Brooke Milligan stares directly at Rob Jacobson as she says, “My friend Morgan was a virgin until he came into her life.”
There are times when a quiet courtroom can become suddenly and deafeningly loud. This is one of them.
I am looking at the jury as I get to my feet, knowing that no objection is going to change the fact that the word—“virgin”—has landed in their box as if it exploded there.
“Objection,” I say, trying to sound as if I’m lodging the most obvious objection in the world. “Hearsay.”
“Sustained,” Judge Horton says.
But it’s too late for him to do me any good, either, because Brooke Milligan hasn’t quite finished with her answer.
She turns to the judge then, looking fresh-faced and earnest and sincere almost to the extreme.
“It’s the truth, Your Honor, even though it’s not a pretty picture,” she says. “About Morgan having been a virgin.”
We understood you perfectly the first time.
Of course, she’s right about it not being a very pretty picture.
Unfortunately, especially for Morgan, just not the whole picture.
SEVENTY-NINE
KATHERINE WELSH FINISHES UP with Brooke Milligan by asking her about the last time she spoke with Morgan Carson.
“The day he killed her,” she says.
“Objection!”
“Sustained,” Judge Horton says. To Brooke he says, “It’s the jury’s job to acquit or convict, young lady. Not yours.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” she says.
“Please try not to let it happen again,” Horton says.
“What I was trying to say was, it was the afternoon before the murders,” she says. “And it was pretty important.”
Welsh asks, “Important in what way?”
“She told me that she was going to tell him that she no longer wanted to see him, that she was breaking it off,” Brooke says. “That her parents had just found out about their relationship, she didn’t exactly know how, and that her dad said that if Mr. Jacobson ever came near her again, he—Mr. Carson—would kill him.”
“Did she say anything else during that call?”
“She did,” Brooke Milligan says.
“Please share with the jury what else she told you, if you would.”
“Morgan said that she was more scared about what Mr. Jacobson might do than she was her father.”
Katherine Welsh pauses, as if waiting for my objection.
But I let this go, because now it’s go time for me.
Whether I like it or not.
“May I call you Brooke?” is my opening line.
“Please do.”
