Dread Champion (6 page)

“Go with me?” Chelsea raised her eyebrows.“That's the last thing I would have thought of.”

Kerra shrugged. “Well, I'll sleep on it. I don't know what else—”

The phone rang.

“Oh.” Chelsea's back tensed as she glanced at her watch. It was almost eleven. “That's probably Paul.” She pushed out of her armchair, mentally preparing herself for the conversation, and forced her legs toward the kitchen.

Paul had never traveled overseas on business before, and he and Chelsea did not relish being apart for so long. If Kerra hadn't been scheduled to visit, Chelsea would have jumped at the chance to go. In hindsight, leaving the country certainly would have kept her from jury duty. Their family did not need any more publicity; last year's events had inundated them with it. Paul loved Chelsea fiercely, but he wasn't a Christian and didn't understand the spiritual gift of visions that God had chosen to give her.

Chelsea took a deep breath and picked up the cordless phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, babe.” Paul's weary voice sounded so close, it was hard to believe he was thousands of miles away.

“Hi.Was your flight okay?” Chelsea walked into the library and shut the door.

“Everything was fine.Now I'm ready for bed, but the day's beginning here. I'll try to sleep for a few hours.”

“Good.” Chelsea perched on the edge of a leather chair, vainly searching for something more to say.

“You there?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Did Kerra arrive? How does she look?”

“Pretty worn.”Again she flailed for words.

“What's the matter?”Paul asked.“You don't sound very talkative.”

Chelsea's eyes closed. This was not going to be easy. “I have something to tell you.”Her fingers tightened on the phone.“They put me on the jury.”

The silence was deafening. Chelsea pictured her handsome blond husband sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, a sick expression on his face.

“They
what!
Why didn't you get off?”His tone mixed accusation and fear.

Steeling herself, Chelsea told him. Including the worst part— that it was the murder case they'd heard about on the news.

“I can't believe this,” he breathed.“Why didn't you do what I told you?”

“Paul, I couldn't.”

“Of course you could! All you had to do was tell them about the Trent Park case.”

“Believe me, I told them everything.” Chelsea's tone held an edge. “For an
hour
I told them. It didn't do any good.”

Paul puffed out air. “Then you should have found another reason. All you needed to do was say you couldn't be impartial.”

Frustration rose within Chelsea. “Why would I say that? It's not true.”

“Doesn't matter whether it's true or not; the point was to get yourself excused.”

“What do you want me to do, Paul,
lie?”
Her voice was rising. “You know I can't do that.”

“Of course not, Chelsea. But how can you possibly be a normal person on a jury after last year?”

The words pierced. Paul was right—her being on this jury made no sense. Surely God had a reason for it, but that's the last thing Paul would want to hear. “I don't know.” Tears bit Chelsea's eyes. “I even asked them to send me home. And still … ”

Silence.

“Oh, Chelsea, I'm sorry,” Paul said finally, his voice flat, tired. “I'm just scared, that's all. I don't want you to go through anything as awful as you did last year.And now I'm not even there to keep an eye on you.”

“I know, I know. I'm sorry.”

Paul sighed.“Look, I need to go.Do one thing for us, okay? Keep a low profile. No crazy God stuff. Just do your duty like everyone else. I'll check in with you tomorrow night. And remember how much I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

At the sound of the dial tone, Chelsea dropped her head into her hands and prayed.
God, why have you placed me on this jury?

Suddenly something clunked into place inside her, like machinery locking into gear. She knew the sensation well—the sign of an oncoming vision of particular evil.Most of the time Chelsea felt no physical symptoms when a vision came. But once in a while, as with the Trent Park case last year …

Chelsea pressed her head back against the chair and stared straight ahead, muscles tensing. A piece of knowledge, implacable, unquestionable, shot through her mind: this vision had to do with the trial.

No,
she screamed silently,
don't tell me anything, God! Idon't want to know; I
can't
know!

The edges of her sight began to blur like water at the stir of a finger. On the right, the curtained window shimmered; on the left, the bookcase. The wavering expanded, moved into the center, shimmering over the edge of the bookcase, a painting on the wall, until everything disappeared.

Darkness.

Silence.

Then sound filtered into the darkness and the shimmering retreated.Undulating back,wider, a new picture filling the center of her sight. A man seated in a leather chair, staring into the distance, cigarette smoke drifting from his nostrils. His hair was shiny black, like a crow's wings, his eyes dark, narrowed. He brought a cigarette to his hard mouth, a raised scar jagging between his thumb and index finger. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke. Chelsea could almost feel it burning her own lungs. One thick eyebrow raised slightly and satisfaction flicked across his face. Chelsea's stomach knotted. His thought was hurtful, evil. Dread coursed through her veins.

Quickly the picture melted, leaving darkness once more. Bits of color shimmered until the painting reappeared, the undulation flowing wider, over the bookcase, the window.

Chelsea's mouth hung open as she dragged in air. Tears stung her eyes. Her imagination ran wild with fears of what the vision could mean. For the moment she couldn't even pray. She could only silently plead,
No, no, not again. I can't live through this again.…

PART 2

DECEIT

The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:9

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6

FIVE

Sitting at the kitchen table, Chelsea sipped her pungent coffee and stole glances at Kerra's face. Her niece stood at the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, gazing out into the backyard, which was abundant with flowers and an expanse of green lawn. Kerra seemed to chew her bite of bagel forever before swallowing, as if the very act of eating taxed her.

“You have such a beautiful yard,” she said, sighing. “All so pretty and green.”

“Glad you like it.” Chelsea paused. “Sure you don't want to just stay here today?”

Kerra turned to consider her plate. “Do you really not want me to go; is that why you keep asking?”

The man's face from the vision flashed into Chelsea's head. Carefully she set down her mug with both hands. “Kerra, as you know, I've been involved in a murder trial before, and they're no fun.After all, they're about—”

“Death?” Kerra raised her light blue eyes with a hint of defiance that could not cover her pain.

Chelsea fingered the handle of her mug. “It may be too much for you, Kerra. I just want you to be sure.”

“What'll be ‘too much' for me, Aunt Chelsea, is sitting here by myself all day with nothing to do but
think.”

Her accusing tone stung. Chelsea's gaze fell to the table.Another sigh escaped Kerra, and she flopped herself back in her chair.

“I'm sorry. Really. I thought I got all this out of my system last night.”

“No,
I'm
sorry.” Chelsea's voice was soft. “Believe me, if I could have done anything … ”

“I know, I know. You would have.” Kerra's eyes closed, as if her continued harshness surprised her.When they reopened, she forced a tiny smile.“Look. I want to go, okay? I can at least be near you.We can be together during breaks and at lunch.And maybe we can leave right from there at the end of the day and go into San Francisco. Besides, it really will give me something else to think about. You don't know how crazy my head gets when all I can do is remember and feel sorry and … think.”

Chelsea laid a hand on her niece's arm.“No, I don't know, completely. But I do know what thoughts can do. I had a hard time last year with all that happened, and my own head wanted to drive me crazy.”

Silence. Chelsea sensed that Kerra was trying her best to equate Chelsea's experiences with her own loss—and failing.Her niece was right, of course. Chelsea's nightmare had not been permanent, while Kerra's was.

“Well.” Chelsea withdrew her hand. “We'd better get going. Court's at nine o'clock.” She stood to clear her dishes. “And Kerra?” She waited until she held her niece's gaze. “I am glad you're going with me.Very glad.You'll bring a ray of sunshine into that room, as far as I'm concerned.”

Kerra made a face as she picked up the last of her bagel. “Yeah, right. Some sunshine.”

Twenty minutes later they were approaching the courthouse. The entrance to 400 County Center in Redwood City sported numerous security guards and a metal detector.Chelsea and Kerra placed their purses in plastic bins, then stepped through the scanner. They rode up the escalator to the second floor and found a seat on one of the long benches that lined the expansive hall back-to-back. Attorneys with briefcases milled and chattered while the mix of jurors and witnesses sat silently, watching with curious gazes. Chelsea's eyes locked momentarily with a young Japanese man standing near one of the pillars. She remembered him from the jury box the day before. He looked at her almost derisively, then turned his eyes away.

E
NERGY ZIPPED AND CRACKLED
from Stan Breckshire's head to his toes. He perched in his chair behind the prosecution table, one heel tapping as he waited for the judge to enter. To his left at the defense table sat T. C.,Mr. Dapper Dan himself, in a dark blue suit and silk tie. The man was so laid back, every movement like a languid river. T. C.'s helpmeet, Erica Salvador, a thirtysomething single woman who'd been his partner for the past seven years, reflected the man's grace, her left elbow resting lightly on the table, two French-manicured fingernails demurely beneath her chin.

The door leading to the hallway behind the courtroom opened. Down that hallway lay jury deliberation rooms and judges' chambers. Sidney Portensic, the heavyset bailiff spilling over his wooden chair at the far left of the courtroom, lazily pushed himself back from his desk. “All rise,” he announced in his gravel voice as Judge Carol Chanson made her entrance. Stan stood and sat back down, the proper puppet.Whoa, the adrenaline rush! Before he knew it, his left heel was busy keeping time with his right. He picked up the notes to his opening argument, leafing through them with deliberate ease, hoping the calm movement would convince his metabolic rate to slow.No such luck. The jury pulled at his eyes, but he focused on the judge as she positioned her computer keyboard just so and generally settled herself like a hen over eggs. Behind him all whispering had stopped. Stan could imagine the reporters' poised pens, the craning necks of the lookie-loos as they waited for the show to begin.

Anticipation prickled. Nothing in this world, he thought, absolutely nothing, sawed his nerves like a murder trial. The judge, the attorneys, the jury, the defendant, the crowd. This courtroom. For the next couple of weeks this would be his cosmos, the mini-world of “being in trial.” The Dow could fold, gas prices shoot through the roof, countries bomb each other to smithereens, but for the next two weeks Stan Breckshire would hardly notice. Trials had the strangest way of collapsing the world into small, adjoining pieces, like parts in a Lego set. Pieces of evidence, pieces of sidebar arguments and jury responses and wins and losses. They built upon each other to form a tower that to the outside world may look like pick-up sticks but to him loomed like Babel.

And this wasn't just any trial. This was a prosecutor's worst nightmare—a murder without a body. Or it could be a prosecutor's best dream,
if
he won the case. The first thing on Stan's plate was to prove
corpus delicti—
that “the alleged victim met death by a criminal agency.” Normally, this wasn't so difficult. But without a body, proving
corpus delicti
could be difficult indeed. He had to convince the jury to a “moral certainty” that Shawna Welk had been murdered. And that the “criminal agency” was none other than her husband, Darren Welk.

Stan itched to get started. Shawna Welk's body may never have been found, but she was calling from her watery grave, pointing to the truth.With all the evidence, he had little doubt in his mind that he'd help the jury hear her cry for justice.

“All right.” Judge Chanson swept her gaze over the jury, attorneys, and onlookers before landing momentarily on the defendant. “Good morning, everyone. Let's get some housekeeping out of the way, shall we? First”—she turned to the jurors—“since speaking with you yesterday, I have decided to do something I don't usually do. In most cases, jurors wait outside in the hall like everyone else while court is not in session. But because of the media's interest in this case, and since it's already been through one change of venue, I'm going to be a little more cautious. From now on I've opened up the deliberation room in which you members of the jury will meet each morning and be able to take your breaks. There are two bathrooms in there for your use. During lunch you can go where you please, but of course remember that for the duration of this trial you are under admonishment to speak to no one about the case.When we take our first break, your bailiff will show you the deliberation room and how to access the hallway that leads to it. All right?”

The jurors nodded as one.