YUKI STOOD WITH CINDY in the corridor outside of courtroom 4A, their backs against the cold marble wall as the courtroom emptied.
Cindy was excited, the reporter in her pumped up, asking, “So, what did you think?”
A group of lawyers for the defense and hospital execs passed by, talking about the trial. An old fox in gray tweed was saying, “Thank God for Kramer. Great recovery on his part. That guy’s a superstar.”
Almost on their heels, O’Mara and her retinue proudly strode down the hallway. O’Mara’s face was impassive as she reached the elevator, the door opening as if it had been expecting her.
“Yuki?” Cindy asked again. “Your professional opinion. How do you think the jury’s going to decide?”
Yuki heard the anxiety in Cindy’s voice, saw her tracking the lawyers with her eyes, and knew that Cindy wanted to get into the action on the courthouse steps.
“Both sides did extremely well, made a hell of a case,” Yuki said. “You know, there’s no ‘reasonable doubt’ in a civil case. They’re usually decided on a ‘preponderance of evidence.’ So each juror will have their own definition of pre —”
“You can’t even guess?”
“It’s a coin toss, Cindy. The jury could even hang.”
Cindy thanked her, said she’d catch up with her later, then made for the stairs, running.
Yuki waited for the next elevator, got in, and watched the numbers light from four to one.
Then she exited into the lobby, passed the circular security desk, and stepped out into the brisk October air.
There were two thick scrums of reporters outside the courthouse, one pack around Larry Kramer, the other around Maureen O’Mara, shoving microphones in their faces, feeding picture and sound to satellite vans parked on McAllister.
No matter what the outcome, both Kramer and O’Mara were getting a huge media boost that money couldn’t buy.
As she walked past them, Yuki thought back a couple of months to the last trial she’d litigated, how good she’d been. How she’d stood on those courthouse steps, mobbed by the press.
How much she’d liked that. But how much she’d changed in the last couple of weeks.
Yuki’s car was parked at a meter three blocks from the courthouse.
She removed the parking ticket from her windshield, put it inside her handbag, located her keys, and got behind the wheel.
She switched on the ignition, then just sat there for a while, looking out at the traffic, at the purposeful pedestrians on the sidewalk pacing past her, lost in their daily routines.
It was a world that had nothing to do with her anymore. She had no place to go.
A great torrent of sadness welled up inside her. It was so sudden, she couldn’t even name it. She crossed her arms over the steering wheel, put her head down, and began to sob.
Chapter 108
CLAIRE AND I WERE at Susie’s at dinner hour, the smell of barbecued pork and fried plantains making my mouth water and my stomach grumble. As we waited for the others, Claire was telling me about a recent case that had torn her up. She’d been working on it since the small, dark hours of the morning.
“A nineteen-year-old girl, apparent suicide, was hung by an extension cord wrapped around the bathroom door —”
“Wrapped around the door?”
“Yeah. One end was tied to the knob, then the cord was slid under the door, up over the top, then knotted around her neck.”
“Jeez. She really did that?”
“It’s really a puzzle,” Claire said, pouring us each a glass of beer from the frosted pitcher. “Her twenty-eight-year-old dirtbag boyfriend with a history of domestic violence was the only witness, of course.
“He called it into nine-one-one as a suicide after a dispute they had. Said he cut her down, gave her CPR. Oh, and that she’s pregnant.”
“Aw, no.”