The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [259]
With that Mr. Darrow wandered solemnly back over to his table and sat down. He never turned to Libby Hatch, but she did glance at him; and in her eyes was a light of hope, one what quickly became a frightening gleam of triumph when she looked beyond Mr. Darrow to all of us who were sitting behind Mr. Picton. It was pretty plain that she figured she was going to get off; and as I looked around at the faces of the jury and the people in the galleries, I couldn’t honestly say that I thought she was mistaken. Strange, the effect what that thought had on me: suddenly all I could think of was of the little Linares girl and Kat, and what would happen to them both if Libby was allowed to walk out of that court house a free woman—a possibility what had never seemed so likely before.
To judge by the looks on both the Doctor’s and Mr. Picton’s faces, they also realized how much damage had been done. The jury and the crowd, who likely would have bought even a poor defense of Libby Hatch, had taken Mr. Darrow’s cagy, expert, and passionate words straight to heart. The evidence and the testimony, now more than ever, were our only hope. And that afternoon, the process of introducing them started with a bang, when Clara Hatch was called to the stand.
CHAPTER 44
The frightened little girl and her family arrived at the court house during the midday recess, escorted by Sheriff Dunning and a gang of specially appointed deputies. The Doctor made sure he was at the back door to greet Clara, and judging by the look on her face when she saw the crowd what was waiting for her, it was a good thing he did: even during my old days downtown, I’d rarely seen a kid what looked so confused, so lost, and so desperate. Searching through the jungle of faces and bodies what swarmed around her family’s carriage, Clara appeared to calm down only when her golden-brown eyes locked onto the Doctor; and she fairly flew down to the ground in her rush to get to him. Some nearby newspapermen took particular interest in that fact, for reasons I didn’t quite understand until I forced myself to look at the case from the opposition’s point of view: if you were disposed to think that the Doctor was controlling and engineering what Clara said and did, then her plainly urgent need to be close to him might’ve looked sinister, indeed.
As the Westons followed Clara and the Doctor into the court house, Sheriff Dunning’s men strung themselves out across the back doorway, keeping the curious crowd outside. Then we all went up to the second floor of the building, where we sat in Mr. Picton’s office and ate some sandwiches what Cyrus had picked up from Mrs. Hastings. We tried to be as merry as we could, given the circumstances, and nobody said anything about the case; but none of it seemed to make Clara any easier in her mind. She didn’t eat anything, just sipped on a glass of lemonade what Cyrus gave her; and each time she set the glass down, her one good hand, sticky with lemon juice and sugar, wandered to either Mrs. Weston or the Doctor, who were sitting on either side of her. Not seeming to hear any of the light conversation or strained jokes what floated around the room, she just stared at each of our faces kind of blankly until it was near time for us to return to court; and then, when she thought no one was paying attention, she looked up at the Doctor.
“Is my mama here?” she asked, very quietly.
The Doctor nodded, with a gentle smile but a very serious look in his eyes. “Yes. She’s downstairs.”
Clara began to kick her feet against the legs of her chair and turned her head down to stare into her lap. “This is my Sunday