At Close Range Page 7

  “The learning to let others take care of you part, maybe.” Brian’s concession was dry. “Not the learning to care for others part.”

  “My lack of nurturing instinct is what makes me good at my job,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “If I were a nurturer how could I possibly face an eighteen-year-old kid and make decisions that might help get him a death sentence?”

  “Because what he did was heinous and to let him live would put other lives at risk.”

  “He’s little more than a child.”

  “He brutally beat another kid to death, simply because that kid’s skin wasn’t white.”

  “And what about the mothers whose children I take away? Where’s my compassion then?”

  “With the children. Would you want them suffering from malnutrition and skin disease the way you did?”

  “I don’t know.” Hannah shook her head, looking inward. “I examine the facts and make decisions. I don’t think I feel anything at all.”

  When Brian’s brows drew together, she figured she’d convinced him. And was disappointed that it hadn’t been harder. She wasn’t surprised, though.

  “How well do you sleep at night?”

  “Depends on the night.”

  “Any night after a trial.” And when she didn’t immediately answer, he added, “Or a sentencing. Which,” he went on without letting her answer, “would be just about every Friday night, wouldn’t it?”

  The man remembered too much. Or else she talked too much.

  “What do you usually do on Friday nights, Hannah?”

  He knew what she did. She’d turned down enough invitations from him over the years.

  “When I’m not at a SIDS conference, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “I come home. Have a quiet dinner…”

  “Usually a frozen dinner you microwave because you don’t have the energy to cook. Though you love to cook.”

  Peering over at her with his head slightly bent, Brian reminded her of a teacher she’d once had who’d always seemed to think she wasn’t giving him her best effort.

  “I have dinner and then I either read a book or take a hot bath or both.”

  “And have a glass of wine.”

  “One. Sometimes.”

  “All to help you relax so that you can sleep.”

  Smart-ass.

  “Am I right?”

  He knew he was. There was no point in admitting the obvious.

  “Just because my job takes a lot out of me doesn’t mean I’m a nurturer.”

  Brian clasped his hands on his lap in front of him. “I’m prepared to argue this the rest of the night.”

  “So am I.”

  And they did.

  In the end, Hannah felt a lot better. But she still wasn’t convinced.

  Watching the beautiful woman seated next to him in Symphony Hall Saturday night, William Horne couldn’t help the frisson of worry in his gut. Hannah could hardly keep her eyes open, and while she’d said that she’d slept and was fine, he knew there were things she wasn’t telling him.

  His son, twelve-year-old Francis, had played his piece. William wouldn’t be seeing him after the show. He wouldn’t be seeing him at all until his mother had one more day in court. With a judge specially appointed from another county.

  “You want to go?” He leaned over to whisper in her ear.

  Frowning, she shook her head. “I’m enjoying this.” And then, her expression suddenly compassionate, she added, “Unless you want to?”

  He did. Kind of. But not if she was actually relaxing. Enjoying herself.

  “No, I’m fine.” He smiled. Covered her hand where it lay on the armrest between them—a rare show of the physical affection he fought so hard to hold in check.

  She’d outdone herself that evening, dressed in a figure-hugging black dress that brushed her calves. Her hair was swept up in an array of curls, leaving her neck exposed. And the diamond hoops threaded through her earlobes had been driving him crazy.

  Lately, everything about this woman drove him crazy. From her body to her intellect and personality, she was under his skin.

  As the concert went on, shrouding him in a cocoon of darkness and classical music and Hannah’s perfume, he let his mind dwell more intimately on the woman beside him.

  He needed her with a hunger he hadn’t felt even in his youth. Not an hour went by, it seemed, that he didn’t have some fantasy about Hannah Montgomery naked. But it was more than that. He craved her smile when he woke up in the morning. Her voice on the phone at lunch. Her laugh made his insides jump. And when she took a firm stance, whether he agreed with her or not, he respected the hell out of her. Plain and simple, she made life worth living.

  He’d never felt that way before.

  Except when Francis was born. And right now, he couldn’t think about that. He had to be patient. To let justice run its course. If Patsy wanted to try and prove that the threats against Francis’s life, almost three years before, made him in any way an unsafe figure in the boy’s life, let her try. He’d win this one.

  He just wondered how much of his son’s life he was going to lose in the meantime.

  And when the acid started to burn his stomach, he quit thinking about Francis and concentrated on the music instead. The smell of perfume. And the woman who hadn’t pulled her hand away from his.

  7

  “M r. Ramirez, thank you for being here today. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  Butterflies swarmed in her stomach as Hannah sat on the bench after lunch on Monday, listening to Julie Gilbert begin the afternoon’s session. She just hoped she hadn’t made a terrible mistake in allowing these proceedings.

  Robert Keith was going to regret ever alleging that the injuries suffered by the victim could not have come from the instrument found in Mr. Hill’s car with only Mr. Hill’s fingerprints on them.

  And she might regret allowing the prosecutor to present the state’s rebuttal. Not because she doubted for a second that she acted within the law, but because there might just be a time when one had to consider self before the job.

  William certainly thought so. Had told her so, repeatedly, whenever the Ivory Nation or Hill’s trial was mentioned. As recently as Saturday night.

  According to William, she had a duty to the state, a job to do, but it was only a job. When her life or safety was threatened, her duty was to herself first.

  Of course, if that was the situation, if he was right, she should recuse herself.

  And that would be wrong.

  So here she sat, wishing she were snug on her couch in the middle of the night, with no one but an old friend to answer to.

  The first questions were mostly innocuous, carefully worded questions that were meant to lead the jury to a mental picture, without giving away any information that might cause a mistrial.

  Miguel Ramirez was nineteen. He’d been born and raised in southern Arizona, moving to Phoenix with his parents when he was fifteen. He still lived at home. He was a student at Arizona State University and worked full time as a cook in a Mexican restaurant.

  What Hannah knew, and the jury wouldn’t, was that his parents owned that restaurant. And that when Kenny Hill’s older sister worked there, she’d fallen in love with the owner’s handsome young son, Miguel.

  They wouldn’t know about the night a fifteen-year-old Kenny had lain in wait for the then-seventeen-year-old Miguel, taking him by surprise, torturing him.

  “Mr. Ramirez, do you recognize this…tool?”

  The prosecutor held up a homemade contraption that had already been submitted as evidence. It looked like a cross between a hand drill and a kitchen mixer, with a gunlike handle from which protruded a slim metal tube with an elongated beater on the end.

  The weapon that had been used to kill Camargo Cortes.

  Hannah could hardly watch as the witness looked at the weapon Ms. Gilbert held and then down at his hands. His chin trembled slightly, but he glanced back up
almost immediately. “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was so much he could have said. But he’d been well coached. He knew how critical it was that his testimony remain within the boundaries of the law or this ordeal would be for naught.

  “And without revealing how or why you are privy to this information, can you tell the court what kind of injuries this tool can cause?”

  Very slick, Ms. Gilbert, Hannah silently applauded. A slight variation of that word, one letter different, and the whole trial could have gone up in smoke. If she’d said caused instead of can cause, she’d have been telling the jury for certain that the weapon had been used before. Which would reasonably implicate Kenny Hill for a previous offense and Keith would’ve been screaming for a mistrial.

  Miguel Ramirez swallowed as though his throat was dry. He coughed. And then calmly and unemotionally, as if he was a stranger to the case, he said, “When used as a whip, it can break bones, inflict deep lacerations and bruises. Any of the normal injuries that would be sustained if you had, say, any heavy piece of metal swung at you. The…beater blade…at the end cuts unevenly, ripping the skin, making those lacerations harder to stitch.”

  Bravo, young man, Hannah thought, having to quell the emotion Miguel’s demeanor inspired.

  “Anything else?” Julie asked. Hannah noticed that the prosecutor didn’t lead the young man to other injuries that had already been testified to during the trial.

  “Yes.” Again, Miguel swallowed. Started to speak and then stopped, apologizing.

  “That’s all right, Mr. Ramirez. Take your time. The court recognizes that this is a difficult situation. We’ve all had to endure some very distressing evidence over the past week.”

  Good again. The jury now had an explanation for the young man’s discomfort, could understand that he probably felt as they had at various times this week—and none of them had been victims of a crime. So there was no reason to automatically assume that he had been.

  And then Miguel Ramirez, his chin tight, his expression determined and resolute, looked straight at the prosecutor.

  “The beater at the end, when inserted anally and turned on, destroys the colon.”

  The prosecutor asked a couple of other detailed questions for which Miguel had ready and confident answers, using laymen’s terms to describe potential injuries.

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I’ve seen it used.” He didn’t say when. Which meant it could have been during the committing of the current crime.

  And then, looking not at Kenny Hill, but at his parents, sitting pale and rigid in the front row, Julie Gilbert said, “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Heavy silence pervaded the room as those present absorbed the fact that earlier testimony from one of the state’s expert witness physicians had just been validated.

  Hannah called for a five-minute recess.

  “We’re back on the record….” Hannah repeated the words she’d said so many times she could quote the case number by heart. And then, after asking Miguel Ramirez to retake the stand and reminding him that he was still under oath, she invited Robert Keith to cross-examine the state’s witness.

  If she could have found a way to hold the young man’s hand as he faced attack for having suffered a savage assault, she would have.

  Robert Keith’s confidence worried her.

  “Mr. Ramirez, you say you’ve seen a tool like this before?”

  “Yes.”

  All Keith had to do was trip Ramirez up once, get him to admit, without direct question, that he’d been a victim of Hill’s previous crime and nine days of emotional turmoil and anguish, would be wasted.

  “How many times?”

  “Once.”

  “And were you completely sober at the time?”

  “No.”

  Shit.

  “In fact, you’d had at least three beers, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Keith approached the witness stand. “How long ago was this?” he asked, as though speaking to a child.

  “Three years.” The defense brought it up. The defense alluded to the earlier crime. That meant no cause for mistrial.

  “So three years ago you saw a tool that looked something like this while you were drunk and you’re sure you know that this very tool could do the damage you describe.”

  “I wasn’t drunk. And yes.” Miguel’s confidence didn’t slip. At all. As a matter of fact, Hannah couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a witness who’d spoken with so much authority. Still, Hannah wasn’t sure that it would be enough. The prosecution had failed to disclose, or perhaps hadn’t known, that Miguel Ramirez had been drinking at the time of his attack.

  “How can you be sure?” Keith went on to divulge statistics that could be easily verified, stating margins of error for the human eye, the human brain, while under varying degrees of intoxication. “With all of that,” he concluded, “how can you possibly expect us to believe that, from one sighting while under the influence three years ago, you’re certain of a beater size?”

  Miguel looked at the prosecutor, who nodded—and hung her head. It was up to him now. He could answer the direct question, but only the direct question.

  “I am certain that is the exact tool that I saw.”

  Hannah’s heart sank. Even a mediocre attorney could debate that—by simply bringing in an identical tool and having the two sit side by side. A better attorney would bring in two tools, one with a slightly larger beater and—

  “Because of the acid mark.”

  Everyone, including Hannah, froze. They’d heard testimony the previous week, seen gruesome pictures of a young man’s genitals having been doused with acid before he’d been tortured to death.

  “Acid mark,” Robert Keith repeated, all hint of congeniality gone. And Hannah could hear the attorney in her chambers already. The witness had been given details of the case.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What acid mark?”

  “The one that washes out the brand name on the side of the drill.”

  Julie Gilbert slumped back in her chair, her head still bowed.

  A mark that could’ve been sustained three years ago, or three minutes ago.

  “Come on, Mr. Ramirez, you don’t honestly expect the court to accept a mark you could’ve just seen today for the first time as proof that your testimony is valid, do you?”

  “Yes, I do. I can prove that it’s valid.”

  Julie’s head came up. Robert Keith stood back.

  He didn’t want to ask the next question. But he’d led the witness here. If he didn’t ask it, the jury would.

  “How?” Keith asked, as though he didn’t believe it for a second. But for once, Hannah saw more bravado than confidence in the man’s posture.

  “Because that mark is my thumbprint.”

  Brian was looking forward to getting home to Cynthia and Joseph Monday afternoon. He was far earlier than she’d be expecting and he hoped that would be a good thing. She’d been understanding about his night at Hannah’s. But while she hadn’t said anything, she’d also been agitated. A little short with him. Maybe even a little jealous. It was that display of ruffled feathers that had touched Brian more than anything about her thus far—it showed him she cared.

  They’d had a good weekend together—he and Cynthia and Joseph. They were becoming a family.

  Which reminded him, he had a phone call to make before he got home.

  Hannah answered on the second ring. As though she’d been sitting at her desk next to the phone.

  “I was all set to leave you a message. Figured you’d still be on the bench.”

  “Nope, I’m a free woman.”

  “Does that mean what I hope it means? The trial ended?”

  “I just finished jury instructions.” The lightness in her voice was contagious. She was doing better. Or at least okay.

  But then, he’d known she would be. Hannah Montgomery was a true survivor.

  “They’ll
be back at nine tomorrow morning to begin deliberations.”

  He turned right then left, taking city streets home rather than the more direct expressway most commuters would choose. Brian didn’t feel like being one of a crowd tonight.

  Or like racing for his space.

  “You expecting them to take a while?” he asked, enjoying the conversation. Enjoying just hearing her voice back to normal again.

  “It’s a capital case, so, yeah, I do. It depends on how many questions they send out, what kind of information they request.”

  “At least in the meantime you get to rest,” he said, knowing that rest was a relative term.

  “I’m actually picking a jury for another trial at ten-thirty in the morning, right after my calendar.”

  Which meant she and the attorneys and the defendant would meet in her courtroom, interview potential jurors, dismiss those unsuitable and hopefully end up with enough people left to fill the jury requirement. The attorneys each got a couple of strikes, but the final decisions were Hannah’s. Brian had observed the process enough to know what kind of strain that put on her.

  It was tough watching out for a judge. Hadn’t been any easier when she’d been a prosecutor.

  “Another murder?” he asked, when he’d have liked to suggest that she look into a career as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Good hours. Good pay. Good benefits. And safe.

  “No,” she said. She chuckled, still sounding far more tired than he’d have liked, but upbeat, too. “To be honest with you, I don’t remember what it is, I just know it’s not murder.”

  Murder, drugs, mayhem—they were all just things Hannah took in stride. A normal part of her day—reminding him of just how strong she really was.

  She was going to be all right. She didn’t need him.

  “How are things with Cynthia?”

  “Fine. Great. Better than ever.”

  “She wasn’t put out by the other night?”

  “Nope. She understood. Joseph, on the other hand, gave me a hard time for missing the pizza they had for dinner.”

  “Sounds like he’s settling in well.”