Chapter 28 #4
“On the charge of murder in the first degree on count number one, for Lila Moreno, how does the jury find?”
Carol unfolded the verdict form.
The courtroom was so quiet that Haven could hear the paper scrape against itself.
“We, the jury, find the defendant, Adrian Mitchell Hale, guilty.”
The judge ran down the list of charges. For each verdict, someone in the gallery exhaled or sobbed. It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was the sound of a room full of people who’d been holding their breath for a long time and could finally breathe.
Haven looked at the prosecution table. At her own hands, flat on the surface. At her French manicure.
She looked at Marcus in the gallery.
Adrian Hale made a notation on his legal pad. He looked up at each guilty remark and smiled. Haven watched him.
She watched him for a long moment. She scanned the suit Garrett had chosen, the composed posture, and the clinical precision that was being shown now.
She looked at Sofia Moreno.
Sofia was crying. Silent and controlled.
She was sitting very straight, and her hands were in her lap.
Tears were moving down her face, and she didn't wipe them.
Haven looked at her for a moment. Sofia glanced up as if she were aware someone was looking at her.
Their eyes met across the gallery. Haven held her gaze.
Then Sofia nodded. The nod of a woman who understood that the person across the room had done everything she could, and even so, it hadn't brought her sister back, it never would. Haven nodded back.
* * *
The courthouse steps were busy afterward with the press, families, and law enforcement.
The chaos of a verdict that was going to be on the national news was Jackson Pollocked all over the front steps.
Everyone who’d been inside the building was now outside it, processing what had just happened in small groups that moved from one area to another.
Marcus stood on the steps and looked at Nashville. It was an ordinary city that had been the end of a travel corridor and the place where Hale had finally been stopped.
Haven was beside him. They stood there for a moment without saying anything because, in reality, there was nothing to say.
Reyes came down the steps. He stopped beside Marcus and looked at the city.
“Thirteen murder convictions and attempted murder charges,” he said. He looked over at Haven. “I’m thankful they were only attempts.”
“Me, too,” Marcus said.
Reyes nodded. He stood there for a moment and put his hand on Marcus's shoulder.
“Good work, you two,” he said. “He wouldn’t be in custody if it wasn’t for both of you.”
“And I would probably still be looking for a common thread if you hadn’t put the ME’s comment in your report. We all made this happen. All of us.”
Reyes took a deep breath. “All of us.” He nodded and went down the steps.
Marcus looked at Haven. She was gazing out at the city with her jacket pulled around her.
“Hey,” he said.
She turned to him.
“You okay?” he said. They’d talked for hours about what the ending would feel like. How they would be moving forward, and how getting stuck sometimes in the past was going to happen.
She was quiet for a moment.
“I will be,” she said. “The verdict was right. He’s locked away. He’s going to appeal. His lawyer made that notice in court at the end.”
“Insanity, probably. I have no idea why he didn’t plead that to begin with.”
“Voss talked to Garrett. He said Hale refused to let him. He wanted his day in court. He was instructed to plead not guilty so he could have his day in court.”
“Even with an admission.” Marcus shook his head. “He really is delusional.”
“Yeah, his lawyer would be a fool not to appeal on those grounds. I don’t care, though. If he goes to a mental institution or is behind bars for the rest of his life … I really don’t care.”
He looked at her. At the woman who’d fought back, gotten up off a trail, and pointed to a photograph and said This is him.
He looked at her because she was the woman he loved.
He saw the detective, but underneath, he also saw the person who completed him.
The woman was strong and fierce, yet let him protect her and care for her.
He saw everything that Adrian Hale could never see.
Her value, her humanity, her love, and a future.
“Yeah,” he said and put his arm around her. “You do care, and so do I.”
She looked at the city for another moment. Then she looked at him. “Buy me dinner. Chicken and dumplings.”
He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They went down the steps together.
Behind them, the courthouse stood in diminishing chaos.
Inside it, a man was being escorted back to a cell where he would spend the rest of whatever time the appeals process allowed him.
Marcus could imagine the man making notations on a legal pad, cataloguing a world that had finally stopped accommodating him.
Outside life moved on. It always would. He put his arm around the woman he loved and walked together into the rest of their life.