Puppet Read Free Page A

side of my head, then fell to the floor and broke apart.”
    “What happened next?”
    “I changed my clothes and went to work. He ripped my dress,” she reminds the jury. “So I had to change.”
    “And did you report what happened to the police?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “When was that?”
    “A couple of days later. He started hitting me again, and I told him if he didn’t stop, I’d go to the police, and he didn’t stop, so I did.”
    “What did you tell the police?”
    Caroline Fletcher looks confused. “Well, what the officer already told you.” She is alluding to Sergeant DanPeterson, the previous witness, a man so nearsighted his face virtually vanished inside his notes for most of his testimony.
    “You told him about the rape?”
    “I told him that me and Derek had been fighting, that Derek was always slapping me around and stuff, and then he took some pictures.”
    Tyrone King lifts long, elegant fingers into the air, signaling for his witness to pause while he locates several more photographs and shows them to Caroline Fletcher. “Are these the pictures the police officer took?”
    Caroline winces as she looks over the various pictures. A nice touch, Amanda thinks, wondering if she’s been coached.
Don’t be afraid to show some emotion
, she can almost hear Tyrone King whisper in his seductive baritone.
It’s crucial that you appear sympathetic to the jury.
    Amanda looks toward her lap, tries picturing the photographs through the jury’s eyes. Not too damning really. A few scratches on the woman’s cheek that could easily be the result of her daughter’s groping fingers, a slight red mark on her chin, a fading purple blotch on her upper right arm, either of which could have come from almost anything. Hardly the stuff of a major assault. Nothing to directly implicate her client.
    “And that’s when I told him about Derek biting me,” Caroline continues, unprompted. “And so he took pictures of my back, and then he asked me if Derek had sexually assaulted me, and I said I wasn’t sure.”
    “You weren’t sure?”
    “Well, we’ve been together for three years. We have a baby. I wasn’t sure about my rights until Sergeant Peterson told me.”
    “And that’s when you decided to press charges against Derek Clemens?”
    “Yes, sir. So I pressed charges, and the police drove me back to my apartment, and they arrested Derek.”
    A phone rings, disturbing the natural rhythms of the room. A tune emerges.
Camptown ladies sing dis song—Doo-dah! Doo-dah.
And then again.
Camptown ladies sing dis song …
    Amanda glances toward her purse on the floor by her feet. Surely she hasn’t left her phone on, she hopes, reaching inside her purse, as do several women on the jury. The Hispanic man reaches for his jacket pocket. The prosecuting attorney looks accusingly at the woman who is his second chair, but she shakes her head and widens her eyes, as if to say, Not me.
    Camptown ladies sing dis song—Doo-dah! doo-dah.
    “Oh, my God,” the witness suddenly exclaims, the color disappearing from her already pale face as she grabs her enormous canvas bag from the floor beside her and rummages around inside it, the tune growing louder, more insistent.
    Camptown ladies sing dis song …
    “I’m so sorry,” she apologizes to the judge, who peers at her disapprovingly over the top of a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses as she switches her portable phone off and flings it back in her purse. “I told people not to call me,” she offers by way of explanation.
    “Kindly leave your phone at home this afternoon,” the judge says curtly, taking the opportunity to break for lunch. “And your gum,” he adds, before telling everyone to be back at two o’clock.
    “So where we going for lunch?” Derek Clemens askscasually, his arm brushing against Amanda’s as they rise to their feet.
    “I don’t do lunch.” Amanda gathers her papers into her briefcase. “I suggest you grab a bite in the cafeteria.”