Page 89 of One of Us Is Guilty

I saw that sadness on the jurors’ faces. Some of them let their compassionate looks wander from the image of Molly, down to Vanessa, and their expression hardened as they gazed on the defendant.

Young prosecutors play this trick often. It’s compensation for inexperience. You see, there’s lots of things they can’t teach you in law school, and you don’t learn it running trials, not right away. It takes time. In the early years of an attorney’s life, they focus on the evidence, the testimony, cold, hard facts.

What they don’t know how to do is win the jury’s hearts.

A verdict in a murder trial is supposed to be a neutral, unbiased assessment of the evidence and nothing else.

That’s how the law works.

But that’s not how people work.

Ordinary people have great analytical minds. But most of us make decisions with our emotions, not our brains. That’s what young DAs haven’t learned yet.

We do it every day, in every single decision. The COO of Ford, Kumar Galhotra, once said that building a car involves making a hundred thousand rational decisions, with the sole purpose of persuading a buyer to make a single emotional one.

Riley’s rational approach was on point. I couldn’t fault it.

His blades were razor sharp.

He’d drawn first blood.

Judge Elizabeth Tanner, a relatively new judge in her late fifties, slid her eyeglasses to the end of her nose as she stared at me. Like all judges, she was appointed by politicians. There were rumors floating around that Judge Tanner had granted a lot of favors in order to get this appointment. That didn’t bode well. I had resolved to keep a close eye on her.

It was my turn now.

Defense opening statement.

I knew what I had to do. I’d done this a thousand times.

I stood up, left the defense table and made my way to the center of the courtroom and stood before the jury. I took up the same position Riley had. It was a psychological trick. If I stood exactly where he’d stood, and then gave another side to the story, this would have more impact. The jurors’ minds would register it more deeply as a true alternative version of events. It was like holding up a mirror and reversing an image.

I felt the pressure building in my head.

Turning, I scanned the faces watching me from the gallery. Harry sat beside Vanessa at the defense table, his eyes locked on me.Behind him, on the end of the second row of the public seating, Voss sat with a pen in her hand and a legal pad on her knee. Vanessa had fired her, as I’d asked, so there was no reason for her to be here. Buchanan and Duff were acting for Patrick in the divorce. It was still early days in that process, and we were leveraging the divorce case to help with the defense. Bloch had a mission today, doing some work for the divorce case, which wouldn’t help the divorce at all, but might help us in this courtroom.

I didn’t do divorce cases, as a rule. It was much dirtier than crime and more complicated – two people who had at one time wished to spend the rest of their lives together, and now they hated each other and wanted to rip their former partner’s guts out. And those were the uncomplicated cases.

In this divorce, there was money. Shit tons of it. And Buchanan and Duff had taken all the kinds of precautions that come with protecting the Vanderpools, including a prenuptial agreement with an iron-clad sunset clause. Sunset clauses are legal markers that reflect the evolving rights of spouses as the marriage continues, and protections for Patrick. In this case, the prenup stated that Vanessa had basically no martial rights until the marriage was two years old.

She had cleared that bar, but there was still an almighty battle ahead.

Her divorce case didn’t matter right now. If she was convicted, she would get nothing. This trial was way more important.

The courthouse was packed with journalists and politicos. This case was going to cause ripples for Patrick’s election hopes, no matter what. The only question was, would it be a small undulation on the surface, or a tidal wave that would bury his political ambitions in the stain of sex and murder?

I had my hopes.

I let my eyelids fall closed.

Took a breath.

I thought of Hanna Tublowski sitting on the window ledge of her apartment, happily watering her rubber plant.

I opened my eyes.

Opened my mouth.

Gave the jury my full attention.