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I start to go back at him, gulping air, the old hockey fighter in me, but then stop myself, even as I feel the heat on my cheek, wondering what I’m going to look like when we’re back in the courtroom.
“Showtime,” I say.
One Hundred Ten
THERE IS A SLIGHTdelay before Judge Prentice enters his courtroom. Maybe he’s trying to milk the big moment for himself. I’m aware he’s presided over a lot of big trials in his career. Never one as high-profile as this one.
So this is his moment, too. His, mine, Jacobson’s, Ahearn’s. The jury’s.
Showtime.
“All rise,” we all hear, and then he’s walking slowly toward his chair.
Rob Jacobson and I watch as Dame Maggie and her fellow jurors file into the jury box. Nothing to tell from their faces. There really never is. None of them make eye contact with me, or my client, as they get themselves seated.
Jacobson does whisper something now.
“You see anything?” he says.
“Relief,” I say.
“That it’s over?”
“For them, it is.”
And for me.
Win or lose.
As we sit down again, I suddenly find it difficult to swallow. Or breathe normally. Watching as the bailiff takes what I know are three pieces of paper, for the three counts, from Dame Maggie, and walks them over to Judge Jackson Prentice. The sound of the bailiff’s shoes seems quite loud. Other than that, Prentice’s courtroom is completely silent.
All the cases are different, I think. But this moment is always the same. Something changing in the air, the way the air changes before a lightning strike.
I turn to look at Jacobson, his breaths moving in and out quickly, as if he’s hyperventilating. Maybe because he is. He must have thought he had the whole world by the balls once. Only now everything has shrunk to the size of this room. And maybe the cell waiting for him upstate somewhere.
“Will the defendant please rise?” Judge Prentice says, and it’s as if he’s slapped Rob Jacobson now, knocking him back in his chair.
But he and I both stand.
Prentice says to Dame Maggie, “You have reached a verdict, Madame Foreperson.”
“We have, Your Honor.”
Jacobson and I both turn slightly to face her.
“On the first count, the murder of Mitchell Gates Jr.,” Prentice says, “murder in the first degree, how find you?”
Dame Maggie starts to answer, but then it’s as if she’s the one who can’t swallow or breathe. She loudly clears her throat, reaches down for the bottle of water next to her chair, drinks some water.
“Sorry, Your Honor. I’m a little nervous.”
“She’snervous?” Jacobson hisses.
“Take your time,” the judge says to her. Then Judge Prentice says, “Once again, on the first count of murder in the first degree, how find you?”
Jacobson tries to take my hand.
I pull it away.
