Farnsworth snapped the calendar shut. “We will start with opening statements on Monday. I hear motions every day at seven thirty and trial starts at eight. A week from next Monday, we'll recess at one thirty so that I can attend a monthly district conference. A week from Tuesday, I want to see your draft jury instructions. I'll give you my draft instructions on Wednesday, and you submit your comments on Thursday. I'll instruct the jury the following Monday.”
Click, click, click. Seeley was learning something new about women. They were better than any of the men he knew at bending their lives to a single object: Ellen Farnsworth, to efficiency; Lily Warren, to her research; and Judy Pearsall, to proving that her husband had not killed himself.
“Are there any questions?”
Seeley said, “We have no problem with a two-week trial, or with you picking the jury. But the two are connected. It's going to be hard to winnow out witnesses, not knowing what the jury looks like, and if we have no control over that-”
“An interesting point, Counselor. What are you suggesting?”
“That we give you our final witness list Monday morning at seven thirty.”
“Do you have any problem with that, Ms. Fischler?”
“I don't know, Your Honor.” The question flustered her. “I hadn't discussed this possibility with Mr. Thorpe.”
“Why do you need Mr. Thorpe? Your client is sitting right next to you.”
Dusollier shot her a puzzled look.
“It will be fine, Your Honor,” Fischler said. “What Mr. Seeley proposes will be fine.”
Farnsworth rose and gave them an amused but remarkably warm smile. “I will see you all Friday morning.”
When they were in the brightly lit hallway outside the maze of corridors, Barnum gripped Seeley's arm, furious. Seeley pulled away as they went into the elevator. Palmieri came in behind them and said, “That was nice footwork in there.”
Seeley said, “I don't like being put in tight corners.”
“I'm sorry about the papers. I'll take care of it.”
The elevator doors opened to the lobby. “Have them on the clerk's desk no later than one.”
Barnum fumed silently until they were past the security station and out on the plaza. “Get clear on this,” Barnum said. “I make the important litigation decisions-and the order of witnesses is an important decision.”
“I've decided to lead off with Cordier, the South African. I'm putting Steinhardt on fourth, after Chaikovsky and Kaplan.”
“Bob Pearsall was thinking that, too, but he had the good sense to come to me first. I don't care how good your track record is, I get to make that call.”
Seeley wondered what Pearsall's reasons had been for moving Steinhardt. It was the scientist's arrogance that initially concerned Seeley, but since the lunch with Lily, he was also worried that there might be gaps that Steinhardt's well-buffed lab notebooks could not explain. He thought of the words in Pearsall's sketchbook: What else is A. S. hiding? What else. What had Pearsall already discovered when he wrote that, and what had he not yet discovered?
“Look, Ed, let's go over the list tomorrow and decide on which witnesses we can cut.”
“Steinhardt comes back from Paris Sunday afternoon. If he hears you moved him, he'll go straight to Joel.”
From what Seeley could see, Barnum was not a very good lawyer, but behind the bullying was a middle-aged man with few career prospects who was afraid of his boss. He was doing the best he could to keep his job, and all that he could see was Michael Seeley blocking his way.
“Joel Warshaw's not a problem. He'd fire Steinhardt if he thought that's what it would take to win the case.”
This failed to console Barnum.
Seeley said, “Call me tomorrow and we'll talk.”
“I got a call from Herb Phan this morning.” The busy San Mateo police lieutenant had found the time to call the former county prosecutor. Barnum drew close and Seeley again smelled the peppermint. “Herb likes to focus on his investigations, and he doesn't like lawyers looking over his shoulder. You could take a lesson in concentration from him. Forget the widow. Let's win this case.”
Barnum left, giving Seeley his first unhurried moment of the day. With jury selection on Friday, Steinhardt descending from Paris, Thorpe from Akron, and Cordier from New York-he again reminded himself to return Cordier's call-the quiet would be his last for the next two weeks.
Seeley surveyed the patchwork that surrounded the courthouse: parking lots, luncheonettes, a tire store, low-rise apartment and office buildings. Unlike the high-rise canyons of the business district two miles away and the grand, implausible architecture of the Civic Center next door, the jumble reminded him of nothing so much as the desolate heart of Buffalo's once-thriving downtown. The thought of his hometown pulled at Seeley as it did whenever he was away from it, perhaps because, as dark as the memories were, it was the one place where he felt entirely safe. He did not feel safe in San Francisco.
TEN
Click, click, click.
Jury selection moved forward like tumblers falling in a lock, Judge Farnsworth leaving no question about her complete control of the courtroom. On the benches in the first two rows of the gallery, the thirty or so prospective jurors talked quietly among themselves, waiting while the judge ruled on motions in other cases and on a last-minute evidentiary motion from Fischler. Thorpe was still absent, and the judge didn't ask why.
After she disposed of Fischler's motion, Farnsworth turned to Seeley. “Aren't you forgetting something, Counselor?”
The corrected pro hac papers had been filed, but the judge hadn't yet acted on them, and Seeley didn't enjoy being a supplicant. With a teasing smile, Farnsworth said, “Your motion for admission is granted.”
At eight, the judge's clerk, a radiant black woman wearing gold hoop earrings, looked out to the gallery and read a name, Floyd Ramsey, from the paper in her hand, directing the prospective juror to the seat in the jury box closest to the judge. As he took his place in the front row, Farnsworth greeted him. “Good morning, Mr. Ramsey.” She and the clerk continued on this way until they had filled all fourteen seats in the two rows of the jury box.
In a federal civil trial, a jury of as few as six can render a verdict, but the verdict must be unanimous. Palmieri had told Seeley that Farnsworth was going to impanel eight jurors, with the expectation that illness or an unexpected obligation over the course of the two-week trial might drop the number to seven or even six. This meant that, with each side entitled to three peremptory challenges, the judge was going to be strict in ruling on challenges to disqualify a juror for cause.
Surveying the courtroom as he waited for the first panel of jurors to take their seats, Seeley found himself thinking of m words: magisterial, medieval, murky. There were no windows in the courtroom, and the shadowy corners and dull reflections off the dark wood paneling made it easy to imagine a royal court or ecclesiastical hall from another century. The two heavy oak counsel tables were large enough for a banquet, and the witness box and desks for the clerk and the court reporter, a sharp stick of a woman with carrot-orange hair, clung like dependencies from the judge's bench. Only the polished granite behind the judge was amply lit, casting a halo around her robes.
The wooden gate separating the well of the courtroom from the gallery squeaked softly when someone passed through it, and Seeley and Palmieri turned when Thorpe came in. Everyone in the courtroom, even the judge, watched as the old lawyer shuffled to counsel's table, but Thorpe gave no sign that he was aware of the attention. Seeley figured his adversary to be in his late seventies, but the way his narrow shoulders locked into a shrug when he put his briefcase down and waited for a nod from Farnsworth to introduce himself had less to do with age, or even fatigue, Seeley thought, than with melancholy. His suit was well pressed, the white shirt starched; a silk tie was neatly knotted beneath a bloodhound's jowls. But sadness clung to him like a garment.