“Yeah, for sure. Will you call me later?”
“I’ll have my cell phone. I’ll call you every break I can.”
“Good, use my mobile number, too. Keep me apprised.
Part of me wishes I could watch it on TV. Part of me is glad I can’t.”
“Me, too,” Taylor agreed. “I was actually relieved when the judge banned TV cameras.”
“Taylor,” Brett said. “This is going to be okay. Whichever way it goes, you’re going to survive this. Okay? Promise me?”
Taylor smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Promise.”
Carey picked up Taylor and Michael at the hotel and drove them silently to the Davidson County Courthouse. They avoided the news vans and the waiting reporters at the main entrance by using an entrance on the river side of the building.
Carey escorted them up to the third floor of the Davidson County Courthouse, where Talmadge and two other men in suits, carrying heavy briefcases, waited for them.
“There’s a small conference room down here we can use,”
Talmadge said. “We’ve got about ten minutes before we kick off.”
Michael and Taylor followed them to a narrow doorway off the main hallway. One of Talmadge’s assistants held the door open.
“Should I wait out here?” Taylor asked.
“No,” Michael said. “I want you with me, if that’s okay.”
Talmadge nodded solemnly. Inside the room, he turned and faced Michael. “You know my assistants, Jim McCain and Mark Hoffman, right?”
Michael nodded. “Yes, we met a couple of months ago.”
“Jim, Mark, this is Taylor Robinson, Michael’s fiancee and literary agent.”
The two men nodded quickly. “Pleased to meet you,” Taylor said quietly.
“We don’t have a lot of time, Michael,” Talmadge said. “I just want to go over a few last things with you. First, do your best not to react to anything the prosecutor or anyone else says. If you need to say something to me, whisper it very quietly or scribble it down on a legal pad. You don’t have to say anything out loud, and I don’t want you to. Just stay calm, look professional, and let us handle this. You good with that?”
Michael smiled, a look of confidence on his face. “I’m fine, Wes. I’m ready to go.”
“Good. So are we. Now when we get in there, the judge will ask if there are any last-minute motions or questions.
We won’t have anything and the DA probably won’t, either.
Then the judge will seat the jury and we’re on our way. The DA will start with an opening statement. As we’ve already agreed, we’re going to hold off on our opening statement until the prosecution rests. We know what we’re up against and we’re ready for it. Let’s just get our heads in the right places, okay? Everybody with me on that?”
Talmadge looked around the room. Both his assistants nodded, then Michael turned to Taylor. “You okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. A little nervous, but I’ll be fine.”
“Outstanding,” Talmadge said. “We’re good to go.”
They exited the room and walked down the long, cavernous marble-floored hall of the Davidson County Courthouse. Taylor expected to have to walk through a throng, but surprisingly, there were few other people in the hallway. As they approached the security checkpoint that barred access to the two massive wooden doors of the courtroom, Taylor saw a line of perhaps ten people waiting to be screened.
She looked nervously at her watch. It was two minutes until nine.
Time seemed to drag. She fought the sense that this was unreal, a dream that wasn’t really happening. Her stomach knotted, and she felt, briefly, the urge to scream.
And then she was at the security checkpoint, handing her bag to a female officer and stepping gingerly through the large frame of the metal detector. She waited at the heavy wooden doors for Michael and the rest to get through, then grabbed the handle of the door and pulled.
The courtroom was packed. A murmur went up as she walked in, followed by Michael and the team of lawyers.
She stopped, and a court officer nodded to her, then motioned toward the far side of the courtroom. She stepped aside as Michael entered the courtroom, then followed him around the edge of the audience and over to the defense table near the large windows. The courtroom seemed smaller than she expected. Cramped, in fact. But the ceiling was easily twenty feet above their heads, giving the room a cavernous feel. The air inside was still, almost stale, and the temperature was already rising from the dozens of bodies packed onto the hard wooden seats.
Michael, Wesley Talmadge, and the two assistant lawyers stepped through a wooden gate and entered the area in front of the bench. They started unloading their briefcases as Wesley pointed to an empty space on the bench right behind their table. Taylor eased in past four people and sat in the middle, placing her purse on the floor next to her foot.
She looked over to her right, where a tall, graying man and a younger woman assistant already sat with files and notepads piled in front of them. The man looked tired and a little rumpled, Taylor thought. The young woman seemed well-scrubbed and bright, almost eager.
Suddenly the door to the right of the elevated judge’s bench opened and an elderly man in a court officer’s uniform stepped through. “All rise,” he said loudly.
A rustle echoed through the courtroom as everyone shuffled to his feet. “Davidson County Criminal Court Division Four,” the court officer continued, “of the Twentieth Judicial District of the State of Tennessee is now in session, the Honorable Judge Harry Forsythe presiding. God save this honorable court, the State of Tennessee, and these United States of America.”
A large man with a massive head, a long shock of graying hair down over a broad forehead, and large rheumy eyes stepped quickly through the doorway and took the three steps up to the bench quickly. He placed a bound portfolio on the bench, then arranged his robes and sat down in a large leather chair.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a sonorous voice that clearly was used to command. “We have quite a crowd in here this morning. I want to remind you all that I expect proper courtroom decorum as we get this trial under way. I also want to remind you that there are no cameras or recording devices of any kind allowed in this courtroom.
“And,” he added, smiling out over the crowd, “if I hear a cell phone go off in this room, it belongs to me. Believe me, I have quite a little collection of them. Couple of shoeboxes full, in fact. And for those of you with the fancy vibrate feature, if I see a cell phone answered in this room, the same rule applies.”
Taylor leaned down, stuck her hand in her purse, and pulled out her phone. She flipped it open, powered it down, then sat back up.
“Madame Clerk, do we have the proper forms completed for all pleadings and counsel of record?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” a slim woman said from a desk in front of the bench.
“Is counsel present?” Forsythe asked, his voice booming.
The lawyers rose. “Yes, Your Honor,” the tall man at the prosecutor’s table said. “District Attorney General T. Robert Collier for the state, with Assistant General Jane Sparks in assistance.”
“Wesley Talmadge for the defense, Your Honor, with Jim McCain and Mark Hoffman in assistance.”
“Very good,” Forsythe announced. “Are there any last-minute motions or pleadings before we get going?”
“Nothing for the state, Your Honor.”
“Nothing for the defense, Your Honor.”
“Then we’re ready to go. Bailiff, seat the jury.” The lawyers all sat back down.
Taylor took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly, trying to lessen the tension in her abdomen.
She’d forced herself to eat a bagel earlier, just to have something in her stomach. It tasted like cardboard. Her stomach rumbled. She hoped no one heard it.
The jury filed in from a door to the judge’s left. Taylor watched as the mixture of people, fourteen in all-
