these two young, intelligent, beautiful women.”
Collier paused and took a breath, then lowered his voice and spoke calmly. “Now ladies and gentlemen, there are two kinds of evidence that you’re going to see here. The first is direct evidence. That’s the evidence given by eyewitnesses, experts, and others as to what they saw, what they did, what they personally can testify to from firsthand experience. The second kind of evidence is circumstantial evidence. This is evidence that requires us to examine it, and then deduce from what we see that something must have happened a certain way in order for what we just saw to be the way it is. This is evidence that requires us to make conclusions, draw inferences. This is evidence that forces us to think, to rely on our common sense, in order to discern the truth of something. If we come home from work and our spouse isn’t there and the car isn’t in the garage and the grocery list has been taken off the refrigerator door, then we deduce, or figure out, that our spouse has probably gone to the supermarket.
“Now in almost every criminal trial I’ve ever been involved in, the preponderance of evidence has been circumstantial, and this case is no exception. I’m going to tell you up front that we do not have a witness that places the defendant at the scene. No one saw the defendant kill Sarah and Allison. But we have other kinds of evidence that we will ask you to look at, and we believe and maintain that if you examine this evidence with a fair and open mind, you will conclude-as did we-that only one man could have committed these horrible deeds. Now I can’t put words in my esteemed colleague’s mouth as to what he’s going to say to you when he gets up here, but defense attorneys often try and convince you that circumstantial evidence is somehow less valid than direct evidence. That you should discount what you see because there’s no eyewitness to verify the results you conclude.
“Don’t let them, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t let them turn your eyes away from what you see and what you, with your intelligence and your common sense, have concluded must be the truth. You’re good people, you’re smart people, and you’ve taken on a tremendous responsibility. All the state can ask of you is that you use that common sense to give justice to Sarah and Allison, and to bring some peace and closure to their families and those who loved them.”
Collier gazed at the jury for a few last moments. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then turned and sat down at the prosecutor’s table.
“Mr. Talmadge, are you prepared to deliver your opening statement at this time?” Forsythe asked.
Talmadge stood. “Your Honor, we’re going to defer our opening statement until the state has concluded its case.”
“Very well,” Forsythe intoned. “General Collier, call your first witness.”
CHAPTER 31
Of all the things that had amazed her over the past year-
from falling in love with Michael to seeing him become a major literary celebrity to watching the world explode around them as these insane charges went on and on-perhaps the most astonishing of all was the clinical detachment with which the morning had gone by.
For three hours nonstop, from the district attorney’s opening statement until the judge declared a lunch break at twelve-thirty, witness after witness took the stand and related a series of events that should have horrified and repulsed everyone beyond description. Instead, the professional voices spoke quietly; the lawyers intoned with leaden heaviness; the jury watched attentively throughout most of the morning, with only a few eyes glazing over.
It was all Taylor could do to keep still. She wanted to scream, to jump up and yell: “Have you all lost your minds?
Her eyes burned from lack of sleep. She felt frustrated, desperate. Her skin crawled with invisible insects under her clothes, in her hair. She fought to keep still.
And the voices went on and on. The first police officer on the scene described the grisly scene in the detached, un-emotional way he’d been taught in his report-writing classes at the academy. The first investigators on scene described how they cordoned everything off and began following accepted standard procedure-always accepted standard procedure-in their evidence collection, the samples, the bags, the labels, the sign-offs from one person to the next. The forensic examiner described the procedures for making a preliminary determination of cause of death, the estimates of time of death.
Explanations of algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis …
the singsong litany of death’s sweet terms and verses. The clinical analysis and deconstruction of life gone from a mass of rotting tissue, the light gone, energy dissipated into the universe.
Taylor wanted to scream.
The hardest parts were the photographs. Somehow, detachment was easier to maintain when it was all just words.
But the pictures, the blowups of the mutilated bodies, paraded in front of the jury-then and then alone did Taylor see a visceral reaction from the jury. Heads turned away, faces screwed up in winces …
A woman sobbed.
They took lunch at the City Club on Fourth Avenue, an exclusive, members-only club where Talmadge had a standing reservation five days a week. The two younger attorneys had rushed back to the office to research a couple of issues and to report back to the consultants who would soon be testifying for the defense. If they were lucky, they would grab a quick sandwich and a soda somewhere as Talmadge, his daughter Carey, Michael, and Taylor sat around a corner table with a gorgeous view of the city from twenty floors up.
White-coated waiters brought them tall glasses of iced tea and expensive gourmet food Taylor couldn’t bear to touch.
They talked little, the silence between them awkward, heavy. Talmadge described a little of the history of Nashville, of its incredible growth over the last twenty-five years from what had even in the seventies still felt like a small town to the churning, multicultural megalopolis it had become. Nashville had become a mini-Atlanta, Talmadge complained, as his daughter grinned at him, patronizing the old man.
Taylor stared at Michael, who seemed to be taking this all in stoically. Taylor estimated he’d said barely ten words all day. As they left the courthouse, through a gauntlet of television cameras, he’d not even taken her hand. He seemed off in his own world, shut down and removed from anyone or anything else.
Finally, Taylor couldn’t take it any longer. “Wes,” she said, interrupting a monologue about his long involvement in the movement to bring professional football to Nashville.
“Where are we?”
“What?” Talmadge asked, confused.
“I mean,” Taylor said, leaning forward over her plate,
“where are we in this whole process? How did this morning go? I’m not an attorney. I’ve never done this before. How is it going? How bad does this all look?”
Michael turned to her, his face a blank mask.
Talmadge cleared his throat, then settled back in his chair.
“Okay, this is how I read it. The initial part of a trial like this is always difficult. You see the crime scene, how awful it is. The evidence is gruesome, the pictures even more so.
But this is the time when you have to keep your emotions in check. Yes, we’re human. Yes, we can’t help but react to this kind of horror. But we also have to keep our wits about us, our intellect intact. And looking at this from a legal point of view, an intellectual point of view, all they’ve done so far is prove that a crime was committed. They have presented no evidence that can tie Michael directly to any of this.”
Taylor felt the tightness in her chest loosen just a bit, and she let out a long breath. “Okay, then it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Of course not,” Talmadge replied. Carey reached out and took Taylor’s hand in hers.
“It’s going to be fine,” she said. “You’re doing great. Just hang in there.”
Taylor squeezed Carey’s hand back, grateful for the touch, then turned to Michael. “You’re so quiet,” she
