A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,190

nodded at Kiera and she continued, “He asked me if I liked it and I said no. I was cryin’ and shakin’ and I thought, you stupid man, how can you think I’d like it? As he was leavin’, I was still in the bed, under a sheet, and he walked over to me and slapped me in the face, but not too hard. And he said that if I told anyone, then he would kill me and Drew.”

“What happened next?”

“As soon as he left, I went to the bathroom and took a bath. I felt dirty and didn’t want his smell on me. I sat in the tub forever and tried to stop cryin’. I wanted to die, Mr. Brigance. That was the first time in my life that I thought about suicide.”

“Did you tell your mother?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was afraid of him, we all were, and I knew he would hurt me if I told anyone. As it went on and on, I realized that I might be pregnant. I felt bad in the mornings, got sick at school, and I knew that I would have to tell Mom. I was planning on it when Stu got killed.”

“Did you ever tell Drew?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged and said, “I was too afraid. And what was he supposed to do? I was scared, Mr. Brigance, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“And so you told no one?”

“No one.”

“When was the next rape?”

She looked at her sheet of paper and said, “A week later, December the thirtieth. It was like the first one, at home, on Saturday, with no one else there. I tried to push him away but he was so strong. He didn’t slap me, but he threatened me again when it was over.”

With a loud gasp, almost a shriek, Janet Kofer launched into another round of crying. Noose pointed to her and spoke to a bailiff, “Please remove that lady from the courtroom.”

Two deputies escorted her to the door. Jake watched the disturbance, and when it was finally over, he looked at his witness. “Kiera, please tell the jury about the third rape.”

Kiera was rattled by the outburst and wiped her cheeks. Take your time, Jake had told her over and over. There is absolutely no rush. It will be a short trial anyway, and no one is in a hurry. She leaned closer to the mike and said, “Well, I had to change things for Saturday, so I asked Drew to stay home with me, and he did. Stuart left. A couple of weeks went by and I managed to stay away from him. Then one afternoon Stuart picked me up from school.” She looked at her notes. “It was Tuesday, January sixteen, and I had to stay late to work on a play, a theater project. He volunteered to get me, in his patrol car, and we stopped for ice cream. It was gettin’ late and, lookin’ back, I think he was just killin’ time until it was dark. We drove home, but he took a side road not far from the church, Good Shepherd, and stopped behind an old country store, one that has been closed for a long time. It was very dark out there, not another light anywhere. He told me to get in the backseat. I had no choice. I begged him not to and I thought about screamin’, but no one would hear me. He left a rear door open, and I remember how cold it was.”

“And he was in uniform?”

“Yes. He took off his gun and just pulled down his pants. I was wearin’ a skirt. He wrapped it around my neck. When we were drivin’ home I couldn’t stop cryin’, so he took his gun and punched it into my ribs, said to stop it, said he would kill me if I breathed a word. Then he laughed and said he wanted me to walk into the house like nothing had ever happened, said he wanted to see how good an actor I was. I went to my room and locked the door. Drew came to check on me.”

As gripping and lurid as her testimony was, Jake knew it would be a mistake to punish the witness and the jury with the details of all five attacks. They had endured enough, and he had plenty of ammo for the rest of the trial. He stepped to the defense table to get some notes, a legal pad for a prop, and