August 21, Friday
COURT WAS dark for the day—some scheduling matter between the judge and both legal teams that no one explained to the jury.
It meant an unstructured stretch of hours and, blessedly, an excuse to leave the hotel for something other than the courthouse.
Never before had I looked forward to a trip to the pharmacy.
Deputy Wells drove me himself, in a sedan deliberately unremarkable. I sat in the back, per protocol, though the arrangement felt oddly formal for an errand.
"I need to pick up a prescription," I explained, then found myself adding, unprompted, "for migraines. Not anything serious."
"Didn't ask," he said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror, though not unkindly.
"I know. I just didn't want you thinking—" I stopped myself before I could finish a sentence that had nowhere good to go. "Never mind."
"Do you get them often?" he asked, pulling out of the hotel's underground garage into the flat brightness of a Georgia afternoon.
"Not really. But with everything lately, I wanted to be prepared rather than caught without something if one hits."
He nodded, eyes on the road, and I found myself studying the back of his neck for a moment before catching myself and looking out the window instead.
"Can I ask you something?" I said, as we idled at a light. "Do you like this job? The jury detail, I mean."
"I do," he said, without hesitation. "It's not glamorous. Mostly it's waiting and watching and driving people to pharmacies." A faint, almost imperceptible curve at the corner of his mouth. "But it feels like it matters. Keeping people safe while they do something that needs to be done."
"That sounds nice," I said. A small unexpected ache accompanied the words—a stab of envy over hearing someone describe purpose out loud when I was unsure I had any of my own left.
At the pharmacy, he waited beside me at the counter while the pharmacist filled the migraine prescription, and when she asked if there was anything else, he stepped forward and picked up a bottle of over-the-counter arthritis medication from the endcap display, setting it on the counter without comment.
I glanced at it, then at him, curiosity winning out over discretion. "Arthritis?"
"In my hands," he said, sliding cash across the counter. "Comes with the territory, I guess. I play guitar in a band, weekends when I'm not on assignment."
It was a small detail, a glimpse into the man who existed outside the eight-hour rotations and the careful blankness he wore in the courtroom.
I found myself wanting to ask a dozen things at once.
What kind of band. What he played besides guitar.
Whether there was someone waiting up when he got home from long shifts.
I didn't ask any of it. It wasn't my business, and besides, I was sure it was a violation of some kind for the Marshal to fraternize with jurors.
"That's a nice thing to have," I said instead. "Something separate from all this."
"Everybody needs something like that," he said, pocketing his change.
He held the door for me as we stepped back out into the heat and we walked companionably back to the sedan.
He opened the door to the backseat and glanced all around while I climbed inside.
When the door closed and he slid behind the wheel, it was all business again.
Rightfully so.