“We’re fine with it being stricken, provided that we’re able to have redirect.”
Conrad smirked. “Figured you’d say that. The jury is to disregard Mr. Cowan’s last statement.” He bowed his head toward Shay. “Redirect?”
“Absolutely,” Shay said.
Jason stood by the defense table, unable to bring himself to sit.
“What did Waylon Pike tell you about Dr. Waters?”
Trey Cowan looked directly at the jury. “He told me that Jana Waters had offered him $15,000 to kill her husband.”
The answer hung in the air like smoke from a cannon.
Shay moved her eyes from the witness to the jury. “No further questions.”
“Mr. Rich, any further cross?”
Jason peered down at his sister, who was looking at him with scared eyes. Damnit . . .
“Mr. Rich?”
Jason turned to the witness stand, thinking as fast as he could. “So Pike told you he was offered a deal to kill Dr. Waters?”
“Yes. By Dr. Waters’s wife.” He pointed toward Jana Waters. “Your client.”
“Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant,” Shay said.
And the hits just keep on coming.
“But you didn’t think he was seriously going to go through with it, did you?”
Trey shrugged. “I didn’t know what he was thinking.”
Jason did everything he could do to keep his voice from waning. Never let them see you sweat. He strode to the jury railing. “You and Maples knew what Pike had been offered, true?”
“I didn’t tell Colleen about it.”
“But you knew.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You were interviewed twice by the sheriff’s office, and you never mentioned that Pike told you he was offered a deal to kill Dr. Waters.”
“They never asked,” Cowan said.
“That’s quite an omission, don’t you think?”
“Objection,” Shay said. “Argumentative.”
“Sustained,” Judge Conrad said.
Jason knew he shouldn’t sit down on a sustained objection, but he couldn’t think of anything else to ask. “Nothing further.”
73
Jason wanted a drink.
After Judge Conrad dismissed the jury, he told Jana he’d be by to see her in an hour. Then he walked a straight line out of the courtroom, walking past Izzy and Harry without a word. As he was about to get on the elevator, he felt a hand grab his arm. He turned and saw Beverly Thacker looking at him with a proud smile. “I remembered,” she said.
Jason blinked his eyes and tried to focus. He was exhausted from the whipping he’d just received courtesy of Shay Lankford. All he wanted was a drink.
“Remembered what?” he asked.
“I told you I saw Dr. Waters with another woman, but I couldn’t place who it was.”
Jason snapped his fingers as he recalled their initial encounter at the hospital. “The woman you saw with him in his office.”
“Right. I couldn’t think of who it was, and then I saw that man at the courthouse today. You know . . . the car dealer. I got here early and was coming up the stairs when he was leaving.”
“Jackson Burns?”
She slapped her hands together. “Yes, that’s him. He used to do a lot of commercials with his entire family.”
Jason felt a tiny tickle crawl up his arms like a spider. “His family?”
Bev nodded furiously. “That’s how I recognized the woman messing around with Dr. Waters in his office. It was the car dealer’s wife.”
The closest watering hole, as luck would have it, was the Brick. Jason grabbed a booth in the back, still reeling from the disaster of his cross examination of Trey Cowan and the revelation that Bev Thacker had just made.
Braxton was screwing around with Shandra Burns . . .
When the waitress came his way, he said, “I want the strongest IPA you have.”
“How about Snake Handler made by Good People?”
“Fine.”
She brought it to him, and he smelled the glass.
Then he closed his eyes, thinking again of the Cowan cross. How could I have been so stupid? I opened the door, and he closed it in my face.
Jason knew he couldn’t leave his exchange with Cowan as the last thing the jury heard, but he was out of options.
Jason saw a man sit down at the bar, and he shook his head.
Like clockwork, he thought, watching Trey Cowan take a sip of a beer that had already been poured for him.
Without conscious thought, Jason walked away from the booth and approached Cowan. He took a seat next to him and nodded at Teresa Roe, who looked at him with wide eyes.