There was another knock at the door. They were running out of time.
“Please. Please, Michael. You have to trust me.”
“Hannah.” Parekh turned to her, trying for patience. “I haven’t seen this evidence you’re talking about. I have no idea if it has any value or if you’re just plain making things up. I’m not going to risk my case by putting you . . . Look, we can discuss this tonight. You can lay it al out for me. We can take it to trial.”
“No,” Hannah said firmly. “That’s not an option. You know Pierce.
Give him time and he’l find a way to make it al go away.”
There was yet another knock on the door, this one louder. She had to push him. She had the strongest feeling that she had one chance to make things right. If she let this chance slip through her fingers everything could get much, much worse. She had to make Parekh listen to her. Maybe she’d been unfair about him, back in that conversation she’d had with Sean’s mother. Maybe he was running the Project for al the right reasons. But he was stil a human being with his own private motivations, and the Robert Parekh that she had observed was a man who loved to win, no matter the cost.
“Look, the evidence I have, I stole it from Jerome Pierce’s home.
An hour ago. When he gets out of here this evening and finds out that it’s gone, he’s going to move heaven and earth to find me.
There’s nothing he won’t do to stop this information from coming to light. If you let this chance go by, it wil not come again.”
Parekh looked appal ed. “Jesus Christ. You did what? You broke in?”
“When you took me onboard, you said you were taking me on because I was the kind of person who did things other people wouldn’t do. That I’d go the extra mile, think outside the box, whatever. Wel , now I’ve gone and done it. I’ve got the evidence you need to turn this case around and you’re too afraid to use it. I’m tel ing you. Let me do this and it’s al over. Let me do this and Michael goes free. If you don’t . . . wel , I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I know Pierce and Engle are awful y good at making problems go away. Do you want to win this thing, or don’t you?”
Parekh wavered just for a moment, but Hannah could see he was going to refuse her and her heart sank.
“Let her do it,” Dandridge said.
Parekh turned on him.
“Let her do it, Rob. I trust her. And it’s my case, after al . My life.”
There was yet another knock on the door, more insistent this time.
Parekh held her gaze for a long moment, then he threw his hands up.
“Why not? If nothing else, you’l have grounds for an appeal for incompetent counsel, right?” He spun away, thrust open the door, and before Hannah quite knew what was happening, he was back in the courtroom, asking the judge for permission to cal Pierce again, asking that Hannah be al owed to question him. It took some persuasion for the judge to agree. It helped that Jackson Engle seemed more bemused than concerned. He turned to look her over.
The judge was watching her too. Hannah took a breath, closed her hands into fists to stop them from shaking.
“I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing,” Parekh hissed at her as he returned to his seat.
Jerome Pierce took the stand. His pale eyes met hers and she had to shake off a feeling of impending doom. Christ, he was intimidating. Oh God, this was actual y going to happen. She’d talked herself into this situation. Now she had to deliver. It was harder even than she had imagined, standing alone in the middle of the courtroom with every eye on her. She wanted just one more quiet moment alone, to order her thoughts and strengthen her nerve, but there was no more time. It was now or never.
Before entering the courtroom Hannah had placed the evidence bag from the Sarah Fitzhugh file in Pierce’s garage inside another clear plastic bag, to protect any fingerprint evidence there might be.
She took that bag from her backpack and carried it across to Pierce, placing it in front of him.
“Sheriff Pierce, can you tel me what this is?” she said, her voice clear and loud and carrying across a suddenly hushed courtroom.
He looked at the evidence bag and back at her. He searched for words and found none.
Engle jumped to his feet. “Judge, this is a preliminary hearing, not a trial. This is not the time for the defense to try to enter new evidence.”
Hannah turned to Burrel . She made sure that she was very calm, very professional, and very clear when she responded. She also made sure that she pitched her voice loud enough that the journalists at the back could hear her. “I’d ask the court for a little leeway, Your Honor. I’m afraid we have come across evidence of a decade-long cover-up by the sheriff. The evidence already put before the court today in an effort to indict our client is a deliberate attempt to mislead you. I’m not trying to enter new evidence, just to demonstrate that the evidence already put before you is false.”