Depraved Indifference

16

If the media circus had died down a bit for the Wade hearing and jury selection, it was back up to three rings Wednesday morning, with Carter Drake's trial about to begin for real. Outside, an extra parking lot had been opened to the public, and three enormous trailers set up in front of the courthouse to accommodate the press, additional security personnel and a makeshift first-aid station. Across the street, the vans were back, with their satellite dishes and telescoping antennae bearing the logos and numbers of all the major networks and several cable channels.

In the lobby, despite the addition of extra banks of metal detectors, the line waiting to go through them backed up and snaked out the door and around the corner. Several food vendors had set up their trucks and were doing a brisk coffee and doughnut business, and one enterprising young man quickly sold out his stock of battery-operated hand warmers to early-morning shiverers.

By nine o'clock, Justice Hinkley's courtroom was filled to capacity. Anticipating as much, the administrative judge had ordered all other cases in the building postponed for the duration of the trial, and had set aside not one but two additional courtrooms to accommodate the overflow. Those rooms had been fitted with coatracks, extra rows of seats and oversize screens and speakers, so that those who'd failed to make the cut could still follow the proceedings via closed-circuit television.

Jaywalker took it all in as he entered, making mental notes and smiling bitterly at the environment in which his client was expected to get a fair trial, free from outside influences. Just prior to opening statements, he renewed his motion for a change of venue for the fifteenth time, and for the fifteenth time Justice Hinkley denied it.

Abe Firestone delivered his opening in workmanlike fashion, surprising Jaywalker with both his restraint and his command of the facts. He drew the obligatory comparison between his remarks and the table of contents of a book. Mercifully, he refrained from reading the indictment from start to finish, settling instead for listing the specific crime charged in each of its ninety-three counts. He told the jurors which witnesses he would call, and briefly summarized what each of them would contribute to his case. Finally, as all prosecutors apparently feel compelled to do, he predicted with confidence that at the end of the case, after all the evidence was in, he would address them again, at which time he would ask them to convict the defendant on all charges, including nine counts of murder. Why? Because the defendant's own behavior would prove not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt, that he'd acted in a reckless manner, evincing a depraved indifference to human life.

With that, he thanked the jurors for their attention and sat down, exactly forty minutes after he'd begun. If his opening had been less than riveting, it had certainly done its job. Had Jaywalker been sitting in the jury box, he would have been more than ready to vote guilty right then.

But Jaywalker was sitting at the defense table. And he kept sitting there, just long enough to force Justice Hinkley to inquire if he, too, wished to make an opening statement. "Unlike the People," she reminded the jurors, "the defendant has no burden of proof, and therefore no duty to open."

Just as he'd counted on.

"Yes," he said.

Jaywalker had been debating for weeks-for months, actually-whether to include the wasp story in his opening. On the plus side was his belief that it was generally best to get his client's side of the facts in front of the jury as soon as possible. And then there was his conviction that his own telling of the story would be better than Carter Drake's version. Drake, he felt, was likely to come off as a decent storyteller, but hardly a great one. Jaywalker, on the other hand, was one of the best. Not that he came by it naturally. It was more of an accidental by-product, he figured, of having spent his adult life first posing as a drug dealer, then defending criminals, and lately writing fiction.

Lying, others might call it.

In the end, he'd decided against including the wasp incident in his opening statement. To do so would put it out there too early, where the jurors would have it, but would have nothing but Jaywalker's word for it, nothing to corroborate it. It would be better, he'd convinced himself, to have it come from Drake's mouth, however imperfectly, and then to quickly back it up with the medical records Nicolo LeGrosso had dug up.

The problem was that such a tactic would limit what Jaywalker could say in his opening. He hated the stan dard K eep-your-minds-open-until-you've-heard-all-theevidence approach that so many of his colleagues hid behind, and hated even more the Don't-rush-to-judgment mantra that Johnnie Cochrane had used to such success in a certain West Coast trial some years back.

So he compromised.

He conceded, as he had during jury selection, that his client had been driving the Audi that swerved across the dividing line and forced the van off the highway. "By doing that, Carter Drake's actions were the direct cause of nine deaths. And eight of those deaths ended the lives of this community's most prized treasure, its children." Furthermore, he again confessed, his client had been drinking earlier that afternoon, and by his own admission, drinking more than he should have, considering that he was going to have to drive home.

Jaywalker left out the business about Amanda and Eric's having shown up, and Drake's refusal to let Eric drive illegally. Let the jurors hear that, too, from the defense witnesses. Let them hear firsthand Drake's regret over that fatal bit of miscalculation.

Then he got to the point.

"Once the prosecution finishes calling witnesses to tell you what they saw and heard and assumed and calculated from outside the Audi, we're going to put on the stand the one witness who can tell you what happened inside the Audi. Because he was there. He was in the driver's seat. He's the defendant, Carter Drake. The prosecution's witnesses may tell you the absolute truth, they may exaggerate a little, and some of them might even tell a lie or two. It doesn't much matter. Because until you hear Carter Drake's testimony, you're going to have no way of knowing what really caused him to swerve. And once you hear why, you're going to know immediately, and you're going to understand everything."

Looking into their eyes, he searched for a spark, a glimmer, a sign that they were finally with him at that moment. Was that a nod coming from Number 3, or just a stiff neck she was stretching? Was Number 6 leaning forward in his seat because he was buying it, or because his hemorrhoids were bothering him? And there in the back row, Number 10. Did her hint of a smile mean Jaywalker had her hooked, or was she seeing right through his act?

And the thing was, as with so many things that came up at trial, he had only a split second to decide. Did he go on, and begin talking about the rest of his witnesses? Did he take Firestone to task for having predicted what he'd be asking for in his summation before they'd heard a word of testimony or seen a single shred of evidence? He'd even settled on a term for that display of arrogance, and for two days now had been working on his pronunciation of c hutzpah. Did he thank the jurors for their attention, as Firestone had made a point of doing? Or did he leave it right where he was, while he had them. In his dreams, at least.

He sat down.

"Call your first witness, Mr. Firestone," said the judge a little too quickly, to Jaywalker's way of thinking. Had she deliberately cut short his moment of drama? Was she that smart? That worried?

Along with everything else he did during the course of a trial, Jaywalker had a habit of asking himself an awful lot of questions.

"The People call Hannah Weintraub."

Jaywalker reached to the very back of a folder he'd marked Other Prosecution Witnesses. The files it contained were arranged alphabetically, so he wouldn't have to waste precious time searching for them as their names were called. Old Cousin Dorothy had been at work. A lot of prosecutors he'd tried cases against told him in advance the order of the witnesses they intended to call. Not Firestone, though. When Jaywalker had asked him for the same courtesy, Abe had responded with a sneer and a gruff "Show me where it says I gotta do that."

What Firestone had been required to do was to turn over another carton of reports to the defense, this one containing the prior statements of his witnesses. True to form, he'd waited to the last possible moment, meaning that Jaywalker had been up half the night reading the stuff, making notes from it, and arranging it into files. Hannah Weintraub, he therefore knew, was one of three individuals who'd been driving on Route 303 shortly before the crash and had seen a red car either speeding, in the wrong lane of traffic, or both.

Had Jaywalker been prosecuting the case, he'd decided some weeks ago, he would have started off with the witnesses from the End Zone, to show how many drinks Carter Drake had downed prior to the incident. Then he'd have followed up with an expert to translate those drinks into an estimate of Drake's blood alcohol content. That way the jurors would have had an explanation for his driving even before they heard the details of it, and would have had ample reason to be hostile toward him. Then again, they looked hostile enough as it was. Perhaps Firestone had figured as much when he'd decided to start with the driving and then backtrack to the reason for it.

Now, as Hannah Weintraub entered the courtroom, dwarfed by a state trooper, Jaywalker got his first look at her. Shorter even than Firestone, she had to be in her seventies. And judging from the thick glasses she wore, she had to have the eyesight of an aging mole.

This, thought Jaywalker, was going to be easy.

FIRESTONE: Where do you reside, Mrs. Weintraub?

WEINTRAUB: Reside?

FIRESTONE: Live.

WEINTRAUB: Right here in New City.

FIRESTONE: Do you recall where you were on the eve ning of May 27, at about nine o'clock?

WEINTRAUB: Yes, I do.

FIRESTONE: And where were you?

She'd been driving her friend Bessie Katz home from a mah-jongg game in Pearl River. Bessie had recently undergone a hip transplant, Hannah explained, and wasn't yet able to drive herself. A case of the blind leading the lame, thought Jaywalker, reminding himself to be gentle on cross-examination.

FIRESTONE: And did something unusual happen?

WEINTRAUB: I'll say.

Jaywalker noticed a couple of tentative smiles in the jury box. Not good.

FIRESTONE: Tell us what happened.

WEINTRAUB: A little red car, like a sports car, zoomed past us. It had to be going about a million miles an hour.

The smiles broadened, and there was even some muffled laughter. Not good at all.

FIRESTONE: Did it pass you on the left, or on the right?

WEINTRAUB: How could it pass me on the right? I was on the right.

FIRESTONE: So it passed you on the left?

WEINTRAUB: Right.

That took a few minutes to sort out, but with Justice Hinkley's help, the Who's-on-first? routine was soon resolved. The red car had come up from behind them, passed them, and then stayed in the left lane, the one meant for oncoming traffic.

FIRESTONE: Did you see what it did after it passed you?

WEINTRAUB: Sure I saw. It kept zooming, and it stayed in the lane it didn't belong in.

FIRESTONE: Did you lose sight of it?

WEINTRAUB: Naturally.

FIRESTONE: Did you ever see it again?

WEINTRAUB: Only in a picture you showed me.

Firestone produced a photograph and had it marked in evidence. Mrs. Weintraub identified the car depicted in it as the one that had zoomed past her. Then, with a little coaching from Firestone, she more or less pointed out on a large map the spot where she'd been on the highway when that had happened.

On cross-examination, Jaywalker established that, even corrected, the witness's eyesight left a lot to be desired. Asked to tell him the time by looking at a clock on the rear wall of the courtroom, she was unable to.

"But I can tell it's a clock," she said. "Just like I could tell it was a red car."

Jaywalker smiled indulgently. But when he shot a glance over at the jury box, he saw only love. The jurors were eating up every word of Hannah's testimony. They absolutely adored her. So did he try to get her estimate of the red car's speed down from a million miles an hour to, say, a more plausible thousand? Did he ask her how fast she herself had been going when the car seemed to speed by, figuring her answer might well be in the single digits? Did he underscore the fact that Firestone hadn't even tried to have her identify the defendant as the other driver?

"No further questions," said Jaywalker.

Julie Napolitano took over for Firestone and called Moishe Leopold. Jaywalker had been aware of Leopold for several months. He'd discovered a one-page report in the three cartons of stuff Firestone had given him, referring to an interview way back in July. It had been one of the four gold nuggets hidden among the mud and silt. Leopold, too, had been out driving on that evening in May. He, too, had seen a red car speeding in the wrong lane. But unlike Hannah Weintraub, Leopold had been going in the opposite direction and would have been run off the road himself, had he not managed to swerve onto the shoulder.

Not that Firestone had turned over the report so early out of the goodness of his heart, assuming he had one. No, the report constituted exculpatory material, because it contained several things that could reasonably be considered favorable to the defendant. Years ago, in a case called Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court had ruled that any such material had to be turned over to the defense at the earliest possible moment.

The first of these exculpatory matters was Leopold's misidentification of the car. Not content to call it a "little red sports car" and leave it at that, as Hannah Weintraub had been willing to do, Leopold had stated with certainty that it had been a "late-model Porsche." The second mistake Leopold had made was to tell the trooper who'd interviewed him that there'd been not one but two people in the car.

To Jaywalker's way of thinking, neither of those errors had been particularly significant, given the fact that Carter Drake was going to admit that it had been he, in his Audi, who had forced the van off the road, and that he'd been alone at the time. But of course Firestone hadn't known that back in July. Back then, he'd had to assume that the defense would make him prove who the driver of the red car had been, and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. And because Moishe Leopold's inaccuracies might undermine his credibility, Firestone had acted properly, for once. Even if he'd then tried to bury the evidence.

As Firestone had with Weintraub, Julie Napolitano had Leopold recount the events of May 27. He described with some detail how he'd almost lost his life that evening. Then, on the same map Firestone had used, he pointed out the spot where he'd encountered the red car. It was almost a quarter of a mile from where the driver of the van had been considerably less fortunate. The implication was clear. The red car had stayed in the wrong lane for a considerable period of time.

NAPOLITANO: Tell me, Mr. Leopold. Back when you first saw the car coming towards you in your lane, what did you do?

LEOPOLD: I beeped. I flashed my lights, my high beams. But it kept coming right at me-fast.

NAPOLITANO: Then what did you do?

LEOPOLD: I pulled to the right, onto the shoulder. And I, I NAPOLITANO: Yes?

LEOPOLD: And I…soiled my trousers. That's how scared I was.

Nobody laughed at that.

Napolitano then took the trouble to preemptively bring out the errors Leopold had made in his statement to the troopers. She even produced photos of a latemodel Porsche, red, and had them marked in evidence so that the witness could compare them with Carter Drake's Audi.

"I see I was wrong," said Leopold. "But they sure do look similar." And even Jaywalker had to agree.

NAPOLITANO: And when you said you thought there might have been two people in the red car…?

LEOPOLD: I could have been wrong about that, too. As I said, it all happened very fast, and it scared the THE COURT: Yes, okay. I think we get the idea.

Jaywalker had jotted down a dozen questions or so for Mr. Leopold. He could have played around with the misidentification of the car or the existence of a phantom passenger in it. But Julie Napolitano had already covered both of those things for him, and neither was worth overemphasizing. When it came right down to it, Jaywalker realized, Moishe Leopold was telling the truth as he knew it. No amount of cross-examination was going to get him to change his testimony or unsoil his trousers. As far as Jaywalker was concerned, the sooner he got rid of Leopold the better.

"I have no questions of the witness," he said, trying to sound as though the reason was obvious, that his testimony hadn't hurt the defense at all.

Just in case there were any idiots on the jury.

Following Moishe Leopold's testimony, the judge broke for lunch. Amanda was a bit put off when Jaywalker explained that he wouldn't be joining her at the diner. This time it wasn't just Pagesixaphobia that made him decline her offer. Never much of a breakfast eater, unless you wanted to count pretzels and iced tea, it had been Jaywalker's long-standing habit to skip lunch when he was on a trial. Adrenaline seemed to have a way of trumping appetite, and there were the afternoon's witnesses to prepare for. Not that he wasn't ready to crossexamine Concepcion Testigo, the truck driver, whom he figured would be next up for the prosecution. But there was ready, and then there was Jaywalker ready, which didn't leave time for silly distractions like food. So he found an empty windowsill, hopped up onto it and spent the hour reviewing reports and revising notes that he'd already reviewed and revised a hundred times earlier.

Why was it again that he'd been in such a hurry to get back to this love-hate business they called trying a case, and had been so happy when the Disciplinary Committee judges had given him the green light? Oh, yeah. The money. That was it.

Abe Firestone was back at the podium for the direct examination of the first of what, as Jaywalker saw things, would be his three star witnesses. First would be Testigo, the pickup-truck driver who'd seen the accident and managed to remember the three critical numbers off the Audi's license plate. Then there'd be Riley, the bartender from the End Zone. And finally, an expert in alcohol metabolism, to convert drinks into drunkenness.

FIRESTONE: By whom are you employed, Mr. Testigo?

TESTIGO: ABC Construction, over in Nanuet.

FIRESTONE: And prior to working for ABC, where were you employed?

TESTIGO: For eleven years I worked as an auto mechanic for Rockland Foreign Cars.

FIRESTONE: In the course of your work, did you become familiar with different makes and models of imported cars?

TESTIGO: Yes, I did.

FIRESTONE: Are you by any chance familiar with the Audi TT?

TESTIGO: I am.

FIRESTONE: Have you worked on one?

TESTIGO: Yes. Several.

FIRESTONE: Did you happen to see one back on May 27 of last year?

TESTIGO: Yes, I did.

FIRESTONE: What color was it?

TESTIGO: It was red, bright red.

Firestone had his witness describe the time and locate the exact place on the map. He'd been heading home, Testigo stated, coming from a construction site where he'd put in a twelve-hour day. Other than a single bottle of Corona Light with his lunch eight hours earlier, he'd had nothing to drink.

FIRESTONE: Did you see something?

TESTIGO: Yes. I seen a red Audi TT driving in the wrong lane, very fast.

FIRESTONE: How fast would you estimate it was trav eling?

JAYWALKER: Objection. No foundation.

THE COURT: Overruled. You may answer.

TESTIGO: Seventy, seventy-five.

FIRESTONE: Do you know what the posted speed limit is on that stretch of highway?

JAYWALKER: Objection.

THE COURT: Overruled. Do you know?

TESTIGO: Fifty or fifty-five. I'm not sure.

FIRESTONE: What happened?

TESTIGO: Like I said, the Audi was in the wrong lane, facing oncoming traffic. I seen a van come around a bend, a white van. And the Audi never pulls over. It stays in the van's lane, heading straight at it.

FIRESTONE: What happened next?

TESTIGO: The driver of the van must have braked, 'cause I hear his tires laying down rubber, squealing like. Then I seen him veer off to the right, to get out of the Audi's way. For a second or two I thought he was going to make it, but then he lost it like, an' took off in the air.

FIRESTONE: The van became airborne?

TESTIGO: Yeah.

FIRESTONE: And then?

TESTIGO: And then I seen him come down hard, bust right through the metal fence there FIRESTONE: The guardrail?

TESTIGO: Yeah, the car rail.

FIRESTONE: And?

TESTIGO: And he flips over an' goes down the hill, hit ting things.

FIRESTONE: Things?

TESTIGO: Trees, rocks, whatever was in the way.

FIRESTONE: What did you do?

TESTIGO: I looked at the Audi, to see if it was going to stop.

FIRESTONE: Did it?

TESTIGO: No.

FIRESTONE: When you looked at the Audi, what were you able to see?

TESTIGO: I got a quick look at the driver. But I got his license plate.

FIRESTONE: Front plate, or rear?

TESTIGO: Rear.

FIRESTONE: Do you see the driver in court?

TESTIGO: I think that's him, over there.

(Witness points)

FIRESTONE: Indicating the defendant.

TESTIGO: I remember his jello hair.

FIRESTONE: Excuse me?

TESTIGO: I could see his hair was jello.

Jaywalker raised his notepad to hide his smile. He'd represented his share of Hispanic clients over the years, and had learned that a number of them had difficulty when it came to pronouncing certain letters. J and Y, for example, proved especially hard, no matter which one they were trying to say. So just as he'd had to get used to being called Mr. Yaywalker, or the more familiar Mr. Yay, so too did he have to learn not to take offense when told by one of his clients, "I really like jew." Therefore he now knew exactly what Mr. Testigo was trying to say, even if he was the only one in the courtroom who seemed to. And since the identity of the driver wasn't what the case was all about, he decided he might as well solve the mystery for the rest of them.

JAYWALKER: The defense will stipulate that the witness is referring to the color of my client's hair, which is blond or yellow, as in Y — E-L–L-O-W.

That drew a collective "Aaaah" from the jury box, a thank-you from the judge, and even a grunt of approval from Firestone.

Firestone had his witness describe how, at the time, he had been able to read the entire plate, but could later on remember only the numerals 724. He was absolutely certain of them, though, because they were the same as his wife's birthday, July 24. But that was the last he ever saw of the Audi, which continued on without ever slowing down or stopping.

FIRESTONE: Did you see what happened to the van?

TESTIGO: Yeah. I stopped my truck and jumped out, and

I was climbing down to help. There was like a little bit of fire coming out from underneath it. Then all of a sudden it blew up like, exploded. And I had to back off. It was so hot I couldn't get close.

(Witness crying)

THE COURT: Do you need a minute?

TESTIGO: No, no. I'm okay.

FIRESTONE: What happened next?

TESTIGO: It kept burning, but I couldn't do nothing, I couldn't get anywhere near it. Other people stopped, too. One guy had a fire 'stinguisher in his car, but it didn't work, nothing came out of it. Somebody with a cell phone called 9-1-1. And after a while the police came, and the fire trucks and ambulances. But it was too late, it was too late.

Firestone was smart enough to leave it right there, on an emotional high point. Jaywalker briefly considered asking no questions at all. Testigo really hadn't hurt the defense too badly. The Audi's speed was bad, but Hannah Weintraub had already established that. The wrong-lane business would have to wait until Carter Drake took the stand and told his wasp story. And his continuing on without slowing down or stopping could be explained by his belief that the driver of the van had recovered control of his vehicle and managed to keep it on the road. In an ironic way, Drake's speed might even work in his favor there. By the time the van had gone over the edge, he'd been too far away to be able to see. Though that might be a tough sell to the jury.

Still, Jaywalker had to ask Testigo something. Suppose the jurors were to get into deliberations and decide they wanted to hear his testimony again. A readback ending with a dramatic description of the van engulfed in flames, followed by no cross-examination whatsoever by the defense, could prove devastating. So he stood up, walked to the podium and gave it a shot.

JAYWALKER: When you first saw the red Audi in the wrong lane, did you beep your horn or flash your lights, or did it all happen too fast?

It was a trick question, of course. If Testigo hadn't beeped his horn or flashed his lights, chances were he'd now feel guilty, or at least sorry, about not having done so. In offering him an out, that it had all happened too fast for him to do either of those things, Jaywalker was just about putting words in his mouth. Not coincidentally, they were precisely the words he wanted the jurors to hear.

TESTIGO: No, I didn't have time. It happened too fast.

JAYWALKER: Is it fair to say that the whole thing, from the time you first saw the van until it disappeared, took only seconds?

TESTIGO: Yeah, that's fair to say.

It had been another trick question. Because the incident had to have taken only seconds. The key was leaving out the number of them. Come summation time, Jaywalker would remind the jury that even according to the prosecution's star eyewitness, the event had taken only seconds, which everyone thinks of as only a few seconds. But Jaywalker wanted more.

JAYWALKER: I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, Mr. Testigo, and try to visualize, to see in your mind, what you saw that evening. I'm going to say, "Start," and that'll mean you first see the Audi coming along. I want you to say, "Stop," as soon as the Audi disappears, and you can't see it anymore. Do you understand?

TESTIGO: You mean, to see how long it took?

JAYWALKER: Exactly. Okay, you ready?

TESTIGO: Yeah.

JAYWALKER: Start.

He kept one eye on the witness, the other on his watch. It was no mean feat, and definitely the stuff that migraines were made of.

TESTIGO: Stop.

According to Jaywalker's calculation, the interval had been about seven seconds. Short enough, he knew, to be explained by Drake's leaning over to swat at the wasp. Still, he would have liked it to have been even shorter.

JAYWALKER: May the record reflect that the interval between the end of my "Start" and the beginning of the witness's "Stop" was precisely five and a half seconds.

THE COURT: So noted.

That word "precisely" got them every time. That, along with the inclusion of the half second. The implication was that he'd been looking at a sophisticated stopwatch, capable of breaking seconds down to fractions. The truth was, Jaywalker's watch didn't even have a second hand. It was a knockoff he'd bought on Canal Street for five dollars. "Movado," the Korean woman had told him, the same one who sold fake Gucci handbags and disposable three-dollar umbrellas. "Very good watch."

Jaywalker spent only a few more minutes on his cross-examination. He established a period at the beginning of the incident where Testigo could see the approaching Audi but couldn't yet see the driver. That would dovetail nicely with Drake's account that he'd been bent over to his right, trying to swat the wasp. Then he chipped away at the witness's estimate of the Audi's speed, getting him to concede that it might have been as low as sixty or sixty-five. Which would bring it down to ten or so miles an hour above the limit, something most drivers would be comfortable with, and few would be shocked by.

With that he thanked the witness and sat down.

Abe Firestone had evidently counted on Testigo's cross-examination lasting a lot longer than it had. He'd no doubt expected Jaywalker to contest not only the length of the incident and the speed of the Audi, but the make and model of the car, the identification of Carter Drake as the driver, his being in the wrong lane, and his failure to stop or even slow down after running the van off the road. But Jaywalker hadn't even touched on those subjects.

"May we approach?" Firestone asked.

"Yes," said Justice Hinkley.

"My next witnesses won't be here until the morning," he confessed. "I assumed-"

"Don't assume," said the judge. "Who's up next?"

Firestone looked over at Jaywalker. "Do I have to tell him? " he asked.

"Oh, grow up, Abe, for God's sake. What's he going to do, go out and kill the guy?"

"The intoxication witnesses."

Jaywalker had guessed as much, but it was good to know for sure. If nothing else, it would mean lugging fewer files to court tomorrow.

They stepped back from the bench and returned to their tables. "I understand we may get a little snow this evening, or some freezing rain," the judge told the jurors. "For that reason, I'm going to let you go early. I'll see you tomorrow morning, at nine-thirty sharp."

For some reason, judges love to lie.

It hadn't been a terrible day, Jaywalker admitted to Amanda outside the courthouse. As a witness yet to testify, she was prohibited from being in the courtroom during testimony. But he'd insisted on her showing up every day, even though that meant spending most of her time sitting on a bench in the hallway. The jurors would see her there as they came and went, and her presence was therefore important. She was doing the Hillary thing, he'd explained, standing by her man.

"How's Carter holding up?" she asked him.

It was a good question. What had struck Jaywalker most about his client over the past several days was his emotional detachment, his almost total disconnect from the goings-on. Here was a man who was looking down the loaded barrel of a twenty-five-year-to-life sentence, and it didn't seem to faze him in the least. Didn't he get it? Didn't he understand that the best he could possibly hope for was double-digit time on some of the lesser charges? And that was only if they got lucky and beat the murder count. Yet with all that, he just sat there, watching the jury selection, listening to the testimony, as though it was someone else's trial he was observing.

"He's okay," said Jaywalker. The last thing he wanted to do was to start psychoanalyzing Carter for Amanda. He was into their marriage deep enough as it was. So to speak.

"What happens tomorrow?" she asked.

"The shit hits the fan," he told her. "They're going to put on the bartender from the End Zone, and probably a couple of people who drank with Carter. Then an expert to estimate how drunk he was."

"Can they do that? I mean, legally?"

"I'm afraid so," he said. "It's not going to be a very good day. If you know what I mean."

"Would a very good night help? If you know what I mean."

He laughed out loud at the pure absurdity of it all. First Carter, who didn't seem to care about anything. And now Amanda, who seemed to care about only one thing.

"Not tonight," he said.

But not without smiling.