A Conflict of Interest. Anna Adams

      CHAPTER THREE

      TWO DAYS LATER, just past 2:00 p.m., the jury filed in, all staring at their feet.

      Jake avoided looking at the gallery where Maria was sitting. While everyone else in the courtroom had wondered if Maria was guilty, she’d studied the jurors with a pleading face, as if she could will them to see Griff through her eyes, as a sick child.

      A sick child might not survive prison.

      Jake gripped his chair arms, but somehow, he was remembering the silky seduction of Maria’s skin beneath his fingers. He had to stop thinking about her. Her self-destructive refusal to back down reinforced his career-long commitment to keeping his personal feelings out of the courtroom.

      He’d heard the gossip. As Buck had said, Maria’s practice was anything but traditional. Apparently, she didn’t believe in the conventional therapist’s tools—a couch, a knowing smile, a “How did that make you feel?”

      The obvious question nagged at him. How big a jump was it from meditating on mountains to making so-called love in her office?

      Jake had to read that journal. Forcing his attention from Maria’s face, he dragged his mind back to the task at hand.

      The jurors sat. Jake nodded to their foreman. “Have you reached a verdict?”

      “Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

      “Bailiff?”

      The uniformed officer took the verdict slip from the foreman and handed it to Jake. He opened it, glanced over it. It wasn’t a total shock. But, completely out of character, all he could think was that he had to decide what to do next about Maria.

      Jake handed the slip back to the bailiff, who returned it to the foreman, a woman old enough to harbor grandmotherly sentiments toward Griff. She unfolded the paper and cleared her throat before she gave the boy a warm smile.

      “In the matter of the Commonwealth versus Griffin Samuel Butler, on the first count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Channing Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

      Voices surged like background sounds in a movie. Half the gallery agreed with the verdict. Half definitely did not.

      The foreman continued, “On the second count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Ada Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

      Griff looked stunned, as if he’d been imagining prison walls and found himself transported out of this musty room to the middle of fresh new snow and the twinkling lights blinking holiday colors on the square. That kid had plenty to be grateful for.

      Jake picked up his gavel. Conversation ceased except for muffled sobbing as he turned to face the jury.

      “Thank you for your service to the Commonwealth,” Jake said. “You may speak to the press if you wish. If you prefer not to discuss this case or the verdict, follow the bailiff, and he’ll escort you to an alternate exit.”

      He turned to Griff, who’d reached behind him, turning over his chair as he grabbed at his family.

      His aunt, still crying, held out her arms. His uncle extended a strong hand. Griff tried to take both.

      Far from gloating, as the guilty tended to do when they got off, he just looked like a kid. Happy to be going home to the people he was supposed to love.

      Supposed to. That was the problem. No matter what a man might see in his job, day in and day out, he assumed a sixteen-year-old kid loved his mother and dad.

      At least Jake assumed. And unless Griff was adept at a sociopath’s crocodile tears, he was grateful and glad to wrap trembling arms around his aunt and uncle.

      Jake searched for Maria. Perched on the edge of her seat, her hands folded in her lap, she might have looked the part of a prim schoolmarm, but Jake felt a grim compulsion to get her out of here before anyone else saw how deeply she cared for the kid who’d thrown her to the wolves.

      It was surreal being one of two still people in a room boiling with activity. Usually, a verdict freed Jake of responsibility. His job stopped at making sure the defendant got a fair trial.

      Not this time. Juries were made up of humans. For the first time, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that twelve humans had made a mistake.

      That skinny boy might have taken the gun from his father’s safe and loaded the shells. Gil Daley theorized Griff had then walked up two twisting flights of stairs in his right-side-of-Honesty house and stood over his sleeping parents. He’d had all that time to rethink his plan. Could a kid kill his parents because they’d grounded him?

      What about his aunt and uncle? Jake studied the last two adults in the Butler family. With their arms around Griff and each other, they still reached with outstretched fingers, seeking even more contact, as if they all feared a cop was going to show up and drag Griff back to his cell.

      Angela Hammond had lost her sister. Were she and her husband covering for Griff because he was all that remained of his mother?

      Gil hadn’t found the least whiff of violence in the Butler household. However, at the high school, the teachers and principal had described several escalating incidents, from shoving in the hall to a more dangerous infraction in the boys’ room, when Griff had shoved a freshman’s head into the toilet.

      Which any kid might do if his therapist were abusing him.

      Jake straightened, searching inwardly for his customary sense of justice served. Time and the law moved forward, and Jake had no choice. The jury’s decision ruled.

      “Mr. Butler, you are free to go.”

      Shouting and laughter clashed. A couple of groans layered in an undertone. The boy and his relatives started hugging all over again, still stunned and even happier.

      Holding his gavel loosely in his hands, Jake eyed Griff Butler with Maria’s doubt, but Griff was oblivious. He wriggled toward the aisle, past his attorneys, but then he saw Maria.

      She leaned toward the kid, her face vulnerable, soft with concern.

      She opened her mouth, as if to speak. Jake almost lifted his hand, to warn her. Griff’s aunt saw her nephew’s confusion, and she spun, a look of chilling rage freezing her face.

      Maria stared at Angela, her eyes soft with pity. Jake swore silently as Angela’s mouth straightened into a bitter slash. He didn’t have to read lips to guess at the words she spit at Maria. David, her husband, regarded his wife with the dismay of a man confronting a stranger.

      Maria stood her ground—sat it—without wavering. David gathered Angela and Griff into his arms and dragged them toward the exit.

      The fight seeped out of Maria. She lowered her head as if she couldn’t hold it up. Her shoulders hunched. Light glittered in the curls that framed her pale cheeks.

      Her air of submission startled Jake more than any other move she’d made. He slammed the gavel onto its rest. “Court dismissed.”

      He turned to the doors behind him and the bailiff, a friend since the first time Jake had defended a client in this building, opened the door.

      “Over at last, sir,” he said.

      “Yeah, Joe.”

      “You should go out that back way, too. Those guys are going to want your opinion on the verdict.”

      “I have no opinion, Joe.” It was the way he lived. Objective. As Maria had said, determined to see all sides of any argument.

      Camera flashes lit up the back of the courtroom. Some of the press had come from D.C. and beyond. Griff Butler’s father had been a congressman before he’d resigned to make money building strip malls. Griff’s arrest had made big news because of his family name, as well as the depraved nature of his alleged crime.

      Jake would like nothing better than to go to his chambers, hang up his robe and spit the