The Juror (19 page)

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go then.”

“Let me call Jesse, he’s got my helmet. I got to tell him to bring my helmet.”

“For Christ sake, let’s go.”

She rattles her keys impatiently. She goes downstairs and out to the car, and waits for him.

But he’s so slow. Always so slow. She honks the horn and finally here he comes.

They pull out onto Seminary Lane. She glances in her rearview mirror, as she always does—ever since this started. But there’s
no one back there. She heads up the hill. Takes a right on Warbler Hollow, and then drives four or five miles through pastures
and blazing autumn hardwoods. When they’re almost to the school she checks the mirror again and this time there is a car.

The beat-up VW bug that belongs to Juliet.

It’s something Annie’s been afraid of every time she’s gone out: that she might run into Juliet. She leans forward a bit so
the mirror can’t track her eyes.

They turn into the big parking lot beside the phys ed fields. It’s almost empty at this hour. She peeks in the mirror and
Juliet is pulling into the lot right behind her.

Maybe I can pretend I don’t see her. Drive away the moment Oliver gets out—

“Mom, there’s still nobody here.”

“Huh?”

She looks, and there’s not a soul on the lacrosse field. Or in the bleachers.

“Oh man,” says Oliver. “What, did I get it wrong again? Wait. Maybe they’re using the back field. Wait here, let me check,
wait, I’ll be right back.”

“No, Oliver, I’m
not
going to—”

He jumps out. Doesn’t seem to notice Juliet’s car, he just runs off on a path through trees toward another open field.

Annie gets out and stands by her door and shouts after him, “Oli-ver! Get back here!”

But he’s gone, and Juliet has parked her VW and she’s walking toward her. Annie sees no choice but to turn her way and smile
a little.

Says Juliet, “We need to talk.”

“I’d love to talk, Juliet—I can’t now. I’m late, I’ve got to run but let’s—”

But Juliet has already taken Annie’s arm. She gets a good grip and commands, “Walk with me.”

“I really, I really can’t—”

“What if I were in trouble?” Juliet asks.

“What kind of trouble?”

“What if it were really bad trouble?” Juliet asks her, and she leads Annie toward a copse of old maples at one edge of the
lot.

“What, some man? Your job?”

“I don’t know if I can tell you.”

This outrages Annie. “What do you mean, if you can tell me? What are you saying? You’re my closest friend, if you’re in trouble,
you’ve got to tell me.”

Juliet abruptly holds up. Faces Annie. “Would you tell
me
?”

“Of course.”

“Then do that.”

“Do what?”

“Tell me. What’s going on. I know somebody’s hurting you. How can we stop him?”

“Whoa.” Annie puts her hands up. She backs up a step. “What the hell is this?”

She glances around her. First toward the silent playing fields. Then to her car in the lot. Inside it, the shape of Oliver,
patiently awaiting her return.

“This is a setup. Isn’t it? You didn’t just run into me. Did my kid put you up to this?”

“I had to find some way to talk to you.”

“What about calling me on the damn phone—”

“No good if the phone’s tapped,” says Juliet, and Annie’s spine tightens. “So what is it, Annie?”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“Oh Christ.” This is too sudden. She’s giving it away, she’s losing her grasp. “I
can’t
. I can’t tell you.”

She turns and walks toward the car. But her friend quickly catches up with her.

“It’s because you’re a juror, isn’t it?”

Annie keeps her head down so Juliet won’t see her crying. “Leave me alone,” she says. “God
damn
, leave me alone!”

“What’s he doing to you?”

Annie stops, and brings one hand up to her face. “Oh Jesus,” she says. She still won’t look up. “Is anyone watching us?”

“No.”

“Look all around. Be sure. On the road—”

“There’s no one.”

“Are there any cars?”

“No.”

“You sure we’re alone?”

“We’re alone.”

“OK.” Annie shuts her eyes. “OK. He said if I didn’t help him he’d kill Oliver. He said, Juliet, he said he’d kill my child.”

J
ULIET
and Annie sit side by side in soft-slung swings, with the huge trunk of a sugar maple shielding them from the eyes of the
road. Annie tells Juliet everything, all that she knows and all that she’s guessed.

When she’s finished she asks her friend, “So what do you think? What do you think I should do?”

Juliet shakes her head. In a small dry voice she says, “I can’t tell you what to do.”

“What would
you
do?”

“I don’t have a kid.”

“Still, you love him. You love him almost as much as I do, don’t you?”

“Annie. You want to protect him. It makes sense.”

“You think I’m a coward?”

“No.”

“Tell me what you’d do, Juliet. Tell me.”

Juliet sits on the swing without moving. Runs the strategy through her head one more time. Finally she straightens a little.
“Well. All right. Everything this guy does, he plans. Right?”

“He seems to.”

“He’s orderly? Meticulous?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever he does, he does for a
reason
?”

“Yes.”

“So if he thinks he’s a reasonable man, you can beat him. You know? You make sure there’s a price for hurting you, and you
make sure he knows this price. And you have to make it a high price.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You go to the judge. You tell him you want out of this trial. Tell him, tell him your kid’s sick. Tell him he was just diagnosed
with leukemia.”

“Oh, come on, Juliet. He’ll never buy that.”

“He has to. Because you’ll bring him a letter from his doctor. From me. He’s got to dismiss you. Then we send Oliver to Long
Island, to live with my folks for a while. And then, well, well then we send a message to that man. You’ll meet with him somewhere.
Say, by that reservoir again. And you’ll say, ‘Come near me again and I go to the cops with
everything
. Or if anything happens to me? Then my friends will go to the cops.’ And then, I don’t know, I don’t know what he’ll say,
maybe he’ll laugh, but you’ll say: ‘There’s a few of my friends now.’ And me and Henri, we’ll be across the water, and we’ll
wave at him and, and we’ll let him see that we’ve got a camera. And that we’ve been taping everything. OK? And that’s, well
I mean that’s it, that’s all.”

Annie asks her in a tired voice, “That’s what you think I should do?”

“You asked me what
I’d
do.”

All day, while Juliet was working this out, working it over and over in between bouts of nightmare sleep, it had seemed to
her a crisp and spare and cold plan. Low risk, high sanity. Outfreeze this ice-fiend. Now it all strikes her as naive and
dangerous. That part about waving to the guy and showing him a camera? Weird. Sleep-deprived dementia.

She watches Annie’s eyes. Annie’s simply looking at her car. Juliet looks that way too, but there’s nothing to see. Nothing
visible of Oliver save his forearm and his hand hanging out the window.

Says Annie, “I don’t know. It sounds sort of crazy.”

“Yeah. You’re right. The way you’re handling it, it’s probably a lot smarter.”

“Then why would you—”

Juliet shrugs. “I don’t know. Because I don’t take orders very well. From monsters I don’t take them at all. But that’s just
me. And it’s not my kid.”

Annie keeps looking across the lot at her car. Those big gray eyes of hers are wide open. Is she thinking? Juliet wonders.
She doesn’t say anything. Is she still with us? Is she thinking, or only staring?

Finally she says, “Well, I can’t…”

Then nearly a minute rolls by. “I mean I can’t keep doing
this
.”

Juliet waits. Annie sways on her swing. “Oh, God. I don’t, God, I don’t know.”

S
ARI KNOWLES
, at home, fixes herself a salad but can’t eat it. It’s all she can do to nibble a single leaf of lettuce.

She only wishes Slavko would answer his phone.

Yesterday he told her machine that he’d found out something about Eben, but now she can’t get hold of him. She calls and calls,
but he’s never there.

What
about Eben? Another woman?

I should go to Slavko’s office, she thinks. Tonight. Right now. Even if he’s not there I can leave a note.

Something about Eben. He knows something about Eben. Eben Eben Eben. Stop saying his name, girl, or you’re going to start
bawling again.

She gets into the shower but no sooner has she put her head under the water than she thinks she hears the phone ringing. So
she has to turn off the tap and listen. Silence. It was only a ringing in the pipes. She turns the water on again. Again she
thinks she hears the phone. She
knows
it isn’t the phone—but still, it might be. So off with the water. More silence. This life, damn. She stands there dripping,
with no water coming down. This pain. God. Eben, this is too much pain. This dome of damn silence I’m living under, Eben,
you prick, look what you’ve done to me.

Don’t you ever ever
ever
try to come back to me, Eben, I’ll spit in your face, I’ll claw your eyes out, I
swear
I will.

Then she hears a car in her drive, and she thinks, Eben? Could it be Eben? No. But it might very well be Slavko, who could
tell her something about Eben—so she steps out quick and grabs a towel and dips her head and dries her hair. The doorbell
rings.

Jesus, this guy shouldn’t come without calling but really I don’t care, it’ll be nice to talk to him. My new friend, my comfort.
We can get drunk again. She puts a robe on and runs to the door and opens it.

It’s Eben.

He’s brought an orchid. He’s wearing a gorgeous Brioni jacket and Converse sneakers. He’s wearing his screwy smile. He says,
“I’m sorry.”

“Keep your flower,” she says. “Get out of here.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been missing you. This is the toughest deal of my life, Sari. It’s going to be the sweetest
when I win. But I’ve been missing you every minute.”

She hates him. Even the sound of his voice, everything disgusts her. She says, “The other night, the last time you called
me—where did you call me from?”

“From home.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what you told me
then
.”

“It’s true.”

“Fuck you. You called me from your townhouse?”

He squints. He looks away a moment, then meets her eyes again. “Well, no.”

Exactly, you greasy liar. So now what new lie are you going to try to cover yourself with?

“I called you from another home, Sari.”

“Another home? What the hell are you trying—”

“I have a cabin. Near Garrison, overlooking the river. I never take anyone there, it’s just for me. It’s not much more than
a lean-to. But when I’m stressed, that’s where I go. I’ve been going there every night for the last week. How did you know
I wasn’t at the town-house?”

She glowers at him.

He asks her, “You don’t trust me? You should trust me, Sari.”

Her eyes drop. She can feel the hatred starting to break up inside her. But she doesn’t want it to break. She wants to keep
this solid wall of rage. She thinks, No. He’s lying again. He doesn’t have any secret cabin. This is all bullshit.

Then he says gently, “I’ve never asked anyone this before, but, well, would you like to see it?”

“See what?”

“My cabin.”

“Go there?”

He nods.

“When?”

He takes her hand. He starts to draw her outside.

“Jesus, Eben, no!”

He tugs. “Come with me.”

“You don’t
really
have a cabin?”

“Come right now.”

“But, I’d have to, I’d have to put some clothes on—”

“It’s a beautiful night, Sari. I’ll lend you some clothes when we get there. Just come.”

She laughs.

No
. Don’t laugh.

Jesus, don’t give in so quickly,
don’t
. But she can’t help but laugh. She lets him pull her out with him. In her house robe, in her bare feet. He shuts her door
and leads her across cool gravel to his car, and holds the door open for her, and she laughs some more.

Where’s that pain?

She has a vague memory of a lot of silly pain, which thank God is all behind her now.

O
LIVER
’s mom gets in the car and casts him a sharp look, and when he tries to say something she puts a finger to her lips. She pulls
out of the lot onto Warbler Hollow Road, and he figures he’s screwed now. Grounded for at least a month, which is an unpleasant
prospect all right, but even worse, she must think he’s a schizo paranoid. She and Juliet both—they must think they better
get him locked him up before he wigs out and hurts someone.

Mom takes the long way home. Over to Ratner Avenue and then to Old Willow Avenue. Dusk is dampening the leaf light in all
the sycamores.

She pulls over beside the statue of Hannah Stoneleigh on her horse, and she asks, “What’s that? Behind the statue, what’s
that?”

“It’s a skeleton, Mom. For Hallowe’en.”

“Is it? Let’s check it out.”

So they walk down to the statue.

They look at Hannah and the top-hatted skeleton who rides behind her. Oliver is only waiting for her to broach the subject.
To say, Maybe it’s time to get you a little therapy, boy.

But what she says is, “Oliver, we can’t talk in the car. Ever. They might have our car bugged. I’m
sure
they have our house bugged. Do you know what a bug is?”

He nods.

It doesn’t matter how powerfully he’s been imagining all this—it astonishes him to hear her confirm it.

She says, “For all I know maybe they’re listening now. Maybe they’ve bugged our shoes or something, but that’s a chance I’ll
take. Once we’re back in the car, though, you don’t know anything about this. Not a word. Not a question. You make one slip
and everything is ruined, you understand?”