Hide & Seek - James Patterson [87]
“We never made love!”
“Forgive me, but that’s difficult to believe. You’re an attractive young woman, Jennie. Will Shepherd was susceptible to attractive young women. We’ve heard that again and again in this courtroom. Are you telling me that even though you threw yourself at him, he refused? His reputation says otherwise!”
Jennie finally began to cry. Her sobs were the only sounds in the courtroom. She was a young girl again.
“Nathan, please,” I whispered again.
Nizhinski, relentless, moved even closer to Jennie.
“In fact, isn’t it true that you and he had been lovers for months? That the defense contention your mother killed him to protect you is therefore nonsense. That your mother killed him for revenge?”
“I didn’t throw myself at him! He never touched me! He never did anything indecent, like you’re doing now.”
Nizhinski took a step back and stared at her. “Do you know what perjury is?”
She nodded.
“Answer yes or no, please. The court stenographer can’t record a nod.”
“Yes.” Her voice was faint.
“Do you know what the penalty is for perjury?”
“Not exactly. Will you unjustly put me in prison—like you did to my mother?”
“The penalty for perjury can mean jail, but there’s no injustice here, Miss Bradford. Your mother killed Will Shepherd because she thought the two of you were having an affair.”
Nathan was on his feet beside me. “Objection! Objection!”
“No further questions,” Dan Nizhinski said and walked away from Jennie.
The courtroom erupted all around us. It took minutes before the banging of Judge Sussman’s gavel caught anyone’s attention.
Jennie was led from the witness box. She was crying. I reached my arms out to her, but I couldn’t touch her.
“It’s all right, Mom,” she said. “Nobody can hurt us. Nobody can hurt us anymore.”
I only wished that were true.
CHAPTER 105
NORMA BREEN CHEWED on Rolaids, tasty, orange-flavored ones, as she sat in court and listened to the closing arguments. She had a secret, an absolute mindblower, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting it out.
Maybe we can throw out this bullshit trial, Norma thought as she sat in the back row of spectators. Or maybe, despite all the evidence, Maggie will be acquitted. Maybe the jury will see that she had to kill—and let her off on a technicality. Or at least give her the lightest sentence permissible under the law, the least punitive verdict. And maybe Mel Gibson will call me for a date while I’m sitting here on my oversized rump. You never know, right?
Norma had decided that her best strategy was to wait for the verdict. And now, as she listened to Nathan Bailford’s rebuttal, a spark of hope glimmered in her heart. This is a good woman. Spare her. It’s only right. Do the right thing, huh.
In his redirect, Nathan had interpreted the facts so succinctly that Norma was left feeling that Maggie was the victim, Will the killer.
Still, the defense lawyer couldn’t change the fact that Will was dead, Maggie alive. And he couldn’t solve the other important question—if Maggie hadn’t, then who had killed Will?
The prosecutor got up and immediately dismissed Nathan’s case as a smokescreen. Murder was murder. That’s what it was; there was no other name for it. Murder with a single motive: revenge. And because Maggie had picked up the gun, brought it knowingly into her daughter’s room, it was premeditated murder, and deserved the maximum penalty: a life sentence.
Yet with it all, Norma considered, something is terribly wrong about this trial.
She was still uncomfortable. It was the gut feeling she’d had from the very start. Maggie did not kill Will Shepherd. She was convinced of that. Will had committed suicide, hadn’t he? According to Maggie, and even Palmer, he’d been threatening to do it for years. This was his final, terrible revenge against Maggie.
Maybe if they had put Maggie on the stand, a reason would have emerged. Norma had reluctantly agreed with Barry and Nathan that such a strategy was a mistake. Maggie could only verify her statement to the police—that