Stand Your Ground: A Novel (30 page)

“And what did Mr. Spencer say?”

“He said that he didn’t have his phone on him. That he had to run into the house and go upstairs to get it. He said that accounted for the difference in time between his call and the first call.”

“Did that make sense to you?”

“At that time, we were just taking his statement.”

“Was there ever a time when you became concerned about that explanation?”

“Yes. When our detectives went back to the scene. We reenacted a man running from the front of the house, up to the bedroom, then back down again.”

“And how long did that take your detective?” the prosecutor asked.

“About forty-four seconds—if he waited to call until he came back outside. If he had called from his phone when he first found it, it would have taken him about half of that time.”

“Did you ever ask Mr. Spencer about the call again?”

“Yes, sir. After we’d done our test, I spoke with Wyatt Spencer again about ten days later. At that time, he said that his cell phone was downstairs, right at the front door.”

“
Would you consider that an inconsistent statement?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you ask him about that inconsistency?”

“I did.”

“And what was his response?”

“He never answered; he was angry.”

“No further questions.”

Then, the attorney on our side asked Detective Ferguson if he’d ever met an innocent man who’d given an inconsistent statement. When the detective said that he had, our attorney sat down and the detective was dismissed.

But while Newt didn’t think the detective’s testimony counted for anything, I thought it revealed to the jury that my husband was not only a murderer, but he was a lousy liar.

To me, between the teachers and the detectives, that day had gone well for the prosecution of my husband.

Yesterday he said, “If this does make it to the jury, they’ll be out for ten minutes before they come back with ‘not guilty.’ ”

That’s when I decided the only way Newt could think that the jury would come back so quickly and decisively in Wyatt’s favor was that Newt had to be sleeping through the testimonies.

It was true that the medical examiner didn’t give much to either side. But what he said had to help the prosecution.

“Marquis was shot at close range, one bullet through his heart that caused catastrophic loss of blood pressure. He didn’t die instantly, though. It probably took two to three minutes.”

Janice had let out a gasp that made me want to cry, and there was no relief for me when the fingerprint expert took the stand.

“Mr. Henderson,” the prosecutor began, “you didn’t find any prints on the bat?”

“No.”

“But does that mean that Mr. Spencer did not touch the bat?”

“No, it doesn’t,” the examiner said. “The misconception is that there will be fingerprints on every surface. But just because someone touches a surface does not guarantee that a latent print will be deposited, and there are lots of reasons for this. The person’s hands may be very dry, which means there is little or no sweat or oils coating the ridges. Therefore, the ridge detail won’t reliably transfer to the surface. And then, of course, there is the chance that someone could be wearing gloves.”

If I had been any kind of woman, I would have stood up and given the examiner another reason for how the bat could have been wiped clean.

“
So, I’ll ask one more time: Just because Mr. Spencer’s fingerprints weren’t found on the bat doesn’t mean he didn’t touch it, correct?”

“Objection! The question was asked and answered.”

“Sustained.”

Our side didn’t ask the examiner nor the fingerprint expert any questions and I was glad. I was glad because if either had stayed on the stand any longer, I may have found the courage to do the right thing.

But then my heart stopped again when the prosecutor stood and said, “The state calls Mrs. Janice Johnson.”

And that was the first time that I felt my baby kick.

E
veryone had to be holding their breath. That was the only way I could explain how suddenly all the air had been sucked from the room.

Janice put her hand on the Bible and swore to do what I would never do. And then she sat on the stand facing everyone.

Now that I could see her face-to-face, she was exactly how I imagined from the television images. She sat taller than anyone else had done on that stand, sitting almost like she was atop a throne.

“Mrs. Johnson, will you tell us your relationship to Marquis?”

“I am his mother,” she said with an authority that I admired. “He is my son.”

I noticed how she spoke of him in the present tense, even though he would never be present with her again.

The prosecutor said, “Can you tell us about your son’s plans for school?”

“Well, he attended Winchester Academy. He was a high school senior and on his way to college.”

“What else can you tell us about your son?”

She smiled, a mother’s smile that had enough wattage to light up the city. “He was a good kid. He loved to read, loved to write poetry, he played two instruments, the piano and saxophone, and he loved to play golf.”

“How were his grades?”

“He had all A’s, even in his advanced classes. He was a good student, very smart.”

“So, would you call your son a thug in any way?”

“No!” she said, and the smile that she’d worn was completely gone now. “I don’t even know how to define a thug, but my son was a good kid. Yes, he was a teenager, and he smoked weed with his friends. We told him not to, but—”

“He was a teenager,” the prosecutor finished for her, and she nodded.

I wasn’t surprised that Newt and his team didn’t object. In the car this morning, they had said that whenever Janice Johnson took the stand, they were going to have to play her right. They were not going to object to anything while she was being questioned by the prosecution. But on cross-examination, Wyatt had given his permission for them to go after her.

I had prayed then, and I folded my hands and started praying now.

The prosecutor continued questioning Janice, about how she had found out about Marquis being shot, about what it was like to bury her son, and what life was like now.

“There are mornings when I wake up, and once I realize that yes, my son is dead, I don’t want to keep breathing. On the day that we buried him, I truly just wanted to climb into the casket with him,” she said. “It is only because of God and my husband . . .” She paused and took such a long moment to look at her husband that I turned to look at him, too.

He sat stoic, like his wife, no smile on his face.

She said, “I can go on because of my husband. But it hurts every day to know that I am no longer a mother. That hole in my heart will never be filled.”

The prosecutor did not say another word. He just returned to his seat, taking slow steps. He didn’t even say,
No further questions
. He just allowed Mrs. Johnson to sit in that witness stand so that all of us could see the image of a grieving mother who was filled with a pain that most of us would be blessed to never experience.

Newt’s associate stood up, buttoned his jacket, and said, “Mrs. Johnson, we are so sorry for your loss.”

Without a beat, she said, “Thank you,” which was a much kinder response than I would have given to my enemy’s attorneys.

Our attorney said, “Were you always aware of what your son was doing? Always aware of where he was?”

She shrugged. “As much as I could be with a seventeen-year-old. I mean, I knew when he was at school, I knew when he was out with friends, and I knew where he was generally.”

“Did you know where he was the night he was shot?”

“Yes, he was at the library and then with his girlfriend.”

“You were sure of that?”

“Yes,” she said, frowning, looking confused.

“But isn’t it true that when the police came to your home, you thought your son was there? You didn’t even know that he wasn’t in the house?”

She glanced again at her husband. “Yes, but . . . I mean. No. I thought he had come home.”

“But when the police got there, that was when you first found out that he wasn’t there, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So, often, you had no idea where your son was, or what he was doing?”

“Objection!” the prosecutor said.

“Sustained. Move on, Counselor,” the judge told our side.

Our attorney said, “Mrs. Johnson, can you tell us who Caleb Brown is?”

“Objection!” The prosecutor shouted so loud this time it felt as if the walls had rattled. “Mr. Brown is not relevant to this trial.”

Our side said, “This goes to the credibility of the witness. She’s telling us about her son’s credibility, so it’s only fair that we be allowed to question hers.”

The judge paused, thought, said, “I’ll allow it. The witness will answer the question.”

Janice lowered her head, and when she raised it up, there were tears in her eyes. Looking straight at her husband, she said, “He’s . . . he was . . . my pastor.”

Before she completed the last word, her husband stood and stepped over a woman before he left the room. And right after him, another man stood up—one of the men that I’d seen on TV with the Johnsons.

Her eyes were on her husband as a tear rolled down Janice’s face, and I cried with her.

Our side said, “And besides him being your pastor, did you have any other kind of relationship with him?”

She nodded.

The judge said, “Mrs. Johnson, please answer the question.”

She took a deep breath and said, “I had an affair. I had an affair with my pastor.”

When she sobbed, I sobbed. And I did what Janice Johnson couldn’t do at the moment.

I got up and walked out of the courtroom.

Janice

I
had another day to add to the list of the horrible days of my life. It was humiliating to sit in front of all of those people and have to confess the worst thing I’d ever done.

The only good thing was that Tyrone
had
walked out. I hadn’t known that he was going to do that, but when the questions started coming, I was grateful. Because I didn’t want him to hear anything about how long the affair had lasted, even though he already knew. And I certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to hear my response when the attorney asked if I’d spoken to Caleb recently.

When I said, “No, I haven’t spoken to Caleb,” and when I didn’t even mention seeing him at Marquis’s funeral, my husband would have looked straight into my eyes and known that I was lying.

I didn’t care if the attorneys knew or if the judge knew—they could have thrown me into jail for contempt or for perjury; it didn’t matter. When I told that lie, I didn’t even care that God knew—I would pray for forgiveness later.

But that was the only lie that I told. Once Tyrone left the courtroom, I went toe-to-toe with the man who was defending the killer of my son. And while he probably won the battle, I made sure that everyone could see that he’d been in a fight.

By the time the judge told me to step down from the witness stand, the defense attorney was as worn-out as I was, leaning back in his chair looking like it would be hours before he would be able to get up again.

I marched past the defense table, the prosecution table, through the gallery of spectators, and out into the hall. I had done what I had to do for our son. Now I had to do what I had to do for my marriage.

Delores met me right on the other side of the courtroom doors and pulled me into a hug. “I’m so sorry about that, baby.”

At least my mother-in-law had forgiven me. Maybe she could convince her son to do the same. “Where’s Tyrone?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Raj called and told me that he’s with him, though.”

I released a long breath. “Good.”

“Raj said that the car will be waiting where you normally meet.”

I hugged Delores good-bye since she’d come to court with
her
pastor, and I dashed down the stairs, hoping, praying that Tyrone would be in the car.

He wasn’t. So I rode that long distance alone. Just me and the driver and enough silence for torturous thoughts to sprout like weeds in my head. Thoughts that made tears fall from my eyes, though I kept my cries as silent as I could. I cried and I prayed.

“Here we are, Ms. Johnson,” the driver said, getting me home in an hour, much quicker than I expected for a Friday.

I thanked him, then jumped out as fast as I could because I had hope—our car was in the driveway.

I busted through our front door, but the moment I stepped inside, I knew Tyrone wasn’t home. It was just the feeling in the
house. We had found a way to warm up our home just a little since Marquis passed away. Today, though, that cold, empty sadness that had weighed us down from the day we heard the news was back.

I ignored the cold, I ignored the sadness and ran from room to room, calling Tyrone’s name and checking every crevice and corner as if my husband would hide from me.

He
was
hiding, just not at home.

Once my search ended, I dialed Tyrone’s cell, and even when it went straight to voice mail, I hung up and dialed once more, just to hear his voice again.

His phone was off, and he was nowhere to be found. He didn’t want to talk to me, didn’t want to see me.

I just prayed that he still wanted me to be his wife.

I parked myself in the living room so that Tyrone would see me as soon as he returned. Stretching out on the sofa, I didn’t even take off my shoes, not caring at all about the stains that my soles might leave. I lay down because there was nothing else to do. Nothing except to wait.

So that’s what I did. I cried, I prayed, and I thought about Tyrone. I cried, I prayed, and I thought about Tyrone. I cried and prayed and thought about Tyrone . . .