Read Online Bear Is Broken by Lachlan Smith - Free Book Online Page B

doors open at the back of the
courtroom. I jerked upright, standing as Teddy had taught me whenever
the jury came or went, elbowing Ellis to remind him to stand with
me, as a gesture of respect for the jury’s service and for the power they
held over his life. I glanced at their faces, trying to remember which
ones were likely with me and which against me, and which might be
on the fence. There were fourteen, twelve jurors and two alternates. A
few of the jurors studied me as they followed the deputy through the
swinging gate, their movements stiff under the scrutiny of the journalists.
    One woman around my age gave me a little pursed-lipped smile
of sympathy. An older man looked at me suspiciously, as if imagining
I might have tried to kill my own brother. Dear God, I prayed, just
give me a hung jury.
    For Teddy, it would have been blasphemy to hope for any result
short of total acquittal.
The judge polled the jurors one by one, asking them if they’d heard
about the attempted murder, if they realized that it had been Teddy
who was shot, if it would affect their deliberations in any way. This
was the first time since selection that they’d been called on to speak.
Their eyes flashed to the reporters, to the judge, to the DA, but most
of all to me. After two jurors answered that they could be fair, Judge
Iris began to phrase it as a leading question. “And what’s happened
won’t have any effect on your deliberations in this case?” she asked, and
each juror answered no, though I could see a few of them wondering
if maybe it should. Otherwise, why would she ask?
    After the judge had finished polling the jurors she sent them back
out into the hall. They filed out as meekly and mysteriously as they
had entered, resigned by now to the interminable routine of entering
and leaving and waiting without any explanations, their paperbacks
and their knitting baskets always close at hand.
    When they’d filed out she denied the mistrial motion on the record,
finding that the jury had not been tainted. Beside me Ellis had begun
sketching furiously on his legal pad, his usual reaction to moments
of stress and tension in the trial. “All right,” Judge Iris said, giving me
a significant look, her eyebrows raised seemingly in encouragement.
“Let’s bring the jury back in. If you need anything moved around in
here, Counselor, why don’t you go ahead and do that.”
    Teddy always made a point of changing something in the courtroom
before he gave his opening and closing statements, a subtle way of
demonstrating to the jurors that he owned the space he was about to
occupy, that he belonged in it just as much as the DA or the deputy
or the judge. But that would mean my coming out from behind the
defense table and wrestling with the podium or the easel. I shook my
head.
    “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Judge Iris droned when the jurors were
back in their places, “the defense will now give its closing argument.
Since it’s been a whole day I will repeat the instructions I gave you
yesterday morning before the assistant district attorney gave her closing
argument. What the lawyers say is not evidence…”
    They didn’t listen to the instructions then, I thought, and they won’t
listen now. They’ll decide based on some illogical detail that has nothing
to do with the facts, something they think makes them cleverer than
the attorneys or the police or anyone else, some coincidence that has
nothing to do with anything. She was finishing: “After Mr. Maxwell
speaks, Ms. McRae will have ten minutes for rebuttal. Counselor, you
may proceed.”
    I thought of giving the whole thing sitting down, staring at my notes.
But then I was standing and moving away from the relative safety of
the defense table, walking around it to the well at the center of the
courtroom and turning to address the jury as I’d seen Teddy address
them. I was like a swimmer who’d cast off from the edge of the pool
and was treading water; now I had to put my face