Free The Guilty by Gabriel Boutros Page A

the shifty con artist had even on him.
    As for Nancy Morin, she waited for the verdict with Brenton and the others on his team in the Crown’s offices. That was just as well, Bratt decided, since he was in no mood for playing verbal footsy with her just then. 
    As he slowly shuffled from floor to floor, a Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand, he did his best to avoid crossing paths with any of his colleagues or professional rivals who might have been at court. He dreaded the idea of idle chitchat with his fellow attorneys, or worse, having to talk about his family life. Today he preferred keeping his own company and observing everyone else from the distance that he felt s eparated him from the world.  
    A s time dragged itself forward he sat down and watched the constant movement of the volume lawyers, those whose careers were spent fast-tracking most of the thousands of cases that crowded the court’s dockets each year. They rushed with stacks of case-files under their arms, running from a hastily-prepared trial to an arraignment, to a preliminary inquiry or two, all in the same morning.
    He watched a pair of teen-age girls, hardly older than Jeannie, chasing down the corridor after their infants. They were probably waiting for word of whether their boyfriends had gotten bail, or had copped pleas to avoid jail time, or had somehow managed to get themselves acquitted, on those rare occasions when their Legal Aid lawyers had bothered to go through with trials.
    Watching these people, the lifeblood of the courthouse being pumped back and forth through its corridors, he felt nothing, neither common bond nor dislike. There was only an ever-growing wall going up around him.
    At 12:30 p.m. the jurors were brought their lunches in the jury room, and their deliberations were suspended until two. He was free to return to his office if he wanted to, maybe do some paper work or swap war stories with John or J.P. for a while.
    He sat on a bench at the end of a courthouse corridor and tried to muster up the will to go back to his office. But human contact held very little attraction for him just then. He sat alone in his corner and spoke to nobody until the lunch break was over.
     
    A few minutes before 8:00 that evening the jurors came back with a verdict acquitting Cooper Hall on all the fraud and forged document charges. Brenton’s face had fallen at the verdict, convinced as he always was that right had been on his side. Nancy looked toward Bratt and gave a little shrug, as if to say que sera, sera . They had other things on their minds, after all.
    As for Hall, he was nearly overwhelmed with relief, and he burst into tears of gratitude. He ran up to his lawyer and threw his arms around his neck, letting out little woo -hoos of joy between his sobs.
    Bratt stood unmoved while his client hugged him. He had no feelings of his own about what had just happened. He had won a complicated and torturously long trial, yet he felt no sense of accomplishment. Neither feelings of relief nor joy had washed over him at the verdict, wh ich he had barely listened to.
    His thoughts had been on Jeannie, and now they were tinged with bitterness. With her simple act of rebellion she had managed to rob him of one of the purest pleasures of his profession: the feeling of anticipation before a verdict is read out, followed by the exultation of victory.
    Now the verdict held little meaning for him, and he had Jeannie to thank for that. This time she hadn’t even needed to be in the same room: she still managed to bring him down from what should have been the high point of his day.

The taxi ride home seemed too short. His workweek was over, but he wasn’t ready to go back to his empty apartment. He had no place else to go, though, and for once, he regretted not having asked Kalouderis which bar he would be closing that night. 
    He didn’t bother turning on the lights as he entered his home; he knew his way around well enough, and the dark certainly