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A shrug follows. “I guess they figure if they do it every year, they’ll eventually get it right.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter, since I’ve clearly dodged this bullet in the past, and really, why would this type of event include a SpongeBob float? Not that I have anything against SpongeBob, per se, but he’s blocking my car, and the trucker is now getting out of the cab.
I march forward, meeting him by his door as he hits ground level. “Excuse me, but I need to get out.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the man says, tipping back his cowboy hat. “But the truck is running hot. My employer said park, so I parked.”
“I appreciate that,” I say. “I do. But I need you to please pick another spot.”
“I’m parked until they fix it.”
Exasperation overtakes me. “You can’t leave me stuck here with a giant SpongeBob blocking my car. I have to get to work.”
He grins. “Not like anyone is going to be around to get mad at you. Today’s the Armageddon.”
I’m not sure if I should laugh or punch him. Well, not really punch him—I’m not the violent type—but I’m not happy, either, and I don’t have time to get Cowboy Armageddon to cooperate. If only this cowboy knew I’m a walking, talking Armageddon, I bet he’d move that stupid truck. I shut my car door and begin hoofing it toward the courthouse, but instead of my verdict, I find myself thinking about what that Starbucks employee had said about the end of times. I thought this ended back in 2012, when the whole Mayan calendar thing came and went, but apparently not. They’re throwing darts at a calendar, and at least one old lady has decided it’s landed on me. Sorry, folks, I think, not happening this year. I’m too busy ending a trial today to end the world.
Another block into my travel, and the hair at my nape lifts—the sensation of being watched overwhelmingly present. A shiver slides down my spine, and I step a little faster. It’s likely reporters, I reason, but the truth is that there are those out there who believe my client receiving a not guilty verdict today would be the end of the world. You never know what people might do. I haven’t had issues up to this point, but it is verdict day. I cut to the courtroom steps and jog upward, relieved beyond reason when I enter the building and leave prying eyes outside.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
If you listen closely, you can hear the screams of your enemies long before their demise.
Chapter three
The energy in the courtroom is as dark and cloudy with doom and gloom as it is electric with excitement. Finally, the moment of verdict is upon us.
The doors to the back room open, and a guard appears, followed by Jeremy Gibson, my client, a man who personifies a meek, gentle schoolteacher, his short, mousy-brown hair neatly combed to his scalp. His clothes are as simple as the man—basic brown slacks and a button-down—his hands curled together in front of him, his chin dipped. And the damn cuffs shackling his wrists really get to me. They are his statement piece of wrongful imprisonment, the slight tremble to his hands the prosecution’s reward for an intimidation campaign against an innocent man.
One of the perks of owning your own law firm is never defending a killer, no matter how big the return, and Jeremy is no killer. And for just the briefest of moments, I’m back in my office the night Jeremy had walked in near closing, confessed he’d walked by my office on the way home, and taken a chance to walk in and ask for help. He’d been on the police radar, feeling their pressure. It hadn’t taken long and he’d burst into tears and fell to his knees, but even then, I’d been skeptical of him, nervous that looks were deceiving. It was only after I read the file his public defender sent me and met with his students that I’d decided the case was why I’d opened my firm, I’d wanted to make a difference, and clearing the path for a real killer to be caught because a wrongly accused man is found innocent is making a difference.
He needed me. And my firm had needed him. I believed then, and I believe now to my core, he is falsely accused of killing all six female victims.
Jeremy arrives at my table, and I stand as he’s uncuffed, relieved when he’s allowed to sit. “This is it,” I announce softly, claiming my seat next to him. “Are you ready?”
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.
