Claim of Innocence. Laura Caldwell

reject the notion, but he only said simply, “Maybe.”

      “Let us handle it.” Maggie nodded toward the courtroom. “I’ve already told the judge that Izzy was filing an appearance.”

      Again, I waited for swift rejection, but Martin Bristol nodded. “Just this one time.”

      “Just this once,” Maggie said softly.

      Martin pushed down on the table with his hands, shoving himself to his feet. “I’ll explain to Judge Bates.” He slowly left the room.

      Maggie’s round eyes, fringed with long brown lashes, watched him. Then she met my gaze across the table. “You ready for this?”

      My pulse quickened. “No.”

      “Good,” she said, standing. “Let’s get out there.”

      5

       “H ow’s Theo?” Maggie asked as the sheriff led a panel of about fourteen potential jurors through the Plexiglas doors and into the courtroom. Theo was the twenty-two-year-old guy I’d been dating since spring.

      “Um…” I said, eyeing the potential jurors. “He’s fine. So what’s your strategy here? Did you do a mock trial for this? Do you know what kind of juror you want?”

      As was typical, the possible jurors being led in were a completely mixed bag—people of every color and age. I remembered a story my friend, Grady, once told me about defending a doctor who had been sued. As they were about to start opening arguments, the doctor had looked at the jury and then looked at Grady. “Well, that’s exactly a jury of my peers,” the doc had said sarcastically.

      When Grady told me the story, we both thought the doctor arrogant, but we understood what he meant. Chicago was a metropolis that was home to every type of person imaginable. As a result, you never knew what you were going to get when you picked a jury in Cook County. “Unpredictable” was the only way to describe a jury in this city.

      “We talked to a jury consultant,” Maggie said, answering my question, “but tell me, what’s going on with Theo?”

      I turned to her. “Why are you asking this now?”

      “My grandfather always taught me to have two seconds of normal chitchat right before a trial starts.”

      “Why?”

      “Because for the rest of the trial you become incapable of it and because it calms you down.” She peered into my eyes. “And I think you could use some of that.”

      “Why? I’m fine.” But I could feel my pulse continue its fast pace.

      She peered even more closely. “You’re not going to have one of those sweat attacks, are you?”

      I glared at her. But she had a right to ask. I had this very occasional but acute nervousness problem that caused me to, essentially, sweat my ass off. It usually happened at the start of a trial, and it was mortifying. I’d always said it was as if the devil had taken a coal straight from the furnace of hell and plopped it onto my belly.

      I paused a moment and searched my body for any internal boiling. “No, I think I’m fine.”

      The sheriff barked orders at the jurors about where to sit.

      “If it’s a tradition,” I said, “the chitchat thing, then we should do it.”

      Maggie nodded.

      “So Theo is good,” I said. I got a flash of him—young, tall, muscled Theo, with tattoos on his arms—a gold-and-black serpent on one, twisting ribbons of red on the other. I could see his light brown hair that he wore to his chin now, his gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous face, those lips…

      I shook my head to halt my thinking. If I didn’t stop, my internal heat would definitely rise. “Actually, I have more to talk about in terms of Sam.”

      “Really? I thought you hadn’t seen him much.”

      “I haven’t. He called this morning.”

      “Hmm,” Maggie said noncommittally, her hands tidying stacks of documents. “How is he?”

      “Engaged.”

      Maggie’s chin darted forward, the muscles in her neck standing out. Her eyes went wide and shot from one of mine to the other and back again, looking for signs, I supposed, of impending sobbing. Finding none—I think I was still too shocked—she asked, “Alyssa?”

      I nodded.

      “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry, Iz.”

      Maggie’s gaze was worried. She knew the ins and outs of Sam and me from start to finish. After Sam and I broke up, she was one of the few friends who understood that I still adored him, even as I felt I couldn’t continue our relationship. Eventually, I put that relationship away, in my past, likely never to be seen in my future. But here it was in my present.

      “Where are they getting married?” Maggie asked. “And when?”

      “Well, that’s the thing. He says he won’t set a date. Not if I don’t want there to be a date.”

      And then I saw something remarkable, something I’d seen only once or twice before—Maggie Bristol, who was never at a loss for words, stared at me, her mouth open. Not a sound emanated from within. Not even when the judge shouted at her.

      “Counsel,” the judge called to Maggie again, this time very loud. “Is. Your. Client. Here?” he said, enunciating.

      Maggie finally dropped her eyes from me, picked up a cell phone and glanced at it. “Yes, Your Honor. One moment please.” Maggie gestured at me to walk with her.

      “Where is your client?” I whispered.

      “Our client,” Maggie whispered back. “She gets emotional when she’s in the courtroom so we try to keep her out until it’s absolutely necessary. I have someone from our office sit with her in an empty courtroom, then I text them to get her down here.” She put her hand on my arm. “We’ll have to table this discussion of Sam.”

      “Of course. Forget I said anything.”

      She scoffed as she led us past the gallery pews, all filled with more prospective jurors. I knew what she meant—it was hard for me to think of anything but Sam. Sam’s voice. Sam, saying he still wanted to be with me after everything.

      I forced myself to focus instead on all those people in the pews, watching us like actors on a stage. And in a way litigation was a performance. I knew exactly what production Maggie wanted us to act in right now. She wanted us to make a show of solidarity—the two women lawyers about to greet their female client.

      I threw my shoulders back, banned Sam Hollings from my mind again and smiled pleasantly at a few of the potential jurors as I followed Maggie to the courtroom door. I spied a couple of reporters scribbling in notepads. “I’m surprised there isn’t more media,” I whispered to Maggie.

      “We’ve been trying to keep it low-key. We haven’t made a statement to the press, and Valerie hasn’t, either.”

      As we stepped into the hallway, Maggie was stopped by a man with bright eyes who must have been at least eighty. I recognized him as a famous judge who had stepped down over a decade ago but was always being profiled in the bar magazines as someone who spent his retirement watching over the criminal courthouse where he had presided for so long.

      “Hey, Judge!” Maggie said casually, shaking his hand and patting him on the arm. “How’s the golf game?”

      “Terrible this summer!”

      “It’s always been terrible, sir.”

      The judge laughed. Maggie was like this at work—irreverent in a respectful kind of way. But she had an immediacy to her and a clear-cut way of speaking to people like judges, other attorneys and politicos, as if she had been intimately involved