A Jury of Her Peers by Korelitz Jean Hanff

Author:Korelitz, Jean Hanff [Korelitz, Jean Hanff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780307830265
Google: p35pQ9sJO3YC
Amazon: B00CGI3F38
Barnesnoble: B00CGI3F38
Goodreads: 17835055
Publisher: Onyx
Published: 1996-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY

With the prosecution case rested and largely complete (the DA’s shrink, naturally, would be held back for rebuttal, but Sybylla doubted his services would be required once she played her acid card), she breathed a tentative sigh of relief. From here on in, she told herself, all of the surprises would be hers, and all of the scrambling for appropriate responses on cross would be Greer’s. It was a heady feeling. Her handling of the State’s case had been fairly strong, she told herself, and while things as they stood still looked very much like a losing proposition for Trent, Sybylla knew that without the option of an insanity defense, they wouldn’t have stood a chance with any other strategy.

If only Trent would change his mind, she thought, sighing, as she made her way down Broadway with her gym bag swinging at her hip. There was still time to score a touchdown with insanity, and the beauty of her subterfuge was that the defense would retain this option up until the very moment somebody uttered the acronym LSD. As it was, she’d already gotten one of the witnesses to call Trent “sick,” the doctor to discern in him “an element of wildness,” and the victim herself to compare him to the crazy lady on the Madison Avenue bus. Not bad for an insanity defense that hadn’t even properly begun. She would have a word with her client before the case was called tomorrow morning. Make a last-ditch effort to warn him plainly that his prospects for prison looked excellent as things stood. She could only do what she could do for him, and what she could do was limited. She wasn’t a magician, after all.

The cool evening air felt sweet. Sybylla had not been to the gym in over a month now, between trial preparations and, more recently, the advent of Sam. Then, too, she had been reluctant to return to the place where she had last seen Susu, as if nothing had happened. But tonight she had energy to spare, and it seemed like the right time to reclaim some sense of normalcy in her routine. Sam, meanwhile, had opted to press his nose even closer to the grindstone and was spending the evening at the public library, trying to learn something—anything—about LSD that might help them, or at least bolster their argument enough that they wouldn’t get laughed at openly.

The gym windows were steamy and crowded with body parts packed in Lycra. She shouldered the door open and closed her nose against the pungent smell of sweat, then made her way through the StairMasters to the front desk, where one of the receptionists was chatting amiably with the Iron Maiden. Sybylla set down her bag and fished out her card to be stamped. “Hiya,” she told the Maiden. “There still a six o’clock step?”

“Sure thing,” the tall woman said, peering at her intently. “You’re, um …”

Sybylla looked up at her and frowned. She was, um, what?

“You’re … what’s your name again?”

“Sybylla?” Sybylla said hesitantly, as if she weren’t at all sure.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.