Neither did Andrew.
He let his silence chew at her nerves. Leigh looked at him, blurring her eyes so she didn’t have to see his face. He was sitting back in his chair, spine straight, hand resting on the file, yet every part of him seemed ready to pounce. She watched his fingers gently stroke the corner of the light blue folder, tickling apart the edge. His hands were large like his father’s. The gold watch hanging loose from his wrist reminded her of the one Buddy had worn.
“All right,” Andrew said. “That’s voir dire. What about the trial?”
Leigh looked away from his hand. She struggled to find her place. “The prosecutor will start with establishing a timeline. While he’s presenting his case, keep silent, don’t shake your head or make any noises of disbelief or disagreement. If you have questions for me, or comments, then write them down on a notepad, but keep it to a minimum.”
Andrew nodded once, but she couldn’t tell if any of this mattered at all. He was toying with her, playing at Leigh’s edges the same way he was playing with the file. “How does the prosecutor establish the timeline?”
Leigh cleared her throat. “He’ll take the jury through the night at the bar. He’ll call the bartender, the valet, then the dog walker who found the victim in the park. Next up is the first officer on scene, then the paramedics, then the nurses and doctor who performed the rape exam, the detective who—”
“What about Tammy?” Andrew asked. “I’ve gathered from Reggie that your job will be to annihilate her. Are you ready to annihilate her?”
Something had shifted . Leigh recognized the unsettling sensation from the day before, her flight triggering into overdrive. She tried to act as if the subtext was meaningless. “I’m ready to do my job.”
“Right.” Andrew started clenching and unclenching his fist. “You’ll start with showing how Tammy was aggressive with me in the bar. You can point out how, in the video, she keeps touching my leg, my hand. At one point she even touches the side of my face.”
Leigh waited, but then she realized that Andrew was expecting a response. She picked up her pen, ready to write. “Go ahead.”
“She had three drinks in two hours. Double gin martinis. She was clearly getting sloppy.”
Leigh nodded for him to continue, recording every single word. She had wasted hours figuring out a shadow strategy to tank his case. Andrew was clearly willing to do the heavy lifting for her.
She told him, “Keep going.”
“Then, at the valet stand, she grabbed me by the neck and kissed me for thirty-two seconds.” Andrew paused, as if to give her time. “And of course, she offered me her business card, which I still have. I didn’t ask for her number. She gave it to me.”
Leigh nodded again. “I’ll make sure to bring that out during cross.”
“Good,” Andrew said, a new edge to his tone. “The jury needs to understand that I had plenty of opportunities for sex that night. Reggie might have framed it crassly, but he’s right. Any woman at that bar would’ve gone home with me.”
Leigh couldn’t give him too much rope. Reggie was not her compatriot. Cole Bradley would be expecting her to put up a plausible defense. “And if the prosecutor argues that rape isn’t about sex, it’s about control?”
“Then you’ll explain that I have plenty of control in my life,” Andrew said. “I can do anything I like. I live in a three-million-dollar house. I have my pick of luxury cars. I have access to our family jet. I don’t chase after women. Women chase after me.”
Leigh nodded her head to encourage him, because his arrogance was her biggest advantage. Andrew had picked the wrong part of Atlanta to commit his crimes. The jury pool would be drawn from registered voters in DeKalb County, a demographic that was overwhelmingly comprised of politically active people of color. They weren’t inclined to give a rich, white asshole like Andrew Tenant the benefit of the doubt. And Leigh wasn’t inclined to change their minds.
She asked, “What else?”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed. Like any predator, his senses were finely tuned. “I assume you agree that going over Tammy’s sordid past is the best course of action?”
Reggie saved her from answering. “It’s he said/she said, right? The only way you can fight back is to make sure the jury hates her.”
Leigh wasn’t going to openly challenge a graduate of the Twitter School of Law. “There’s more nuance to it than that.”