Baby, Would I Lie?

25

Friday was the first day of the actual trial, and Sara was there, but only through the intercession of Cal Denny. The court was being quite strict with the press, which by its very nature prefers the circus of celebrity to the bread of jurisprudence. Only three pool reporters were allowed in the courtroom itself, though the rest of the flock could preen and honk all it wanted in the hall outside and in the stairwell down to the main entrance. Remote-TV trucks now girdled the courthouse, as though they’d formed a circle there against an attack by the Atlanta Braves, but no media cameras were permitted anywhere in the building. Other cameras were present, however, small video cameras discreetly on black tripods by the side walls of the court, one placed there by the prosecution, the other by the defense.

Sara was not seated with the press contingent, three shaggy reporters and three intense sketch artists jammed together in the rear row on the prosecution side, but with the defense partisans across the aisle and down front, between Cal Denny and Ray Jones’s “secretary,” Honey Franzen, a woman so laid-back and sure of herself, she probably didn’t even bother to have a pulse. Jolie Grubbe, on the aisle, had given Sara one brisk nod upon meeting but then grimly avoided her eye ever after; so whatever good fellowship had developed between them last time, Jolie still didn’t like the idea of a reporter, any reporter, hanging out inside the tent.

Well, she was right, wasn’t she?

The Ray Jones trial was a hot ticket, but the courtroom was small, with four benches on each side of the public area that you could maybe squeeze six people onto apiece, which meant fewer than fifty spectators could be accommodated, of whom six — rear row, left — were press and six — front row, right — were with Ray Jones. How the court had decided to allocate the rest of the seating, Sara didn’t know, but the benches were jammed with civilians of every sort — except children — all of them trying to look solemn and sober and mature, but all of them actually so agog, they looked mostly like those fish with both eyes on the same side of the head.

Judge Quigley entered the court promptly at 9:30 — swish, everybody rose; swish, everybody at the judge’s order became seated again — and in no time at all, reality set in. Intensity and expectation drained out of the room like crankcase oil; you could feel the deflation everywhere. And Sara’s own delight at being an insider didn’t last long; very soon, what she was mostly thinking about was how hard this bench was and how very long it still must be before lunch.

This first day of the trial being on a Friday, there would be a long two-day hiatus before they all got rolling again on Monday, so the state had chosen not to lead off with anything particularly interesting or dramatic. Since the jury could reliably be counted on to forget by the end of the trial whatever happened here today, the state used this time to fill the record with all the necessary boring background stuff, the forensics: the medical examiner’s testimony; testimony of the police officers who first responded to the report of the dead woman in the lake; testimony of the old geezers who’d found the body; testimony of various experts on the condition of the body, the meaning of the water in the lungs, the length of time in the water, the approximate time of death, the casts of tire tracks taken at the murder scene, the analysis of the bloodstains found in Ray Jones’s Acura SNX sports car, and on and on and on. By the time Judge Quigley banged her gavel for lunch, Sara had begun to feel she was trapped forever in the world’s slowest mystery novel.

Apparently, Cal felt the same way. They’d all trooped over to Warren’s offices to eat take-out sandwiches in the conference room, and Cal, after consulting with Warren and Jolie and Ray, came over to say, “They tell me this afternoon’s gonna be just like this morning.”

“Goody.”

“If you want to stay, you know, for your job and all—”

Sara sat up straighter and looked up at Cal, standing beside her. “What’s the alternative?”

Cal took the empty seat next to her, resting one bony elbow on the conference table now littered with little white paper bags and Saran Wrap and Styrofoam coffee cups and aluminum Diet Pepsi cans. (Product placement.) “I was talking to Ray,” he said, “and, you know, he’d like for you to get to know him and understand him, for that piece you’re gonna write in your magazine after the trial—”

“I’ve had the feeling, to tell the truth,” Sara said, “that Ray’s been avoiding me.”

“Well, yeah, he is,” Cal agreed.

“He is?” She hadn’t expected that blunt an answer.

“See, the thing is,” Cal explained, “Ray hopes, you know, he’ll come out a good guy in that piece of yours in the magazine. But if everybody sees like you and him are buddies all through this, nobody won’t care what you think. So you and me are pals, but Ray’s gonna keep his distance. You know, till after the trial.”

“When he may be keeping his distance from everybody.”

“We sure hope not,” Cal said.

“I’m sorry, Cal, but I just don’t get the point.”

“Ray says to me,” Cal told her, “ ‘Cal, you know what I’m like, who I really am. You tell that friend of yours, let her get to understand me without all this regular press stuff.’ You know what he means. You do an interview, photo op, all of that, you don’t get to know somebody that way.”

“You don’t get to know them by staying away from them, either,” Sara pointed out.

“You aren’t away,” Cal said. “You couldn’t get much closer, now, could you? It’s just, Ray’s got a lot on his mind these days. He don’t want to have to put on his publicity face just because you’re here, you see?”

“I guess so,” Sara said dubiously.

“So,” Cal said, “if you don’t want to be in the court there this afternoon, when Ray’s got to be there, you wanna go see his house?”

Sara stared at him. “What?”

“It’s that keep-your-distance thing again,” Cal said. “Ray wants you to know how he lives, but he can’t invite you to the house. That’s too close; that gives you — what do they call it?”

“Conflict of interest?”

“Maybe,” Cal said. “Anyway, I talked it over with Ray and it’s okay with him, so I could show you the house while he’s in court here. If you want to see it.”

Sara considered, frowning at this big open friendly face, wondering just what the hell was going on here. This is the way, she thought, Binx felt with me last night. She said, “What are we gonna do there, Cal? Just the two of us, huh?”

Cal blushed. Tomato red, looking like a really bad sunburn, the blush came up out of the open neck of his yellow shirt and suffused his face. “Oh no!” he said, and his big bony hand nervously lifted, then quickly pat-pat-patted the tabletop between them as though gentling a horse. “No no,” he said. “Uhh — I don’t even know how to say this.”

“Just go ahead and say it,” Sara suggested.

“Well, uh, you and me, I mean, I like you, and I think you like me, like friends, but, uh, I’m not the kind of guy you’re gonna go for. You’re a very pretty lady, and you’re a New York lady, and a reporter and all, and we can get along with each other, but, you know, not that way. I’d be embarrassed to even, even, uh... Nothing.”

There was no way not to believe that protestation. Cal is who he seems to be, and if this whole situation is weird, so what? Most situations are weird, if you stop to look at them. “I apologize,” Sara said with absolute sincerity. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just wasn’t sure.”

“I imagine,” Cal said as the red sea receded from his face and he tried a tentative smile, “you get a lot of fellas expressing interest.”

“Some,” Sara admitted. “I’d like to see Ray’s house this afternoon. Very much. Thank you.”