Ivory essence … sandy texture … my special gift.
I see the hidden; I see the shine, every touch, every footfall, every cheek on a pillow, every hand on a wall. Some might call it an aura, I just call it life energy; either way it leaves its soft glowing trace on everything we come in contact with, radiating even from the blood we leave behind. Sometimes it’s chartreuse with a wispy texture, or muddy mauve, or flaming coral, or a crimson baked-earth. Every shine is different and specific to a person, like fingerprints or eye scans or DNA.
This time it had an ivory color—what I call essence—and a sandy texture.
Landing at SeaTac, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Jimmy leads the way to a waiting car driven by an FBI staffer from the Seattle office, who takes us directly to the King County Courthouse.
We’re still early, so we kill some time in the cafeteria. The Quillan case was more than a year ago, so I review my notes for the third time before handing the file back to Jimmy. He stuffs it into his Fossil soft-side portfolio briefcase as I say a prayer that I’ll never have to look at it again.
*
The courtroom is similar to others I’ve had the ill fortune to attend, though without the individual theaterlike seating found in newer buildings. Instead, family members, observers, and reporters sit upon hard church-type pews, lacking only hymnals and prayer kneelers.
The jury box sits at the front of the room on the right side: twelve overstuffed chairs, six to a row, with the back row elevated slightly above the front, surrounded by hard oak railings stained in dark cherry. At the front of the room, elevated above all others and brooding over the courtroom, stands the judge’s bench. Made ornate with carvings and a marble top, it, too, is dressed out in undergarments of oak with a handsome, silky suit of dark cherry stain draped over the top.
My place is less ornate …
… and not so high.
Taking my seat in the witness box to the judge’s left, I shift on the hard chair and try to find a comfortable position; it’s not to be had. Perhaps it’s just me, but I find witness chairs to be strikingly similar to the medieval Judas Chair, or Chair of Torture, a terrible invention embedded with a thousand or more piercing spikes rising from the seat and the armrests and protruding from the back. Its singular purpose, like the witness chair, is to encourage one’s tongue to flap about in a productive fashion. Though in the Middle Ages the truth was less relevant than the confession.
I glance at the jurors and envy them their stuffed chairs. They look to be a decent group, with not a mouth-breather or drooler among them. The oddest of the lot is an older woman in a lime-green suit, big-framed glasses, and a 1950s-style beehive hairdo.
Seriously, I don’t know if she’s going for the retro look or if she just came from a Marge Simpson look-alike contest, but it’s freaking me out.
Okay, maybe the beehive isn’t that large, but I’d wager if it caught fire it’d take her a few minutes to notice … and several extinguishers to put out … and maybe a ladder truck.
I glance quickly from face to face, making eye contact with some, even sharing the edge of a smile with Marge Simpson. These will be the men and women who decide Quillan’s fate. I may not be able to tell them everything, I think, but I won’t be false; the world has enough liars.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth…” bla blah, bla blah, bla blah.
I say, “I do,” while thinking in my head, All except for that “whole truth” part.
“Good afternoon, Steps,” King County Prosecutor Tully Stevens says as he approaches and shakes my hand. I’ve met Tully twice before. He’s abrupt and, some would say, humorless, but he’s a man of integrity and principle, a scarce combination these days, particularly among attorneys. He’s not a handsome man, but he’s not spare parts, either. At fifty, he still has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair that gives him a distinguished look and earns respect from juries … plus it balances the jut of his oversized ears.
“Steps, could you please explain to the jury why you were called in to this case and what your role was.” His eyes direct me toward the seven women and five men in the jury box. I give a nod, thinking, Here we go, and dive in.
“The King County Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI’s Special Tracking Unit after Ms. Moongood and her infant son went missing and investigation revealed a large amount of blood at the residence that suggested foul play. While the house had been cleaned, deputies found a blood trail on the porch”—I gesture toward a large photo on an easel to my right—“that terminated three feet down the gravel walkway.
“I picked up the trail where the blood ended. Directionality initially suggested the suspect was heading west, toward a parking lot in front of the apartment complex, but then the trail turned south and led to the trunk of a 1996 Chevrolet Caprice parked on the street about a hundred feet from the victims’ house.”
“And you checked the trunk?”
“I did.”
“What did you find?” Tully asks, knowing full well the answer.