Out of Control

by Arline Chase

A woman, on trial for shooting her live-in lover, must face him in court where he testifies against her.

ISBN 1-59431-881-6 Romance, Mystery, court, legal, contemporary

CHAPTER 1 “I solemnly affirm that I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” I swore, and prepared to lie my head off. I lowered my right hand, took a seat on the witness stand, and stated my name, “Iris Baker.”

The charge was attempted murder and I was facing maybe twenty years in prison. Not exactly the best day of my life. My lawyer, Donna Watson, a young, blonde with hardly any trial experience, is court appointed.

At first I wasn’t too happy to have a white lawyer, especially a white woman lawyer who looked like she ought to be in high school.

We couldn’t have been more different. Even when I was in high school, I didn’t look like a kid. “I am black and I am beautiful,” as the Bible says. I was fourteen before I heard that phrase or spent much time in church. As a young child I had been taught to trust no one and to hate all whites, but I thought I’d gotten over my prejudice years ago. Some part of it must have still been there, because I had hated Donna on sight. She looked so clueless. Over the past few weeks, I had overcome that and learned that clueless was just the way she looked, now how she was. I tried to trust her. I knew she was trying to help me, even though mine is a pretty hopeless case.

“Yes, I shot Paco Valerian, but it didn’t exactly happen the way he told it when he was up here on the stand.” Paco had testified that I had pointed the gun right at him and shot him, but Donna’d had his number when she cross-examined him. He had sworn he was sure, though. He knew it was me.

Remembered me standing over him with the gun in my hand, pointing it straight at him. My words sounded hollow in the almost-empty courtroom. Sunlight shone through the high-arched windows and slanted in rays across the wooden benches that curved like church pews. The judge looked half asleep.

Nobody seemed to care much that my whole life would be decided here today.

“You see, it was self-defense. I was fighting for my life,” I testified.

Vanessa Holt, Paco’s other girlfriend, stared at the floor. Visibly pregnant, she sat on the hard wooden bench behind the prosecutor’s table. Paco’s aunts and a couple of younger cousins crowded around her.

Besides Paco, the prosecutor, Mr. Harlan Wilson, had two assistants at his table, which was piled high with thick lawbooks and covered with piles of notes and file folders. Mr. Wilson has a crooked nose; someone at the jail told me it was a present from a jealous husband.

Donna says he has a soft spot for women lawyers and witnesses and hardly ever objects no matter what they say, but that doesn’t mean he takes it easy on the folks he cross-examines. I knew I couldn’t relax, just because he didn’t want to look like a bully in front of the jury. At about six foot four and roughly 250 pounds of muscle, Wilson was big enough to be mistaken for a bully anywhere, any time. I tried not to let him scare me, but my mouth was dry all the same.

Paco had chosen a sharp-looking suit and, as I gathered my courage, he rubbed his wrists and shot his shirt cuffs to hide the red marks left by the handcuffs they had removed before the jury was brought in. By the time the jury got there, he looked perfectly respectable.

The jury wouldn’t be told anything about his record or that he was currently an inmate in state prison. Paco leaned over to whisper something to Mr. Wilson, who wrote it down on a pad. Paco didn’t look at me, but I looked straight at him, just the way Donna had told me to. “If you don’t look at him the jury will think you look guilty,” she had warned. “You have to face him unafraid.”

Well, I was afraid. So looking at him eye-to-eye was a lie. But I faced him.