Eventually, Cindy said: ‘Do you think she’ll be convicted?’
Stride hesitated. Saying nothing would have been better, but he couldn’t remain completely silent. ‘You can never tell with juries.’
That was true. Jurors were a strange lot. Impossible to read or predict, always able to surprise. Dan said that trial attorneys were storytellers for a jury of children, and the lawyer with the best bedtime story won.
Stride respected the difficulty of what jurors had to do. They were asked to set aside a lifetime of bias, but they were also human beings, filled with prejudice and empathy. They were asked to evaluate nothing but the evidence in front of them, and yet they had to share a courtroom day after day with the man or woman whose fate they held in their hands. You couldn’t vote guilty in a felony murder case if you didn’t believe that the person behind the table ten feet away was capable of a terrible crime.
The state didn’t have to establish a motive. The defendant didn’t need a reason to cause the death of another person. Even so, every investigator and every prosecutor knew that jurors craved the why.
Why did respected surgeon Janine Snow murder her husband, Jay Ferris?
Because she was living under the threat of Jay stealing away the only thing she cared about. Her career.
‘You never found that man,’ Cindy pointed out.
‘No.’ Stride knew who she meant. They’d been unable to identify the man who’d threatened her at Miller Hill Mall. He was a ghost. ‘Guppo saw a man matching his description at the marathon, but he wasn’t able to get close. The guy disappeared before Guppo got there. But we haven’t stopped looking for him.’
‘It’s been months,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t found him by now...’
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t want to argue with her. Arguing only ruined the perfect day. She felt the same way, because she squeezed his fingers with her small hand and then pulled his fist to her mouth and kissed it.
‘Sorry,’ Cindy said.
‘That’s okay.’
They sat, and the evening got darker, and the wind grew a little bite off the water. It was time to go inside, to go to bed. She got up first. By then, she was mostly a shadow. She leaned down over his deck chair, with her long hair falling across him, and she kissed his lips. A hard kiss. A Cindy kiss.
‘I’m glad we went to Alaska,’ she said.
‘Me too.’
‘Nobody can ever take that away from us.’
He thought that was a strange thing for her to say, but he let it go, because it was a beautiful summer night, full of love and life. You don’t question such things. Even so, something in her voice made him shiver and think of winter.
20
Juror #5.
That was Howard Marlowe’s identifying number. He stood along with thirteen other men and women — twelve jurors, two alternates — to swear their oaths to the court. With that, the trial began.
The judge, the Honorable Jeffrey R. Edblad, spoke directly to the jury, and Howard tried to concentrate on his words. Edblad had short gray hair, black glasses, and a rounded face. If he hadn’t been a lawyer and a judge, Howard figured he could have been a teacher. He was calm, and he spoke slowly and deliberately, like a father offering words of wisdom to a teenager about to take the car out for the first time. I’ll be fair, I’ll be gentle, but I’ll be firm.
Members of the jury, you will hear testimony from witnesses in this trial. It will be up to you to evaluate their credibility and decide how much weight to give what they say. I’m asking you to be patient and listen carefully to each witness and not to come to any conclusions until you have heard all of the evidence.
Howard felt restless. It was hard to come down from the adrenaline high of being here. His eyes flicked around the courtroom, which was smaller than he expected. He and his fellow jurors were seated in blue cushioned chairs inside the jury box. The two counsel tables were placed side by side, barely six feet away from them. He thought it strange to see the prosecutor and defense attorney seated next to each other, like colleagues rather than adversaries. Judge Edblad’s platform, inside a wooden enclosure at the front of the courtroom, was only slightly elevated. There were tables and computers for the clerk and court reporter. Everyone was close together.
The room was narrow but very tall, with twenty-five-foot walls broken up by dark wood panels and white stone blocks. The chambered ceiling featured sculpted trim painted in gold and green. One set of double-wide doors led in and out to the marble hallway of the courthouse. Behind the counsel tables, a few rows of spectator benches were completely filled by the media.
You should rely on your own judgment and common sense to evaluate the testimony of each witness. You will need to decide for yourself whether they are sincere, whether you believe them, whether what they say is reasonable or unreasonable.
His fellow jurors looked as ordinary as he did. Eight women. Six men. Twelve of them white, plus one black man and one black woman. The youngest juror couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. The oldest, a woman in a blue dress with her hands in her lap, was at least seventy. Howard was seated at the end of the front row, closest to the counsel tables. The lone black woman, who was in her mid-thirties and wore a burgundy pants suit, sat next to him. She had a pleasant smile.
While this trial is going on, there are things you shouldn’t do. Remember, you aren’t investigators or detectives, so you shouldn’t go looking for information about this case. Your family and friends are likely to be curious about what you’re doing, but you should not discuss the case with anyone else. You shouldn’t read articles about it in the newspaper or online or watch news reports.
Janine Snow was directly in front of him.
She was seated at the end of the counsel table beside her attorney, Archibald Gale. If she’d reached out her hand, if Howard had reached out his hand, they could have touched. She wore a light blue suit with a rose blouse underneath. Styled blond hair, each strand in place. An expressionless, enigmatic face. He could see her blue eyes as she watched the judge. She kept her hands folded primly in front of her. He was close enough to her that he could see the small birth mark near her mouth and the pale pink shade of her lipstick. As beautiful as she was, she wasn’t completely ageless. He could see tiny creases in her skin, hiding discreetly under her makeup.
He knew he was staring and that he should drag his eyes away. She must have felt him studying her, because her head swiveled slightly, and their eyes met. It felt to him just as it had in the mall that day. There was something intimate and extremely erotic about it. Her eyes didn’t smile or beg him for mercy; she simply answered his own stare, human to human, woman to man. He looked down at his lap, embarrassed.
He hadn’t lied in the juror interviews. Not really. He’d acknowledged that he was aware of the case, but that was true of anyone in Duluth. No, he hadn’t formed a conclusion about Dr. Snow’s guilt or innocence, and that was true. For everything he’d read about the murder, and for all the time he’d tried to divine the truth in pictures of her face, he really had no idea if she killed her husband. He was an ordinary man with no connection to anyone involved in the crime. The perfect juror.
‘Mr. Erickson,’ Judge Edblad said, ‘do you wish to make your opening statement?’
‘Thank you, your honor,’ Dan Erickson said, standing up.