A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,183

and to stop hitting them. But Stuart was out of control. She threatened to leave him on several occasions, and this always sent him into a rage. He called her names, cursed her in front of the kids, made fun of her because she had nowhere to go, called her trailer park trash.”

Dyer stood and said, “Your Honor, I object on the grounds of hearsay.”

“Sustained.”

Jurors number three and nine lived in trailers.

Jake ignored Dyer and Noose and concentrated on the faces of three and nine. He continued, “On Saturday night, March twenty-four, Stuart was out. In fact he’d been gone all afternoon, and Josie was expecting the worst. They waited as the hours passed. Midnight came and went. The kids were upstairs in Kiera’s room with the lights off, hiding, hoping their mother wouldn’t get hurt again. They were in Kiera’s room because her door was sturdier and the lock worked better. They knew this from experience. The previous door had been kicked in by Stuart during one of his rages. Josie was downstairs, waiting for the headlights to appear in the driveway.” He paused for a long time, then said, “You know, I’ll let them tell the story.”

He stepped behind the podium, glanced at his notes, and wiped sweat from his forehead. But for the funeral fans and the constant hum of the window units, the courtroom was silent and still. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a clear-cut case of premeditated murder, far from it. We will prove that during that horrifying moment, with his mother unconscious on the kitchen floor, with Stuart blind drunk and stomping through the house, with his sister crying and begging their mother to wake up, with both children alone and vulnerable, with the history of indescribable violence scarred into their frightened souls, with the belief that they were not safe and would never be safe from that man, what little Drew Gamble did was entirely justified.”

Jake nodded at the jurors and turned to face the judge. “Your Honor, we are ready with our first witness, Josie Gamble.”

“Very well. Please call her to the stand.”

No one moved as Josie made her entrance. Jake met her at the railing, opened the low gate of the bar, and pointed to the witness stand. Because she had been superbly coached, she stopped by the court reporter, offered her a smile, and swore to tell the truth. For the occasion, she wore a simple sleeveless white blouse tucked into a pair of black linen slacks, and brown flat sandals. Nothing was tight or revealing. Her short blond hair was pulled back. No lipstick, little makeup. Carla was in charge of her appearance, and after studying the five female jurors she had loaned her the blouse and sandals and bought the slacks. The goal was to appear attractive enough to please the seven men but simple enough not to threaten the women. Her thirty-two years had been hard and she looked at least ten years older. Still, she was younger than most of the jurors and in better shape than virtually all of them.

Jake began with some basic questions, and in doing so elicited her current address, which until then was unknown. The bill collectors had not found her in Oxford and he had debated which address to use. Without too much detail, they went through her past: two pregnancies before she was seventeen; no high school diploma; two bad marriages; the first conviction for possessing drugs at the age of twenty-three, a year in the county jail; the second drug conviction in Texas that landed her in prison for two years. She owned her past, said she was not proud of it and would give anything if she could go back and change things. She was at once stoic and vulnerable. She managed to smile at the jurors a time or two without making light of the situation. Her biggest regret was what she had done to her children, the lousy example she had set. Her voice cracked slightly when she talked about them, and she wiped her eyes with a tissue.

Though every question and answer was thoroughly scripted, the conversation seemed genuine. Her story unfolded with ease at times, and with pain at other times. Jake held a legal pad as if he needed a prompt, but every word had been committed to memory and rehearsed. Libby and Portia could recite the exchange verbatim.

Switching gears, Jake said, “Now, Josie, on December the third of last