The bailiff took my second page and made us put our pens down.
“No discussion,” she said. “Not about the note, not about why somebody wrote it. I'll be back.”
She did not shut us in together. Another officer appeared in the doorway, and we were taken to separate rooms along the corridor, with the care usually reserved for keeping people apart after a fight.
Mine contained a telephone without a cord and a framed photograph of the courthouse before it had a wheelchair ramp. I counted the windows in the photograph twice. At the second count somebody knocked.
Judge Saye sat at a small table. Both trial lawyers were there, and a court reporter, and Rusk beside his lawyer. No witness. No Owen.
“We are on the record,” the judge said. “Ms. Duarte, I need you to answer the questions asked. If you are uncertain about something, say so. Your uncertainty is information too.”
In the courtroom she had looked smaller than she did here. Her robe covered the ordinary chair. There was nowhere for the authority to spread out, so it stayed with her.
She had my note under one hand.
“Have you discussed the substance of the recording with any other juror?”
“No. I said I had a concern about the translation. I didn't tell them the words.”
“Recognition?”
“I said I believed I recognized a witness. Nothing further.”
“When did that recognition occur?”
I took her through the morning exhibit, the arguments, her charge and the corridor. I explained when the old name returned, the paper I asked for and the count Ruth began while it was passed to me. I did not improve the sequence so that it would show me asking for help sooner.
The prosecutor, Celia Ward, made a note. She had beautiful, very straight black hair, which she tucked behind her ear when she disliked an answer. I knew that gesture after nine days. She did it now.
“Was there anything about the witness's appearance?” the judge asked.
“Not enough. His name wasn't the name I knew. He spoke English during his testimony. On the recording he spoke Spanish. The voice and an instruction about a child. Together they made me remember somebody.”
“What name did you know?”
“Luis Arce.”
The reporter's fingers stopped for half a second. Then they went on.
“Where?”
“Honduras. Near the coast. Twenty years ago.”
“What was your contact with him?”
Rusk looked at me. It was the first time in the whole trial I knew he was looking at me rather than the people around me.
“He arranged a boat for my son and me.”
Ward's pen stopped.
Martin Keene, the defense lawyer, put a hand flat on the table. His nails were bitten short. I had expected a man like him to have better nails.
“Your Honor, I ask that the witness be excused while we address—”
“She is still a juror, Mr. Keene. I will determine her status. You may make your application when I have finished these preliminary questions.”
Witness. I had heard the word enter the room and watched it find me.
“The translation,” Judge Saye said.
“There is a sentence concerning the binding. The English transcript says someone told him about the tape after the police arrived. In Spanish he says he saw a blue cloth beneath it before they arrived.”
“You understand the jury was instructed to use the English translation admitted in evidence.”
“Yes. That's why I didn't offer my own.”
“Can you identify the passage?”
“Near the end of the excerpt. After the interviewer asks him about the tape on her wrists.”
I could hear the sentence again, the casual irritation in the old voice. Vi el trapo azul debajo de la cinta antes de que llegara la policía. I saw the blue cloth under the tape before the police arrived. I had heard the blue cloth and thought only of the people holding her. I did not know whether that detail mattered.
The warehouse was city-leased space used by Arrival House. That was why a reviewer examining its use had asked about the binding. Earlier in the same interview he had asked about Soto's transport work. Soto had described calming children on boats, offering his old instruction as an example. To someone else it would have sounded like the advice of an experienced man.
Keene had played the recording as his final exhibit that morning. His point had been that Soto gave the city investigator one sequence of telephone instructions and later gave the police another. Both sides had accepted the English transcript. That version let Soto learn of the binding from somebody else, consistent with arriving the next morning. The voice put him looking at it before the police reached the building.
It did not tell me who killed Leah. I wanted it to. I knew the danger in wanting that.
“Is that the extent of the linguistic concern you wish to raise?” the judge asked.
“At present.”
“Do not investigate it further yourself.”
“I won't.”
“And the additional statement in your note. Please describe it without interpretation.”
That was a kindness she probably did not intend. Without interpretation was a job I could do.
I repeated Owen's words. My question. His answer. His saying my name when I asked for the paper back.
“Did he identify a person who made this statement to him?”
“No.”
“Had you heard anything like it from any juror before today?”
“No.”
“Outside the jury?”
“No.”
Keene looked at Ward across the table. Neither of them had looked at Rusk.
Judge Saye asked whether I felt threatened.
“I don't know what he meant,” I said.
“That wasn't my question.”
I looked down at my hands. They were on my knees, held tightly enough to leave marks.
“Yes.”
The judge called for a recess.
Outside, a court officer asked me to wait in a conference room. The telephone in this one worked. Somebody had left a laminated list of extensions beside it, curled at one corner.
I knew how to ask for a lawyer. I had interpreted the request hundreds of times, in rooms much worse than this one.
I had never needed the sentence for myself.
When the officer asked if there was anyone I wanted called, I gave her a name.
“Amelia Cho. She does criminal defense in Larch County. Her number's in my phone.”
“We'll get your phone.”
“Please don't tell her it's interpreting work.”
The officer's face changed slightly.
“I'll tell her to speak to you.”
I waited with the list of extensions between my hands. Outside the room, people who had been expecting a verdict began to learn there would not be one before lunch.
At eleven forty-seven, I heard Owen swear in the corridor. An officer answered him, too quietly for me to hear the words.
For nine days I had heard Owen make rooms laugh. This time he did not try.