Page 13 of Jury Woman, Part 4 of 6

I picked up my pen again and wrote that down, and then I sat with it until the wine was gone.

October 13, Tuesday

AFTER A day of lavender salts and Middlemarch, my hands felt steady again, so I brought Lily's gloves back to court. The rose-colored yarn had relaxed overnight in my bag so most of the kinks were gone. I took that as a good sign.

Week ten brought Blackthorne's former driver to the stand. Desmond Pike was a heavyset man in his fifties with a gray-flecked goatee and a borrowed-looking suit that pulled across the shoulders. He'd driven for the defendant for eleven years, and he'd pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony.

McDavid wasted no time. "Mr. Pike, besides driving, did you have other duties?"

"Sitting on people."

"Explain what that means."

"Parking outside somebody's house. Their job. Their kid's school." He shrugged, as if describing a paper route. "Didn't have to do nothing. Just be there. Let them see the car every morning when they walked out for the newspaper."

"Whose idea was that?"

"His." Pike tipped his head toward the defense table without looking at it. "Mr. B used to say you don't have to touch a man if he knows you can reach him anytime you want."

My needles slowed.

McDavid led him through a list. A restaurant owner in Decatur who'd refused to switch linen suppliers. A county inspector who'd written up a warehouse. A bookkeeper who'd started asking questions. Pike had followed every one of them. Some for a week, some for months.

"Did any of these people go to the police?"

"Two did." A faint, unpleasant smile. "Didn't matter. Mr. B had a sergeant in Zone Six who'd call him before the report was even typed up. Had a lady at the county clerk's office. Had a guy at the phone company." He spread his thick hands. "There wasn't a door he couldn't get somebody through."

The courtroom had gone very quiet. I knit two, purled two, and kept my eyes on my work, because I didn't like where my thoughts were heading. A clerk. A cop. A phone company. My daughter's Instagram, with fourteen hundred followers.

"Mr. Pike," McDavid said, "did anything important happen in that organization without the defendant's approval?"

"No, ma'am. Nothing. Not a dime moved, not a car got sent."

I looked up without meaning to.

Blackthorne sat angled slightly toward the jury box, one arm draped along the back of his chair like a man at a dinner party. His eyes were on me. Then, slowly, his left eyelid lowered and lifted.

A wink.

My breath caught so hard it hurt. The tip of my needle slipped, and two stitches dropped off the end.

Then Blackthorne raised his hand and rubbed his eye with his knuckle, twice, the way Josh does when his contacts dry out. He blinked a few times and turned back toward the witness stand.

An eyelash. Dry air. Anything.

Get a grip, Isabel.

I picked up the dropped stitches with more care than they required and made a rule for myself: no more looking at the defense table. I'd watch the witness. I'd watch the exhibits. I'd watch my own ten fingers if I had to.

It didn't help as much as I'd hoped. Through the rest of Pike's direct and the first thirty minutes of Stone's cross, I could feel someone's attention resting on me, light and steady, the way you can feel sun on the back of your neck without turning to find it. The skin along my arms prickled. I finished the gusset and started up the hand, counting every round under my breath.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I lifted my eyes.

Not to the defense table. To the back wall.

Deputy Wells was looking straight at me.

For half a second, neither of us moved. Then he glanced away, squared his shoulders, and fixed his attention on the gallery with such sudden, rigid professionalism that he might have been standing for inspection.