Twisted Justice by Diane Capri

Twisted Justice by Diane Capri

Author:Diane Capri [Capri, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780983729822
Google: BbY9AwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 12501656
Publisher: AugustBooks
Published: 2011-07-01T04:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Tampa, Florida

Friday 8:35 a.m.

January 28, 2000

THE TRIAL DAY, WHICH after today I had limited to four mornings a week, continued to be substantially less mesmerizing than my private life. As CJ promised, another three hundred cases had been added to my load. My docket clerk badgered me to get them on the calendar.

I had very little time to investigate Andrews’s murder, but there was no chance I’d stop. I could live without this job. I could return to private practice or take an in-house counsel job. But I couldn’t live without George and I wasn’t willing to let Drake take George away from me.

Too many things on my mind; staying focused on the Newton trial was increasingly difficult.

Fortunately the case was a jury trial, so I didn’t need to pay strict attention to everything that happened. The jury would decide the facts and I only needed to make evidentiary rulings as they came up.

We were still hearing Newton’s case in chief. Moving right along, but shortened trial days meant little accomplished.

There was no way Newton could keep the fact that he’d been married four times from the jury. The information was contained in The Review story he was suing over. He’d tried to take the sting out of his marital history on voir dire by choosing jurors who had been married more than once, but Tampa is still a pretty conservative place. Divorce is common, but not desirable.

Instead of relying on the marital privilege to exclude spousal communications, today Newton planned to call the most recent of his four ex-wives to the stand. His strategy escaped me. Maybe he was trying to show that since he’d been involved in at least four heterosexual relationships, he couldn’t possibly be gay. Like the jurors, I’d just have to wait and see.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” Newton asked his first witness.

“Jennifer Newton,” said the fourth former Mrs. Nelson Newton.

She looked like a young Tampa matron on her way to church: fresh, neat, not overly showy. Nervous. She held a tissue in her small hands, twisting it so tightly that her knuckles whitened. I thought she looked like she could use a tranquilizer. The entire jury already felt sorry for her.

“Do you know me?” Newton asked her, with a smile and a wink to the jury. Several of them smiled back.

“Yes. We were married for five years,” she managed to answer, in a small, trembling voice. Without the microphone on the witness stand, no one would have heard her.

“Do we have any children?” he asked, turning around to look at his youngest son, sitting with his other four sons in the first row of the galley behind his chair.

“Yes. Nelson, Junior. He’s seven.”

“Now, Jennifer,” he said gently, “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, honey, but please tell the jury why we divorced.”

I remembered the divorce and it hadn’t been friendly. He must have muscled her to get her here at all. I was as curious as everyone else as to what she would say.



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