No One Knows Us Here(96)

He said that was where I was wrong. That was exactly what I was on trial for. We need the jury to walk away thinking Leo was an abusive psychopath and I was as pure as the driven snow. If I didn’t get that, well—Calvin didn’t complete the sentence. He let it sit there as I got carted away by a deputy, shuffled back into my cell for the evening.



I had hoped Sam might appear in the courtroom again on the last day, to hear the verdict. I had held out hope, just a shred. He wasn’t there. Everyone else—my haters with their angry scowls, my advocates wearing pink T-shirts emblazoned with the now-ubiquitous raised-fist design—filled the seats. Wendy smiled and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. This time I had the sense not to return the gesture. Jamila was there, sitting next to Priya. When I caught Jamila’s eye, she opened her blazer jacket, revealing her pink raised-fist T-shirt.

Jamila had become a bit of a celebrity herself. A journalist had spotted her in the courtroom audience and asked to interview her for the New York Times. It hadn’t been clear—not at first—why Leo Glass’s ex-girlfriend was there, watching my murder trial. When it came out that she was there for me, because she believed in me, because she wanted me to win, it became huge news. Jamila appeared on the Today show. She gave a TED Talk about women in tech, how vital they were, how important it was for them to rise up and let their voices—their ideas—be heard over the “persistent chatter of men.”

I was winning in the court of public opinion once again. But the jury didn’t see any of that. They wouldn’t have seen Jamila on the Today show or read about her in the New York Times.

“You should put her on the stand,” I told Calvin in a desperate phone call. “This could be huge for us.” Jamila, Leo’s successful, brilliant ex-girlfriend, was in my corner. The jury had no clue! This could cinch a win for me.

I heard Calvin sigh on the other end of the line. “We’ve been over this,” he said. Putting Jamila on the stand could backfire for the same reasons putting me on the stand could backfire. We wanted the jury to understand how Leo hurt me, how he manipulated me—but he never beat me. He never beat Jamila. He never left a mark on either of us. “The prosecution will get that out of you and they’ll run with it. It could sink us.”

Linda Murray stood up at her podium and faced the judge to deliver her closing statements. She was wearing the same mauve suit she wore on the very first day. It must be her lucky suit. Her hair was blow dried and puffed out to perfection. She was wearing copper earrings, two shiny disks, like blank pennies. She smiled calmly at the judge and at the jury and fed them a few lines about how important their role in this process was, how it made them a part of the judicial system that guarantees each citizen a right to a fair trial, etc., etc. I sneaked a look at the members of the jury. Their faces were impassive. Tired, even. That was good. They weren’t getting puffed up on the idea of the power they wielded over me, my fate.

She talked again about Leo Glass, what a great guy he was, quite the humanitarian. They looked unimpressed by this as well. When Linda Murray gestured to Leo’s mother, Christine, who sat in the audience, dabbing her eyes with a tattered tissue, I looked down at my hands, contrite. “The defense is arguing that Rosemary Rabourne brutally stabbed Leo Glass to death in an act of self-defense,” Ms. Murray said, her voice rising now. “They say Leo Glass used his power and influence to manipulate the defendant. He paid her. He gave her and her sister the ability to stay in a nice, safe apartment. Yes, he watched her. He scheduled doctor appointments for her. He bought them matching outfits.” Linda laughed a little here. “Who are we to judge what goes on behind closed doors, in a relationship between two consenting adults?” Linda gestured over to me and Calvin. “If Mr. Glass was making Ms. Rabourne uncomfortable, she could have told him to stop. She could have”—Linda widened her eyes—“walked out the door.”

The jury was paying attention now. Some jurors were leaning forward in their seats. “Did Leo Glass slam Rosemary Rabourne’s head against the cupboards?” She shrugged in an exaggerated way, the shoulder pads of her suit rising up to her ears. “We don’t know. What we do know—what both sides agree on, what Rosemary Rabourne confessed to—is that she killed Leo Glass on that cold, rainy night last April.

“I’ll leave you with this,” Linda Murray said. “If being with Leo Glass was so awful, why didn’t she leave? Rosemary Rabourne stayed of her own volition. We don’t know how she got the bruises on her face. The defense wants you to believe Leo Glass did it. We have no evidence to corroborate that. She could have tripped and fallen into the cupboard. She could have banged her own face against them in frustration. We don’t know. We do know she stayed even after she knew the relationship wasn’t working. That was her choice. It was also her choice to pick up a knife and brutally stab it into his throat, severing the carotid artery. Leo Glass died within minutes. ‘Exsanguination’ is the technical term. I call it cold-blooded murder.”

The crowd shifted and murmured as Linda Murray took her seat. Calvin Lewis unfolded his long limbs and rose to standing. He didn’t approach the podium immediately. He had an amused smile on his face, as if he were arranging his thoughts, as if everything the prosecution had just said was too comical, too much to take in.

The crowd went silent, watching him, anticipating his next move. By the time he approached the podium, the room was completely silent. Calvin adjusted his lapels and smoothed down his tie. Still wearing that smile, he looked up at the judge and then at the jury. Then he began his closing statements. “Let me tell you a little something about Rosemary Rabourne,” he said. He talked about what a selfless person I was, going to such extremes to help out my troubled, orphaned little half sister. He talked about Leo Glass and reminded the jury of the testimony from various witnesses that painted a picture of what the last several months had been like for me. “Now, is any of this justification for taking his life? No. But it sets the scene. It provides context. Rosemary Rabourne is not a ‘cold-blooded murderer.’” Calvin said “cold-blooded murderer” in a mocking tone, as if it were the most preposterous accusation anyone could hurl at me, the person who confessed to stabbing Leo Glass in the throat. The audience tittered. “She’s a young woman who has endured extremely difficult circumstances.”