They Know But Do Not Tell
an excerpt

Three days into jury deliberations, Raven Blackburn was worried. Three days to come to a consensus on what should have been a slam-dunk for the prosecution.

She took a sip of tepid coffee. It was bitter, but she hardly tasted it. She shifted her weight on the wooden bench. Crossed her legs and swung her foot back and forth. Plucked a few stray dog hairs from the knee of her black slacks and sighed. She’d made fierce use of the lint brush, but Jake shed like a buffalo.

The woman beside her, Carla Jackson, jabbed her with a finger and asked, “They gonna yap in there all week?” Carla was a light-skinned young black woman with a fragile build that reminded Raven of an Italian Greyhound. There was an angry red scar on one side of Carla’s face. It streaked from the inside corner of her left eye to the lobe of her left ear, then slashed back to the corner of her mouth and jigged downward toward her chin. There were other scars hidden beneath the modest black dress the DA had insisted she wear. The scars were the defendant’s handiwork. Carla was Dennis Ray Harper’s last—and, as far as anyone knew, only living—victim. “What they doin’ in there, already?”

“Arguing, probably.” Raven gave the woman what she hoped was a calming smile. “Discussing the evidence.”

“That’s a load of crap.”

“Carla—”

“Shouldn’t be nothing to discuss. Sumbitch done what he done, somebody should just pop a cap in his head, be done with it.”

“I know you’re angry—”

“Damn straight I am.”

“But let’s not discuss popping caps in a hallway full of witnesses.”

Carla set her jaw, but said nothing. Instead, she slunk down on the bench and sucked down a swig of warm Pepsi from the vending machine downstairs. A tough girl, what popular culture euphemistically called a working girl. She was twenty-three but looked seventeen and had been on the streets since she was twelve. Tough on the outside, a lonely, frightened kid inside. And since Dennis Ray Harper, she was badly spooked.
She tugged anxiously at the hem of the black dress. When Dennis Ray had picked her up, she’d been wearing an electric purple micro-mini-skirt and a sheer blouse with no bra. These days, she seemed uncomfortable in anything but baggy jeans and T-shirts that swallowed her up. Covered her curves. Made her invisible.

Raven reached across the bench, gave Carla’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Keep the faith,” she said. “We knew this might happen.”

The thing about juries was, there was no way to hurry them up. No way to know what was going on inside the deliberation chamber and give a nudge in the right direction. No way to know if the right people were making the right arguments, or if someone else, charismatic but clueless, was dragging the others astray.

She took another sip of her coffee. Three days. What was taking so long?

“You think we’re gonna win?” Carla asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Raven said. “Dennis Ray doesn’t look like a rapist.”

“It’s ‘cause I’m a whore, ain’t it?”

“It’s ‘cause he’s a slick son of a biscuit-eater.”

“You think the jury gonna fall for it?”

“Hard to say.”

There was an art to reading a jury. Some said a long deliberation was a good sign for the defense, others said short was best, that a long deliberation was a shoe-in for the prosecution. Truth was, it could go either way. It was the body language you had to watch. Body language and eye contact. From what Raven had seen of this jury, they had been at odds since the opening comments, and the closing arguments had done nothing to unify them.

Juror Four, a middle-aged man, ex-military and the father of college-aged daughters, was almost certainly on the prosecution’s side. The defense attorney had looked almost nauseous when she realized she’d used the last of her peremptory challenges on a woman who counseled battered women. She’d made a grievous tactical error, and Juror Four slipped through. He’d taken an instant dislike to the defendant, seen past the smooth façade to the monster beneath. Juror Four knew Dennis Ray Harper for what he was, a man who liked to play rough with the women he slept with. Very rough.

Juror Seven was a pert, pretty brunette not much older than the women Dennis Ray had brutalized. Juror Seven had creamy skin, doe eyes, and manicured nails that had not shown a chip since the first day of the trial. She wore cashmere sweaters, silk blouses, crisply ironed skirts. Her earrings matched her necklace, always delicate, always tasteful, pearl on pearl with a tan Jackie O skirt suit, diamond on diamond with a black and white Chanel ensemble. Matching tennis bracelet, dipping from beneath the cuff of her sleeve. Juror Seven practically licked her lips every time she looked at the defendant’s table. Once, Dennis Ray had winked at her, and she had smiled to herself the rest of the afternoon. Juror Seven was a problem.

Juror Nine was an earnest woman somewhere in her mid-thirties. As the lawyers spoke, she leaned forward in her seat, a slight frown on her face. Occasionally, she nodded at something one attorney or the other had said. Not a sign of agreement, but an unconscious acknowledgment that she had absorbed and understood some complicated piece of evidence. Juror Nine took her responsibilities seriously. Juror Nine was an enigma.

The rest could go either way. Raven knew that Dennis Ray looked good on the stand. Charming, articulate, a little bit sheepish, a little bit—but not too—polished. She thought Carla had looked good too, even though the DA was afraid she’d come off brash. The jurors were smart, Raven had said. They’d see past Carla’s tough exterior and realize she was scared to death. Yeah, right, the DA said. Since when are jurors smart?
The scar helped, though. Hard to ignore it, even if you had a thing against working girls.

Raven shifted again, leaned forward and tucked her coffee cup well under the bench, away from careless feet. Went over the case in her mind, weighing their chances. Dennis Ray’s charisma was a strike against the prosecution. The second strike was the judge’s ruling that, since Dennis had never been convicted of the rape and murders of his other victims, the DA couldn’t mention them. No convictions, and no indictments, even, since the DA thought the evidence in those cases was too weak to risk a trial. No fingerprints, no DNA. Just the similarity to Carla’s rape, just the things he’d told her while her blood pooled beneath his blade. And Carla was a prostitute, a petty thief, a burned out junkie with a rap sheet and a long string of documented lies.

It was a crapshoot. If Raven had to guess, she’d say that Jurors One, Six, Eight, Ten, and Eleven would vote in favor of the prosecution. Jurors Two, Three, Five, and Twelve seemed sympathetic to the defense.

Juror Nine could swing the vote—or hang it.
Or something else could happen altogether.
A mixed bag.

There was a flurry of activity near the courtroom doors, a hum like a swarm of excited bees. Raven stood up. Carla squeezed her free hand into a fist. In the other hand, the aluminum can crackled. Bent. “This it?” she said. “They done discussin’?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

Warren Hubble, a white-haired man in a rumpled brown suit, came out of the courtroom, glanced around, and picked his way through the crowd toward them, shaking his head. If Carla was an Italian Greyhound, Hub was an English Bulldog—loyal, affable, stubborn, and given to occasional bouts of flatulence. Hub worked for the DA’s office.

“Do we have a verdict?” Raven asked.

He shook his head. “Juror Four’s wife just called. Hysterical. Their oldest daughter’s in the hospital. Car wreck—pretty bad, looks like. Since this thing’s likely to drag on awhile, the judge is dismissing him and calling in an alternate.”

Raven groaned. She’d been depending on Juror Four.

“What?” Carla shoved the Pepsi aside and came to her feet, bumped the can with her hand as she rose and sent it tumbling, spewing foam and syrup across the bench and onto the floor. “What’s that mean, calling in a alternate?”

Raven took in a long breath through her nostrils, let it out her mouth. She needed to be calm. She was Carla’s Advocate, and Carla needed her to be calm. “It means they start over,” she said.

“Start over?” The scar on Carla’s face paled. “The trial?”

“No, no. Just the deliberations. The alternate’s been listening to the evidence, they just have to go over the discussion.”

“But the discussion took three days!”

Hub gave a wry smile that made his jaws quiver. “Nothing for it now, ladies. Nothing we can do but hunker down and hope.”

“Keep the faith,” Carla said.

He nodded.

“Yeah, right.”

“Go home,” he said. “Get some rest. They won’t make a decision today.”

But they did. It took less than two hours for the newly constituted jury to come back with a verdict.

Raven watched their faces as they trooped in. Juror One glanced at Carla, looked away. Jurors Two and Three looked at the floor, but the new Juror Four made eye contact with Dennis Ray as she filed in. Raven glanced past Jurors Five and Six, dug her nails into her palms when she saw Juror Seven give Dennis Ray a brazen smile.

Juror Nine looked unhappy.

Raven knew before the foreman read the verdict what they had decided.

Not guilty.

There was another buzz of excitement in the courtroom. Dennis Ray hugged his attorney, whose frozen smile said she knew exactly what her client was capable of and would be glad to see the last of him.
The judge banged his gavel and dismissed the courtroom. A small crowd, made up of reporters and groupies and Dennis Ray’s family and co-workers, swarmed forward. Before he was engulfed, Dennis Ray glanced toward the gallery and gave Carla Jackson a curt nod.

It could have meant anything.
You can’t hurt me.
You can’t touch me.
I’m coming for you.

Carla had gone perfectly still, a lost kitten in the shadow of a hawk. Raven laid a hand on Carla’s arm.

Carla’s face hardened. She shook the hand away. “Keep the faith, huh?” she said. “You keep the faith. I’m done.”