Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [37]
Cochrum spewed a lot of high-toned crap about being certain that justice would prevail for his client, and the reporters ate it up. Alex found a harried-looking Dave Rutherford and asked, “What’s going on in there?
Rutherford shook his head. “I don’t really know. Cochrum doesn’t seem to really care about the testimony. He just uses it as an excuse to work in some speeches about the evils of guns and what racist rednecks we all are. Somebody from our side always objects, of course, and the judge sustains the objections, but that doesn’t matter. Cochrum’s already hammered that into the heads of the jury. Carson ought to shut him down as soon as he starts up with that claptrap, but he won’t.”
“Why not?”
Rutherford grimaced. “Carson used to be a federal judge. He retired from that and ran for election as a state judge. But he got his marching orders from Washington for a long time, and you know what that means.”
Unfortunately, Alex did. Not much had come out of Washington in the past decade that most folks in this part of the country agreed with.
“Anyway, I think you’ll be first up in the morning,” Rutherford went on. “Are you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Alex said.
But she had to wonder what was waiting for her. She had an uneasy feeling that it might be something none of them expected.
CHAPTER 18
Alex tried to put the trial and everything about the Navarre case out of her mind when she got home that evening. It was the first day of Jack’s final year in high school, and she wanted to hear all about that instead. She didn’t even want to think about what was going on in the county seat.
That was all he wanted to talk about, though. He brushed aside her questions about school and asked her about the trial. Alex told him what she could—Dave Rutherford had cautioned all the witnesses about talking too much about the trial, even with family members—and Jack seemed frustrated that she couldn’t tell him even more.
“Really, I don’t know anything else,” she assured him. “I haven’t even been inside the courtroom except for a few minutes this morning before the trial even started.”
“There’s a lot of talk at school about how mad everybody’s gonna be if Mr. McNamara loses,” Jack said.
“Everybody needs to just settle down and let the law run its course. Getting mad isn’t going to help anything.”
“Yeah, well… what if the course the law takes is the wrong one?”
Alex didn’t have an answer for that. The part of her that believed in the legal system wanted to think that whatever finding the courts reached had to be the correct and proper one.
The part of her that had watched objectively what had happened over the past ten or twelve years since the liberals had taken over Washington completely knew that wasn’t necessarily the case.
She didn’t feel any better about things when she arrived at the courthouse the next morning, but at least she didn’t have to sit around for very long, stewing and waiting. She had only been sitting in the corridor about five minutes when a bailiff opened the courtroom doors and said, “Ms. Bonner?”
“Chief Bonner,” Alex said as she stood up. She didn’t want to get pissy about it, but that was her title after all.
The bailiff didn’t seem offended. He smiled and said, “Please come in, Chief. You’ve been called to the stand.”
Alex had testified in plenty of court cases before. She knew the drill. She went to the witness stand and was sworn in, then sat down to await the questioning. Cochrum was still sitting at the plaintiff’s table, whispering to the blonde.
Judge Carson said, “Mr. Cochrum? Are you ready?” The judge was in late middle-age, a slight, gray-haired man with a heavily lined face.
Cochrum got to his feet. “Yes, sir, Your Honor,” he said as he came toward the witness stand. Alex thought the lawyer’s suit probably cost as much as she made in a month. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses in the courtroom, of course, but other