Chapter Twenty-one
Judge Hutchison’s gavel crashed down three times. “Bailiffs! Get him under control. Mr. McMillan, one more word, and you are out of here.”
Two bailiffs weaved toward Zane, hands on their guns.
But Sherry now jumped to her feet with surprising agility, given the seventh-month state of her belly. “You think you can pay me to lie and then dump me like garbage when I’m carrying your baby? I told you last week I was done lying for you. You raped her. I was there. And you are going to pay for what you did to both of us.”
This couldn’t be happening, yet it so very much was. The drama was electrifying the bored jurors. They’d have something worth talking about over the water cooler for the rest of their lives. I’d have something to ensure years of financial security for my therapist. But what the jury didn’t seem to comprehend yet was that this was not theater. There was no director to yell cut.
“But I gave you more money, you greedy slut,” Zane screamed.
“Yeah, because you’re stupid as shit,” she screamed back. “And guess what? Last week when we met in your car? I taped you on my iPhone, asshole. How about I give your confession to the cops, huh?” She held her phone aloft, her victor’s trophy.
Zane lunged around the table and charged at Sherry. The bailiffs moved faster now, and they made it in time to get between the two. The courtroom went off like a bomb, everyone talking at once.
My brains rattled in my head. I shouted over the melee to be heard. “Your Honor, objection. Please strike the witness’s testimony as non-responsive.”
“Sustained,” the judge shouted back. “Jurors, disregard Ms. Talmadge’s testimony, and please go to the jury room, at once,” he ordered. “Gallery, please exit the courtroom.”
The jurors stood, looking around at each other, but they didn’t budge. The spectators didn’t even bother standing up, not a one of them willing to give up their prime seats to the drama unfolding before them.
“I said OUT,” Judge Hutchison screamed, “or I’ll hold you all in contempt.”
The crowd had drawn courage from each other in their defiance, and no one moved a muscle. If the judge stuck to his threat, the jail cells would fill to capacity tonight.
The bailiffs pulled on Zane by the arms to no avail as he and Sherry screamed and flipped each other off. They needed to get both of them out of here, but they looked unsure of what to do next. Zane was huge, and he was livid. The judge sat still and quiet. I knew he had a panic button under his desk. Dad had told us about their installation years ago, after a defendant had assaulted a judge in a murder trial. I prayed the judge had already pushed it.
Without pausing to think, I came from behind the counsel table and approached Zane. I stabbed my finger into his chest three times, turning his attention away from Sherry for a moment, hoping it would give someone time to neutralize or remove her. “You knew she was lying, that she had decided to quit lying, and you didn’t tell me?” I asked.
He smirked. “Yeah, well, I had it covered.” When he continued talking, his voice rang through the courtroom as if he was hooked into surround sound. “I didn’t need to worry about nothing because I had Police Chief Daddy’s little redheaded girl getting me off.” Zane chose to illustrate his point by jerking his hand up and down over his crotch, despite the restraining grasp of the bailiff, whose arm moved with Zane’s like a profane puppeteer. “Daddy’s not here to save you now, is he? Too bad.”
My reflexes were still pretty awesome, even if I was thirty-five years old and mortally hungover. Quick as a whip crack, I slapped him across the face with all my strength. Only a desire to avoid jail time kept me from giving him a judo punch to the crotch. I would have loved to end his manhood completely on behalf of womankind, but I congratulated myself on my restraint and leaped out of his reach. Sherry was cheering and screaming in appreciation. The jury and the spectators had abandoned decorum and the room buzzed and crackled. One of the bailiffs jumped between Zane and me.
“Stand down, Ms. Connell,” he warned. “Let us get him out of here.”
A hand grasped my shoulder. I jumped and turned around.
It was Nick.
“What the hell have you done, Katie?” he asked, his voice raised in the din. It took a lot of blood to make an olive-skinned face tomato red.
“What do you mean, what did I do? I didn’t do anything,” I yelled back. “I called Sherry to testify. I had no idea she would turn. You sure didn’t tell me.”
“I left you voicemail last night, I emailed you, I texted you. I told you as soon as I found out she’d turned state, and I absolutely told you not to call her.” His words pounded my skull.
Oh, God. I stared at him. My mouth hung open, but I couldn’t find any words. I’d been scrambling so fast since I woke up that morning that I’d never looked at my iPhone. And then I’d just assumed . . . Oh, God, it was my fault. Oh no, no, no. It was my fault.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, to no one, to my mother who never got her chance to be a lawyer, to my father who dedicated his career to justice. To Nick. To Emily. To everyone, even myself.
What the hell had I done?
“Stay the fuck away from me,” Zane was saying to a deputy, who had rushed into the courtroom from behind the judge and made it to the front of the witness bench, handcuffs in his left hand and his right hand on the stock of his holstered handgun. He was fifteen feet away from where Zane was now dangling one bailiff from each arm, Incredible Hulk-style, and ten feet from Nick and me. “Man, don’t make me do something you’ll regret,” Zane said to him.
Nick jerked me out of the line of fire and back behind the defense table.
“Sir, I need you to put your hands behind your head and stand very still. I am going to move closer, and then you and I will exit the courtroom together.” The deputy eased himself between Zane and the judge.
“Put my hands on my head? Like I done something wrong? I ain’t done shit. The bitch is lying. Arrest her.”
And then ten seconds of pure chaos reigned.
The doors to the courtroom burst open with concussive force, slamming into the walls on either side. Five armed officers barreled in, one screaming, “Everyone down!” I hit the floor in a crouch, hands down. Three officers assumed firing positions and pointed guns at Zane’s head. Two others rushed forward. Zane released the two bailiffs, spun, and assumed a flexed-kneed stance as if he would fight the interlopers off, as if he were fighting for his very life—which he was. His life as he knew it, at least. The bailiffs were behind him now. One had handcuffs at the ready. They both reached for his arms again, and he whirled on them. The two officers didn’t hesitate. They jumped onto Zane’s back, tackling him before his body finished its rotation toward the sounds behind him. Zane and the two officers went down hard, but I couldn’t hear the impact over the screams of the jurors and spectators. Theater had ended and reality hell had set in. The screams subsided into weeping and a cacophony of voices.
I realized I had stood back up, and that’s when I saw her. Or thought I saw her anyway, the nameless woman from Annalise. I was suffering simultaneously from lovesick rejection, sleep deprivation, a hangover, extreme stress, and a punishing wallop of humiliation, so it was possible I was hallucinating. She was standing between me and the door. Her eyes looked hollow with sadness. She was saying something to me, although not loud enough that I could hear her. She motioned me toward her with her hand.
“Order, order, order!” The judge’s gavel punctuated his thin voice, but the crowd ignored him. He turned on his mike and tried again. “I will have order in this courtroom right now!” He slammed down his gavel right in front of the microphone, an echoing rifle shot of sound. This time he got all of our attention. Slowly, the panicked group settled back into their seats and their voices lulled to a buzzing. I jerked my head back around toward my imaginary friend, but she wasn’t there.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve all had a bit of excitement, but the officers have it under contr
ol and we need to let them do their jobs,” the judge said.
I heard a keening noise. The kind a cat makes when it’s trapped up in a tree.
Hush, I thought. Just hush. Everyone hush.
I sank to my knees on the courtroom’s tile floor. I put my head in my hands. And that’s when I realized the sound was coming from me.
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