He looked back and forth in the hallway and saw no one but a uniformed officer strolling as if on patrol.
“Excuse me!” he called, surprised by the panic in his own voice. “Where is everybody?”
“Lunch break,” the man called back.
“But I left my friend in this room, and she was supposed to sit right there until I got back, so we couldn’t lose each other. Neither one of us has a phone. They wouldn’t have locked her in, would they?”
“Oh, I doubt that,” the officer said, moving closer to Raymond. “I’m sure they cleared the room.”
“So where is she?”
It came out as nearly a full-throated shout. Raymond stood back from himself and realized he was officially losing it. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Normally he did not allow himself to become so outwardly, overwhelmingly emotional.
“Well, I don’t know. But take a deep breath. Most people go to one of four or five restaurants in walking distance of here. But I’d start by looking in the cafeteria. It’s on the first floor, at the back of the building. Straight back down the hall from the lobby.”
“Thank you,” Raymond said, and took off running again.
He hadn’t even managed to get his breath back from the last marathon sprint.
He stuck his head into the cafeteria and saw her immediately.
She was sitting at a table with that thirtysomething man and woman. The ones who had been watching the trial with them, but from the other side of the aisle. From the defense side.
He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and gasped air for a long time. Until he could breathe normally again and the bulk of his panic had drained away.
Then he walked to her.
“Oh, Raymond,” she said, turning her face in his direction. “Thank goodness. You’re back. Is Isabel all right?”
He almost asked how she did that. But then he remembered. It was the sound of his left shoe.
“Yeah. She’s okay. She’s at the hospital. Scared me to death when I didn’t know where you were.”
He pulled the fourth chair out from the table and sat.
“Oh dear. Didn’t that officer give you the message?”
“No. I talked to him, but he didn’t know anything.”
“That must have been a different officer. The one I left my message with was a she. What a shame. She said she’d be there, and then she went and let me down. I’m so sorry to throw a scare into you like that, Raymond, but I really had no choice. They cleared the room for lunch, and I didn’t see that coming. But I’m being very rude. Forgive me. This is Peter Hatfield and Mary Jane Hatfield Swensen. Peter and Mary Jane, this is my good friend Raymond. Peter and Mary Jane helped me to come down here for lunch, and we’ve been having a nice talk.”
Raymond stared at the couple and said nothing. They shifted their eyes away, maybe in slight discomfort. Maybe even in shame.
Hatfield. Relatives of the defendant.
“Oh,” Raymond said. “Pleased to meet you.”
But he wasn’t.
The Hatfields only nodded in silence. Raymond remembered something he’d read about a famous generations-long feud between a family called the Hatfields and . . . he couldn’t remember what the other family had been called. But it struck him as ironic.
“So, how is Isabel? Did she have the baby?”
“Not yet. I mean, she hadn’t yet when I left her. She said it could be a long time. She said I should come back here and be with you, and when court lets out we can go back there and see the baby. Or wait with her. You know. Depending.”
Peter and Mary Jane made a show of wiping their mouths with their napkins and dropping them on their empty plates, as if underlining the fact that they were done eating. Which was already clear.
They rose to their feet.
“We’ll go back up now,” Peter said. “You have your friend here to help you when you’re ready. Right?”
“I think the room is still locked,” Mrs. G said. She lifted the hinged crystal of her watch and felt its hands. “It’s not two o’clock yet.”
“We’ll take a little walk before the afternoon session,” Mary Jane said.
They hurried away.
Raymond watched them go, then turned his face to Mrs. G. He noticed for the first time that she appeared to have eaten something. An empty plate sat in front of her with a small scrap of sandwich left uneaten.
“That was weird,” he said.
“Which part of everything was weird?”
“Those two people. Their names are Hatfield. Are they related to the lady who shot Luis?”
“Yes. They are. They’re her son and daughter.”
“And you were sitting here having lunch with them.”
“Yes. They were nice enough to see I was in trouble as the room was being cleared. They helped me down here.”
“And you had a nice chat, you said.”
“We did.”
“What did you chat about?”
“Oh, this and that. Not the shooting. We left that subject alone. But pretty much everything else.”
“Didn’t you feel weird having lunch with that lady’s son and daughter?”
“Yes. In many ways I did. But then I thought, they are not their mother. How would you feel if somebody blamed you for something your mother did?”
“Oh,” Raymond said. “I guess I hadn’t thought to look at it that way.”
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Just the Facts
“Mr. Adler,” the prosecuting attorney said, “please tell the court what you witnessed on the evening in question.”
“Okay,” Ralph Adler said.