Quickly the picture melted, leaving darkness once more. Bits of color shimmered until the painting reappeared, the undulation flowing wider, over the bookcase, the window.
Chelsea’s mouth hung open as she dragged in air. Tears stung her eyes. Her imagination ran wild with fears of what the vision could mean. For the moment she couldn’t even pray. She could only silently plead,No, no, not again. I can’t live through this again.…
PART 2
DECEIT
The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6
FIVE
Sitting at the kitchen table, Chelsea sipped her pungent coffee and stole glances at Kerra’s face. Her niece stood at the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, gazing out into the backyard, which was abundant with flowers and an expanse of green lawn. Kerra seemed to chew her bite of bagel forever before swallowing, as if the very act of eating taxed her.
“You have such a beautiful yard,” she said, sighing. “All so pretty and green.”
“Glad you like it.” Chelsea paused. “Sure you don’t want to just stay here today?”
Kerra turned to consider her plate. “Do you really not want me to go; is that why you keep asking?”
The man’s face from the vision flashed into Chelsea’s head. Carefully she set down her mug with both hands. “Kerra, as you know, I’ve been involved in a murder trial before, and they’re no fun.After all, they’re about—”
“Death?” Kerra raised her light blue eyes with a hint of defiance that could not cover her pain.
Chelsea fingered the handle of her mug. “It may be too much for you, Kerra. I just want you to be sure.”
“What’ll be ‘too much’ for me, Aunt Chelsea, is sitting here by myself all day with nothing to do but think.”
Her accusing tone stung. Chelsea’s gaze fell to the table.Another sigh escaped Kerra, and she flopped herself back in her chair.
“I’m sorry. Really. I thought I got all this out of my system last night.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Chelsea’s voice was soft. “Believe me, if I could have done anything … ”
“I know, I know. You would have.” Kerra’s eyes closed, as if her continued harshness surprised her.When they reopened, she forced a tiny smile.“Look. I want to go, okay? I can at least be near you.We can be together during breaks and at lunch.And maybe we can leave right from there at the end of the day and go into San Francisco. Besides, it really will give me something else to think about. You don’t know how crazy my head gets when all I can do is remember and feel sorry and … think.”
Chelsea laid a hand on her niece’s arm.“No, I don’t know, completely. But I do know what thoughts can do. I had a hard time last year with all that happened, and my own head wanted to drive me crazy.”
Silence. Chelsea sensed that Kerra was trying her best to equate Chelsea’s experiences with her own loss—and failing.Her niece was right, of course. Chelsea’s nightmare had not been permanent, while Kerra’s was.
“Well.” Chelsea withdrew her hand. “We’d better get going. Court’s at nine o’clock.” She stood to clear her dishes. “And Kerra?” She waited until she held her niece’s gaze. “I am glad you’re going with me.Very glad.You’ll bring a ray of sunshine into that room, as far as I’m concerned.”
Kerra made a face as she picked up the last of her bagel. “Yeah, right. Some sunshine.”
Twenty minutes later they were approaching the courthouse. The entrance to 400 County Center in Redwood City sported numerous security guards and a metal detector.Chelsea and Kerra placed their purses in plastic bins, then stepped through the scanner. They rode up the escalator to the second floor and found a seat on one of the long benches that lined the expansive hall back-to-back. Attorneys with briefcases milled and chattered while the mix of jurors and witnesses sat silently, watching with curious gazes. Chelsea’s eyes locked momentarily with a young Japanese man standing near one of the pillars. She remembered him from the jury box the day before. He looked at her almost derisively, then turned his eyes away.
ENERGY ZIPPED AND CRACKLED from Stan Breckshire’s head to his toes. He perched in his chair behind the prosecution table, one heel tapping as he waited for the judge to enter. To his left at the defense table sat T. C.,Mr. Dapper Dan himself, in a dark blue suit and silk tie. The man was so laid back, every movement like a languid river. T. C.’s helpmeet, Erica Salvador, a thirtysomething single woman who’d been his partner for the past seven years, reflected the man’s grace, her left elbow resting lightly on the table, two French-manicured fingernails demurely beneath her chin.
The door leading to the hallway behind the courtroom opened. Down that hallway lay jury deliberation rooms and judges’ chambers. Sidney Portensic, the heavyset bailiff spilling over his wooden chair at the far left of the courtroom, lazily pushed himself back from his desk. “All rise,” he announced in his gravel voice as Judge Carol Chanson made her entrance. Stan stood and sat back down, the proper puppet.Whoa, the adrenaline rush! Before he knew it, his left heel was busy keeping time with his right. He picked up the notes to his opening argument, leafing through them with deliberate ease, hoping the calm movement would convince his metabolic rate to slow.No such luck. The jury pulled at his eyes, but he focused on the judge as she positioned her computer keyboard just so and generally settled herself like a hen over eggs. Behind him all whispering had stopped. Stan could imagine the reporters’ poised pens, the craning necks of the lookie-loos as they waited for the show to begin.
Anticipation prickled. Nothing in this world, he thought, absolutely nothing, sawed his nerves like a murder trial. The judge, the attorneys, the jury, the defendant, the crowd. This courtroom. For the next couple of weeks this would be his cosmos, the mini-world of “being in trial.” The Dow could fold, gas prices shoot through the roof, countries bomb each other to smithereens, but for the next two weeks Stan Breckshire would hardly notice. Trials had the strangest way of collapsing the world into small, adjoining pieces, like parts in a Lego set. Pieces of evidence, pieces of sidebar arguments and jury responses and wins and losses. They built upon each other to form a tower that to the outside world may look like pick-up sticks but to him loomed like Babel.
And this wasn’t just any trial. This was a prosecutor’s worst nightmare—a murder without a body. Or it could be a prosecutor’s best dream, if he won the case. The first thing on Stan’s plate was to prove corpus delicti—that “the alleged victim met death by a criminal agency.” Normally, this wasn’t so difficult. But without a body, proving corpus delicti could be difficult indeed. He had to convince the jury to a “moral certainty” that Shawna Welk had been murdered. And that the “criminal agency” was none other than her husband, Darren Welk.
Stan itched to get started. Shawna Welk’s body may never have been found, but she was calling from her watery grave, pointing to the truth.With all the evidence, he had little doubt in his mind that he’d help the jury hear her cry for justice.
“All right.” Judge Chanson swept her gaze over the jury, attorneys, and onlookers before landing momentarily on the defendant. “Good morning, everyone. Let’s get some housekeeping out of the way, shall we? First”—she turned to the jurors—“since speaking with you yesterday, I have decided to do something I don’t usually do. In most cases, jurors wait outside in the hall like everyone else while court is not in session. But because of the media’s interest in this case, and since it’s already been through one change of venue, I’m going to be a little more cautious. From now on I’ve opened up the deliberation room in which you members of the jury will meet each morning and be able to take your breaks. There are two bathrooms in there for your use. During lunch you can go where you please, but of course remember that for the duration of this trial you are under admonishment to speak to no one about the case.When we take our first break, your bailiff will show you the delib
eration room and how to access the hallway that leads to it. All right?”
The jurors nodded as one.
“Okay. Now let’s turn to our other items, and then we can get down to business.”
Stan flopped his papers back onto the table, a forefinger riffling one corner of the stack. His heels picked up speed.
“…WHAT DARREN WELK did not know,” Stan Breckshire declared, “was that in the corner of that little interrogation room and hidden from view, a video camera was running.”
Chelsea maintained a passive expression as she sat in the prosecutor’s line of fire. Stan Breckshire paced in staccato steps before the jury box, abruptly turning, his arms jerking now left, now right.His dark suit hung a little large on his shoulders, and his red-flecked tie was slightly askew. His forehead collapsed in lines of fitful concentration, his hand raking his coarse dark hair until it stuck out like stiff feathers.
“Understand,” the prosecutor continued,“a hidden video camera is common procedure.”He pulled up to the rail separating him from the jury box, his right palm bouncing off the wood.“You will see this tape. You will see firsthand how Darren Welk”—he half-turned his body to indicate the defendant—“looks and acts as he tells the detectives what he ‘remembers’ about that night.How he hit his wife.How she fell in the sand and cut her head.You will see”—Breckshire’s face screwed into a cynical expression—“how he happened to remember everything that could be verified by his friends, Lonnie and Todd Broward.And then, amazingly, how his memory stops just about the time these friends leave. How it doesn’t resume again until his stepdaughter, Tracey Wilagher, arrives at the beach, panic-stricken because her mother is missing.” Stan Breckshire paused to allow his insinuations to sink in.“And you’ll hear Darren Welk confess that he buried his wife’s bloody blouse.”
Chelsea felt her own face pulling at the mental picture of a man burying a bloodied blouse in the middle of the night.Her eyes wandered to Darren Welk, who sat unmoving except for his hands. One large fist knotted into his other palm, then slid away, the fingers opening to cover the other hand, now fisted. Then slid again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Chelsea watched those fingers, feeling their force. Could this man be capable of killing his wife? Chelsea gazed at his face. Darren Welk was fairly handsome in a weary and rugged sort of way,with a wide, square jaw and gray brown hair.His skin seemed to hold a permanent tan, even after almost six months in jail. Chelsea guessed he would be even more brown if he still worked the fields. His face was deeply lined. Something about the man looked implacable, hard.
“ … you will hear Lonnie Broward’s testimony,” the prosecutor continued. “You will hear that the last time she saw the deceased, Shawna Welk and the defendant were fighting. … ”
Chelsea’s gaze drifted to Kerra, then to a man sitting in the center of the second row. She froze.Milt Waking. That awful reporter from Channel Seven who’d broken the story about her last year, who’d spread her name across television screens. How could she have failed to spot him until now? He was staring at her, watching her every move.
Her heart tripped over itself. She tore her eyes away, forcing herself to keep calm. First the vision last night, now this. God, I need your strength and guidance!
In her peripheral vision she saw Milt Waking slip out of his seat and hurry from the courtroom.
“IDON’T CAREWHATyou have planned, Ron; you have to make room for me on the noon news!”Milt snapped into his cell phone. “We’ll scoop the other stations. Both the other television reporters here are new; they don’t know who she is yet.”
“Are you sure she’s the same woman?” The news director’s voice grated in his ear.
“Of course I’m sure! I’ve been watching her all morning, and then when she got a look at me, you should have seen her face! She recognized me, all right.”
“I just can’t believe it’s her.How on earth would she end up as an alternate on the jury?”
“Who knows? But I certainly aim to find out.”
Silence. Then,“I couldn’t let you say her name,Milt. That would be going too far.”
“I don’t need to say her name; it’s not even important. Every viewer in the Bay Area will know exactly who I’m talking about.And they’ll be as surprised as you. Remember your own line, Ron: ‘Curiosity means viewers.’ Come on, for heaven’s sake; you know I need this!”
Milt had enjoyed a real coup last year with his exclusive on the Trent Park events. But in television you were only as popular as the last minute.His luck had seemed to run out since then, fate placing him again and again in one Bay Area town while some unexpected story broke miles away. Milt’s ratings had slipped. He’d even been called in for a “serious word” with Ron.
“Yeah, but,Milt, you can’t be wrong. Heads would roll, starting with mine.”
“I’m not wrong!”He exhaled loudly. “Put me on the noon news, Ron. And write a head-spinning trailer for the evening edition. I’ll know more by then.”
Milt snapped off the phone and snatched up his briefcase, which carried his state-of-the-art computer with wireless Internet hookup. Then he paused,working to catch his breath. Only when he’d recovered his cool and collected image did he return to the courtroom.
SIX
“Where’s the body?”
Brett Welk swallowed and his dry throat clicked. The sandwich he’d eaten for lunch sat heavily in his stomach. Terrance Clyde, his father’s defense attorney, stood before the jury box, hands spread in a shrug of elegant puzzlement. The question seemed to swirl through the courtroom’s claustrophobic air, funneling into Brett’s ears to storm through his head. His lungs felt thick, clouded.
How would he ever survive this trial?
The stepmother he’d never managed to accept, referred to as a body. His father, sitting woodenly in the defendant’s chair. Brett closed his smarting eyes, then self-consciously blinked them open. He glanced left, right. Who was watching him? Which reporter’s story would speak tomorrow of the grief-stricken son hearing the sordid details of his father’s crime? Brett’s face heated at the thought. He flexed his jaw, forced himself to stare at the attorney.
Terrance Clyde glided his hand toward the prosecution table. “You have heard the prosecution’s opening remarks. Quite a dramatic, forceful beginning, I must admit. I imagine that the scenes Mr. Breckshire has painted in your heads are quite vivid. Shocking, even. And of course it is Mr. Breckshire’s job to continue painting those scenes in your heads throughout this trial.What I will ask is that you be suspicious and cautious of the picture he is presenting. You see, when it comes right down to it, the prosecution has very little proof. Much of his story hinges on a blouse. And a supposed confession of burying it.”
The attorney said the word confession as if it held not the slightest weight. Brett cringed.He knew the weight of the word and it was heavier than lead. His shoulders nearly crushed beneath it.
“Dad,why?” he’d whispered that February afternoon as he faced his father in the tiny visiting room of the Salinas County jail. Brett had hulked toward the glass that separated them, his arms as stiff as his heart. He remembered how he’d heard the pulse beating in his head as he pressed the telephone into his ear. His father’s explanation about the blouse echoed through his mind like an avalanche through a canyon. His father, a man he’d barely recognized, had sunk into his battered wooden chair on the other side of the glass, a hand over his forehead. A long moment passed before he spoke into his receiver, his words distant and frail.
“I didn’t mean to hit her.”
So many words went through Brett’s head at once. He couldn’t speak.
His father’s forehead wrinkled, the grooves down the sides of his mouth deepening. He looked exhausted, old. “I was drunk and she got me mad. …”
The words cut through Brett like a knife. His muscles turned watery.Words fell from his lips in a guttural fury.“Dad,why did you tell them you buried the blouse? That’s just going to give them more ammunition ag
ainst you!”He threw out his hands in despair, head tilting back as he breathed hard at the ceiling. Shock and anger and guilt raged through him in a confusing, nauseating flood.He opened his mouth and a low moan slipped out, resonating through his stretched vocal cords. Like a wounded puppet’s, his head dropped back down.
“It’ll be all right, Brett. It’ll be all right.” His dad leaned toward the glass. “Listen to me. They can’t keep me in here; that’s what Ter-rance says. They don’t have enough evidence.We’ll get through this. We have to.We’re all we’ve got right now.”
Brett’s head shook back and forth, back and forth, his breaths coming in ragged puffs. The pain of the last four years welled within him. “You shouldn’t have married her in the first place, Dad; I told you that. She was selfish and greedy.” His lips pulled back as he locked eyes with his father.“And why did you have to drink so much? Why did you have to run around with all your girlfriends in front of Shawna like you were spitting in her face? Now all that’s going to come back and haunt you. They’ll use it as an excuse for you wanting your wife out of the way! Why didn’t you listen to me when I told you not to marry her?”
How could you try to replace my real mother after her death, the mother Iloved so much? The unspoken words hung in his throat. Brett glared at his father and watched the man’s head draw back, hurt sinking his eyes into his head.
“Brett, don’t,” his dad rasped. “You have to help me now. I need you.”
Brett’s anger vaporized. He sucked in a breath, chest heaving. He’d waited all his life to hear those words from his father—always capable, in control. Now here they were, on this day, in this godforsaken room. The irony nearly squeezed his heart shut.
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