Page 26 of Jury Woman, Part 4 of 6

When it reached the end of the second row and returned to the cart, I exhaled and wiped my palms on my skirt. They felt contaminated.

Then Bryan Stone stood for cross-examination, and within five minutes the room shifted again.

"Ms. Probst, would you turn to page nine of your log, please?"

She turned.

"The FBI checked this weapon out on June third. When did it come back?"

A pause. "June seventh."

"Four days. And during those four days, where was it?"

"The log reflects that it was in FBI custody."

"The log reflects." Stone let the phrase hang in the air. "But there's no second signature for June fifth. Or June sixth. Is there?"

She adjusted her glasses. "There is not."

"So for two days, nobody in this courtroom can tell this jury where the murder weapon was, or who had their hands on it."

"Objection," McDavid said sharply. "Argumentative."

"Sustained."

It didn't matter. The words were already sitting in the jury box with us.

I opened my notebook and wrote June 5–6 and drew a box around it, the way I had with the phone. Two days. A gap in a row where the pattern suddenly didn't hold.

At the defense table, Robert Blackthorne leaned back, laced his fingers across his stomach, and looked, for the first time all month, genuinely pleased.

I felt his attention start to drift toward the jury box.

To me. I looked away, but not in time to miss the arch of his eyebrow, as if to say, "See?"

October 27, Tuesday

THE WITNESS that morning wasn't in the courtroom. She was on a television.

Two flat screens had been wheeled in on carts, one facing the jury box, one facing the gallery. McDavid explained that the government would be playing a deposition recorded fourteen months ago, under oath, with defense counsel present. Judge Arnold instructed us that we were to weigh it exactly as we would live testimony.

He didn't explain why the witness couldn't be here in person. Nobody did. Not yet.

The screen flickered, and a woman appeared in a windowless room, seated at a conference table with a microphone clipped to her blouse. Late fifties, maybe. Short, sensible gray hair. Cardigan buttoned to the throat. A pair of drugstore reading glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck, the kind my mom used to wear. She looked like someone who ran a church bake sale.

"Please state your name for the record."

"Gloria Anne Tillman."

"And what was your former job, Ms. Tillman?"

"I kept the books for Blackthorne Hospitality Group. Eleven years."

The bookkeeper. Desmond Pike had mentioned her two weeks ago, almost in passing. A bookkeeper who'd started asking questions. He'd followed her for three months.

On the screen, an assistant prosecutor asked why she'd requested her testimony be recorded in advance rather than waiting for trial.

Gloria Tillman folded her hands on the table. They weren't steady. "Because I don't believe I'll be alive to give it."