Guilty Read online

  In other words, what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

  The deputy kept watching the door to chambers. Meanwhile, the bench remained unoccupied. Silvery rivulets of rain streamed down the pair of tall windows that flanked the bench, making the courtroom seem unusually closed off. It had been officially autumn for more than a week, but today’s cold rain was the first real indication they’d had that the seasons had changed. The downpour was also why they were late—every available parking spot near the Justice Center was taken, which meant they’d had to park in a garage on the next block—and why unruly strands of her normally sleek, shoulder-length blond hair were escaping from her once-neat bun to wave around her face. She could only hope the mascara she’d hurriedly swiped on—it was waterproof but cheap, so you never knew—was still framing her blue eyes and not making inky rivers down her smooth, ivory-pale cheeks. Looking like a sad clown was not the way to win the kind of notice she wanted.

  Despite the danger inherent in charging full-tilt toward the counsel tables without keeping her mind totally in the moment, Kate multitasked. Juggling umbrella and briefcase, she ran her fingers beneath her lower lashes in the hope of doing away with any errant black streaks, then brushed down the front of her once-pricey black skirt suit with quick little whisking motions that just seemed to make the wet spots bigger, and plucked the damp front of her white Hanes T-shirt away from her chest so that it wouldn’t cling too closely. At the same time she absorbed all of it, the large, highceilinged room with its mahogany-paneled walls, the bent heads of the public defender and his client close together as they conferred over a yellow legal pad, the steady murmur of conversation and rustle of movement from the packed gallery, the musty smell of too many damp bodies jammed in together, with a quick surge of satisfaction. This was her world, the world she had fashioned for herself out of nothing but her own determination. The knowledge that she belonged in it now, that she was one of the good guys, brought a small smile to her lips. Walking a little taller, she was instantly brought back to earth by the stabbing of the thrice-damned shoes into her heels. The price on the pointy-toed pumps had been right, they were black and real leather and definitely added to the professional aura of her secondhand suit, but Jesus, they hurt. It was all she could do not to limp.

  Beggars can’t be choosers, as the last—and least lamented—of her foster mothers used to say. This month she had paid the rent and the utilities and the babysitter and the minimum on her Visa bill and student loans and put gas in the car and bought Ben a new pair of sneakers. Now, with six days to go before the first of October—she was paid semimonthly, on the first and the fifteenth—she was scarily close to dead broke. That was pretty much how it went every month, which meant there was little—as in practically zero—in the budget for work clothes. The thing that made it difficult was that to achieve her goal, she had to look like a professional. A successful professional. Ergo, she turned to eBay when necessary. But like everything else in life, getting the right clothes on the cheap came with a price, and today the price was apparently going to be hamburger heels.

  The minute hand on the large, round clock that hung over the door to the hall through which prisoners were brought into the courtroom moved incrementally. It was now officially nine o’clock.

  To hell with her shoes. They had to move.

  “Look out, here he comes.” Bryan practically shoved her through the low, swinging door that separated the gallery from the well just as the stone-faced deputy turned to face the crowded courtroom and drew himself up to his full height.

  “All rise,” he boomed, fixing Kate and Bryan with a warning stare as they scrambled into place behind the counsel table at the last possible second. Everyone else stood, too, so that they were all on their feet together and focused forward as the door to chambers was pulled open from the inside. “Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Michael Moran presiding.”

  While Judge Moran—“Moran the Moron,” as he was known to the assistant DAs—strode out, his black robe flapping around his portly frame, his round, ruddy face beneath its short thicket of iron-gray hair already tired and cross-looking at nine o’clock in the morning, a steaming coffee cup in his hand, Kate quietly dropped her umbrella to the floor, slid her briefcase onto the table, and struggled to catch her breath. Instead of watching the judge assume the God position behind the polished mahogany bench, she shifted her attention sideways to the jury box, which was to her right. It held fourteen people, twelve jurors and two alternates, skewing older, white, and female, which was just the way she had wanted it. This was at its heart an armed-robbery case, nothing unusual for Philly, but the defendant, Julio “Little Julie” Soto, a twenty-three-year-old street punk, had beaten up the woman behind the convenience-store counter badly enough so that she had spent five days in the hospital. That degree of violence, in Kate’s estimation, was uncalled for and the mark of a dangerous man. She had refused to plea-bargain. The Commonwealth—that was her—was asking for a sentence of not less than twenty years.

  Not surprisingly, the defendant had opted to exercise his constitutional right to a jury trial. Not that it would help him in any way. She had the goods on him, from eyewitnesses to fingerprints to tape from a security camera, and unless he was next in line for a miracle, he was going away for a long time.

  “Good morning,” Judge Moran said to the courtroom in general. His tone was sour. Kate presumed he didn’t like rainy Mondays any more than anybody else. To the left of the bench, the court reporter, Sally Toner, a plump, fiftyish blonde, was seated in front of her computer. Her fingers flew over the keys as she recorded the judge’s greeting, as she would everything else that was said in the courtroom that day.

  “Good morning, Your Honor,” Kate and opposing counsel chorused faux-cheerfully in reply. Synchronized small talk was a skill largely left untaught by law schools, but most lawyers managed to pick it up anyway. Over time Kate was sure it became as automatic as sucking up to the judge.

  Judge Moran nodded and settled into his tall leather chair, carefully positioning his coffee in front of him and accepting a sheaf of papers handed to him by the deputy.

  That was everyone else’s cue to sit, too, which Kate did with relief, surreptitiously easing her feet a little way out of her shoes. The deputy turned back to the courtroom with his usual bit, announcing that they were assembled there in that courtroom on that morning in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Julio Juan Soto, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kate tuned him out.

  First chance I get, I’m sticking Band-Aids on my poor heels. She always kept some in her briefcase.

  Since she was wearing hose, that would require a trip to the ladies’ room, which would have to wait for a break.

  Rats.

  Pulling her notes from her briefcase, she discreetly checked her reflection in the small mirror she kept clipped to one of the inside pockets. What little makeup she wore seemed to have survived the deluge more or less intact, she was relieved to see. Just as she had feared, though, her hair was well on its way to working free of its bun—she quickly pushed the pins holding it in tighter—and her nose was shiny. Otherwise, she was good to go. She wasn’t gorgeous by any means, but she was attractive, with a square-jawed, high-cheekboned face punctuated by intelligent blue eyes and a wide, soft-lipped mouth. Her nose, which was a little too long, was her worst feature, in her opinion. The fact that it was, at the moment, glassily reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead didn’t help. Under the cover of setting her briefcase on the floor, she managed to swipe her nose with a blotting tissue from the packet she kept in there along with various other emergency items, then straightened just as the deputy ended his spiel.

  Judge Moran’s attention, she was glad to see, was still focused on the papers in front of him. Beside her, Bryan had pulled a yellow legal pad and pen from his own briefcase and was doodling away. This was nominally his case, but she had done all the preparation and would be trying it. After the trial was over, unle
ss she did something horribly wrong and got fired, she would be handling cases on her own from then on out, no longer tucked under Bryan’s wing. Her bar exam results had come in just days before: She had passed with flying colors. Except for the official swearing in, she was now a full-fledged member of the Pennsylvania bar, and no longer required supervision to work as a prosecutor.

  She, Kate White, was a real, honest-to-God lawyer.

  Just saying the words to herself gave her a thrill. Who woulda thunk it? Nobody she had ever known once upon a time, that’s for sure. Sometimes she had trouble believing it herself.

  “Mr. Curry?” Moran looked up from the papers at last and frowned in the direction of the defense. “What’s this?”

  Kate’s antenna went up. “Mr. Curry” was the public defender, Ed Curry, who had been opposing counsel on several of the cases Kate had worked, enough so that she thought she knew how he operated by now. Average height, thin, balding, midforties, dressed today in a rumpled gray suit with a white shirt and navy tie, Curry wasn’t given to springing surprises in court. Straightforward and unimaginative, with an air of impatience, he did a competent job for his clients in the meager time he was able to allot to each of them.

  Curry stood. “Your Honor, I apologize, but our office just received the information on this witness late Friday. Over the weekend, I talked to the man in jail, and I found him to be cred—”

  “Witness? What witness?” Kate jammed her feet back into the torturous shoes and shot upright, accidentally sending her wheeled chair flying back toward the bar. Bryan grabbed it, stopping it before it crashed. Judge Moran sent her a quelling glance. Curry’s gaze shifted her way for a split second, and then he quickly refocused on the judge. He looked uncharacteristically ill at ease. As well he should, Kate thought. Springing a surprise witness on the opening day of a trial was one of those Lawyer 101 no-no’s that even newbies like herself knew not to do. A quick check showed her that the jurors had brightened with interest. Not good. Whatever was up, she didn’t want the jury hearing about it until after she did. She needed details on what was going down and time to assess its impact on her case, to say nothing of coming up with a way to neutralize any potential negative fallout before the jury got so much as a whiff of whatever it was. “Your Honor, permission to approach the bench.”

  “Permission granted. You, too, Mr. Curry.”

  Kate whisked out from behind the counsel table and marched toward the bench, her screaming heels be damned. Body language was worth a lot in a courtroom, and sometimes you just had to make the opposition aware that you weren’t going to take their crap. Otherwise, the bullies—and there were lots of them in the legal profession—would gleefully kick your ass.

  Refusing to look at her—Hah, he knows he’s out of line—Curry walked forward, too. As soon as he joined her in front of the bench, Kate pounced.

  “Your Honor, opposing counsel knows very well that it’s too late to introduce a new witness. Discovery was closed weeks ago. I—”

  “Spare me the lecture, Ms. White.” Judge Moran held up his hand for silence. “You can rest assured that I’m well aware of the appropriate timetable here.”

  Kate clamped her jaws shut, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared, hopefully presenting a picture of five feet six inches—no, five-nine with the shoes—of slender, eloquent indignation for the benefit of the jury. The jury couldn’t hear what they were saying—the conversation was being conducted in low tones for just that reason—but she hoped that at least they could read her body language loud and clear: The defense is trying to pull a fast one. Don’t be fooled.

  “In case it somehow escaped your notice, you interrupted Mr. Curry,” Moran continued. He looked at the public defender. “Mr. Curry, I presume you were about to tell me just why it is that this is the first we’ve heard about this witness. And I warn you, if I find that you’ve deliberately withheld information from the prosecution . . .”

  Curry shook his head vigorously. He, too, knew Moran’s reputation for firing off contempt citations at lawyers like parking tickets, and nobody wanted a contempt citation with its accompanying time in jail until somebody could get the offending attorney off the hook. It cost the unlucky recipient too much time, money, and aggravation.

  “Nothing like that, Your Honor. As I was saying, the witness just got in contact with our office on Friday. He’s in custody himself, and claims he was unaware of the facts of the case until then. His evidence is compelling, and it provides my client with a full alibi. You may be sure that I wouldn’t have brought it to your attention otherwise.”

  “Bull—” Kate caught herself in time, swallowed the inevitable ending as Moran turned a warning gaze on her, and hastily substituted the judge-friendlier “—ocks, Your Honor. The evidence against the defendant is overwhelming, as Mr. Curry knows. This witness cannot possibly provide a credible alibi for his client because we already have eyewitnesses, a security videotape, and forensic evidence placing Mr. Soto at the scene. There is no way your client”—and here she shot a hard-eyed look at the public defender—“isn’t guilty as sin.”

  “Ms. White, I realize you’re just out of school so we all have to cut you some slack, but for future reference that’s usually up to the jury to decide,” Curry said. As Moran’s focus shifted to Kate, Curry gave her a snarky smile.

  “That’s right,” Moran said before Kate could reply.

  He nodded gravely, and Kate saw just how he had earned his nickname: The man clearly didn’t know when he was being had. She also realized that Curry knew Moran far better than she did, and was using that knowledge to his advantage. It didn’t matter if his tactics were blatantly out of order. All that mattered was how they played to this particular judge on this particular day. Now Moran was frowning at her. “Remember, Ms. White, we are here to find out the truth, whatever that may be. Potentially exculpatory testimony cannot be ruled out simply because the timing is inconvenient for the prosecution.”

  Moran’s lecture had the patronizing tone of a professor to a student, and Kate’s hackles rose even higher. She pursed her lips. The defense’s tactics were becoming as clear as glass to her: Curry knew he couldn’t win today in court, so he was trying to delay. Delay was a defense attorney’s best friend. Put a trial off long enough, and anything could happen, with most outcomes favorable to the defense: Witnesses could move away or die, evidence could be lost, memories could fail. Prosecutors could move on to other jobs. Judges could retire. Even in the absence of any of those, with each day that passes the case loses priority. There is so much crime, so many criminals, out there that a case not tried in a timely manner could easily get lost in the judicial system shuffle.

  Debbie Berman—the store clerk whose cheekbone and eye socket had been broken by the defendant—deserved better than that. She was there, in the courtroom, losing more time from work, for which she wouldn’t be paid, waiting to testify, to bring her attacker to justice. So was the customer who had been in the store at the time. So was the man who had been out front pumping gas at just the right moment to see Soto run out. So was the cop who had analyzed the videotape. So was everybody connected to the case, all brought together in the courtroom today as a result of her, Kate’s, painstaking work, all relying on her guarantee that showing up and doing the right thing would be worth it, that this time one of the bad guys was going to get what was coming to him. She had organized everything, assembled everyone, dotted every pretrial i and crossed every pretrial t. The prosecution was set up to run like clockwork, with the case going to the jury by the close of the day, probably less than a day for deliberations, late tomorrow or Wednesday at the worst for the verdict to come in. And it would be guilty.

  Guilty, guilty, guilty. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind about that. A solid conviction, justice done all around, one less bad guy on the streets, and everybody could go home happy.

  Only now Curry was screwing with the plan. She scowled at him before she could stop herself. Luckily, Mora
n’s attention had already swung back to the defense attorney.

  “Mr. Curry, you want to give Ms. White and me a quick idea of who this witness is and what he is prepared to testify to before I rule on admissibility?”

  Curry glanced at her again. Kate could see the craftiness at the backs of his eyes. He knew his witness was full of crap. He knew that there was no way anyone could testify truthfully that Soto was not at the scene of the crime, because Soto was there, had committed the crime, and all the evidence proved it. Her gaze shot to the judge, whose expression was solemnly unctuous.

  Doesn’t he see it? Doesn’t he see that Curry knows this is bullshit? Doesn’t he get that he’s being had?

  Apparently not.

  “My witness—and I don’t want to give his name here in open court, for his protection, but he is a longtime acquaintance of the accused and his family—says Mr. Soto has a cousin who . . .”

  The cheerfully funky notes of the Pussycat Dolls hit “Don’t Cha” blared without warning from somewhere in the courtroom. While Judge Moran stiffened and Curry glanced over his shoulder, his expression surprised as he sought the source of the disruption, Kate froze in horror.

  She knew the source of the disruption without any possibility of mistake. It was her cell phone. She—and this was another big courtroom no-no—had forgotten to turn it off. The mortifyingly unprofessional ringtone only made things worse. Ben and his friend Samantha had been experimenting with her phone yesterday when she had driven them through the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way to returning Samantha home from a playdate. This had been their favorite ringtone. This was what they had left on her phone. This was what she had forgotten all about, and thus hadn’t gotten around to changing back to its usual businesslike chime.

  She always turned her phone off before walking into court. Always. But in all the rush, today of all days, she had simply forgotten.

  “Whose cell phone is that?” Judge Moran asked awfully.