Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
He lifts his chin but doesn’t make eye contact, a common Jeremy habit I attribute to his extremely respectful and timid nature. “Scared,” he whispers.
“I know. That’s normal.”
At this point, the jury door opens, and I straighten, my shoulders knotting as I watch the men and women who will decide the future of my client claim their seats. The air of anticipation is palpable, low murmurs of conversation evaporating as the bailiff announces, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Norris.”
With butterflies, or rather bats, in my belly, I once again stand next to my client in a courtroom full of observers with cameras and reporters aplenty, waiting on the verdict to be rendered. Oliver’s co-worker, an assistant DA and snake named Devon Row, eases forward from his spot at the prosecutor’s table just enough to smirk my direction. My reply is a cold stare and short incline of my head.
All formalities complete, the jury foreman prepares to read the verdict, the end to a drawn-out trial. The many delays the prosecution created, no doubt part of the DA’s strategy to tear me down financially, worked. At this point, I’m all but bankrupt. I have everything riding on this verdict. Tension curls in my stomach and in the air of the courtroom as we wait for the elderly Black man to speak, his hand trembling around the card he’s reading. “On the count of murder in the first, we find the defendant…not guilty. On the count of criminal sexual assault, we find the defendant…not guilty.”
I’m stunned, and my mind is not fully processing what just happened.
Not guilty, I think. Not guilty! I did it! The courtroom erupts into murmurs, shouts, and general chaos. So much so that the judge has to call for order to allow the remaining verdicts to be read—not guilty on all counts. When it’s finally done, Jeremy turns and grips my hand. It’s a firm grasp—a solid handshake that does something beyond the simple touch. There’s a shift in the room, in me. Suddenly, I’m removed from my surroundings, in a bubble where time seems to stop.
There is an odd prickling at the back of my neck, and the hair lifts on my arms. I’m hyperventilating. I have to be hyperventilating, but why? I suck in a breath as a blast of subzero chill rips down my spine. Pain splinters over and around my scalp, and black and white spots explode in front of my eyes before images appear. Horrible, vivid images. Women. Women clawing for their lives, fighting off an attacker. One woman, and then another. And another. Their faces contorted in pain and desperation. Their fear, their absolute terror, is one with me.
I feel it all to my soul, and it’s as if I’m living the moment each died, only I’m dying with them.
Unbidden, information flies through my brain with lightning speed, like a reel of a movie in fast-forward—names of places, people, hair color and length, street signs—so much, too much, not enough. No. Too much. Way too much. I can’t bear it. Make it stop! In some dim recess of my mind, I fight the urge to fall to my knees. I struggle to escape, like the women in my mind, to get away from…him. The man who killed them all.
But there’s no escape for me, any more than there was for them. I see their bloodied, naked, damaged bodies, so similar to those in the photos from the trial, but different. These were not those women, but others—women who have yet to be discovered. I know this, though I have no idea how. And, Lord, help me, I feel their attacker’s pleasure as he hurts them, his pleasure in seeing their blood, in feeling their pain…in his power to extinguish a life. And then I see his face, his expression evil and brutal, the man, their murderer, Jeremy Gibson—my client, who isn’t innocent at all, if I am to believe what my mind has somehow shown me.
I can feel myself imploding, and I silently scream and jerk my hand from his grasp. A flash blasts behind my eyes, and the room comes back into focus—the sounds of the crowd and the sight of him all returning to normal. Jeremy stands, towering above me. I’d never noticed how tall and big he was until now. But then, he isn’t slumped forward in his normal posture, nor are his eyes downturned. His gaze locks on my face, and I see something in his expression—something hard and knowing etched in his uncharacteristically stark features. As if he is aware of my visions, as if he placed them in my mind, when logic would proclaim this impossible, a wave of malice rolls off him and into me, so real, so alive, that I stumble with the impact, grabbing the back of the seat I’d sat in most of the trial. And then it is gone, as is the Jeremy of seconds before. He slumps over, and his gaze flutters downward. But it’s too late. I’ve seen him, I’ve seen the real him, and either I am crazy, or I’ve just met a killer.