She sighed as her shoulders sagged. “Well, not really. Every doctor or nurse who enters a patient’s room is supposed to log the visit and give a brief description of the service or what happened.”

  “But this is not always done, is it?”

  “No, it’s virtually impossible. We just don’t have enough time to record everything.”

  “What about the non-professional people—the orderlies, technicians, janitors, repairmen? Do they keep detailed records of every visit?”

  “No,” she said softly.

  He handed her a copy of the visitation logs and asked questions about who stopped by Eleanor’s room. Mr. Latch had signed in twice, but usually skipped that requirement. Mr. Wally Thackerman signed in once. Another lawyer had also signed in.

  Loretta got another laugh when she said, “When there’s a car wreck, we usually get a lot of interest from the lawyers.”

  She also admitted that the visitation process was not run with military precision. In fact, it was quite unstructured at times, even “porous.”

  She said, “Look, we’re a community hospital and we encourage visitation. We try our best to monitor things, but it’s just not always possible. And, we’ve never had a serious problem.”

  By noon, Loretta was fading. Raymond and the defense had not only made the point but had driven it home with a sledgehammer: There were dozens of people with plenty of opportunities to poison Eleanor.

  Cora Cook’s cross-examination of Loretta lasted only ten minutes, but was effective, at least in Simon’s opinion. She reviewed the names of the doctors and nurses and asked Loretta if she was implying that one of them had used the poison. Of course not.

  Loretta was excused, and as she was leaving the witness stand, Judge Shyam said, “We’ll break for lunch and be in recess until one-thirty.”

  Raymond startled everyone when he announced, rather dramatically and at full volume, “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

  Chapter 51

  It took two hours, and all of lunch, to hammer out jury instructions and settle the lingering objections that Judge Shyam had taken under advisement. When the loose ends were wrapped up, the jurors were brought in once more and the courtroom grew quiet. Cora Cook approached the jury box. It was almost 3 P.M.

  She once again thanked the jurors for their service, a needless gesture that meant nothing. By then they were weary of their service and tired of each other and no amount of false praise could impress them.

  She switched gears immediately and got their attention. “According to FBI statistics, there are twenty thousand murders each year in this country. Almost forty percent are never solved. Those are troubling numbers, but let’s set them aside. Of the murders that are solved, almost half, fifty percent, involve circumstantial evidence. No one saw the fateful deed. No one saw the murderer pull the trigger, or cut with the knife, or beat with the club. There were no eyewitnesses. And, since the murderer did not confess to the crime, the detectives studied the crime scene and found clues. Every murderer leaves behind evidence. Bullets and shells for ballistics tests. Blood, semen, saliva, sweat, skin, for DNA testing. Fingerprints, hair follicles, boot prints, for forensic analysis. And poison for toxicologists to examine and study.”

  Cora stayed behind the small podium and only occasionally glanced at her notes. She spoke directly to the jurors, looking them in the eye, an orator who was well prepared and knew her stuff.

  “Eleanor Barnett was murdered in a very devious manner. She ingested a poison that has for decades been known as the poisoner’s choice. Thallium has no taste, odor, or appearance. It’s invisible. It can be ingested in small quantities over several days or weeks without yielding clues, often, as in this case, confounding the doctors, who so rarely confront it. Neither the doctors nor the nurses had any reason to suspect that this lovely and respectable lady, laid up in the hospital after an awful car wreck, would secretly be fed, in small doses, a poison added to one of her favorite treats, ginger cookies purchased by the defendant and delivered by his longtime and loyal secretary.

  “Now, the defense evidently wants you to believe that someone other than the defendant acquired a poison that can be found only on the black market and only by someone with evil intent, and this other person sneaked into Ms. Barnett’s hospital room and laced her cookies with thallium. How convenient. How original. Someone else did it. I’m sure you’ve never heard that one before.

  “But why would someone else murder Eleanor Barnett? Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a question of motive. And the motive was greed. Who could profit from her death? Oh, I suppose the funeral home could make a buck. But it’s hard to imagine Mr. Douglas Gregg, the mortician you met here on the stand, sneaking into her hospital room and killing her so he could then cremate her. Are we supposed to believe that? Ludicrous. About as ludicrous as the other good and innocent people the defense has dragged into this courtroom to smear their names. The doctors, nurses, orderlies, assistants, even janitors, all those good folks just doing their jobs, trying to save her life, and now the defendant wants you to suspect them all. Pretty outrageous.”

  One glance at the jurors and Simon knew better than to glance again. If Raymond thought they had eight friends in the box, Simon would love to know where the first one was sitting.

  “Who has the motive? Who wanted Eleanor dead?” Cora’s voice was loud, incredulous, and echoed around the courtroom. She stepped away from her notes and hit her stride with a tirade of facts that could not be contested. The secrecy of the preparation and execution of the will. The obvious belief that there was big money on the table; otherwise, why would the defendant go to such great lengths to set up a trust designed to make donations to 120 charities? Why would the will leave $100,000 each to Clyde and Jerry Korsak if doing so would leave so little for the trust? Why would the defendant call his pal Dirk Wheeler, a bona fide tax and estate lawyer, and seek advice for a client with a substantial net worth? Why would the defendant insert himself as the attorney for the estate and also the attorney for the trust, with no other trustees to provide oversight? Why would the defendant award himself fees of $500 an hour, an obscene amount for a small-town lawyer with no experience in complicated estate matters? According to his own secretary, he had never been paid such exorbitant fees.

  Cora stopped, looked at the jurors in complete amazement, and asked, “Who in the world is worth five hundred dollars an hour?”

  Then she lowered the large white screen opposite the jurors and methodically went through the timeline, carefully listing the important dates and times: Eleanor’s car wreck and hospitalization, the purchase of the first box of ginger cookies from Tan Lu’s, the aggressive actions by the defendant to get his client to execute a power of attorney and living will, from her hospital bed; the purchase of the second box of cookies; the deterioration of her condition; the ventilator; her death; then, of course, the forty-seven-minute gap between her official passing and the defendant’s phone call to the funeral home with the request to “come and get her.”

  Cora finished an hour after she began. Her final words to the jury were: “A clear-cut case of first-degree murder.”

  Simon tried to sit tall, take meaningless notes, and present a confident look for everyone.

  * * *

  Raymond wasted no time in attacking the prosecution. He said, “Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, once again the great Commonwealth of Virginia, with its endless resources of lawyers, investigators, experts, doctors, and money, has stumbled its way into a courtroom without bringing enough proof to overcome the presumption of innocence. The prosecution has no proof!” His voice boomed throughout the hushed courtroom.

  “What the Commonwealth does have is plenty of speculation. Tons of it. Lots of suspicion too. Plenty of circumstantial suspicion. And, it has the dead body of a lovely lady who deserved better. A lady who trusted the defendant because she had no one else to trust. A lady who had once been wealthy and lost it all and was obviously mentally unbalanced in many ways. She still lived in a fantasy world in which she and her late husband were quite wealthy. She was delusional and still dreamed of the lost money. She was lost in the past.

  “And how, exactly, was Simon Latch supposed to know it was all a hoax? Maybe he should have dug deeper. I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter right now. All that matters today is that someone poisoned Eleanor Barnett and it wasn’t Simon Latch.”

  Raymond stopped pacing and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Greed? You want to talk about greed? Simon Latch never received a single penny in fees from this woman. Nothing. She didn’t believe in paying her legal bills. She had plenty of cash, and he knew that, but he never pressed her for payment.”

  Simon kept his eyes on Raymond as he moved back and forth in front of the jury box, and in doing so he caught glimpses of the jurors’ faces. Some watched Raymond and seemed to agree. Most, however, seemed dismissive.

  He finished in half an hour and his timing was good. The jury had heard enough. Judge Shyam told them to go home and forget about the case until nine the following morning, Friday.

  * * *

  Landy had been in the courtroom for most of the afternoon and was waiting behind the courthouse near the dumpsters. They made another getaway and drove for an hour west of town. She was of the opinion that the jury was split and would hang itself. Simon was too consumed with fear to say much. He certainly wasn’t hungry.

  They stopped at a restaurant in Williamsburg and had drinks on an outdoor terrace as the sun faded. She asked if sex might help and he said no. At the moment, nothing would help but an acquittal.

  Chapter 52

  What could be the most excruciating waits? Simon had never considered the question until then. Waiting to be executed was certainly at the top of the list. Waiting for a loved one, someone in their prime, to die, when death was imminent?

  Waiting for news from a tragedy? Waiting for a killed-in-action list to be posted?

  Waiting for your jury had to be in the top three.

  Again, he slept only minutes at a time and he couldn’t eat. He knew he looked gaunt, even haggard, and he knew the jury would see him, again, but he couldn’t care about his appearance.

  The jurors were sent to their labors at 9:15 by Her Honor, and the waiting started all over again. She ordered him to stay in the courthouse, so he went to an empty courtroom on the second floor and hid in the semidarkness. Then he tried to read a crime novel but the story involved a murder by poison, so he tossed it. The time was now 9:40. He removed his wristwatch. Sitting in a wooden chair, he dozed off and was soon drooling.

  Judge Shyam reconvened at 11:20 and everyone hustled back to the courtroom. Simon’s stomach was rolling and he was sweating. When he sat down, Raymond whispered, “No verdict. Just some question about a jury instruction.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  The jurors filed in and everyone gawked at them, as if their bodies and facial language might tip off their deliberations. If there were signals, Simon didn’t catch them, but then he was no trial lawyer. The foreman said they were making progress but were confused about the issue of motive. Was proving motive necessary to proving murder? Judge Shyam explained that no, it was not, but understood the confusion. She read again the jury instruction pertaining to motive, and in doing so only muddied the water. She said that she was not allowed to offer a more thorough explanation, and told the jurors to get back to work.

  After they filed out, Simon asked Raymond what it meant. He wasn’t sure.

  The courtroom cleared and Raymond seemed content to sit at the defense table with his client and make small talk. Simon asked, “Is the mob still out there?”

  “Afraid so. The vultures are back in full force.”

  “Should I say anything?”

  “Let’s wait. If it’s a bad verdict, I’ll do the talking and promise a speedy appeal and so on. If it’s a good verdict, we might celebrate together for the cameras.”

  “I’d like that,” Simon said, as he let himself dream for a second.

  “If it’s split, a hung jury, we should disappear quickly and say nothing. There will be a retrial and nothing we say to the press can really help us.”

  “Got it. And Raymond, thanks for everything. You’ve been great. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “It’s been my pleasure. We gave it our best shot.”

  They left for lunch, ate as slow as possible, and tried to kill two hours.

  * * *

  The longest afternoon of Simon’s life came to an end at ten minutes after five. The wait was over.

  Remarkably for a Friday afternoon, the courtroom was crowded when the jurors returned to their seats for the last time. The foreman handed a sheet of paper to the clerk, who read it, then handed it up to Judge Shyam. She frowned as she looked at it, then said, “Would the defendant please rise.” It was not a question.

  With knees of rubber and a laboring heart, Simon Latch stood with an attorney on each side. The courtroom seemed to inhale and hold its collective breath.

  Her Honor leaned a bit closer to her microphone so there would be no doubt. “To the charge of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant, Simon Latch, guilty.”

  Chapter 53

  At the rap of the gavel, a bailiff opened the doors and the crowd rushed out, led by Jerry Korsak. When he was out of the building he speed-dialed Teddy Hammer, who was in his Washington office.

  “They nailed him,” Jerry said gleefully. “Guilty, first degree.”

  “You’re lying,” Hammer stuttered in disbelief.

  “Swear. Took ’em all day.”

  “No way.”

  “All the way. You got it. Now what?”

  “I don’t know. Let me sit down.” Hammer had watched most of the trial and left the day before convinced the Commonwealth had not presented enough proof to convict. In his opinion, the best they could hope for was a hung jury, with a retrial to follow. He said, “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  Jerry stuck his phone in his pocket and looked around. The sidewalk was busy with reporters either talking low or texting furiously. Cameras were waiting in an area cordoned off by bailiffs, though the defendant had not been seen all week.

  The defendant sat for a long time at his table, oblivious to the noise and bustle of the crowd in a hurry to leave. The judge and jury were gone. The lawyers and clerks milled about, gathering papers and packing briefcases. Slowly, the crowd thinned on both sides of the bar.

  Simon could not acknowledge the pats on the shoulder and the banal offerings of “so sorry” and “we’ll get ’em on appeal.” He was too stunned to respond and kept repeating to himself, “I didn’t kill anyone, I swear. I know I didn’t.” Casey stayed by his side for quiet support as Raymond went through the forced ritual of chatting with the opposing lawyers. He also brushed off some pushy reporters.

  My poor children, Simon thought, and tried mightily to keep them out of his mind.

  Half an hour passed. He sat slumped in his chair, motionless, staring at something on the floor. Two Virginia Beach police officers loitered near the bench, as if waiting to pounce.

  Raymond finally sat down beside him, leaned in, and said, “Look, Simon, time to go. They’re taking you to the city jail where you’ll spend the night. I’ll be there. In the morning, some boys from Braxton will fetch you here for the drive home.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I know you didn’t. I’ve believed you from the beginning and am even more convinced now. But, juries sometimes do strange things and I guess this is one of them. I can’t explain it.”

  “What’s next? Prison?”

  “No.”

  “For the rest of my life?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t do that, Raymond. I swear I can’t do that.”

  “Not so fast. The next step is post-trial motions, then sentencing. Nobody gets in a hurry. I’ll talk to the judge first thing Monday morning and ask her to allow you to remain out on bond until sentencing. That’s rarely permitted, but it does happen. We’ll get to the bottom of it, Simon, I swear we will.”

  “I can’t go to prison.”

  Raymond looked at Casey as the two police officers walked over. One removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Raymond said, “These two guys will take you to the city jail.”

  Simon looked at them in horror and said, “Handcuffs? And I gotta ride in the back seat?”

  “Afraid so,” Raymond said.

  * * *

  Paula was tidying up her desk as if preparing for the weekend. The day, like the ones before it, had not been productive. It was difficult to concentrate on work with one eye on the news. While the jury was deliberating she couldn’t leave her desk. A cold sandwich for lunch had gone untouched. Thankfully, her colleagues had not made the connection, but it was inevitable. They were gone for the day.

  She almost shrieked at the headline on her laptop: “Virginia Lawyer Guilty in Poison Case.” A live shot from Action News caught Simon as he was led from a side door of the courthouse to one of two fully marked Virginia Beach police cars. His wrists were cuffed at his waist and two cops held his elbows. Though his legs weren’t chained, his captors still walked as slowly as possible, making the most of their brief glow in the cherished ritual of the “perp walk.” Simon seemed dazed and deaf as he deflected the idiotic questions flung from the crowd of reporters. Another cop opened a rear door as Simon ducked low and was shoved inside. For some reason, the drivers of both cars needed to turn on all emergency lights and sirens as they inched away from the courthouse, as if the public should be warned that a convicted murderer was passing through on his way to jail.