wasn’t going to help his situation, but nothing else seemed appropriate in the face of watching Langley’s unfathomable luck claim another victim.
North banged the top of the witness stand with his fist and glared into the distance. Unsure whether he was waiting for a response, my gaze went to the jurors who filed out of the jury room, into the gallery, and through the double doors at the back of the courtroom.
“You know, Corporal, we’re in recess. You don’t have to sit here if you need to report to your superiors.” I widened my eyes and hoped he’d take the hint. All I wanted to do was archive my notes and escape to the kitchen to meet Ms. Freddie. People didn’t usually notice me in my little nook—a fact I enjoyed—and I hated how his lingering presence highlighted my position, not an ideal scenario with Langley just a few yards away.
“Yeah, you’re right.” North gave a resigned huff. He gripped his campaign hat and stood. Then he stuck the powdered sugar inside the corresponding evidence envelope and handed the bundle to me with his hand still inside. “Your clerk forgot to collect these.”
I shrugged. This wasn’t the first time Maggie had left items unattended during a recess. I accepted the moot evidence by wrapping my hands around the length of the envelope, where the white evidence tape concealed the left side. Heat tickled my palm as I clasped the package. When North removed his hand, the warmth disappeared.
“That’s funny,” I mumbled as I set the materials on Maggie’s desk, which was catty-corner to mine.
“What’s funny?” Corporal North paused while stepping down from the witness stand.
“I thought I felt your hand through the envelope, but that’s impossible…isn’t it?”
“Not unless…” He rotated toward me at a slow burn, as if realizing something for the first time, “…there’s a hole. Try it again.”
He set down his hat and reclaimed his seat so we could reenact our exchange. His hand inside, my hand outside. We lingered mid-clench.
“Do you feel something, or are we playing the world’s weirdest game of handsies?” He relaxed his jaw into a dopey grin that almost made me forget he was a witness.
Almost.
I lowered my gaze and let a bushel of curls conceal my embarrassment over happily groping a state trooper’s hand. I moved to slide away. But, as I did so, my palm rubbed against something scratchy. A flash of heat and…nothing.
“There it is again,” I whispered. “Hold still.”
I grabbed a pen from the desk with my unoccupied hand and placed a dot on the envelope under the area of my palm, where I felt the flash.
When I disengaged from the package, I poked at the marked target with my fingernail. It was a small flap of white tape concealing a jagged hole the length and width of a large paper clip, through which protruded North’s flesh.
“What the…” I rubbed my thumb across his skin through the slit. “Did you do this when you opened the evidence, or has this been there the whole time?”
“What? No.” North took his hand out of the envelope. “No way. I only made one rip—right along the blue edge near my signature.”
“Who do you think—”
“I don’t know.” He grabbed the envelope and held the hidden flap up to the light. “But there are several layers of tape here…and it’s not all from the lab.”
He angled the envelope for my inspection. Sure enough. Strips of clear packing tape were visible over the lab’s white masking tape, as if someone had opened and resealed the envelope a second time.
“Should I call the judge?” I turned to make sure our antics hadn’t caught the attention of the attorneys…and Langley.
“I’d rather talk to the chemist first,” he said. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions. This could be from the audit. Do you know if Phyllis Dodd is still around? I thought I saw her a few moments ago.”
“She left with Grace, the bailiff. They were headed to chambers.”
“You’ve made my day.” He handed the envelope back to me with a twinkle in his eyes. “Thanks for playing handsies with me. I owe you one.”
Despite my reluctance to succumb to his flirtation, I watched him leave the courtroom. Tall as a Redwood and just as sturdy, his body gave the navy-blue and gold Delaware State Police uniform superhero dimensions. But, as he sauntered across the well toward the gallery, I noticed he stopped by the defendant’s table and glared. The corporal attempted to mask the eye contact from the rest of the room as he donned his hat, but the unspoken interaction was unmistakable.
“He’s quite the barnyard stud, ain’t he?” Maggie stepped into place behind her desk, having finished gathering paperwork from the attorneys, and joined me in admiring Corporal North’s rear view.
I faced her and dropped the suspicious evidence envelope on her desk. “He thinks he may have found tampering on the evidence packaging.”
“Well, he should have said something to Mr. Stevenson.” Maggie cocked her hip and placed a hand on her waist. “He better not try to blame this on the clerks in the Prothonotary’s Office. We didn’t have anything to do with it. You court reporters and bailiffs are the ones who keep asking to rifle through the evidence closet every five minutes.”
“Whoa, Maggs. Cool it. He’s not interested in throwing around blame. He wants to hear what the chemist has to say before….” I don’t know why I bothered trying to talk to Maggie. If it didn’t involve a man fawning over her, she wasn’t interested.
“Well, whatever. As long as he leaves my name out of it.” She snatched the case file and evidence from her desk and stormed out of the courtroom, with Mr. Stevenson in tow.
I shook off her remarks and hunched over my equipment to do a final save when a sinister voice, an edgy vocal fry reminiscent of the Kardashians, drew my attention.
“What up, Sooty? Been swimming lately?” Langley’s clownish orange hair and ruddy skin gave the already contemptible statement an eerie bite. She was wearing black combat boots with a long-sleeved jean jacket over a black Lycra dress, whose hem clung above her knees. When she’d gotten my attention, she leaned back in the chair beside her attorney.
“Watch it, Langley. You’d have my head if I walked into your workplace and called you a Mick or a Paddy.” I should have ignored her, but I was determined to stand my ground. Trash was the only language Langley spoke.
“You know each other?” Harriston was pouring himself a drink from the water pitcher residing on counsel’s table.
“Oh, yes.” Langley raked her ruby red talons across the wood surface.
The low-pitched scraping sound sent prickles along the scars on my shoulders. The ones I’d received when I struggled under the weight of the mascot’s head harness.
“We were on the Pep Squad together our senior year,” Langley crooned. “She was our sacrificial lamb—I mean, mascot, Sooty the Seabird.”
“That’s Scrappy the Seabird. And boy, you sure made me feel
