Have You Seen Luis Velez?(74)

Another very long silence.

“Is it?” Raymond asked when he could bear the stillness no longer.

“Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t,” she said.

They sipped their drinks in silence for a time. Maybe a minute. Maybe three.

Then Raymond looked up to see the prosecuting attorney standing in the doorway of the cafeteria.

“They’re back,” the man said.

He spun away.

“Wait,” Raymond called. “Wait. What does this mean?”

“It means they’re back,” he called over his shoulder as he strode away down the hall.

“Wait! I have to ask you something.”

“I have to get back,” he called. And kept walking.

Raymond turned his face to Isabel. “I have to ask him something. Can I meet you upstairs? Will you help Mrs. G get back up there?”

“Of course.”

Before she had even finished the second word, Raymond was running. He flew down the hall in a breathless sprint.

“Wait,” he called as he caught up to the attorney.

Raymond slowed to a walk, panting, and more or less dropped in beside the prosecutor. They walked quickly, the way Raymond had used to walk all the time before meeting Mrs. G.

“Why are they back so soon?”

“I have no idea. But we’re about to find out.”

“It was only . . .”

“Thirty-eight minutes.”

“What does that usually mean? When they only deliberate for thirty-eight minutes?”

“It means they pretty much already knew what they were going to decide. So it’s either very good or very bad.”

“Right,” Raymond said. “Thanks. I better go back for my friends.”

The prosecutor walked on without him.

Without comment.



“Have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor,” the jury foreman said.

In a ritual that played out at a maddeningly slow pace, a bailiff walked to the jury foreman and took a paper out of his hand. He carried it to the judge and handed it over. The judge stared at it for what felt like forever to Raymond. Then he nodded and handed it back to the bailiff, who carried it back to the jury foreman.

Raymond felt anxiety pouring off Isabel and Mrs. G—one on either side of him—in waves. Felt it mixing dangerously with his own.

For a minute it struck him that he wasn’t breathing. At all. He gasped oxygen to compensate.

“What say you?” someone asked the jury foreman.

Raymond was watching Mrs. G’s face, so he never knew who had said it.

“In the matter of the People versus Vivian Elaine Hatfield . . . on the charge of voluntary manslaughter . . . we find the defendant . . .”

Then came the pause that Raymond thought might kill him. Stop his heart for good. He leaned forward and tried to suck in air, but no in breath happened.

“Not guilty.”



They sat for several minutes after most everyone else had left the courtroom, Raymond, Mrs. G. Isabel and Ramon. They said nothing to each other. What could they possibly have said, Raymond wondered?

The silence took on a life of its own and became an entity, a physical thing. Like a fourth adult sitting on the bench with them, overpowering them with its presence.

“We should go home,” Mrs. G said after a time.

They stood. Walked out of the empty courtroom together. Slowly.

Raymond spotted the prosecutor standing in the hallway. He was leaning his back against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle, talking on his cell phone.

“Can you guys please wait for me for just a minute?” Raymond asked his two friends.

They did not speak in reply. But it was clear that they would wait.

Raymond walked closer to the man. Close enough to indicate that he wanted to speak with him. Not close enough to be rude or to appear to be eavesdropping on his conversation.

“Let me call you back,” the prosecutor said into his phone, and clicked off the call. Slipped the phone into his breast pocket and looked up at Raymond. Scorched him with his eyes. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you came to tell me I let you down, there’s no need. I’m thinking worse things about myself than you could ever say about me. Believe me.”

“I don’t think you let us down. I thought you did a good job.”

The man laughed a bitter laugh. “If I’d done a good job that woman would be staring down the barrel of six months in prison.”

“I think you laid it out well, but the jury just decided to ignore it. Or that’s how it looked to me, anyway. But I just wanted to ask you . . . I have to write a report about this for school. And I guess that means I have to come to some kind of conclusion about the whole thing. But I’ve got nothing.”

It was true and it wasn’t true. Yes, he had to write a report. Yes, he wanted it to be a good report. He wanted a high grade to help justify the three-day absence. But he wanted to understand this moment not for his teachers and classmates. He wanted to understand for himself and his own sense of peace.

“I mean, I’m just completely . . . ,” he added. Because the man wasn’t talking. “I don’t get it at all.”

“Welcome to the club.”