Blood Money Read Free

impressive list of convictions on behalf of the state attorney’s office included the first woman ever to be executed in Florida. Matthews had personally witnessed her death. Since his election to the circuit bench, not a single one of Judge Matthews’ death sentences had been overturned on appeal. A verdict of guilty could well mean that Sydney would be the fourth woman sent to Florida’s death row since January—the most of any given year in the state’s history.
    “Bailiff, please bring in the jury,” said the judge.
    “All rise!”
    Behind Jack, in the packed gallery, the bumps and thuds of the rising crowd sounded like a ragtag army on the march. Jurors in Florida courtrooms were never shown on television, so even as the jury entered, the cameras remained fixed on Jack and his client. Jack had become almost immune to the constant coverage. Sydney had never gotten used to it, having complained to Jack throughout the trial that when she looked calm, the media attacked her as coldhearted; if she cried, they said she was faking; when she flashed even the slightest smile, they declared her a sociopath.
    The jury took their seats, and everyone else in the room did the same.
    “They’re not looking at me,” Sydney whispered.
    Somewhere—probably TV—Sydney must have heard a lawyer say that if the jurors didn’t make eye contact with the defendant as they filed into the courtroom, it signaled a guilty verdict. For Jack, a far better indicator was the number of courtroom deputies hovering around the defense table, ready to grab his guilty clients before they could make a mad dash for the door. Somehow, the deputies always seemed to know.
    The judge broke the silence. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
    “Yes, sir,” the twelve answered in unison.
    Jack glanced over his shoulder and spotted Sydney’s parents in the back row. Geoffrey Bennett, hands clasped and praying, was seated beside his wife. Behind them stood the police investigators who had found Emma’s body.
    “Would the foreman hand the verdict form to the court deputy, please.”
    A woman in the dark blue uniform of courtroom deputies approached the jury box and received the verdict form. She handed it up to Judge Matthews. He inspected it, making sure that all was in order, showing no expression as he turned page after page. Finally, he looked directly at Jack and his client.
    “Will the defendant rise along with counsel.”
    I know it’s going to be okay. That was what he wanted to tell his client. But how could anyone say such a thing? How could anyone know ?
    Jack’s gaze swept the jury box. Each juror had taken the same oath to “render a true verdict according to the law and the evidence,” and the evidence against Sydney was entirely circumstantial. Cause of death, unknown. Manner of death, a matter of inference upon inference and expert opinion. No eyewitnesses. No confession from the accused. Yes, the jury had been told that in a court of law circumstantial evidence is as probative as direct evidence—a point that the prosecution hammers home in every trial. Beyond their own awareness of what they had decided, however, the jurors didn’t know anything more than the rest of the players in this courtroom drama. For all their forceful argument, the prosecutors didn’t know what had happened. Neither did Judge Matthews, the investigators on the case, or the experts who had testified at trial. The pundits on television sure as hell didn’t know.
    “Madam clerk,” said the judge, “you may publish the verdicts.”
    Not even Jack knew.
    “In the circuit court of the eleventh judicial circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida, State of Florida versus Sydney Louise Bennett . . .”
    None of them knew, because they hadn’t been there for Emma’s final moments.
    “As to the charge of first degree murder . . .”
    What they knew was in actuality nothing more than what they believed.