Tell Me No Secrets Read Free

She took a deep breath, tossing the sentences over in her mind, like errant pieces of lettuce in a large unwieldy salad. She was still tossing them over when Barbara Cohen arrived some twenty minutes later.
    “How’s it going?” At five feet eleven inches, and with bright red hair that cascaded halfway down her back in frenzied ripples, Barbara Cohen often seemed the anthropomorphicversion of a carrot. She was almost a head taller than Jess, and her long, skinny legs gave the impression that she was standing on stilts. No matter how bad Jess was feeling, just looking at the young woman who was her third chair always made her smile.
    “Hanging in there.” Jess checked her watch. Unlike Greg Oliver’s, it was a simple Timex with a plain black leather band. “Listen, I’d like you and Neil to handle the Alvarez drug case when it comes to trial.”
    The look on Barbara Cohen’s face reflected a mixture of excitement and apprehension. “I thought you wanted to take that one.”
    “I can’t. I’m swamped. Besides, you guys can handle it. I’ll be here if you need any help.”
    Barbara Cohen tried, and failed, to keep the smile that was spreading across her face from overtaking her more professional demeanor. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.
    “If I drink any more coffee, I’ll be excusing myself from the courtroom every five minutes to pee. Think that would win me any sympathy points with the jury?”
    “I wouldn’t count on it.”
    “How could she not wear panties, for God’s sake,” Jess muttered. “At the very least, you’d think she’d worry about discharge.”
    “You’re so practical,” Barbara stated, and laughed, readying her cart with files for the judge’s morning call.
    Neil Strayhorn arrived a few minutes later with the news that he thought he was coming down with a cold, then went straight to his desk. Jess could see his lips moving, silently mouthing the words to his initial closing statement. All around her, the offices of the state’s attorney forCook County were coming to life, like a flower opening to the sun.
    Jess was aware of each new arrival, of chairs being pushed back, pulled in, computers being activated, fax machines delivering messages, phones ringing. She unconsciously monitored the arrival of each of the four secretaries who served the eighteen lawyers in the wing, was able to distinguish the heavy steps of Tom Olinsky, her trial supervisor, as he walked toward his office at the end of the long hall.
    “Every day in the United States, 1,871 women are forcibly raped,” she began again, trying to refocus.
    One of the secretaries, a pear-shaped black woman who could have passed for either twenty or forty, stuck her head through the doorway, her long, dangly red earrings falling almost to her shoulders. “Connie DeVuono’s here,” she said, then took a step back, as if she half expected Jess to hurl something at her head.
    “What do you mean she’s here?”
    “I mean she’s outside the door. Apparently, she walked right past the receptionist. She says she has to talk to you.”
    Jess scanned her appointment calendar. “Our meeting isn’t until four o’clock. Did you tell her I have to be in court in a few minutes?”
    “I told her. She says she has to see you now. She’s very upset.”
    “That’s not too surprising,” Jess said, picturing the middle-aged widow who’d been brutally beaten and raped by a man who’d subsequently threatened to kill her if she testified against him, an event that was scheduled for ten days from today. “Take her to the conference room, will you, Sally? I’ll be right there.”
    “Do you want me to talk to her?” Barbara Cohen volunteered.
    “No, I’ll do it.”
    “Think it could be trouble?” Neil Strayhorn asked as Jess stepped into the hall.
    “What else?”
    The conference room was a small, windowless office, taken up almost entirely by an old walnut table and eight low-backed, mismatched brown chairs. The