wealthy. Luckily, and in spite of his gross misunderstanding of the defender's role, Lincoln had somehow managed to find other work, though, perhaps tellingly, as a Republican.
Matthew Sobel, who Jaywalker considered as fair and temperate a judge as there was in the system, couldn't conceal his disappointment when Jaywalker reported to him that there would be no guilty plea. He shook his head in something between disbelief and frustration, and the look on his face turned absolutely grave. It was obvious to Jaywalker that Sobel wasn't looking forward to sentenc ing Samara to life in prison. Yet that was exactly what the law would require him to do in the event of a conviction- an eventuality that was rapidly becoming a certainty.
To be fair to Samara, she did about as well as she possibly could have on the remainder of Burke's crossexamination, looking him squarely in the eye and answer ing every question he threw her way. She readily confessed to the fourteen-year-old stabbing, admitting that she'd done it at a point when her attacker had been sound asleep and no longer a threat to her. And she didn't flinch before an swering that, yes, she'd tried to kill the man and had even assumed she'd succeeded in doing so. Two weeks later, she'd happened to pick up a newspaper in Reno and had rec ognized Roger McBride in a photo buried near the back of the paper. McBride, described as the 'random victim of a deranged teenager,' was said to have miraculously survived a near-death experience and was shown leaving the hospital in a wheelchair, accompanied by his wife and two daugh ters. A warrant had been issued for the teenager's arrest.
As forthcoming as Samara was about the old assault, she wouldn't give an inch when Burke attempted to establish a link between the McBride assault and the murder of Barry Tannenbaum, with Samara's rage proposed as the common denominator. On five consecutive occasions, Burke began his questions with the phrase, 'Isn't it a fact,' trying to get her to admit that she'd stabbed both men. She listened patiently to each question before answering, 'No, it isn't a fact,' five times. Of course, the questions were never meant for her in the first place. Burke was much too smart to expect her to suddenly find religion at this late stage of the game and confess her guilt, too smart even to hope that she might commit some Freudian slip of the tongue and give herself away, however slightly. No, his questions were for the jurors; he was giving them a sneak preview of his summation, only in question form. And their faces, every one of them as grave as the judge's had been earlier, told Jaywalker everything he needed to know.
Bottom?
Rock bottom?
Right now they were beneath the ocean floor itself. They were miles down, down where the molten iron core of the planet lay. Down where life as we know it cannot exist.
Whatever other cross-examination Burke had saved for Samara from the previous afternoon, he decided to leave it on his notepad, choosing instead to end with his devas tating series of Isn't-it-a-fact questions.
Jaywalker managed to pry himself up from his seat and spend fifteen minutes on redirect. He had no real hope of rehabilitating Samara; she was way beyond rehabilitation by that point. But he couldn't let Burke have the last word, not with the jurors about to depart for the weekend. So he picked and chose from his notes, pretending it still mattered. He asked Samara when she'd first learned her husband had cancer; she replied that it hadn't been until Jaywalker himself had read Barry's autopsy report to her. Did she understand the meaning of the phrase, a spouse's right to take against the will? No, she'd never heard it and had no idea what the words meant.
Lame stuff like that.
When Burke avoided the temptation of overkill and declined to recross Samara, Jaywalker stood up and an nounced that the defense was resting. He tried to do it in his firmest, most confident voice, but he knew full well that he wasn't fooling anyone. Not the jurors, not the specta tors, not his client, not the judge. Not even himself.
'And The People rest, as well,' echoed Burke.
Judge Sobel read the jurors his usual admonitions. He instructed them to report back Monday morning for the lawyers' summations, the court's charge and their delibera tions. He told them the court officers would be giving them additional instruction regarding bringing an overnight bag with toilet articles and a change of clothes, in the event that their deliberations were to go over to a second day. Jay walker noticed that the judge seemed to go out of his way to avoid mentioning the term sequestration, much the way doctors of an earlier generation used to refrain from utter ing the word cancer. But this being a murder trial, once the jurors were given the case to decide, they wouldn't be per mitted to return to their homes, families and jobs until such time as they reached either a verdict or an intractable impasse. Jaywalker could have waived the sequestration rule, had he chosen to. But he actually liked the idea of jurors being locked up, even if only overnight and in some motel out by LaGuardia Airport. Let them get a taste of what it was like to sleep in a strange bed, doubled up with a roommate not of their own choosing, having been told what TV programs they could or couldn't watch and what newspapers they could or couldn't read. Maybe they would think twice before sending someone off to prison for years of infinitely tighter restrictions.
With the jurors excused, the judge spent the next fortyfive minutes explaining what he intended to include in his charge to the jury. Jaywalker had a few additional requests and a couple of objections, but it was all pretty standard stuff. About the only point of contention was the stabbing of Roger McBride, the prior similar act, and the way in which the jury could and could not use it.
Then, just before one o'clock, Burke rose to make a request. Jaywalker had in fact been expecting it for some time now, dreading it. He'd even dared to think that Burke might somehow forget to do it, or decide not to. No such luck.
'Based on this morning's developments,' Burke said in an even, untheatrical voice, 'which reveal not only a prior stabbing to the chest of another victim, but also an admitted history of flight, complete with a name change, The People ask that the defendant's bail be exonerated at this time, and that she be remanded.'
Jaywalker stood up, feigning shock and surprise. 'My client has made herself available to the court without fail,' he pointed out. 'She wears a bracelet around her ankle. It contains a GPS transponder that tells the corrections department and the district attorney's office where she is at any given moment, within sixteen feet, I believe it is. Should she cut it off, an electronic signal would go out in a fraction of a second, allowing law enforcement to liter ally beat her to the airport by an hour. Considering all-'
Judge Sobel held up one hand. Here it comes, thought Jaywalker, the extreme likelihood of a conviction, coupled with the Indiana warrant, when weighed against the rela tively minimal inconvenience to the defendant of a weekend spent on Rikers Island.
'I'm satisfied that the present bail conditions are suffi cient to insure the defendant's return to court,' said the judge. 'Should she be so foolish as to prove me wrong, the law gives me extremely wide latitude at the time of sen tencing. Do I make myself clear, Mrs. Tannenbaum?'
'Yes, Your Honor.'
'Have a good weekend, everyone.'
Jaywalker found himself standing there like an idiot, re alizing for the first time that he'd been on the verge of tears. He managed to nod in the judge's direction and silently mouth the words, 'Thank you.' He didn't dare try to say anything out loud.
28
Jaywalker was by nature a procrastinator. He'd realized it early on in school, when he'd found it all but impossible to tackle a homework assignment, however mundane and simple, until the last conceivable moment. 'Don't worry, I'll do it,' he'd explained on one occasion to his father, a stickler for advance preparation. 'It's just that I work better under pressure.'
He'd been five at the time.
That said, Jaywalker had been working on summing up in Samara's case, in one way or another, for a year and a half now. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it isn't. As soon as Jaywalker got a case-and he'd gotten
