Blind Trust (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

D
id you take the pulse of the man you said was shot?” The defense attorney’s acrimonious voice was directed to Clint, though he faced the jury. After hours of drilling testimony, in which Southern analyzed everything he dared to say, Clint was getting angry.

“No, I did not.”

“Then how can you know that he was dead?”

“He had a bullet hole in his chest. And I heard Paul
say
he was dead.”

“Did you examine the alleged bullet wound?”

Clint smirked and shook his head with disbelief. “No, I did not. Under the circumstances I thought it a little silly to pop out from where I was hiding and ask them to let me examine the body so that my testimony in the murder trial might be flawless.”

A soft roar of chuckles passed over the spectators, then died.

“Did you see them bury the body?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you see them throw it into the river?”

“No.”

“Did you attend the funeral of this man you say was dead?”

“Of course not.”

“Could that be because there wasn’t a funeral?”

“I don’t know if there was. I was busy recovering from my knife wound at the time and didn’t much care.”

Southern’s back went rigid and he swung around to the judge. “Your honor, I want that last comment stricken from the record. It has no relevance in this case.”

The judge nodded gruffly. “Sustained.”

But the jury had heard every word.

The defense attorney’s eyes leveled on Clint’s as he faced him squarely, preparing for a duel. “In other words, Mr. Jessup, this man that you are saying was killed on the night in question could in fact be walking around right now. You really have no evidence at all that he was even harmed.”

“Do you consider blood evidence?” Clint’s question came through steely lips.

“People bleed, Mr. Jessup. They also heal.”

Clint hadn’t spent the last eight months in hiding just to have some hyped-up lawyer shoot his story down. He’d seen what he’d seen. “I saw Givanti shoot him!” he blared. “I saw him fall, and I saw blood on the left side of his chest! I heard—”

“Your honor, this witness is out of control—”

“I heard Givanti and Paul say that he was dead,” Clint said louder, “and I—”

“Mr. Jessup, if you continue these outbursts—”

”—heard them decide to hide the body, and then I watched them drag him out!”

The attorney’s face was raging red, and the judge was banging his gavel, but Clint went on. “If he’s not dead, why have so many attempts been made on my life? Why was Gary Rivers killed just hours ago?”

“Mr. Jessup, I’m going to find you in contempt of court if you don’t control yourself—”

“Control myself? Your honor, what was I hiding for eight months for if I can’t tell the truth? He wants you to think Anderson is still alive. I can’t show you a dead body to back up my story, but he can’t show me a live one to back up his!”

“Your honor, I’d like to request a short recess.” This time it was the prosecuting attorney’s voice that cut in. The judge agreed.

Clint dropped back into his chair on the witness stand and held his face in his hands.

C
lint tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair he sat in, wishing he had something constructive to do with his hands. Something like throttling the defense attorney. When Grayson and Breard had stepped in quietly just moments ago, he had not been sure whether it was anger or delight sparkling in their eyes. He didn’t much care.

“I could lecture you on the importance of keeping your cool in the courtroom, Clint,” Breard said, “but under the circumstances, I think your outburst has been to our advantage. Especially the part about your recovering from your knife wound.”

It wasn’t the event that was significant, Clint thought, but the telling of it. “He struck it from the record. It doesn’t matter that people have been hurt over this. My knife wound is as insignificant to those people as Gary Rivers’s death was.”

“Oh, it matters, all right. The jury heard every word, whether it’s on the transcript or not.”

“But what difference will it make when he comes back in there and makes them believe that Anderson is alive and well and living in Kalamazoo somewhere? I
wish
he hadn’t been killed that night! You have no idea how many times I’ve wished that. If he hadn’t been shot, Rivers and Paul and his brother would be alive, and I wouldn’t have even had to testify. You’ve got the drug charges wrapped up without me. But I never counted on having to prove that the guy I saw shot in the chest was really dead when they dragged him out!”

Grayson was calm. “You did a good job this morning telling play-by-play what happened. The jury hasn’t forgotten. And honestly, I think what just happened in the courtroom did more to make Southern look bad than you.” He picked up a sweating silver pitcher and poured himself a glass of water. “He lost the reins when you stood up and started yelling, and he couldn’t get them back. His loss of cool showed a little trace of desperation. I expect him to try to get some witnesses in here to smear your character. His last resort is to convince the jury that your word isn’t worth anything.”

“Smear my character? How?”

“He’ll find a way.”

“I don’t know how,” Clint mumbled. “My life is clean. My crimes seem to be only in the mind. Unless I’m wrong, there’s no crime against
wanting
to strangle someone.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Grayson said, patting Clint’s knee with fatherly fondness. “But we’ll be prepared just in case.”

C
lint sat in knots for the rest of the day as he heard friends and acquaintances testifying to his character. It was brought out that he was undependable. Hadn’t he quit his job when people depended on him? Hadn’t he turned on one of the students in his own youth group?

Grayson’s face blazed fire when the defense attorney drew from someone the fact that Clint was engaged to the prosecutor’s daughter. In spite of Breard’s string of objections, the job had been done, and Clint looked like a man whose very words inspired doubt—an ally of a prosecutor out to get the defendant.

Because this judge had a reputation for squeezing all he could into a court day, especially when the trial was close to an end, the closing statements were delivered that afternoon. And the hopelessness and frustration and tension rising inside him became a volatile mixture while he waited for the jury to be dismissed to decide on the verdict.

“The jury could be out for days,” Clint told Grayson in a voice that denoted the calm before the storm. “I’m not going to be kept here. I want to get back to Sherry. She must be out of her mind worrying.” He paced back and forth before the black tinted window and tried to dispel the feeling that he was smothering. He needed air, and quiet, and an hour in which this trial didn’t hang foremost in his mind. Sam’s quiet scrutiny told Clint that he, too, dreaded the verdict.

“Don’t you care about the outcome of the trial?” Grayson asked. He sat at his desk, going back over his notes, trying to second-guess the twelve men and women who held this situation in their hands. But Clint had the suspicious feeling that that wasn’t Grayson’s real concern.

“Of course I do. But it won’t surprise me if Givanti gets off. The last eight months of my life have been like something out of the theater of the absurd, anyway. A big farce. Might as well end it accordingly.”

“I disagree. I think the jury will bring in a guilty verdict. Meanwhile, I’d like to keep you here.”

Clint stopped and pointed a warning finger at Grayson. “You can’t make me stay,” Clint warned. “I’m going back to Sherry.”

Grayson’s face reddened, and he thumped his forehead with an index finger and compressed his lips.

“Look, I did what I was supposed to do,” Clint continued. “I don’t regret it, no matter what comes of it. But I’m not going to put my life on hold any longer.”

Grayson got up, shrugged out of his coat, and hung it over his chair. A slash of perspiration beaded over his lip. “I’m just asking you to wait a little longer. Until we can be sure that things have settled down.”

“Settled down?” Clint’s laugh bordered on hysteria. “Are you kidding me? You think I don’t know that Givanti will get revenge? That’s why I want to get back to Sherry!”

“
That’s
why I want you here!” Grayson bellowed, slamming his hand on his desk. “I’m trying to protect my daughter! I’m trying to protect
you!
Don’t be blind, man!”

“I’m not blind! But I want to protect Sherry too. She’s probably sitting there thinking the danger’s here. But if
I
were Givanti and wanted to get revenge, I wouldn’t send my goons to the courthouse to make an example of the witness. I’d teach him a lesson by taking it out on the person who means the most to him. I’d—”

“Exactly what I’m getting at!” Grayson cried. “And the closer you are to her—”

“The more protection I can give her. I have to be there to make sure that she’s safe and doesn’t get careless.
You
can’t be there, and those guards barely even know her.”

Sam, who had sat quietly in the corner rubbing his jaw, stood up. “Let him go back,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to them. I haven’t so far, have I?”

“By the grace of God, no,” Grayson admitted. “But I don’t like it.”

“There
is
no safe place,” Sam pointed out dolefully. “Not really. Beef up security some more. Pack our cars full this time. All we really have to do is wait to see if we’re right about Givanti’s little ring being small. Frankly, I think it is. But while we’re waiting for the verdict, there’s no use making everyone suffer more.”

“But some lunatic is still out there. The one who tried to blow you up on the way here.” Grayson’s voice broke. “What if—”

“I don’t care! I’ve got to be with her, Eric. You owe that to us!”

Eric Grayson stared at Clint, his eyes misting with doubt and uncertainty. “All right,” the man said, sinking down into a chair and looking suddenly much older than his years. “All right. Go ahead. I’ll be there as soon as the verdict comes in. For Pete’s sake, man, be careful.”

“I’ll die before I’ll let anything happen to Sherry,” Clint said.

Grayson looked up at him and managed a smile. “Well, how about if we keep both of you alive? I’d sort of like to have grandchildren.”

“You’ll get them,” Clint promised him, his own dark eyes sparkling at the prospect. “You have my word on that one.”

T
he President of the United States could not have boasted more security than Clint had as they left the courthouse that evening. The men again donning their hooded jackets, this time they had twenty police officers accompanying them in four sedans with tinted windows. On a dark, empty side road they changed from the cars into the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler and finished the journey, catching up to a convoy of unsuspecting truckers with which they blended nicely.

Sam had brought along a transistor radio. When a news bulletin interrupted to say that the jury had just delivered the verdict on the Givanti trial, he quieted everyone.