My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(60)

“Detective, will you talk about the shooting last night?”

“Do you fear for your life, detective?”

Tracy headed for the expansive courthouse steps leading to the building’s peaked pediment, ignoring the questions.

“Why were you at Dan O’Leary’s house?”

“Do the police have any suspects?”

As she neared the steps, the pack of reporters and cameramen grew thicker, making her progress more difficult. A line of hopeful spectators bundled in winter clothes flecked with snow also blocked the front entrance, snaking down the steps and spilling along the sidewalk, adding to the congestion.

“Will you be testifying, Detective?”

“That will be up to the attorneys,” she said, remembering that she and her family had never waited in line to enter the courthouse during Edmund House’s trial.

“Have you spoken to Edmund House?”

She pressed on through the crowd to the south side of the building and the glass-door entrance that had been reserved for family members, witnesses, and counsel during House’s trial. The correctional officer just inside the door didn’t hesitate to open it when Tracy rapped on the glass. He also didn’t ask her for any ID before ushering her inside.

“I was Judge Lawrence’s bailiff the first go-round,” he said. “I guess this is like déjà vu all over again. They’re even using the same courtroom.”



To accommodate the anticipated crowd, Judge Meyers had indeed been assigned the ceremonial courtroom on the second floor where Edmund House had been tried twenty years earlier. When the correctional officer allowed Tracy to enter the courtroom early, she stepped back in time to those awful days. Almost everything about the courtroom remained the same, from the rich marble floor to the mahogany woodwork and the vaulted box-beam ceiling, from which hung the bronze-and-stained-glass light fixtures.

Tracy had always likened courtrooms to churches. The ornate judge’s bench, like the hanging cross, was the focal point, elevated at the front of the room looking down on the proceedings. Counsel sat at two tables facing the bench. A railing with a swinging gate separated them from the gallery, which at present was a dozen empty pews on each side of an aisle. Witnesses would enter the courtroom at the back of the gallery and walk down the aisle, pushing through the gate and proceeding between counsel tables to the slatted wooden chair on the elevated witness stand. The jury box was to the right of the witness stand. To the left were the wood-sash windows that at present displayed the still-heavy snowfall.

Only the technology had changed. A flat-screen television occupied the corner of the room where an easel had formerly been used to display photographs to the jury, and computer screens adorned each counsel table, the bench, and the witness stand.

Dan had set up at the table on the left, closest to the windows. He looked back over his shoulder and gave Tracy a brief glance when she entered, then went back to reviewing his notes. Despite the prior evening’s events, Tracy thought he looked sharp in a navy-blue suit, white shirt, and solid silver tie. By contrast, Vance Clark, who stood at the table beside Dan’s and closest to the empty chairs in the jury box, already looked spent. He had his blue sport coat off and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up his forearms. Hands pressed flat on the table, Clark was hunched over a topographical map, head bowed and eyes closed. Tracy wondered if he’d ever pondered the possibility that he might someday be back in this courtroom, sitting opposite the same defendant he’d convicted twenty years earlier. She doubted he had.

When the courtroom door swung open behind her, more of Tracy’s past entered. Parker House, Edmund’s uncle, hesitated when he saw her, as if trying to decide whether to enter or to leave. He’d aged. Tracy estimated him to be in his midsixties now. His hair had thinned and turned gray, but it still hung in strands over the collar of his Carhartt jacket. His face, tanned and weathered from years working outdoors, had sagged from the effects of a lifetime of hard living and hard drinking. Parker thrust his hands in the pockets of worn blue jeans, lowered his eyes, and made his way along the back wall to the opposite side of the courtroom, the sound of his scuffed, steel-toed work boots echoing. He took his seat in the first row behind Dan, the same seat where he’d sat throughout the first trial, usually alone. Tracy’s father had made it a point to greet Parker each morning of the trial. When Tracy had asked him why, her father had said, “Parker is suffering too.”

Tracy approached Parker’s seat. He had his head turned away from her, looking at the snow continuing to fall outside the windows. “Parker?”

Parker looked surprised to hear his name, and after a seeming moment of indecision, he stood. “Hey, Tracy.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“I’m sorry to put you through this again, Parker.”

His eyebrows inched together. “Yeah,” he said.

Not knowing what else to say, she let him be. Instinctively, she also went to the first pew, behind the prosecutor’s table. It had been the pew in which she had sat with her mother and father and Ben, but the familiarity of her surroundings suddenly overwhelmed her, and she realized her emotions were more raw, and the edge between composure and tears more thin, than she was willing to admit.

She stepped to the second row and sat.

As she waited, Tracy alternately checked e-mails on her phone and looked out the wood-sash windows. The trees in the courthouse square looked as if they had been flocked, and the rest of the landscape had become a brilliant, pristine white.