AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Showtime.
I know how punctual Judge Jackson Prentice III is. At eleven on the dot the door will open and he will come walking in and the balloon will go up and the ball really will drop.
It’s already been the longest day of my life, and yet I feel myself smiling. Feel my right knee bouncing up and down under the table. Feel the kinetic energy in the room changing, and the air, as if a switch is about to be thrown. I used to feel this way before hockey games. Or when I was walking down an alley or up some stairs, sometimes with Jimmy, sometimes not, looking for a bad guy. Or a witness we’d tracked down.
The door to the right of the bench opens.
Judge Jackson Prentice is walking so quickly toward his bench he’s almost running, as if he can feel the same energy in the room that I can.
“All rise!” the clerk shouts.
I can’t believe how alive I feel.
Ten
I’VE TRIED OTHER MURDERcases before. Never like this one. The Hamptons. A made-for-TV mystery. A lot of front pages at thePostandDaily NewsandNewsday,the tabloids, from the moment it became clear that Rob Jacobson was the only suspect.
Had he done it?
And if he had done it,whyhad he?
Why was Jacobson’s DNA all over the Gateses’ rental house, including on the beds in the master bedroom and the daughter’s? Why did an eyewitness have him speeding away on the night in question from a home he said he’d never been inside?
The Suffolk County district attorney, a publicity hound and ambitious as hell, is Kevin Ahearn. Jimmy has already taken to calling him Front Page Ahearn. I know, though I’ve never gone up against him, that his record on convictions is as spotless as mine is on acquittals. Which makes him, from where I sit, a very bad man.
And a meticulous one. The first few minutes of his folksy presentation, getting it in early that he grew up in Greenport, over on the North Shore, as if he himself could have been among the jury pool, have me thinking I should have packed a lunch.
Then, as I knew he would, he takes a shrewd turn, detailing the state’s case against Rob Jacobson without once mentioning his name. Rob is “THE DEFENDANT.” Emphasis intended.
“His is a world apart,” Ahearn says. “Sagaponack and an opulent town house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the exclusive Dalton School over on the other side of Central Park. The world where the defendant became convinced he could buy anything he wanted.”
Ahearn pauses.
“Anything, in this case, except an acquittal,” Ahearn says.
He introduces the Gates family, sharing their Instagram stories about this being the first time they had ever rented a summerhouse in the Hamptons, the summer Mitch and Kathy Gates celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary in late July with their teenage daughter, before they were found dead in that house.
“The defendant took everything away from them,” Ahearn says. “And on one terrible night, that family and all of its history was gone. And their dream summer had turned into a nightmare.”
I’m not watching him now. I’m watching the jury. The guyisvery good. And has their full attention with the story he’s telling and the way he’s telling it, concluding with a guarantee.
“My esteemed opponent will talk, probably at length, about the lack of motive. But what she will really be doing is shouting at you from the other side of a mountain of evidence against the defendant.”
Ahearn isn’t a big guy. Trim, gray-haired, blue suit that looks—and not by accident, I’m guessing—as if it could use a good steaming. But he’s definitely got a big courtroom voice. Using it to full advantage now.
“My friends, I will leave you with this: facts are very stubborn things.”
One last pause.
“Almost as stubborn as the state’s pursuit of justice in this case, one that will inevitably end with a conviction,” he says. “When we have concluded our business in this courtroom, this won’t be about celebrity and it won’t be about money. It will be about the facts. And about something that you have probably noticed is under attack in this country but still matters:the truth.”
I am already getting out of my seat as he is sitting down, walking across to the empty witness stand, smiling, then turning to the jury.
And applauding. Loudly, and enthusiastically.
From my right I immediately hear the gavel of Judge Jackson Prentice III, who is clearly and enthusiastically displeased. With me.
“Really, Ms. Smith? This isn’t a show.”
