’s showtime,” she said.

He turned around, looking strikingly handsome—and conservative—in his dark gray pin-striped suit, blue banker shirt, and gray and blue striped tie. He wore his hair neatly brushed back, the first time she’d ever seen it styled like that, and the color of his shirt brought out the blue of his eyes from across the room.

Rylann felt a little fluttering in her stomach, then quickly brushed it aside. Just a few butterflies of anticipation.

Kyle tucked his hands into his pockets, looking ready and raring to go. “Let’s do this.”

KYLE FOLLOWED RYLANN through the doorway, his curiosity piqued. He knew virtually nothing about grand jury proceedings, but the confidential nature of the process shrouded it in an aura of mystery. He walked into the room and saw that it was smaller than he’d expected, probably only half the size of a regular courtroom. To his right was a witness stand and a bench, the same kind a judge would normally sit behind. On the opposite side of the room was the table from which, presumably, Rylann would question him, and behind that, three rows of chairs for the jurors, stacked like a movie theater.

Chairs that were noticeably empty.

“Counselor, at some point do you plan to have any actual jurors at this grand jury proceeding?” he drawled.

“Ha, ha. I sent them out for a break. I want the jurors’ first image of the infamous Kyle Rhodes to be of you sitting in that stand. I don’t care what they’ve previously heard or read about you—today, you’re simply a witness.” She gestured to the stand. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

Kyle stepped up and took a seat in a well-used swivel chair, banging his knees against a sturdy metal bar bolted to the underside of the podium. “Whoever designed these clearly didn’t have tall men in mind,” he grumbled.

“Sorry. It’s for handcuffs,” she said, referring to the bar.

Of course it was. Kyle looked out at the small courtroom. “So this is what I missed out on by pleading guilty.”

Rylann approached the witness stand with a reassuring smile. “This is nothing. No cross-examination, no objections—just think of it as you and me having a conversation. The jurors can ask you questions when I’m done, although it’s unlikely they’ll do so. Assuming I’ve done my job right, they shouldn’t have any questions.”

She was awfully cute when she did her lawyer thing. “I like the pep talk, counselor,” Kyle said, appreciating the fact that she was trying to make him feel comfortable.

“Thanks. Do you have any questions before we get started?” she asked.

“Just one.” His eyes coyly skimmed over today’s skirt suit varietal, which was beige. “Do you actually own any pants?”

“Any other questions?” she asked without batting an eye.

They were interrupted when the court reporter walked in, followed by two jurors. Immediately, things got serious again. The trio spotted him in the witness stand, and two of them, including the court reporter, did a double take. Ignoring their looks, Rylann returned to her table and nonchalantly studied her notepad, as if she put notorious billionaire heir ex-con hackers on the stand every day.

Over the course of the next two minutes, the remaining twenty-one jurors trickled in. Kyle was pleased to see that four of them didn’t seem to recognize him at all, and three other jurors merely looked at him curiously, as if they couldn’t quite place him. The remaining thirteen appeared highly intrigued by his presence.

When all the jurors had returned to their seats, Rylann nodded at the foreman. “You can swear in the witness.”

“Raise your right hand,” he said to Kyle. “Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you’re about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“I do.”

Rylann locked eyes with him, with a hint of a smile on her lips only he understood.

They had sure come a long way from the cornfields of Champaign-Urbana.

“State your name for the record, please,” she began.

And away we go.

“Kyle Rhodes.”

KYLE HAD TO say, he was impressed.

She was good.

Of course, he’d guessed that Rylann would be a force to be reckoned with in court, since everything about her screamed Bad-Ass Attorney, but it was another thing to actually see it. Although she never moved once from the table, she commanded the room with her questions, drawing out his testimony in a way that hit all the right notes. She spent the first few minutes asking questions about his background, focusing on his education and work experience, which simultaneously gave Kyle a chance to settle into the witness stand and gave the jurors a chance to see him as someone other than the Twitter Terrorist. She addressed the circumstances of his conviction directly but moved on quickly after that, and then talked with him for a while about prison life.

Not exactly the proudest four months of Kyle’s life, nor a subject on which he enjoyed being an expert, but he understood the role he needed to play that afternoon.

She slowed the pace when they got to the night Kyle overheard Quinn’s threat, first eliciting testimony from him that set the scene.

“Can you explain what disciplinary segregation is, for those jurors who may not be familiar with the term?” she suggested.

“It’s a cell block where they separate inmates from the general population. One inmate per cell, and there are none of the regular prison privileges. Meaning no leisure time, and you eat your meals in your cell.”

“Is it quiet?” she asked.

“Very, especially since inmates in segregation aren’t supposed to talk to each other. If a man’s stomach growled, you could hear it three cells over.”

He could tell she liked that answer.

Back and forth they went, grabbing the jurors’ attention and reeling them in. They steadily made their way to the climax of their story—Quinn’s threat. Kyle could see that the jurors were listening with much interest, practically on the edges of their seats as he repeated the words Quinn had said to Brown that fateful night. The tension and excitement in the room was palpable as Rylann circled back to the threat two times, hitting hard with her questions to emphasize this part of her examination, and then suddenly—

It was over.

She paused for a moment, letting Quinn’s threat hang dramatically in the courtroom air. Then she nodded soberly.

“Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. I have no further questions.” She turned to the jurors behind her. “Does the grand jury have any questions for this witness?” After a moment of silence, she smiled politely at Kyle. “You may step down, Mr. Rhodes. Thank you.”

With a nod, Kyle rose from the swivel chair. Ignoring the curious glances of the jurors, he strode out of the room. When the door shut behind him, he stood alone in the hallway feeling satisfied yet strangely dismissed—like a man who’d barely finished his last pump during a hot one-night stand before being shoved out the door with his shirt and shoes in his hands.

He hadn’t expected her to hang around for hours making post-testimonial chitchat, but, boy, that was…anticlimactic. For one thing, she hadn’t even said when they were going to see each other again. Oh, sure, in a few weeks she’d waltz back into his life with her notepad and briefcase and fiery little subpoena threats, and she’d charm and sass and get whatever she wanted, and then wham-bam-thank-you-sir, she’d be on her merry little skirt-suited way again.

This whole grand jury experience had left him feeling very discombobulated.

Kyle made it all the way down to the lobby before he realized he could turn on his cell phone again. He did so, and moments later a text message popped up.

From Rylann, presumably on a break before her next witness.

YOU DID GREAT. I’LL CALL WHEN I KNOW ABOUT THE INDICTMENT.

Kyle stuck his phone back into his suit coat, only later realizing that was the first time in six months he’d left the courthouse with a smile on his face.

LATER THAT EVENING, Rylann walked out that very same door with a similarly pleased expression.

Unlike trial juries, which could take days or even longer in deliberation, a grand jury typically voted quickly. Today, thankfully, had been no exception. Ten minutes after Manuel Gutierrez left the witness stand, the jury foreperson had brought to the chief judge’s chambers a true bill in the case that henceforth would officially be known as United States v. Adam Quinn.

She had her indictment.