Chapter three
The energy in the courtroom is as dark and cloudy with doom and gloom as it is electric with excitement. Finally, the moment of verdict is upon us.
The doors to the back room open, and a guard appears, followed by Jeremy Gibson, my client, a man who personifies a meek, gentle schoolteacher, his short, mousy-brown hair neatly combed to his scalp.
His clothes are as simple as the man—basic brown slacks and a button-down—his hands curled together in front of him, his chin dipped.
And the damn cuffs shackling his wrists really get to me.
They are his statement piece of wrongful imprisonment, the slight tremble to his hands the prosecution’s reward for an intimidation campaign against an innocent man.
One of the perks of owning your own law firm is never defending a killer, no matter how big the return, and Jeremy is no killer.
And for just the briefest of moments, I’m back in my office the night Jeremy had walked in near closing, confessed he’d walked by my office on the way home, and taken a chance to walk in and ask for help.
He’d been on the police radar, feeling their pressure.
It hadn’t taken long and he’d burst into tears and fell to his knees, but even then, I’d been skeptical of him, nervous that looks were deceiving.
It was only after I read the file his public defender sent me and met with his students that I’d decided the case was why I’d opened my firm, I’d wanted to make a difference, and clearing the path for a real killer to be caught because a wrongly accused man is found innocent is making a difference.
He needed me. And my firm had needed him. I believed then, and I believe now to my core, he is falsely accused of killing all six female victims.
Jeremy arrives at my table, and I stand as he’s uncuffed, relieved when he’s allowed to sit. “This is it,” I announce softly, claiming my seat next to him. “Are you ready?”
He lifts his chin but doesn’t make eye contact, a common Jeremy habit I attribute to his extremely respectful and timid nature. “Scared,” he whispers.
“I know. That’s normal.”
At this point, the jury door opens, and I straighten, my shoulders knotting as I watch the men and women who will decide the future of my client claim their seats.
The air of anticipation is palpable, low murmurs of conversation evaporating as the bailiff announces, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Norris.”
With butterflies, or rather bats, in my belly, I once again stand next to my client in a courtroom full of observers with cameras and reporters aplenty, waiting on the verdict to be rendered.
Oliver’s co-worker, an assistant DA and snake named Devon Row, eases forward from his spot at the prosecutor’s table just enough to smirk my direction.
My reply is a cold stare and short incline of my head.
All formalities complete, the jury foreman prepares to read the verdict, the end to a drawn-out trial.
The many delays the prosecution created, no doubt part of the DA’s strategy to tear me down financially, worked.
At this point, I’m all but bankrupt. I have everything riding on this verdict.
Tension curls in my stomach and in the air of the courtroom as we wait for the elderly Black man to speak, his hand trembling around the card he’s reading.
“On the count of murder in the first, we find the defendant…not guilty. On the count of criminal sexual assault, we find the defendant…not guilty.”
I’m stunned, and my mind is not fully processing what just happened.
Not guilty, I think. Not guilty! I did it!
The courtroom erupts into murmurs, shouts, and general chaos.
So much so that the judge has to call for order to allow the remaining verdicts to be read—not guilty on all counts.
When it’s finally done, Jeremy turns and grips my hand.
It’s a firm grasp—a solid handshake that does something beyond the simple touch.
There’s a shift in the room, in me. Suddenly, I’m removed from my surroundings, in a bubble where time seems to stop.
There is an odd prickling at the back of my neck, and the hair lifts on my arms. I’m hyperventilating.
I have to be hyperventilating, but why? I suck in a breath as a blast of subzero chill rips down my spine.
Pain splinters over and around my scalp, and black and white spots explode in front of my eyes before images appear.
Horrible, vivid images. Women. Women clawing for their lives, fighting off an attacker.
One woman, and then another. And another.
Their faces contorted in pain and desperation.
Their fear, their absolute terror, is one with me.
I feel it all to my soul, and it’s as if I’m living the moment each died, only I’m dying with them.
Unbidden, information flies through my brain with lightning speed, like a reel of a movie in fast-forward—names of places, people, hair color and length, street signs—so much, too much, not enough.
No. Too much. Way too much. I can’t bear it.
Make it stop! In some dim recess of my mind, I fight the urge to fall to my knees.
I struggle to escape, like the women in my mind, to get away from… him. The man who killed them all.
But there’s no escape for me, any more than there was for them.
I see their bloodied, naked, damaged bodies, so similar to those in the photos from the trial, but different.
These were not those women, but others—women who have yet to be discovered.
I know this, though I have no idea how. And, Lord, help me, I feel their attacker’s pleasure as he hurts them, his pleasure in seeing their blood, in feeling their pain…
in his power to extinguish a life. And then I see his face, his expression evil and brutal, the man, their murderer, Jeremy Gibson—my client, who isn’t innocent at all, if I am to believe what my mind has somehow shown me.
I can feel myself imploding, and I silently scream and jerk my hand from his grasp.
A flash blasts behind my eyes, and the room comes back into focus—the sounds of the crowd and the sight of him all returning to normal.
Jeremy stands, towering above me. I’d never noticed how tall and big he was until now.
But then, he isn’t slumped forward in his normal posture, nor are his eyes downturned.
His gaze locks on my face, and I see something in his expression—something hard and knowing etched in his uncharacteristically stark features.
As if he is aware of my visions, as if he placed them in my mind, when logic would proclaim this impossible, a wave of malice rolls off him and into me, so real, so alive, that I stumble with the impact, grabbing the back of the seat I’d sat in most of the trial.
And then it is gone, as is the Jeremy of seconds before.
He slumps over, and his gaze flutters downward.
But it’s too late. I’ve seen him, I’ve seen the real him, and either I am crazy, or I’ve just met a killer.
I lose the next few minutes in the crush of bodies heading for the door, wrapped in a blur of movement, and in the process, a haze of brutal images takes me over again, torturing me with a replay.
Images my mind refuses to let me extinguish.
I don’t know what to do, and my head is too full of gore, pain, and death to wrap itself around options.
Somewhere near the front door of the building, I decide I have to keep Jeremy close. I have to fix my error in defending him. He can’t get away, and right now, that’s not an issue. He’s directly beside me. He glances over at me, and I swear he intentionally presses his arm to mine.
The images flood my mind again—a quick, violent rush of graphic horrors that threaten to knock me on my backside.
Those same images also prop me up, straighten my spine, and remind me of the reasons I must push forward, and those reasons are the victims I now owe justice.
The bitter, coppery taste of blood invades my taste buds as I wobble on unsteady legs through the crush of people at the double exit doors.
I’ve bitten my cheek, I realize, but I really don’t care.
I don’t care about my pain any more than I do my own blood.
But I feel their pain, those women, and I taste their blood—that of Jeremy’s victims, the many women he’s slaughtered.
I step into the clear winter day, beaming Texas sunlight doing nothing to warm my chilled-to-the-bone feeling, while the yellow glow of its glory pierces my eyes, delivering much-needed presence of mind.
I don’t know how I can see his victims. I don’t know what is happening to me, but Jeremy killed them, and I have to stop him from killing again.
Anyone else who dies is on me. I’ve let this madman go free to slaughter young women.
I will not allow anyone else to die at his hands, no matter the cost or risk to me.
My assistant urges me toward the press podium, where a crowd of at least fifty bystanders, including families and friends of the victims, waits on me to speak.
There’s no way I’m going to step to that microphone and proclaim a victory, despite knowing the DA’s office expects me to do nothing less.
Jeremy turns to me for guidance, and though he again appears to be the slumped-over, mousy, innocent victim I’d defended, I now see only a killer.
“Monster!” a male voice screams.
My attention swings to my left, to the place the shout originated, and I find myself staring at an automatic gun pointed directly at me—or rather, at Jeremy. Suddenly, keeping him close doesn’t seem as bright an idea as it did a few minutes, or even seconds, before.
My gaze lifts to the distorted face of the man holding the weapon at the same moment he vehemently repeats his shout of “Monster!” and every instinct I own says he’s going to pull the trigger.
I fling myself down on the concrete as the discharge of the weapon rings out into the air.
The impact rattles my teeth, and my legs scrape against the hard stone beneath me.
Survival instincts tell me to focus and locate imminent danger, then retreat, but I never get the chance.
To my horror, Jeremy flattens on top of me, his body cradling mine, the force cracking my forehead against the pavement.
Black and white spots explode in front of my eyes.
Pain splinters through my skull and transforms into a graphic playback of each of the brutal murders Jeremy committed.
There’s no escaping my own mind, only I think it’s not my mind at all.
It’s his mind. I’m in his mind. Someone’s bloodcurdling screams vibrate through my body.
I am shaking, my heart racing too fast, my spine so hot I am sure it is on fire—I’m on fire.
And the screaming—it just won’t stop. Screaming.
Screaming. The women in my visions are screaming. I am screaming.