by Jo Robertson
Malachi shook his head, but refrained from shooting a glance heavenward, as he contemplated the pomposity that was the state, embodied in the compact figure of Charlie Fulton. He steadied himself for a long-winded speech.
“The prosecution will show,” the district attorney continued, “irrefutably and indisputably that Alma Bentley, a lowly maid in the household of Joseph and Frances Machado, did willfully and with premeditation strap a pistol to her ankle, stride to the Machado home on Fort Sutter Road, and deliberately shoot Joseph Machado, Junior.”
He raised his right arm and pointed his finger in imitation of taking the lethal shot. “As young Joe lay bleeding and dying on the floor, Miss Bentley calmly shot him again. This time directly into his heart.”
Malachi felt his client jerk beside him.
Fulton lowered his mock pistol to the floor and stared down, pausing dramatically as if the pathetic body lay at his feet. “I will show that Alma did so out of revenge. Joe had spurned her attentions and demonstrated interest in another woman. Motivated by jealousy and uncontrolled rage, the accused decided if she could not have Joe, then no one should.”
Malachi glanced at Alma. Her face was a slab of stone. Her hands gripped the table top.
“Alma Bentley committed cold-blooded murder in the grip of the green-eyed monster,” Fulton continued. “Yes, gentlemen, a monster had her in its clutches, but it was a monster she welcomed into her bosom.”
Malachi touched Alma’s shoulder, but she stared straight ahead, her eyes unblinking, her mouth set. “Are you all right?” he whispered. She said nothing, so he patted her hand and turned back to Fulton’s litany.
In elaborate detail the prosecution delineated the evidence he intended to produce and the witnesses he would call to testify for the state. In a rare gesture of patience and latitude, Judge Underwood allowed Fulton to pontificate without interruption. Malachi glanced at the jury box where most of the occupants’ eyes had begun to glaze over.
Ninety minutes later, the prosecutor began to end his opening remarks. “Finally,” he stated, “I will show without a single doubt that Alma Bentley, and she alone, committed this heinous crime.”
When Fulton sat down with a flourish, the judge allowed several ponderous moments to lapse before he harrumphed and removed the sodden cigar from between his teeth. “Mr. Rivers?”
Malachi stood. “Your Honor, the defense wishes to delay its opening remarks to a later time.”
A gentle sigh blew throughout the courtroom. As Malachi suspected, he wasn’t the only one made restless by the prosecution’s lengthy remarks. He thought he saw a glimmer of relief in the magistrate’s eye as well.
Judge Underwood clapped his hands decisively. “Then we’ll take a luncheon break and reconvene at two o’clock this afternoon. Court adjourned.”
With a pounding of his gavel and another swishing of his robes, the judge left through the same door he’d entered.
#
Emma remained on the hard wooden pew long after the other reporters, attorneys, and onlookers had vacated the courtroom. She hadn’t the slightest intention of leaving until she felt composed. Scrupulously honest with herself, she freely admitted that the single meeting of the eyes with Mr. Rivers across the courtroom had thrown her off guard.
She ought to be furious with him. His response to her newspaper article was insolent, but as Stephen had pointed out, she was merely performing her job in reporting the news. Perhaps he also was merely doing his duty by his client. Still, he needn’t have been so acrimonious. And sanctimonious.
However, he was quite impressive in person, tall and broad-shouldered with a longish crop of dark brown hair. But he puzzled her. Although he appeared decisive and self-assured, his trial tactics seemed unconventional. At times he showed kindness and consideration toward his client, but at others displayed an almost cavalier attitude toward the proceedings.
The district attorney had spoken at some length, but Mr. Rivers asked only to delay his opening remarks. Was that the usual procedure? Emma understood little about trial protocol, but shouldn’t he have said something about his client’s innocence or circumstances? Ought he not to have presented a brief summary in her defense?
Frustrated, Emma frowned and gazed down at the sparse notes she’d scribbled in her notebook. She must be more diligent in her note taking even though she had little notion of how to go about covering the events of a trial.
She had carefully perused the jurors and gallery during the court proceedings. In the jury section the twelve men had sat upright and powerful looking on the edge of the bench that ran the length of the southern wall of the courtroom.
All men!
How could Alma Bentley receive the benefit of a fair trial when her sex wasn’t represented? When no woman could sit on a jury? Her civics classes at Wellesley had ingrained the idea of one being judged by a jury of his peers, but where were Alma Bentley’s peers on the jury panel?
#
Moments after the court recessed, Malachi isolated himself from the crowd. A few court attendees had brought picnic lunches now spread on blankets arranged colorfully around the sloping hill. Some of the men strolled toward the tavern on Main Street across from where Malachi maintained his law office. Others wandered to Mary Belle’s Teahouse, where the women in the gallery were eager to share the morning’s events with their friends whose husbands had forbad their wives to observe the trial.
At that moment the red-haired woman Malachi presumed was Emma Knight strode toward him as if she’d take on Beelzebub himself if he got in her way.
“Mr. Rivers?” The woman stopped abruptly and glared up at him, no small feat, for she was an uncommonly tall woman. “Mr. Malachi Rivers?”
He glanced at his pocket watch and ignored the impulse to ask what the devil she wanted. Flies and honey, he reminded himself, as the woman drew near. “Please, call me Malachi,” he said pleasantly.
His apparent friendliness seemed to throw her off guard, for she sputtered to a stop.
Leaning against the cool brick wall of the three-story building, he eyed her carefully. “May I help you?”
“I hope so.” She planted her feet on the grassy lawn and waved a letter under his nose. “You’ve soundly taken me to task in this missive. I’ve come to challenge your ... complaint.”
He should have done far more than send a letter of reprimand. The woman could’ve ruined his defense of Alma Bentley by printing the admission of guilt if he hadn’t had a different plan in mind.
“You’ve done more damage than you can possibly fathom,” Malachi said, his voice the deadly calm that his opponents in the courtroom knew preceded a raging storm. “Your article on Alma Bentley was very harmful to my case.”
The woman’s mouth opened and closed and opened again as she worked her lips like a fish floundering on a hook. Her shock of red hair straggled from beneath some kind of god-awful bonnet with faux birds that threatened to fly off their perch. Her eyes, the only interesting part of her face, widened so that the whites were round orbits circling deep chocolate irises.
“I was doing my job, Mr. Rivers,” she said at last, speaking slowly and deliberately as if to an imbecile. “You can hardly take umbrage with that. You cannot fault me for reporting the news.”
“Precisely,” he answered. “Report news, not speculation and gossip designed to prejudice possible jurors.”
With that parting remark, he lifted his satchel from the ground where he’d leaned it against the wall, nodded abruptly, and strode off, leaving her standing alone, her face flushed.
At the last moment he turned back to see the hard set of her shoulders as she flounced away in that same mannish gambol.
Wishing to avoid anyone else, Malachi took a roundabout route to his office where he sank into his desk chair, pressed his forefinger and thumb against the bridge of his nose, and tried to plan for the afternoon session.
Because Malachi would delay his opening remarks until he began presenting his case,
after the luncheon recess, the prosecutor likely would parade a steady stream of witnesses to testify against Alma’s character. Another boring and lengthy few hours loomed ahead of them, but Malachi didn’t care. Let Charlie Fulton lull the jury to sleep after a heavy lunch. Any irritation the jurors aimed Charlie’s way benefitted the defense.
Fifteen minutes later, Malachi was interrupted by a low husky voice from the open office door. He recognized it at once and jerked his head up.
Christ Jesus, she’d followed him to his office.
“Would you care to comment on the trial thus far, Mr. Rivers?” she asked with calm persistence.
He chaffed under the dark eyes that pierced him like a large, predatory feline, but he was also curious. Was she looking for fodder for another damaging article?
Good manners too ingrained in him to remain seated, he stood, but smiled like a shark. “It’s far too early in the proceedings for a comment.”
Across the barrier of his desk she extended one slender, gloved hand, rather large for a female, but fine-boned beneath the smooth leather. Her grip was as firm as any man’s.
“Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot,” she said.
He believed it cost her something to say the words.
“May I formally introduce myself? I am Miss Emma Knight from The Placer Gazette.”
“Malachi Rivers,” he answered, returning the pressure on those long, slim fingers through the thin, kid gloves. “I accept your apology.”
“Apolog – ?” She coughed and choked for several long moments, but eventually recovered enough to respond. “I had every right – in fact, obligation – to print that article,” she said through gritted teeth.
A becoming flush rose from the high-necked collar of her frothy day-dress to diffuse through her cheeks. Not so bold as she pretended, Malachi realized. Miss Knight was an infant in this hard business of a man’s world.
“You interviewed Miss Bentley without warning me,” he argued. “That’s hardly sporting of you, wouldn’t you say?”
He watched in fascination as the tiny muscles of her jaw tightened. “I hardly think Miss Bentley’s trial is a sporting event, and at any rate, she willingly granted the interview.”
Malachi moved around the desk and leaned in, his mouth inches from her brow. You’re right. The prize in this trial is far too serious for sport.”
He lowered his voice further and felt his breath brush the curls at her temple. “But you, Miss Knight – so much better educated and wiser than Alma – you comprehended her precarious situation even if she did not. Shame on you.”
He felt the quick panting of her breath against his chin and it further inflamed him. “You took advantage of my client.”
She stepped back, flint steeled her eyes, and she quickly rallied. “Time for that later,” she snapped with a wave of her gloved hand.
The next moment she changed the subject in a surprise tactic he hadn’t expected. “Now, how do you intend to defend Miss Bentley?”
He raised his brows. “Beg your pardon?”
“Miss Bentley,” she reiterated with the mock patience of one speaking to a child. “How will you defend her in the face of such overwhelming evidence of premeditated murder? Coupled with her admission of guilt.” Now it was she who took a step closer, her chin jutting towards his necktie. “How will you handle Alma Bentley’s defense? How will you appeal to a jury of men when no women are on the panel?”
He flashed an icy look that had quelled many an opposing attorney. “I have no intention of discussing trial strategy with you, Miss Bentley.”
She ignored his freezing tone and pushed obstinately forward. “Perhaps Miss Bentley would be better served by a female attorney to defend her.”
Malachi clenched his jaw. A woman lawyer? What kind of nonsense was the woman spouting? Alma Bentley could not afford his services, let alone make demands about who should represent her, man or woman.
“Perhaps you would care to represent her?” he ground out.
“Posh, don’t be ridiculous.”
Posh?
Miss Knight frowned. “I’m not an attorney.”
“And yet you have so many opinions about the law and lawyering,” he scoffed.
He was certain, then, that she intended to stomp off, and he was glad to be rid of her. He wasn’t sure why this wealthy, spoiled heiress bothered him so much when another reporter might have done the same as she. Perhaps because she was wealthy and spoiled, and couldn’t possibly understand Alma’s plight, while his client’s dilemma tugged at the strings of a heart he was sure he no longer possessed.
Malachi opened his mouth to lambaste her further when he heard someone enter the reception area behind her. A gentleman stood in the foyer and Malachi recognized him immediately from his years of practice in San Francisco – Stephen Knight, artist and entrepreneur, and surely a relative of Emma Knight.
“Mr. Rivers, I believe,” Knight exclaimed, extending his hand in greeting. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Malachi nodded briefly, feeling quite outnumbered and outmaneuvered. He wondered exactly what Stephen Knight thought he knew. The entire tawdry situation with Constance had happened nearly ten years ago in San Francisco.
“I see you’ve met the new editor of The Gazette!” The older man’s face beamed with pride as he added, “My niece and partner, Emma Knight.”
Knight’s grip was crushing, and although broader and shorter by several inches, he carried his stockiness like the banner of the self-made man Malachi knew him to be.
“Yes, sir, I’ve just had the pleasure,” he answered, glancing at the startled look on Miss Knight’s face.
“How long have you been practicing law in Placer Hills, Mr. Rivers?” Knight asked.
“Five years or so, since I left San Francisco.”
“Ah, I see.” Knight’s eagle eyes seemed to convey more than he expressed.
Malachi checked his pocket watch and gathered up his satchel. “I’m sorry, but I must return to court.”
Knight scrutinized him in a thoughtful manner before turning to his niece. “Emma, dear, you must invite Mr. Rivers to supper on Friday.”
“Uncle Stephen,” she protested, “I’m sure Mr. Rivers is unavailable on such short notice.”
Malachi’s first inclination was to decline the invitation. Supping with an irritating reporter and her discerning uncle held no appeal to him. But something about the self-satisfaction on Miss Knight’s face – the confidence with which she assumed he wouldn’t accept – changed his mind.
“On the contrary. I’m completely at your disposal.” Malachi grinned and again enjoyed the flush seeping up Miss Knight’s neck and cheeks, this time clearly in annoyance. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s nearly time for the afternoon session.”
He nodded to each in turn and then made his way to the front where he locked his office behind them. It wasn’t until he’d ascended the stairs to the second floor courtroom that he wondered if he hadn’t made a serious miscalculation.
###
