But there isn't time for that. I jump out of my seat and stumble through the gate at the bar, flying down the aisle of the courtroom with two bailiffs in pursuit. I make it through the double doors, then fall to my knees and vomit repeatedly, until the only thing left in my stomach is guilt.
"Frost Heaves," I say minutes later, when I have cleaned myself up and Fisher has whisked me to a private conference room away from the eyes of the press. "That'll be tomorrow's headline."
He steeples his fingers. "You know, I've got to tell you, that was good. Amazing, really."
I glance at him. "You think I threw up on purpose?"
"Didn't you?"
"My God." Turning away, I stare out the window. If anything, the crowd outside has grown. "Fisher, did you see that tape? How could any juror acquit me after that?"
Fisher is quiet for a moment. "Nina, what were you thinking when you were watching it?"
"Thinking? Who had time to think, with all the visual cues? I mean, that's an unbelievable amount of blood. And the brains-"
"What were you thinking about yourself?"
I shake my head, close my eyes, but there are no words for what I've done.
Fisher pats my arm. "That," he says, "is why they'll acquit you."
In the lobby, where he is sequestered as an upcoming witness, Patrick tries to keep his mind off Nina and her trial. He's done a crossword puzzle in a paper left on the seat beside him; he's had enough cups of coffee to raise his pulse a few notches; he's talked to other cops coming in and out. But it's all pointless; Nina runs through his blood.
When she staggered from the courtroom, her hand clapped over her mouth, Patrick had risen out of his chair. He was already halfway across the lobby, trying to make sure she was all right, when Caleb burst out of the double doors on the heels of the bailiffs.
So Patrick sat back down.
On his hip, his beeper begins to vibrate. Patrick pulls it off his belt and glances at the number on the screen. Finally, he thinks, and he goes to find a pay phone.
When it is time for lunch, Caleb gets sandwiches from a nearby deli and brings them back to the conference room where I am ensconced. "I can't eat," I say, as he hands me one wrapped sub. I expect him to tell me that I have to, but instead Caleb just shrugs and lets the sandwich sit in front of me. From the corner of my eye I watch him chew his food in silence. He has already conceded this war; he no longer even cares enough to fight me.
There is a rattle of the locked door, followed by an insistent banging. Caleb scowls, then gets up to tell whoever it is to go away. But when he opens it a crack, Patrick is standing on the other side. The door falls open, and the two men stand uneasily facing each other, a seam of energy crackling between them that keeps them from getting too close.
I realize at that moment that although I have many photographs of Patrick and many photographs of Caleb, I haven't got a single one of all three of us-as if, in that combination, it is impossible to fit so much emotion in the frame of the camera.
"Nina," he says, coming inside. "I have to talk to you."
Not now, I think, going cold. Surely Patrick has enough sense to not bring up what happened in front of my husband. Or maybe that is exactly what he wants to do.
"Father Gwynne's dead." Patrick hands me a faxed Nexus article. "I got a call from the Belle Chasse police chief. I got tired of working on Southern time a few days ago, and I put a little pressure on the authorities . . . anyway, it seems that by the time they went to arrest him, he'd died."
My face is frozen. "Who did it?" I whisper.
"No one. It was a stroke."
Patrick keeps talking, his words falling like hailstones onto the paper I'm trying to read. "... took the damn chief two whole days to get around to calling me ..."
Father Gwynne, a beloved local chaplain, was found dead in his living quarters by his housekeeper.
". . . apparently, he had a family history of cardiovascular disease . . ."
"He looked so peaceful, you know, in his easy chair," said Margaret Mary Seurat, who had worked for the priest for the past five years. "Like he'd just fallen asleep after finishing his cup of cocoa."
"... and get this: They said his cat died of a broken heart ..."
In a strange, connected twist, Gwynne's cherished pet, a cat well known to his parishioners, died shortly after authorities arrived. To those who knew the Father, this was no surprise: "She loved him too much," Seurat suggested. "We all did."
"It's over, Nina."
