Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [101]
What we did not know was that I was not the only one in that courtroom who was trapped between the good face of the law and the bad. Andrew had become ensnared by the shooting in a way that went beyond the events in my living room. Although for one teetering moment he had shown conflicting emotions up on the stand, he had regained his resolve, for he must have known the only way for him to survive, as I had scrawled in frustrated silence to Devon across the yellow legal pad, was to bury me in a pack of “LIES!!”
The ER doctor, a knockout Brazilian woman, slender and beautiful as a model although she said she was running on four hours of sleep, described Andrew’s injuries and how they were treated. She confirmed he had been receiving heavy doses of morphine when he stated that he had been shot by bandits, but later, even when he was lucid, she said she never heard him mention my name in connection with the shooting.
“True or false?” I wrote facetiously on the pad.
As Devon predicted the very first night, the prosecution rolled out a chorus line of cops unanimously insisting I was jealous, violent and obsessed with Andrew Berringer. The guys who had been in the kiosk testified I had been “emotionally distraught,” searching for Andrew at midnight on the Promenade. We heard outrage from Detectives Jaeger and Winter about how I’d humiliated Andrew in a public restaurant, and then, remorseful, “bullied” my way after hours into the ICU. Lieutenant Barry Loomis, sporting the walrus mustache and a Betty Boop tie, described me as “behaving in a manner that was suspect” when we spoke on the phone while Andrew was in the hospital. He said “bells went off in his head” when “out of the blue” I guiltily asked whether the weapon had been recovered, although on cross-examination admitted anyone in law enforcement would want to know the same thing. In his version of the confrontation in the Boatyard, I came at the senior detective like a bloodsucking harridan. He omitted the fact that he had been teasing Andrew and egging us on.
“Loomis just killed us,” Devon whispered, and as soon as we broke for lunch, he hobbled out ahead of the crowd, to personally escort Juliana Meyer-Murphy and her mother. She would be our first witness after the prosecution wound up its case.
Andrew and I avoided eye contact or any other kind of contact during the awkward scramble from the courtroom. I was very engaged with the zippers on my briefcase, anyway.
A small crowd had gathered in the corridor, looking out a window. In the street, five stories below, a car in the middle lane had unaccountably flipped over on its roof. There were no other wrecks, no barricades or obstacles or pedestrians that might explain how a two-thousand-pound vehicle could turn completely upside down.
“Do you think that’s a Honda?” someone said.
“Could be. My wife just bought a Honda. She loves it.”
“Have you seen the new ones?”
“No, are they pretty much like the old ones?”
I had no appetite. I went back and sat in the empty courtroom. Twenty long minutes later, Devon’s associate entered alone.
“Where’s Juliana?”
“Oh,” said the jumpy young attorney, who had not yet learned from the master how to lie, “no problem.”
“Where’s Devon?”
“I think he’s grabbing a cup of coffee.”
“Is there a hang-up?”
“No, not at all. Just a last-minute pep talk. They’ll be up in a minute.”
The associate smiled the vacant, noncommittal smile of a subordinate covering badly for his boss.
“Do me a favor? If Devon shows up, tell him I went to the ladies’ room.”
I walked demurely through the doors, then hit the stairway.
There was only one place to get coffee inside the building, and that was the dilapidated cafeteria, but when I arrived out of breath the grill was closed and the place half deserted.
Afraid I had missed them, I was about to run back upstairs but noticed through the rear doors of the cafeteria there was a patio. Sure