Order in the Court
By Casey Lawrence
The Survivor’s Club: Book Two
After witnessing the murders of her three best friends and having their killer arrested, seventeen-year-old Corey Nguyen is having trouble adjusting to life after high school. As a freshman in college, all she wants is to put her dark past behind her, make some new friends, and keep her head down.
Her new world comes crashing down when the killer changes his plea to not guilty, claiming he was coerced into a confession. Corey must now testify in a murder trial, making the panic attacks and flashbacks to the night of the murders intensify. To top it all off, she’s pretty sure her mother is having an affair with the prosecuting attorney. To Corey’s dismay, the story clearly doesn’t end with the murder of her friends.
Table of Contents
Readers love Out of Order by Casey Lawrence
For my mother, Heather, who always believed in me and never let me watch
Law & Order: SVU
.
Thank you to my parents, for encouraging my love of reading and writing and for supporting my crazy dreams. Dad, this one was your idea! Thank you to Billy Dickerson for being my sounding board, first reader, and an incredible long-distance friend. Thank you to Mr. Balsom for being the very first person to preorder
Out of Order
and for making my high school experience exactly what I needed it to be. Thank you to my English teachers in high school, Mr. Poloniato, Mr. Fast, Mrs. Smith, and to all of my English professors at Brock, but especially Dr. Conley, Dr. Pendakis, and Dr. Allard, for indulging my love of literature and my off-the-wall ideas. Thank you to all of my friends (you know who you are). Thank you to Mr. Williamson for fostering my interest in law and social justice, to Collin for making me ask the big questions, to Christy for having my back, and to Steve for accepting all of my crazy. Thank you to the lovely people on Twitter and Tumblr who pushed me to finish the first draft, to NaNoWriMo for its continued support of writers across the globe, and to NaNoWriMo Niagara for being the community I needed to finish the bulk of this book in November 2014. To everyone mentioned here and many more, this book belongs to you: I couldn’t have done it without any of you.
MY PALMS
were wet, and I wiped them carefully on the pleats of the beige skirt I had borrowed for the occasion. It belonged to Ricky, but her dad said I could have it. The blouse, teal cotton, was my mother’s. I felt as if I was sweating through it. My thighs were sticking to the sleek, polished bench under them. In my lap was a copy of my sworn statement, the edges wet with perspiration, the paper creased from constant folding and unfolding.
I couldn’t forget or change the slightest detail, or my testimony would be thrown out. That’s what my lawyer told me. The real one, the prosecutor, not my mother.
Being a witness is not what it looks like on television. You can’t be in the courtroom before you testify. You have to know your testimony backward and forward. Don’t lose your temper, don’t answer too quickly (but don’t hesitate for too long, either), don’t estimate times, don’t volunteer information, and don’t look to your lawyer for help, even if you don’t understand the question. Always ask for clarification.
It was like an exam—the biggest test of my life. Worse than the SATs, worse than any test I’d ever taken, because this test would determine whether the man who killed three people I love would pay for it, or go free. It was a test recorded forever from a dozen camera angles, a test that would be taped and transcribed, reported on in the newspaper, forever public record.
When it was my turn, I handed my mother the damp, creased pages of my sworn statement and followed the bailiff to the stand. He was black, over six feet tall, and had broad shoulders and hands the size of dinner plates. His face reminded me of Robert Shay, with his quiet strength and broad nose, but when the bailiff briefly touched my back as I climbed into the box, I did not feel comforted. He was not Robert.
“Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Right hand raised, left hand on the Bible, I said, “I do.”
My palm left a sweaty circle on the cover of the Bible. I would have affirmed instead of sworn, but for Jessa. Her parents were in the audience, their eyes trying to meet mine. I resolutely did not look at them, though my swearing on the Bible was more for them than for anything, since I do not believe in God.
I did not look at the Fuenteses behind the prosecutor, or at Mr. O’Brien in the second row, or at my parents beside the Fuenteses, or at Amanda Barrett, on the other side of the courtroom, seated behind her son. I did not look at Dustin, in his crisp suit. The prosecutor stood and I looked at him only, his flat gray eyes and gray pinstripe suit, his silver tie embroidered with tiny white flowers, his slicked-back gray hair. His name was Harry Haywood. He was a ghost, no color even in his cheeks or lips, but he was kind. He had coached me for this.
A clerk said, “Please state your full name for the record.” I did not look in her direction.
“Corinna Mai Nguyen,” I said, remembering just in time not to shorten my name to Corey, though I’d practiced this part a hundred times. I almost winced but held it back. A little stutter so early wouldn’t hinder the case. Seventeen-year-olds are allowed to be nervous in court.
“Your witness, prosecution,” said Judge William Gillis, sounding exactly as he had in the video clips Mr. Haywood had shown me before the trial—his voice was booming, a heavy undercurrent of bass that made him sound perpetually angry, even when it was clear that he was not. I had been told not to be intimidated by him. He was fair, methodical, and a good pick for this case: he had two daughters of college age.
“Corinna,” said Mr. Haywood, using my first name to make me seem younger and more familiar to the jury. He’d told me all his tricks. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen, sir. I turn eighteen in a couple of weeks.” Youth and innocence were on my side, making me a compelling witness. I had my hair pinned back in a bow, wore no makeup, and stood only five foot five in flat shoes.
“And where do you go to school, Corinna?”
“McMinn University,” I answered.
“Aren’t you a little young to be in college?” Haywood looked at the jury, raising his eyebrows skeptically.
“I was identified as gifted in the first grade and put ahead a year in school when we moved out of the city,” I started, finding the easy flow of conversation Haywood and I had practiced. But that familiarity was instantly taken from me.
“Objection,” the defense lawyer said dispassionately, barely glancing away from her fingernails to look to the judge. “Relevance?”
The judge looked to Haywood, who shrugged and said, “Establishing the character of the witness, Your Honor.”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge said, but it was already too late. My nerves had been fried by the interruption. Going off-script had never been part of the practice for direct examination. I’d been ready for it in cross-examination—no telling what the defense would ask—but not so soon.
“Corinna,” Haywood started again, his voice lulling and soft, trying to counteract the boom of Judge Gillis. “Tell me about Erica O’Brien.”
I heard Mr. O’Brien’s sharp intake of breath. Phillip and I had seen more of each other in the past few months than we had during the entirety of my friendship with his daughter. It was a shame, really, that he hadn’t been around much for the last months of Ricky’s life.
“I called her Ricky,” I started, taking a deep breath to steady myself. We’d skipped over some of the script—I was supposed to tell the jury about being valedictorian last year, about my volunteer efforts and prefect duties, about the Gay-Straight Alliance I’d helped to form. I didn’t mind the change of pace; I’d never been completely comfortable talking about myself anyway. This was easier. “She thought that Erica was too girly and uppity sounding, so she made everyone start calling her Ricky in the fifth grade.” I smoothed my hands on her skirt again. “I’m wearing a skirt borrowed from her closet today. We were about the same size.” I smiled a sad little smile, risking a glance at the jury. “Ladies’ extra small.”
“YOU CAN
take anything you want,” Phillip said roughly. His voice always had a tired edge to it now. I didn’t ask if the nightmares were back. “I’m sure some of it’s yours, anyway.”
I picked up a cardigan off the back of Ricky’s desk chair and folded it. “This is Jessa’s, actually,” I said, barely believing that he hadn’t been in her room even to pick up the mess strewn everywhere, but the room was like a time capsule; dirty laundry in the hamper, bed left unmade, a book held open next to her pillow by a pen stuck down the middle. “I’ll give it back to her parents for you. They’re donating whatever the girls don’t want to keep.”
Phillip nodded. “Thanks for doing this, Corey.” He awkwardly rubbed at the stump of his left shoulder, a habit that used to freak me out when I was younger. I knew it caused him pain now; sometimes a tingle or an itch he couldn’t scratch, sometimes the phantom pain of a bone splintering out of skin that no longer existed. In a T-shirt, the absence of his arm was even more noticeable than when he pinned an empty sleeve to his side.
I looked away guiltily, realizing I was staring again. “It’s no trouble,” I said, absently petting Jessa’s cardigan. “I helped the Fuenteses a few weeks ago.” The cardigan felt soft and cool, having sat unworn for months in this room. I tried to remember if I’d seen Ricky wearing it, if she had borrowed it for a special occasion, or if Jessa had simply forgotten it here—but nothing came to mind. It was too long ago.
A few of my things had been among Jessa’s when I helped her parents clean out her room, but not many. Much of the stuff I’d carried off in the cardboard box I’d taken home were things of hers, the things that her family didn’t mind me having. Pictures of the four of us, a book she’d promised to lend me, some clothes and things. Nothing of value, nothing that Jessa’s little sisters would want later.
The cardigan would make its way into Mary-Ellen’s closet, or else a donation bin. I smoothed out Ricky’s comforter and placed it on her bed, starting a pile of things I’d take with me. I would take it to the Fuenteses the next time they invited me for dinner, which was often.
“You can have anything you want,” Phillip reminded me again. “I don’t have any use for… clothes and things. Makeup. Shoes.” He leaned against the doorway, not crossing the threshold. “If you find any pictures, I would want to—I mean, you can have copies, but—”
“Of course,” I said smoothly, opening the jewelry box on Ricky’s night table. In it were some things of her mother’s: a cross on a delicate chain, a pair of gold earrings, a few tarnished rings. I took out a tangle of bracelets; some of them were homemade, beads strung by Kate or Jessa or myself. Those I added to Jessa’s cardigan on the bed.
“Friendship bracelets,” I said, looking toward the doorway, but Phillip had disappeared. I could hear his heavy steps heading toward the kitchen.
From Ricky’s closet I took a few items of clothing I wanted to keep. Some T-shirts, a pair of ripped jeans, and the baggy sweater with the elbow patches I liked; we didn’t have a similar style, although we were about the same size. Cautiously, I poked through the fancier side of her closet, passing dress after dress I’d never seen her wear. Pink and lacy things, for weddings and parties I didn’t attend. I was looking for something to wear to court, something nice. The prosecutor mentioned my jeans and T-shirts every time I saw him, reminding me time and again that juries don’t like “average” teenagers. I needed to dress for my IQ, look studious and not like a slouch.
