Chapter 60
Monday Afternoon — After the Verdict
Eleanor
The gavel fell.
For one suspended second, nobody moved.
Then the courtroom came apart.
David made a sound Eleanor would hear later in the quiet—raw and broken. He turned toward his mother as she rose from the bench behind him with both hands already reaching.
Eleanor stepped back from counsel table to give them space, but David caught her wrist before she could fully move away.
His grip was shaking.
She turned.
He couldn’t seem to say anything. He stared at her, eyes red and unfocused.
Then he pulled her into a hard, clumsy embrace.
“Thank you,” he said against her shoulder, voice torn open. “God—thank you.”
The force of it nearly undid her.
Eleanor wrapped one arm around him, then eased back before either of them broke completely in front of half the county.
Mrs. Mercer hurried toward the side door with tears still running down her face. A minute later, she came back with Davie in tow, the little yellow truck clutched tight in one hand.
The boy was frightened and confused, and far too small for a room like this.
“Daddy?”
David dropped to his knees.
Davie ran to him. David caught him hard against his chest, one hand cradling the back of his head as he buried his face in the boy’s hair.
Danny Mercer was being led through the side gate.
Burke was on one side of him. Luke Hale was on the other. Sara Parker had moved ahead to clear the path.
Danny’s face was wrecked.
He turned once.
Toward David.
David did not look back.
That was the cruelest thing in the room.
Through the glass in the back doors, Eleanor caught a flicker of movement in the hallway. Lila Grant stood there among the press, over a cameraman’s shoulder.
For once, she didn’t look composed. She stood there, stunned—mouth parted, eyes fixed on Danny, like she couldn’t quite make the picture line up with the story she’d been telling about David Mercer for weeks.
Across the room, Reid moved.
Eleanor saw it from the corner of her eye—him stepping away from the prosecution table, his face still pale, stunned, as if he meant to come to her.
Before either of them could say more, the side doors at the back of the courtroom burst open, and the hallway noise came pouring in.
Reporters.
Not inside yet, but pressing hard enough against the threshold that the bailiff had to plant himself in the opening and shove them back with both arms.
“Back up! Court is adjourned, not open season.”
Lila Grant’s voice cut through the noise before Eleanor saw her.
“Eleanor—Eleanor, one question. Did you know Trooper Mercer was involved before today?”
Eleanor went cold.
Of course, Lila would come running the second blood hit the water.
“Ms. Harper,” Lila called again, louder, “did the defense intentionally withhold evidence to provoke a courtroom confession?”
Reid’s head snapped toward the door.
Burke heard it too. He stopped halfway through moving Danny out and looked back with a face that went flat as stone.
“Reid—Mr. Calloway, did the State know Trooper Mercer was the last person to see Caroline Simms alive?”
“Nobody moves.” Sara’s voice cracked through the doorway like a whip.
She stepped into the opening before the bailiff could speak, one arm extended across the threshold, Luke falling in beside her. Between the two of them, the doorway became a wall.
“No media past the tape,” Sara said. “You want a statement, you wait outside like everybody else.”
Lila leaned around her.
“Sheriff Scott, did your office bury the roadside witness statement?”
Burke’s eyes did not even flicker.
“Move her back,” he said to Luke.
Luke obliged with the polite, implacable firmness of a man who had absolutely no problem physically redirecting a microphone into safer territory.
The hallway surged.
Deck O’Rourke appeared at her shoulder.
“Time to go.”
His voice was low, blunt, absolute.
Eleanor looked at him.
He took one glance at her face and nodded once, as if that confirmed what he already knew.
“You’re done for today.”
That was so precisely Deck that if she’d had one ounce more strength, she might have laughed.
Instead, she nodded.
“Side exit,” Deck said quietly, one hand already at her elbow. “Come on, lass.”
“Okay,” she said.
The side hallway was cooler, dimmer, blessedly free of cameras. At the end of the corridor, she stopped.
Her hand went to the wall.
She did not cry.
But she felt the tears standing behind her eyes like a weather front waiting on permission.
Deck stopped beside her.
They stood there without speaking for a moment, the kind of silence only old loyalty could hold.
“I can’t do this tonight,” she said.
“Good,” Deck replied. “Don’t.”
She let her head tip back once against the wall.
“I don’t mean just him.”
“I know what you mean.”
The corridor hummed with low, distant voices.
Eleanor swallowed hard.
“It feels like Charleston all over again,” she said quietly. “Only worse.”
Deck was silent for a beat.
Then: “No.”
She turned toward him.
“No,” he said again, rough and certain. “Charleston was a fire somebody else set and let burn through your life while people stood around taking notes. This?” He nodded back toward the courtroom. “This was the truth finally running out of places to hide.”
The words hit somewhere low and painful.
She looked away.
He pushed off the wall and studied her face the way only someone who had known her too long could.
“Go where you can hear yourself think,” he said. “Then come back.”
The simplicity of it nearly broke her.
She nodded once.
As Deck turned her toward the stairwell, Lila’s voice carried faintly down the hall from the main corridor, still trying to claw its way through the chaos.
“Eleanor!”
Eleanor stopped.
For a heartbeat.
Then she turned her head enough to see Lila’s outline at the far end of the hall, framed in camera light.
“You might start by considering,” she said quietly, “that sometimes the man you’ve been hounding isn’t the one who did it. Not this time. Maybe not before.”
For the first time since Eleanor had ever seen her on a screen, Lila didn’t seem to have a follow-up ready.
Her hand tightened on the mic, her face gone blank in a way that looked too much like doubt to be comfortable.
Deck reached into his pocket, pulled out her keys—he’d apparently grabbed them off counsel table when she wasn’t looking—and dropped them into her hand.
“Side lot,” he said. “Take the back road out unless you want three microphones and a drone following ye.”
That earned the ghost of a smile.
“Deck…” Her voice broke a little on his name.
He squeezed her shoulder once.
“Go, lass,” he said softly. “Call me when ye get where ye’re going.”
She nodded once.
Then she went.