The next morning Amelia met me outside the courthouse instead of in it.
“Your name's online,” she said. “A blogger posted it with your photograph. It isn't in the order. Reed is preserving the original post. Don't read the replies.”
“Was that advice or an instruction?”
“Advice. The post also gives your former name. We need to know who supplied it.”
I had already read three replies on the bus. One called me a hero. Another called me a woman who had come to this country to save corrupt men from justice. The third was a photograph of Rusk opening a swimming pool.
Somebody had added a heart beneath it.
Inside, the jury corridor had a new officer. The courtroom doors were closed. We waited while the judge finished questioning jurors separately about possible outside contacts. Nobody was asking how they had voted.
At ten, the lawyers went into court to argue about what should happen next. Amelia obtained permission for me to attend that part; she said she would take me out if my presence became a problem. I sat in the last row. From there I could see the back of Rusk's head and the bald place he had tried to cover by cutting everything else short.
Keene asked for a mistrial.
Ward opposed him.
“We have retained alternates,” she said. “The court should not reward an attempt to interfere by automatically terminating the proceeding.”
“Nobody is proposing a reward,” the judge said. “The question is whether the remaining jury can fairly perform its duty. We will have facts before applications.”
Owen came in with the man I had seen at the side exit. His name was Benson. He said Owen would invoke his privilege unless compelled under an immunity order. On the district attorney's application, Saye granted protection against use of this testimony or evidence derived from it. She made clear that independently obtained evidence could still support prosecution. Benson checked the written order before Owen took the oath.
The judge had released me from further testimony that morning and permitted me to remain for this part. Amelia stayed beside me.
Owen looked smaller sitting in the witness chair than he had beside the refrigerator.
“A man came to my building,” he said. “Second day of the trial. Evening.”
“What did he say?” the judge asked.
“That he could get my rent covered. Three months. He knew the amount.”
The red-coated woman was not in the courtroom. I wondered whether she had stayed home because she did not want to hear this or because she had to take a child to school.
“Did he identify himself?”
“Paul. Paul Marin.”
Ward looked down at her papers.
“Did he say whom he represented?”
“He said there were people who'd rather not lose a good man over a journalist's story.”
“Did you understand what he meant?”
Owen glanced at Benson.
“I thought he meant Rusk. At first.”
At first. Ward's head came up.
“What did he ask you to do?”
“Keep it from being unanimous. He said I didn't have to tell anybody anything. Just don't agree.”
“Did you accept money?”
“My landlord got paid. Six thousand. I've got the confirmation.”
He swallowed.
“Then there was supposed to be more.”
“Supposed to be?”
“After.”
I watched his hands. The thumbnail on the left had been bitten into the pink.
Keene was allowed to ask questions about the contact. He did not ask Owen for the jury's votes.
“Why did you think the money was connected to my client?”
“He kept calling him a good man.”
“Did he use my client's name?”
“Not in that sentence.”
“In any sentence promising you money?”
“No.”
“Did he identify a different person as good?”
Owen shifted in the chair.
“Later. On the phone.”
“What name?”
“Gabriel.”
Nobody moved. Even the judge let the pause stand.
“Gabriel what?”
“He just said Gabriel. Said Gabriel had kept people alive for years and wouldn't get thanks for it.”
Ward's pen rolled off her notebook. She caught it against the table.
Owen described a message sent the evening before the final evidence. Marin said a woman on the jury might know the good man's past. If she hesitated, Owen should stay quiet and let her be the holdout. If she agreed with the others, he was to say he needed more time. He was not to approach her.
Owen looked toward the public seats. I kept my eyes on the judge. His hand had gone up with the others because mine had not. He had mistaken my refusal to continue for the hesitation Marin wanted, and thanked me for doing his job.
“Mr. Pike,” the judge said, “what happened when you understood that Ms. Duarte had reported your remark?”
“I called Paul.”
Benson closed his eyes briefly.
“Before I talked to Mr. Benson,” Owen added. “I wasn't thinking.”
“What did you say?”
“That I'd messed up.”
“His response?”
Owen looked at the floor.
“He said that was all right.”
Rusk turned toward Keene.
“He said,” Owen continued, “if everybody had to start again, that worked too.”
At the recess, Amelia took me into the corridor. Ward went past us fast, her second lawyer trying to say something she did not want to hear.
“He wanted the trial to fail,” I said.
“Possibly.”
“Not just the verdict. The trial.”
“The city committee has put out a notice about its Arrival House hearing,” she said. “Look.”
She showed me the notice on her phone. The week jury selection began, the chair had promised to require the original grant ledgers on the first Monday after a verdict, guilty or not guilty. Now he said that if this jury gave no verdict, he would wait for the retrial. That proposed postponement was his decision, not an instruction from this court.
“Rusk convicted, those books still get opened,” I said.
“That was the announced schedule.”
“Another trial, another delay. Soto doesn't need the mayor free. He needs those books shut.”
Amelia let me read the notice again. “A committee chair can change his mind. But someone betting on him to keep doing nothing might think he's bought weeks.”
Amelia watched the courtroom door.
“Send me that,” I said. “I want Reed to have the dates beside the contact messages.”
She forwarded it while I watched. It was a question now, attached to something a person could check.
She took out her phone to return a call. I moved out of the path of a man pushing a cart, and the corridor went on around us.
Across the corridor, a television without sound showed a photograph of Leah Nunez. The photograph was from a press badge. She was looking at somebody just to the left of the lens, smiling as though they had said something she would use later.
The caption beneath her face was about Rusk's chances.