Hit List

I’d better get back to my room.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, what if somebody calls?”
    “Did you give anybody the number?”
    “No. I guess I could stay, couldn’t I? Do you want me to stay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’d like to, because this one night is all we’re going to have. You know that, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “We read the verdict and I turn into a pumpkin.”
    “Some pumpkin.”
    “Well, a legal secretary and a faithful wife. I never did anything like this before. I’m not saying I’ll never do it again.”
    “You’ll probably do it again in about twenty minutes.”
    “I mean after tonight, silly. With the right person and the right circumstances and the right provocation at home it might happen again. But maybe not.”
    “Maybe if you get picked for another jury sometime.”
    “Maybe. But for you and me it’s ships passing in the night. I think that’s the way it’s got to be.”
    “I think you’re right.”
    “And you know something? Otherwise we’d wear it out. I was even thinking we could stretch the deliberations so that we got to stay here a second night. But a second night wouldn’t be the same, would it?”
    “Not to mention the fact that the other jurors would kill us,” he said.
    “You don’t think any of them are doing the same thing we are?”
    “Well, I’ve got my suspicions about two of them.”
    “Really?”
    “Bittner and Chin,” he said. “A match made in heaven.”
    “Oh, you,” she said. “I thought you were serious. What a bad boy you are. I think you’ll have to be punished. Hey, what have we here? You really are a bad boy, aren’t you? I thought I was going to have to wait twenty minutes.”
    “It’s remarkable what a night’s sleep can do,” Keller said. “When I woke up this morning it seemed crystal clear to me that Huberman did everything the prosecution says he did. I don’t think it matters whether it’s the same VCR throughout. The man’s charged with selling a stolen VCR to a police officer, and they did a good job of proving it. I think the VCR he sold to Mapes is the same one that’s on the evidence table now, because a property clerk might borrow a camcorder, which is something you would use once for a special event, but who borrows a VCR and brings it back the next day?”
    “Everybody’s got a VCR,” someone said.
    “Exactly.”
    He went on, dismissing the defense’s arguments one by one. Heads all around the table were nodding in agreement.It really was remarkable what a night’s sleep would do, he thought, even though he hadn’t managed more than an hour here and an hour there. It was just as well, he thought, that he was never going to see the woman again. Another such night might put him in the hospital.
    “Well,” Milton Simmons said, “I get the feeling our overnight stay cleared things up for everybody. Unless Ms. Dantone’s still harboring some doubts.”
    “I guess I’ve known all along the man’s guilty,” Gloria said, “but I wanted to be sure I was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.”
    “And?”
    “I woke up with better perspective,” she said, “just like everybody else. And, if I had even a trace of doubt, Mr. Keller cleared it up for me.”
    “We could share a taxi,” Gloria said, “but let’s not.”
    “All right.”
    “It was a shipboard romance, and you have to know it’s over the minute the boat docks. Of course instead of the Love Boat we had the Days Inn.”
    “It used to be a Ramada.”
    “Well, there you are. I’ll think of you whenever I have Vietnamese food, but I’ll be staying away from Vietnamese restaurants for a while. And if we’re ever on the same jury again—“
    “Hey, you never know.”
    She hailed a cab. He watched it pull away, then caught one of his own.
    There were four messages on his machine, all from the same person. He called back, and Dot picked up the phone and said, “Where were you?”
    “Sequestered,” he said, and explained.
    “So you went to court yesterday morning, and they kept you overnight at a hotel near the airport. Why the airport?”
    “No idea.”
    “You couldn’t agree on a verdict so they locked you up. Then you agreed and they let you go home. There’s a lesson there.”
    “I know.”
    “But they didn’t lock you up for the weekend, did they?”
    “No.”
    “You went down to Baltimore.”
    “Right after court adjourned Friday.”
    “And came back Sunday.”
    “Right.”
    “And called me, and we had a