‘No, it’s not that. Normally I probably wouldn’t remember. It’s just that’s the day I picked up my kids. They’d been traveling in Europe with their mother -we’re divorced – and I picked them up at the crack of dawn at the airport.’
‘And they didn’t mention anything, seeing anything?’
‘I don’t know how they could. They’d slept on the plane and were ready to go, so we just stopped in to have a bite and drop their luggage. Then we took off, exploring the city. It was a great day really, they’re good kids.’
‘I’m sure. But you saw nothing?’
‘No, sorry. What did she do, this attractive Oriental woman?’
‘She’s being charged with killing someone, although the case is weak. If anyone saw her at home during that day, we can make a case that there is no case.’
‘I’ll talk to the boys, double-check, but I really doubt it. Who’d she kill, by the way?’
Freeman kept himself in check. This was the natural question. ‘She didn’t kill anyone, Mr Strauss.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. Thanks for the call.’
‘Sure.’
Freeman sat back with his hands crossed behind his head. So the alibi wouldn’t hold up. It was no great surprise.
27
The grand jury convened at ten A.M., Thursday, July 2, 1992. It was Hardy’s first appearance there. He wore a brand-new dark suit with nearly-invisible maroon pinstripes, a maroon silk tie, black shoes. When Pullios saw him outside the grand-jury room door, she whistled, looked him up and down. ‘You’ll do.’
Hardy thought she didn’t look so bad herself in a tailored red suit of conservative cut. Instead of a briefcase, she carried a black sling purse.
‘No notes?’
She tapped her temple. ‘Right here.’
At her knock, the door was opened by a uniformed policeman. This was light years from the bustling informality of one of the Municipal or Superior Court courtrooms.
The grand jury was a deck so heavily stacked in favor of the prosecution that Hardy thought a case could be made against its constitutionality. The fact that no one had brought such an appeal was probably a reflection of the reality that nobody representing the accused was allowed in the room. He thought the prosecution winning on an indictment before the grand jury was kind of like a Buick winning the Buick Economy Run.
Hardy sat next to Pullios at the prosecution desk and studied the faces of the twenty jurors arranged in three ascending rows behind long tables.
He couldn’t remember ever having seen such a balanced jury of twelve. These twenty were comprised of ten men and ten women. Three of them – two women and a man – were probably over sixty. Four more – two and two- were, he guessed, under twenty-five. There were six blacks, two Orientals, he thought two Hispanics. Most were decently dressed – sports coats and a few ties for the men, dresses or skirts for the women. But one of the white guys looked like a biker – short sleeves, tattoos on his forearms, long unkempt hair. One woman was knitting. Three people were reading paperbacks and one of the young women appeared to be reading a comic book.
The room wasn’t large. It smelled like coffee. At what would have been the defense table – if there had been one- was a large box full of donuts and sweet rolls that about half the jurors had dipped into.
The grand jury wasn’t chosen like a regular jury – if a trial jury was a time commitment and minor inconvenience for the average taxpayer, selection to the grand jury was more like a vocation. You sat one day a week for six months, essentially cloistered, and the only kinds of crimes you discussed were felonies. And if you mentioned anything about the proceedings outside of this room, you were committing a felony yourself. There were stories -impossible to verify – that D.A.s had come in and said, ‘Off the record, I don’t believe our eyewitness either. We’ve got no credible evidence at this time. But I’ve been doing homicides now for twenty years and I tell you unequivocally that John Doe, on the afternoon of whatever it is, did kill four Jane Does. Now we’ve got to get this guy off the street before he kills someone else. And he will, ladies and gentlemen, he will. You can count on it. I will stake my reputation and career upon a conviction, but we’ve got to get this man indicted and behind bars and we’ve got to do it now.’ Of course they were only stories. Whatever, the grand jury was a cornerstone of the criminal system, and it behooved prosecutors to take it seriously, which Elizabeth did, in spite of her ‘ham sandwich’ rhetoric. She stood up, greeted the jurors pleasantly and began her attack.
‘Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this morning the people of the State of California present the most serious charge in the matter of the capital murder of Owen Nash. You may have read in the newspapers something about this case, and specifically you may be aware that the defendant, May Shintaka, has already been scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court in this jurisdiction. However, the delay proposed by the Municipal Court is, in the opinion of the district attorney, terribly excessive. No doubt many of you are aware of the legal axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. It is the contention of the people in this instance that the proposed delay would in fact constitute a denial of justice for this most heinous crime – the crime of cold-blooded, premeditated murder for financial gain, a crime that calls for the death penalty in the State of California.’
Pullios paused and walked stone-faced back toward Hardy, to where he sat at the table. She picked up a glass of water, took a small sip. Her eyes were bright – she was flying. Immediately she was back to business. Hardy couldn’t help but admire the show.
‘So in a sense,’ she said, ‘the indictment the people seek today is simply an administrative strategem to move the trial for this crime to Superior Court, where it can be heard in a timely fashion. But in a greater sense, an indictment before this body will reinforce the state’s contention that, based on real and true evidence, there is indeed just cause for issuance of a warrant for the arrest of May Shintaka and a compelling need for a fair and speedy trial in pursuance of the interests of the people of this state.’
Hardy thought it was getting a little thick, but he also realized that Elizabeth Pullios, looking like she did and fired up as she was, could probably read the telephone book to these people and keep their attention. She went on to describe the witnesses she would calclass="underline" Glitsky, Strout, the cab driver, the ballistics expert, the two guards from the Marina, a handwriting analyst. Then she got to Celine Nash. Hardy remembered the other giant lapse in evidentiary rules before the grand jury – hearsay was technically inadmissible, but there was no judge or defense lawyer there to keep it out.
How could Celine not have mentioned to him yesterday that she was testifying today? Well, they hadn’t had much time to get to it before she went off on him. It could have been that the initial reason she called him was nerves over this appearance today, testifying against Shinn. She’d even said something about it.
Hardy found himself unhappy in a hurry, wishing he’d reviewed the witness list before they’d come down here -he still did have a lot to learn. Pullios had been doing her homework while Hardy pursued his own agenda. They were going to nail May Shinn six ways from Sunday.
Then, at lunch, Pullios told him she wanted him to take Celine Nash.
‘No way, Elizabeth. She’s mad at me.’ He explained and she thought it over for a moment, then overruled him. ‘No, you’re better. Just get her confidence back.’
‘You’ve already got her confidence.’
‘No, I don’t. I’ve never met her personally, but Sergeant Glitsky tells me she’s stunning.’
‘I guess.’
Pullios shook her head. ‘Then it’s not a good match. The jurors will see something between us. It might even be there.’