Judge & Jury - James Patterson [40]
Some leave. I was doing everything I knew just to hold it together. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go back, at least not to C-10, not after the beating I had given Cavello in his cell. But who was I kidding? It was more than that. Lots more. The bastard had been right. Since that day, the image of Jarrod’s face looking out the window of that juror bus hadn’t left my mind.
A female student in the second row raised her hand. “It’s the means to an end,” she said. “Mapp, and United States versus Russell allow the police to use deceptive procedures to obtain evidence. Without it, they might never make a case. It’s deception for the greater good.”
“Okay.” I nodded, then got up and started to stroll around. “But what if the police have to lie about those procedures during testimony—in order to protect their case?”
In the back row I spotted something that annoyed me. Some kid seemed a lot more interested in a newspaper folded in his textbook than he was in me. I raised my voice. “Mr. Pearlman, you care to weigh in on this?”
The student fumbled with his textbook. “Yeah. Sure thing. Not a problem.”
I went up to him, removing the newspaper from his desk. “Mr. Pearlman here is busy checking his stocks while the Fourth Amendment is under siege. I hope for your future clients’ sake you’ve got a nice family practice in entertainment law to go into.”
There were a few laughs around the room. Typical suck-up snickers.
I felt a little ashamed, though. Like one of those professorial bullies who gets his rocks off from a big show of power over his class. And that wasn’t me. A few months ago I was pushing around one of the most notorious criminals in the country. Now it was just some kid, in law school. Jeez, Nick.
“So, Mr. Pearlman,” I said, offering the kid an olive branch, “the Supreme Court case that held that the exclusionary law of evidence was binding is . . .”
“Mapp versus Ohio, sir. U.S. 643. 1961.”
“Nice guess.” I grinned. I tucked the newspaper under my arm. “I have stocks, too.”
The bell rang shortly afterward. A couple of students came up to go over an assignment or question a grade. Then I just sat alone in the empty classroom.
You’re lying to yourself again, Nick. You’re trying to run, but you’re not fast enough. It wasn’t about some kid catching up on the box scores in my class. Or the Fourth Amendment, or police methodology. It wasn’t even about this closed, dark corner of the universe I had let myself drift to, pretending I was building a new life.
No. I flipped the paper over on my desk. I stared at the headline. The very one I’d been waiting these past five months to see.
GODFATHER, PART II. In big bold letters.
Unfinished business—that’s all it was. Cavello’s retrial was scheduled to begin next week.
Chapter 47
SHE WAS DOING her best to recover, but it was hard and lonely. And long. And basically impossible. Yet she was starting to come through it.
For a while her sister, Rita, stayed with her. Andie had suffered a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, a lot of internal bleeding, and burns on her legs and arms. But those were the wounds that healed. What hurt a lot more was the pain inside. Every time she looked into Jarrod’s room, caught his scent on his books and things, his pajamas, his pillows.
Then there was the anger she felt every single day. Anger that his killers had never been brought to justice. That everyone knew who was behind it—Cavello! And the bastard wasn’t even being charged. She even had dreams of finding him in his jail cell and killing him herself.
Then one day she was finally able to put some of Jarrod’s things away, pack them into boxes, without crying. Without being too ashamed. She had asked the coroner to cut off a piece of the Knicks uniform shirt Jarrod was wearing that day. She kept it in her purse.
MARBURY
3
She started back toward having a life with the simplest things. Doing her proofreading, seeing a flick. It was like relearning the steps of life all over again. Telling herself