The Borzoi Killings

38.

It was two in the afternoon when Judge Conley suddenly emerged from the rear door of the courtroom. At the words “All rise,” everyone in the crowded courtroom stood until she said, “Be seated.”

Escorted by three guards, Juan Suarez quickly emerged from the holding cell. Raquel Rematti noticed that there wasn’t a trace of anxiety or confusion in his expression. He smiled at Raquel when he sat.

Since Raquel expected that the jurors had a question-they had only deliberated for a day-she was surprised when Conley announced, “We have a verdict.”

For Raquel, that was too sudden. Usually a fast verdict meant a conviction. She put her hand on Juan’s shoulder as the jury filed into the box.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Judge Conley said, “I understand you have a verdict?”

A 72-year-old woman with silver hair, a retired school teacher who had been picked as the foreperson, said in a voice remarkably similar to the judge’s, “We do.”

Not one of the jurors had glanced at Raquel or even in the direction of the defense table since entering the courtroom. They stared at the courtroom deputy as he took a slip of paper, the verdict form, from the hand of the foreperson. He carried the paper, folded, to the judge. Her face absolutely expressionless, she glanced at it for no more than a second and handed it back to the deputy.

Judge Conley then looked toward the spectators, many of them reporters. Conley, speaking directly into her microphone, conscious that her words were being broadcast around the world, said: “I want to make it clear that when the verdict is announced there will not be a sound, there will not be a reaction, from anyone in this courtroom.”

Raquel Rematti, despite the many times over more than twenty years that she had been in precisely this situation, just as a verdict was about to be announced, felt the blood throbbing in her temples.

And then the silver-haired lady spoke the word: Guilty.