“Yeah,” I answered. “Why?”
“Just making sure. So when do you start trial?”
“We hand out questionnaires to the jury pool in a few days and voir dire starts next week.”
“That’s fast.”
“Yeah, I’ve been jammed before, but never like this.”
Just talking about it made my stomach hurt. After we hung up, I took a hot shower, got into bed, and watched rich housewives scream about one of them getting too drunk and another one hitting on someone’s husband. It made me feel better about not being rich…or married. I was asleep within minutes.
The jury questionnaire was forty-five pages long and we had over two hundred of them. I always grade each juror on a scale of one to five, with five being best, and I flag the answers that need follow-up. It’s a backbreaker of a process, but it really gets me on top of what I’ve got in that jury pool. I had a second copy made for Declan so he could review them all and make his own assessments. I spent the week going through each and every questionnaire, page by page, and sometimes more than once to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
It was a task that had me alternating between relief and misery. Mostly misery. There were some real gems-smart, well read, and solid. But there was a depressingly high number of defense groupies. Not that they directly admitted it. Their bias-and lack of candor-lay between the lines. A municipal bus driver who admitted in the first pages of the questionnaire that he watched every news program from five o’clock till ten o’clock every night, in later pages insisted he’d heard nothing about the case. He also said he knew he could be fair, but admitted he’d heard that Ian Powers had been framed and thought it was possible. Another potential juror turned out to have been under investigation for a string of arsons in Torrance; he said he wouldn’t hold the unfair suspicion against the prosecution. I told myself that I was being unduly critical, but it felt like for every solid juror, there were ten rejects.
I wanted to believe it would all change when the jury saw the evidence, but I knew better. You can’t make a jury buy logic. I fought to keep my spirits up in the days leading to the trial, but the truth was, my optimism was losing the battle against a growing dread.
Too soon, the day for voir dire arrived. I dressed in one of my “believe me” suits and left myself plenty of time to get to the office and do hair and makeup repair, as per my lessons from Toni. I’d gone back to hoofing it to and from the office. I needed the exercise, and the danger of being chased by reporters had lessened considerably, thanks to Terry’s penchant for giving daily interviews on the courthouse steps. The press now stuck close to the building, where they could be sure of getting their sound bites.
Even from two blocks away, I could see the antennae of the satellite trucks that now permanently surrounded the courthouse. The sight irritated me all over again. I’d wanted Judge Osterman to seal the transcripts of jury selection, so the jurors would feel safe enough to be candid, but he’d refused. “The right to a public trial means the whole trial.” The press wouldn’t physically be in the courtroom because there wasn’t room for them. But they’d be monitoring and reporting every word uttered in court-other than jurors’ names-in a separate room that was wired for sound.
Fortunately, I now had a key to the freight elevator, so I made it up to the eighteenth floor in blissful privacy. As I passed Eric’s office on the way to my own, I heard the television playing what sounded like a crowd at a rock concert. When I leaned in, I saw that Melia was watching the coverage. Curious, I stepped in to get a look. A move I immediately regretted.
The low wall that fronted the length of the courthouse building was now a shelf for vendors hawking everything from T-shirts to teacups, all emblazoned with faces-of me, of Terry, of Don, and of Ian. People were marching back and forth, carrying signs that read TEAM TERRY and TEAM RACHEL.
“What about Team Hayley and Team Brian?” I fumed.
Melia gave me a mournful look. “I know, it’s terrible.”
Not so terrible it made her turn the damn thing off, though.
I’d felt pretty well dressed in the navy suit with the thin silver pinstripes that I’d found on sale at Bloomingdale’s. Until I saw Declan. His was a darker navy that looked like it had been made for him. There’s just no substitute for bespoke.
Now that jurors would be walking the hallways, the judge had ordered the reporters to either stay in the sound-wired room or go outside. The only camera allowed inside was the one mounted on the wall above the jury, which would ensure that no photographs of the jurors would be taken. And it wouldn’t be activated until after jury selection was finished.
When we walked up the courtroom aisle, I saw that Russell was once again firmly ensconced on the defense side of the courtroom and Raynie was sitting in neutral territory, the back row of the middle section. As we set up at counsel table, I stole glances at the defense side. Terry was in a beige dress with a pleated skirt. No doubt trying for the soft, feminine touch. That would work until she opened her mouth. Don wore the standard dark suit. No fewer than six law clerks, and all wore more expensive suits than mine.
The lockup door opened and Ian sauntered out as though he were walking into an A-list party. He had a big smile and wave for girlfriend Sacha, and a smile and a nod for all his loyal acolytes, which included Russell. Five minutes later, the judge took the bench. He surveyed the courtroom with a frown and spoke to the bailiff, Deputy Jimmy Tragan. “I’ll need all family members to sit in the section on the far right, away from the jurors.”
The bailiff turned to face the gallery and gave them Judge Osterman’s edict. Raynie reluctantly moved to the designated area, but as far away from Russell as she could get. I took that as a good sign. Then again, I might just have been desperate for a positive omen.
With the family and friends safely cloistered, the jury commissioner’s emissary opened the door and our group of two hundred prospective jurors began to file in. I watched them fill the benches, looking for early signs of a bad attitude or an overly excited glance at Ian Powers. Not one nuance could be overlooked. Among this group were the twelve people who’d decide whether Brian and Hayley’s killer would be brought to justice.
62
“You’ve all been assigned numbers and that’s what we’ll use today instead of your names,” Judge Osterman said. “We do this to protect your privacy. My clerk, Tricia Monahan, will call out sixteen of you by your numbers, so please look at your number while she reads them. If she calls your number, kindly move up and take a seat in the jury box, starting with the upper-left corner as you face it. Trish?”
Tricia stood, pushed her glasses up her small freckled nose, and began. I pulled out their questionnaires as Tricia called the numbers. When I saw that the electronic engineer from Silicon Valley was in the first batch, I turned my back to the jury and hissed, “Damn it.”
As a general rule, engineers are good prosecution jurors. Smart, logical, and dispassionate, they see through defense games and have no problem convicting. This one in particular was even better because he had sat on a murder case before-and I would bet he’d been the foreman. He was perfect.
And he was toast. Each side got twenty peremptory challenges in this case-meaning challenges we could use without having to show actual bias or inability to serve. The trick in jury selection is in how and when you use these precious challenges.
So if my engineer had come up later in the draw, after the defense had used most of their peremptories, there was at least a chance they’d have to accept him over someone who looked even worse-like a retired cop. But now, with all twenty challenges at their disposal, they wouldn’t hesitate to boot him.