By Blood Written

by Steven Womack

  Brett answered on the fifth ring, barely ahead of the answering machine, her voice thick and groggy.

  “Yeah?” she grumbled.

  “Oh, God, you’re still asleep. I’m so sorry. I figured with the time difference-”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brett mumbled. “The clock was going off in a few anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” Taylor said again.

  Brett cleared her throat, then spoke again. “How are you?”

  “Tired. I don’t think I slept at all last night.”

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “I guess he’s still in his room,” Taylor answered.

  “His room?” Brett asked.

  Taylor felt her shoulders knotting up. “We took separate rooms. I know, it’s kind of weird. But he stays up all night anyway. And the way I’m sleeping these days, it would have been impossible for me to get any rest.”

  “Darling,” Brett said, drawing out the word, “why did you even go down there? This can’t be good for you.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Taylor asked. “We’re engaged. He’s my client and my fiance. I have to support him.”

  “Even though it’s cost you twenty pounds that you really didn’t have to lose?” Brett said. “You’re skin and bones, girl.

  God, I wish I could give you twenty of mine.”

  “They’ll come back. When this is all over.”

  Taylor sat there for a moment, silently. The silence stretched into awkwardness, and she felt silly for calling her best friend so early.

  “At this point, I’m more worried about you than I am Michael,” Brett said. “Whatever’s going to happen to him is going to happen. I don’t want you to go down in the process.”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I just wish this was all over.”

  “When do you have to be in court?”

  “Nine. A little less than three hours.”

  “You’re going to eat something?” Brett scolded. “You’re going to take care of yourself?”

  Taylor nodded. “Yes. I’ll be all right. I think I just wanted to hear your voice. You’ve really been a big help these last few months.”

  Taylor heard Brett let loose a long sigh. “It’s been the weirdest fucking eight months I’ve ever been through. I’ve always wanted to have a real, for-true New York Times best-selling author. I just never imagined him going on Larry King Live to announce that he wasn’t a serial killer.”

  “This is crazy,” Taylor said. “Surely a jury’s going to see how crazy this is.”

  “Yeah, for sure. Will you call me later?”

  “I’ll have my cell phone. I’ll call you every break I can.”

  “Good, use my mobile number, too. Keep me apprised.

  Part of me wishes I could watch it on TV. Part of me is glad I can’t.”

  “Me, too,” Taylor agreed. “I was actually relieved when the judge banned TV cameras.”

  “Taylor,” Brett said. “This is going to be okay. Whichever way it goes, you’re going to survive this. Okay? Promise me?”

  Taylor smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Promise.”

  Carey picked up Taylor and Michael at the hotel and drove them silently to the Davidson County Courthouse. They avoided the news vans and the waiting reporters at the main entrance by using an entrance on the river side of the building.

  Carey escorted them up to the third floor of the Davidson County Courthouse, where Talmadge and two other men in suits, carrying heavy briefcases, waited for them.

  “There’s a small conference room down here we can use,”

  Talmadge said. “We’ve got about ten minutes before we kick off.”

  Michael and Taylor followed them to a narrow doorway off the main hallway. One of Talmadge’s assistants held the door open.

  “Should I wait out here?” Taylor asked.

  “No,” Michael said. “I want you with me, if that’s okay.”

  Talmadge nodded solemnly. Inside the room, he turned and faced Michael. “You know my assistants, Jim McCain and Mark Hoffman, right?”

  Michael nodded. “Yes, we met a couple of months ago.”

  “Jim, Mark, this is Taylor Robinson, Michael’s fiancee and literary agent.”

  The two men nodded quickly. “Pleased to meet you,” Taylor said quietly.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Michael,” Talmadge said. “I just want to go over a few last things with you. First, do your best not to react to anything the prosecutor or anyone else says. If you need to say something to me, whisper it very quietly or scribble it down on a legal pad. You don’t have to say anything out loud, and I don’t want you to. Just stay calm, look professional, and let us handle this. You good with that?”

  Michael smiled, a look of confidence on his face. “I’m fine, Wes. I’m ready to go.”

  “Good. So are we. Now when we get in there, the judge will ask if there are any last-minute motions or questions.

  We won’t have anything and the DA probably won’t, either.

  Then the judge will seat the jury and we’re on our way. The DA will start with an opening statement. As we’ve already agreed, we’re going to hold off on our opening statement until the prosecution rests. We know what we’re up against and we’re ready for it. Let’s just get our heads in the right places, okay? Everybody with me on that?”

  Talmadge looked around the room. Both his assistants nodded, then Michael turned to Taylor. “You okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m okay. A little nervous, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Outstanding,” Talmadge said. “We’re good to go.”

  They exited the room and walked down the long, cavernous marble-floored hall of the Davidson County Courthouse. Taylor expected to have to walk through a throng, but surprisingly, there were few other people in the hallway. As they approached the security checkpoint that barred access to the two massive wooden doors of the courtroom, Taylor saw a line of perhaps ten people waiting to be screened.

  She looked nervously at her watch. It was two minutes until nine.

  Time seemed to drag. She fought the sense that this was unreal, a dream that wasn’t really happening. Her stomach knotted, and she felt, briefly, the urge to scream.

  And then she was at the security checkpoint, handing her bag to a female officer and stepping gingerly through the large frame of the metal detector. She waited at the heavy wooden doors for Michael and the rest to get through, then grabbed the handle of the door and pulled.

  The courtroom was packed. A murmur went up as she walked in, followed by Michael and the team of lawyers.

  She stopped, and a court officer nodded to her, then motioned toward the far side of the courtroom. She stepped aside as Michael entered the courtroom, then followed him around the edge of the audience and over to the defense table near the large windows. The courtroom seemed smaller than she expected. Cramped, in fact. But the ceiling was easily twenty feet above their heads, giving the room a cavernous feel. The air inside was still, almost stale, and the temperature was already rising from the dozens of bodies packed onto the hard wooden seats.

  Michael, Wesley Talmadge, and the two assistant lawyers stepped through a wooden gate and entered the area in front of the bench. They started unloading their briefcases as Wesley pointed to an empty space on the bench right behind their table. Taylor eased in past four people and sat in the middle, placing her purse on the floor next to her foot.

  She looked over to her right, where a tall, graying man and a younger woman assistant already sat with files and notepads piled in front of them. The man looked tired and a little rumpled, Taylor thought. The young woman seemed well-scrubbed and bright, almost eager.

  Suddenly the door to the right of the elevated judge’s bench opened and an elderly man in a court officer’s uniform stepped through. “All rise,” he said loudly.

  A rustle echoed through the courtroom as everyone shuffled to his feet. “Davidson County Criminal Court Division Four,” the court officer continued,
“of the Twentieth Judicial District of the State of Tennessee is now in session, the Honorable Judge Harry Forsythe presiding. God save this honorable court, the State of Tennessee, and these United States of America.”

  A large man with a massive head, a long shock of graying hair down over a broad forehead, and large rheumy eyes stepped quickly through the doorway and took the three steps up to the bench quickly. He placed a bound portfolio on the bench, then arranged his robes and sat down in a large leather chair.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a sonorous voice that clearly was used to command. “We have quite a crowd in here this morning. I want to remind you all that I expect proper courtroom decorum as we get this trial under way. I also want to remind you that there are no cameras or recording devices of any kind allowed in this courtroom.

  “And,” he added, smiling out over the crowd, “if I hear a cell phone go off in this room, it belongs to me. Believe me, I have quite a little collection of them. Couple of shoeboxes full, in fact. And for those of you with the fancy vibrate feature, if I see a cell phone answered in this room, the same rule applies.”

  Taylor leaned down, stuck her hand in her purse, and pulled out her phone. She flipped it open, powered it down, then sat back up.

  “Madame Clerk, do we have the proper forms completed for all pleadings and counsel of record?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” a slim woman said from a desk in front of the bench.

  “Is counsel present?” Forsythe asked, his voice booming.

  The lawyers rose. “Yes, Your Honor,” the tall man at the prosecutor’s table said. “District Attorney General T. Robert Collier for the state, with Assistant General Jane Sparks in assistance.”

  “Wesley Talmadge for the defense, Your Honor, with Jim McCain and Mark Hoffman in assistance.”

  “Very good,” Forsythe announced. “Are there any last-minute motions or pleadings before we get going?”

  “Nothing for the state, Your Honor.”

  “Nothing for the defense, Your Honor.”

  “Then we’re ready to go. Bailiff, seat the jury.” The lawyers all sat back down.

  Taylor took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly, trying to lessen the tension in her abdomen.

  She’d forced herself to eat a bagel earlier, just to have something in her stomach. It tasted like cardboard. Her stomach rumbled. She hoped no one heard it.

  The jury filed in from a door to the judge’s left. Taylor watched as the mixture of people, fourteen in all-twelve jurors and two alternates-took seats behind the jury box.

  She scanned the faces: eight men, six women. Ten whites and four blacks. Three clearly older, four in their twenties or perhaps early thirties, the rest somewhere in the middle.

  How odd, she thought. These are the people who can kill my fiance.

  “Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” the judge announced. “We’re going to get started here in a few moments, but first I want to remind you of a couple of things. First, you are not to discuss this case among yourselves or with anyone else. You are not to form an opinion until all the evidence has been presented and I have instructed you in the law and given you your charge. You will be sequestered for the length of this trial, and during that time, you will read nothing of this case in the media, either in newspapers or magazines or on television. As you know, this trial has drawn a great deal of media attention. It is your responsibility as jurors and citizens to neither expose yourself to all this attention nor take any of it into any consideration. Does everyone understand this?”

  The jurors shook their heads, almost in time with one another.

  “During these proceedings,” the judge continued, “you will be given an adequate number of breaks for meals and the necessities of nature. But if for any reason you need an extra or unscheduled break, simply make a motion to get the attention of the court officer and he will help you. You are not to talk among yourselves during the trial itself, although you may make notes as you see fit. You are also not to speak to any of the counsel, the defendant, or the witnesses during the course of these proceedings. If you have any questions or need any assistance with anything, just write a note and pass it along to the court officer, who will then give it to me.

  Does everyone understand this?”

  Again the jurors nodded. Taylor tried hard not to stare at them. She looked over at the defense table. Michael sat stoically, not moving, his face revealing nothing, his black, pin-striped suit pressed and professional. A very expensive consultant had advised him on the clothes to wear during the trial, how to cut his hair, how to look in front of the jury.

  “Finally, to briefly go over the procedure again, we will begin with the state making an opening statement. During this statement, the district attorney general will outline the case that the state intends to present before you. An opening statement is just that, ladies and gentlemen, a statement. It is not evidence. It is not to be taken by you as fact or construed as evidence. It is simply outlining the case the state intends to make. Then the defense can make an opening statement, although they are not required to. They can also defer their opening statement until the state has completed making its case before you. If they choose not to make a statement or to defer their statement, you are to draw no inferences or conclusions about that as to the defendant’s innocence or guilt.

  You are to make those conclusions based solely on the evidence presented in this courtroom and on the charge I will give you as to the law.”

  Forsythe looked from the jury over to the defense table.

  “Does the defense wish to have a formal reading of the charges at this time?”

  Talmadge rose quickly. “The defense waives formal reading of the charges, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. General Collier, you may proceed with your opening statement.”

  The tall man rose slowly and walked to a wooden podium in the center of the room. Taylor thought it odd that he had no notes, that he was apparently going to speak off the cuff.

  He walked with a slight stoop and seemed less imposing than when she had seen him on television.

  But when he spoke, there was a firmness and an authority to his voice that was in sharp contrast to his tired demeanor.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “I’m Robert Collier, the district attorney general here in Nashville, and I’m not going to take up a lot of our time right now with an opening statement because I believe the facts of this case will speak for themselves. But before I do anything else, I want to thank you for your service as jurors. Jury service is one of our prime responsibilities as citizens of this great republic. We ask a lot of you as jurors. The fate of the defendant is in your hands. The victim’s cry for justice is in your hands. And the state’s responsibility to seek justice is in your hands as well.

  “And that’s a great responsibility. That’s a heavy burden you bear. But it is one of the foundations of our society, as a civilized society, that when a crime is committed, justice must be sought. Some wrongs can never be righted, but a just and proper recompense to the victims and to society can only be found when those who commit great wrongs suffer a fair and just punishment for that wrong. Which is why we are here.

  “Because on a cold and snowy-in fact, a freezing-Friday night last February, almost a year ago, two young, innocent women suffered a great wrong. Their lives were taken from them brutally, violently, and altogether too soon. They had their whole lives ahead of them. They were bright, beautiful young women just beginning their lives. They were working their way through college. They had parents and families who loved them. They had friends who loved them and have mourned their passing as a wound that can never be really healed.

  “Their names were Sarah and Allison. Sarah Denise Burnham was nineteen years old. She was a sophomore down at Middle Tennessee State University where she was studying mass communications. Allison May Matthews was twenty-two. She was about to graduate from MTSU as
well, with a degree in art history. Neither one of them had ever been in trouble before. They had good grades. They were close to their families. Allison attended a Baptist church close to the campus down there. Sarah hadn’t been to church in a while, but she was raised by God-fearing parents.”

  Collier stepped out from behind the podium and paced back and forth slowly as he continued speaking. “But I don’t want you to get the idea that Sarah and Allison were perfect.

  They were young and reckless and foolish, as many of us were when we were that age. Sarah and Allison had done something I wouldn’t have wanted them to do, something that I would never have wanted my own daughter to do.

  Something their parents never knew about …

  “They had gotten jobs working at a place down on Church Street here in Nashville, a place called Exotica Tans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is euphemistically referred to as an exotic tanning parlor, but what is, in fact, more commonly known as a massage parlor.”

  Collier paused to let this sink in. “Yes, a massage parlor. You may find that shocking. I certainly did, given the background of these two young girls. But as witnesses will testify before you very soon, Allison and Sarah were not the kinds of girls who typically worked in places like these.

  They were good girls who had foolishly gone astray in this one instance. Perhaps they could make more money this way than they could selling shoes in the mall. Perhaps they thought it was naughty and funny. Who knows?

  “But one thing I do know, ladies and gentlemen, is that the place they were working was completely legal in the city of Nashville and the state of Tennessee. The owner of that business, as distasteful as we might think it, paid his taxes and his license fees and his rent. We may not like it, folks, but it’s legal. And Sarah and Allison had a perfect right to be working there, as much as you and I might wish that they hadn’t.”

  Collier paused here, as if studying the jury. Taylor could see he was trying to make eye contact with them, trying to reach them. She had thought initially that he seemed to be winging it.

  Now she knew he wasn’t. He knew exactly what he was doing.