At Close Range. Tara Quinn Taylor
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with purpose, she left her chambers and looked both ways as she walked into the secure hallway outside her door and stepped toward the back entrance of the courtroom.
Her job was to administer justice. Kenny Hill might be convicted by a jury of vetted American citizens. If that happened, she’d sentence him to prison—and society would be safer.
But he had brothers. Ivory Nation brothers.
“All rise.”
Hannah heard Jaime’s spiel about the Honorable Hannah Montgomery, but barely waited for the bailiff to finish before she took her seat. Her deputy was there—standing at attention with his eyes firmly on the defendant who was seated at the table directly in front of her bench.
Other deputies were there, too, called by the sheriff’s office to oversee this trial.
Only members of the press and the jury were absent—the jury sequestered in another room. They couldn’t be privy to this particular motion lest their judgment be impaired. The press would line the back of the room again as soon as she gave the okay to let them in from the hall.
“Be seated,” Hannah said clearly. Loudly.
She could do her job. She had no doubt about that. She would do it well.
And she would deal with the ensuing exhaustion, the emotional panic that sometimes resulted from days like today.
“We are back on the record with case number CR2008-000351. The State v. Kenneth Hill. Before we bring in the jury, we have a matter before the court concerning new evidence received by the state.”
The benches in the back of her courtroom were filled to capacity. Whether the victim had as many supporters as the defendant did, Hannah couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think so. She suspected the Ivory Nation ranks had been notified overnight. Was she supposed to consider herself warned? Intimidated?
The defendant’s parents, sitting stiffly in the front row, didn’t seem to know any of the mostly young men around them.
Bobby Donahue, the group’s leader, was not present.
Hannah noted every detail of her surroundings as she held the page she’d written the night before.
“The Court has reviewed the motion to suppress testimony filed by Robert Keith on behalf of the defendant, Kenny Hill, the argument presented by the prosecution, as well as case law pertinent to the matter before us…”
She continued to read, citing case law brought before her during the motion, reminding the defense that it wasn’t within the jurisdiction of trial court to find existing laws unconstitutional. She discussed the Arizona statute about allowing prejudicial evidence, specifically pertaining to cases where evidence pertaining to a previous case is also pertinent to the current one.
In other words, the victim of Kenny Hill’s earlier assault would not be appearing as a victim, but as a witness to the possibility that a certain weapon used in that crime, had caused injuries in this one.
And then, sticking to the plan she’d devised the night before—not to look up from her notes, even once, not to give them anything, any hint that she was human or afraid—she delivered her findings.
“The court has prepared the following rulings,” she said, gaining confidence in herself as her voice remained steady. “It is ordered that the motion to suppress be denied.”
Funny how a room could be filled with negative energy, with savage anger, that emitted not a sound.
The only thing Hannah could hear was the rapid tapping of her court recorder, fifty-year-old Tammy Rhodes. Jaime, the other human being within Hannah’s peripheral vision, was staring down at her desk.
“The state is warned that any mention of a previous conviction for this defendant will result in a mistrial.”
That was it. She’d reached the end of her ruling. Of her notes. There was nothing else to do but look up.
The trial that had already run two days over its time allotment was continued until Monday—the earliest the state’s newly approved witness could be brought in. Which meant that the weight hanging over Hannah would be there all weekend.
She and William had tickets to a concert at Symphony Hall the next night. His son, a student at a private school for the arts, was a guest violinist in one piece and, as William rarely saw the boy, he’d been thrilled to get the invitation. Hannah hoped, as she drove home on Friday, that she’d be able to stay awake. Put her in a comfortable seat, in a dark room with soft music and—
What was that? She saw a pile in the road by her driveway. Driving slowly, Hannah tried to identify the curious shape. Her heart was pounding, but she told herself there was no reason for that.
Some trash had fallen from a dispenser during that morning’s pickup, that was all.
But there was something too familiar about the tan and beige with that streak of black. What had she put in her trash that week? Some kind of packaging maybe.
What had she purchased? Opened? Had she even bought anything new?
As she drew closer, her pulse quickened yet again. The blob didn’t look like packaging. It looked…furry. Like an animal.
The exact size of Callie Bodacious.
Hannah’s beloved eleven-year-old cat. The direct offspring of a gift from Jason, the man she’d married—the man who, at seventeen, had been diagnosed with leukemia and, at twenty-three, had died in the bed she’d shared with him.
“No!” Throwing the car in Park in the middle of her quiet street, Hannah got out, the door of the Lexus wide-open behind her as she sped to the shape in the road.
Callie wasn’t a purebred. Wasn’t worth much in a monetary sense. She was basically an alley cat. One who wasn’t particularly fond of people—other than Hannah.
And she was all the family Hannah had left.
Dropping down on her knees, reaching out to the animal, Hannah blinked back tears so she could see clearly. The black between the eyes told her it was definitely Callie.
And she was still breathing. Sobbing now, Hannah glanced up, around, looking for help. And then grabbed the cell phone out of the case hooked to her waistband.
Addled, frustrated that there was no ambulance she could call for cats, no feline 911, scared out of her wits, she hit the first number programmed into her speed dial.
He answered. Thank God.
“Brian? Where are you?”
“On my way home. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Callie! She’s hurt. Oh, God, Brian, what am I going to do? She needs help and I’m afraid to move her. Her head’s at a bad angle.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah wailed, growing more panicked with every second that passed. “She’s in the road so she must have been hit by a car, but I don’t see a lot of blood.”
Brian asked her to check a couple of things, including lifting the cat’s eyelids. And then he told her to sit tight and wait for him.
Brian wished he could say he’d never seen Hannah Montgomery in such a state. Wished it so hard the tension made his head throb. Watching his good friend grieve was not a new thing to him.
And not a distant memory either. It had been less than a year since he’d sat on this very same sofa, in this very same house, sick at heart, holding this vibrant, beautiful, intelligent woman while she sobbed uncontrollably.
Less than a year since another little body was carried out of this home.
“I…I…she…I…she must’ve slipped out this morning. And…”
She couldn’t