A glimpse of her frightened face in the glass as she turned. Then she walked deliberately back down the hall, away from the front door, past Frank, past the closed door of the kids’ room, into her own room. Her hands sweating, her heart pounding as she rummaged through her closet, pushing dress after dress aside, as she realized that she had nothing black to wear. That she would look all wrong. That she would look as wrong on the outside as she felt on the inside.
She hated black, has always hated black—it made her look tired, washed-out—but she had to look right for Cindy. She had to show her grief in the right way.
Pete had taken unpaid leave from the bookstore to be in court. He sat at the front of the public benches and watched Ruth watching the jury. She was very pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She was wearing a yellow dress and jacket, but the dress was tight and cut low in front. That sensuality was still there—restrained, muted, but apparent.
The jury was all male, all middle-aged, probably blue collar. Ruth looked at them and they looked right back at her. A row of hard faces. She wrote something on her notepad and pushed it toward Scott.
Pete wondered if she was asking the same question he had asked.
Why are there no women on the jury?
Scott had told him that all the women who could have sat on this jury had been excused. This could have been for any number of reasons: maybe they were too busy. Maybe they just didn’t want to get involved. Maybe they had children and homes to take care of, while their husbands sat here, judging Ruth.
Scott scrawled something back, his eyes on Hirsch, who was speaking to the jury. He sounded fierce now, staccato, like a bulldog barking.
“There’s no room for sympathy in a case like this.”
Ruth leaned in to Scott and whispered something. He bent to listen, still focusing on Hirsch, and her smallness next to him made her seem even more fragile.
Pete hoped she wouldn’t guess the real reason, or worm it out of Scott. Every woman on the prospective jury panel had been released after they had stated they believed she was guilty.
He didn’t want her to learn how it had been that morning in the packed hallways of the courthouse. The swiveling heads, the curious eyes, the pointing fingers. He didn’t want her to know about the harsh voices, bristling with righteous anger, with condemnation.
“I heard she put her face on before she even called the cops.”
“She’s never shed a single tear for those poor children. Not a single one, and that’s a fact.”
“My sister’s husband, his cousin knew them, she said they were the most beautiful kids you ever saw.”
There were women on the public benches who were obsessed with the case, or with her. Women who’d taken three buses to be here, who’d slept in the corridor to ensure their place in line. Who were willing to miss meals, to sit for hours on hard benches and listen to legal arguments, who were willing to abandon their own children to neighbors and friends—all to bear witness to Ruth.
As Scott had told Pete earlier, Ruth had already been judged and pronounced guilty in the beauty parlors, the backyards, and the kitchens of Queens. Everything depended on whether the jury would feel the same way.
The next few days were taken up with cross-examination of the medical experts. By the end of the second afternoon, Pete’s head was aching from trying to make sense of long scientific words he’d never heard before. When the court adjourned for the day, he walked outside and took a long sweet breath of fresh air. Instead of heading straight home, he looked over to the far side of the parking lot, shading his eyes, trying to see if there was somewhere nearby he could get a soda or a sandwich.
And then he noticed them: four men walking in a tight line toward an unremarkable car. Hirsch, his assistant, and a short paunchy guy he’d seen around the courthouse—and between them, stumbling like a man too drunk or too tired to hold himself up: Johnny Salcito.
He watched them for a moment as Salcito climbed unsteadily into the back of the car, Hirsch’s assistant with him. Hirsch shut the door behind them and walked to the back of the car to speak to the short guy. They shook hands, the man got into the driver’s seat, and the car pulled away. Hirsch lit a cigarette and walked back toward the courthouse.
Pete stared after the car, pursed his lips, then shrugged and turned away. It would be another twenty-four hours before he understood the significance of Salcito being driven away by the prosecution team.
The witness stand was fifty paces from where Johnny was sitting, down the center aisle of the courtroom, past the defense table, left past the judge.
He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. Ruth kept a smile pasted on her face, kept looking at him, kept hoping he’d turn around and wink.
Scott had told her that Johnny’s evidence could save her. So she needed him to do this right. She needed him to look at her and reassure her that it was going to be okay.
He reached the witness stand, took the oath. He answered Scott’s questions as he’d said he would. He’d spoken to Ruth on the night of July thirteenth. She had seemed normal. Everything was as usual.