“It’s not appointment viewing or anything, but it’s kind of interesting…”
“Anyhow, I’d guess Hollywood nonsense is a fun distraction for her, not the sun in her universe. I think she’ll ride with us. We’ve also got the single mom with the violent history-”
“You want to keep her?”
“Absolutely. She’s cool and smart and she won’t buy anyone’s garbage. And I’m betting the defense doesn’t get who she is, so they’ll leave her on. Trust me on this one. What about that retired schoolteacher who taught English?”
“Not sure. I get a creepy vibe from him,” Declan said.
“As in pedophile creepy?”
“I don’t know.” Declan finished his sandwich and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin. “But whatever. Do pedophiles tend to convict?”
I almost spit my soda across the room. “You’re twisted, Declan. Yet another thing I like about you.”
Back in the courtroom, the afternoon session flew. I hammered away on the virtues of DNA and did my best to find something good in what looked like a relentlessly bad batch.
By four thirty the next day, I had at least seven jurors I needed to kick and only two peremptory challenges left. This was the true heart-pounder, when I had to make the choice between the lesser of the evils. There was the owner of a paycheck advance business (the kind who prey on the poor, charging twenty percent interest for a loan against forthcoming paychecks) who openly admitted he wanted to write a book about the trial; a left-wing blogger who called me a “functionary of the male-dominated establishment” (personally, I appreciated her point of view, but legally, she had to go-and did I mention she hated cops?); and the pièce de résistance: a waiter (aka out-of-work actor) who was very familiar with the work of the genius Russell Antonovich and his partner, the “brilliant Ian Powers.” The other four were equally nightmarish.
I asked for a five-minute break to take aim at our final round of challenges and huddled with Declan in a corner of the courtroom.
“I think that guy in the back row, the one whose mom is so sick, has got to go,” Declan said. “Did you see how pissed off he was when Terry got into her spiel about the innocent men wrongly convicted? I thought he was going to come out of his seat.”
“Number eighty-nine, yeah.” An anesthesiologist had botched a routine hip replacement operation that left the prospective juror’s mother a vegetable, albeit one who’d probably get to go home, where doctors opined she’d survive for many years. Because he’d signed a binding arbitration agreement, the most he could recover was $250,000-which he probably wouldn’t get, because his mother was elderly. I had an idea that whatever he got wouldn’t come close to covering the costs of in-home care. In a word, the issue of innocent people being mowed down by the machine was very real to him. I tried to find a bright side. “He’s got a bachelor’s degree. There’s a chance our evidence could get him to see past his own life. Besides, the paycheck loan guy looks way too impressed with Powers. He doesn’t care what’s true, he just wants a book deal.”
Declan shrugged. It was a choice between death by hanging or by poisoning. There weren’t many good options here. I booted paycheck loan guy and the “waiter” and prayed I was wrong about the rest. Like it or not, by five thirty we were done.
“Congratulations, we have our jury,” Judge Osterman said. “Ladies and gentlemen, would you please stand and raise your right hand.”
Exhausted, I watched as Judge Osterman swore them in, wondering if I’d already made the fatal mistake that would set a murderer free.
64
I called Bailey to tell her we had our jury. “And it ain’t pretty.” I’d been filling her in all along, giving her the highlights-or rather the lowlights-of each day’s proceedings. Bailey was still angry and incredulous about Terry’s opening salvo.
“Rampart Division? Has she lost her mind?” Bailey said nothing for a few moments. “So they’re definitely going for the conspiracy tack.”
“Oh yeah. Terry’s definitely going there, and she’s taking the jurors with her.” I’d told Bailey all about the alarmingly receptive audience Terry had found in our jury pool.
Though Terry had produced nothing to back up her conspiracy claim, the press had run with it as though proof were a foregone conclusion. “The only question,” one commentator said, “is whether the prosecution can overcome this incendiary defense. And on that score, most agree, all bets are off.”
It was, in large part, hype that was meant to make it a close race. I couldn’t afford to get down about it; opening statements would begin before we knew it. Personally, I never do lengthy openings. I prefer to promise less than I plan to deliver. It gives the unheralded evidence an added zing, and it keeps the defense from claiming we made promises we couldn’t keep. I knew the defense wouldn’t say much, if anything. They didn’t want to tip their hand.
Over the next few days Bailey and I put in the finishing touches. Our most important being the ordering of our witness list. I usually like to call a victim’s friend or family member first. It humanizes my victim-always a challenge in a murder case, since the victim can never appear, while the defendant, all cleaned up and pretty, is ever-present. And, if well coached, crying on cue. But I wouldn’t be able to do it this time. Not with Russell dead set against me and Raynie still ambivalent. The night before opening arguments, I was still unsure about who to put on first. Bailey read my thoughts.
“We could start with Mackenzie,” she said.
“But she’s awfully young. We don’t know how she’ll bear up. And I don’t know that I want to open our case by admitting our victims were extorting Russell. We’ll have to get there eventually, but I’d like to at least start strong, put this case on solid ground before I get into problem areas. How’s Raynie sounding?”
“I only really talk to her about scheduling, but from what I can tell, she’s still pretty wishy-washy.”
I’d never before been in the position of having the victim’s family at odds with us in a murder case. “Maybe once Raynie and Russell see it all put together, they’ll come around.”
Bailey gave me a skeptical look. I knew she was right, hard as it was to swallow. “Then I’ll start with the physical evidence.
“How about Dorian?” Bailey suggested.
It made sense to start with our criminalist. She collected nearly all of the evidence, so I’d need her testimony before I could call the fingerprint and blood analysts-plus, she was a strong witness. But this time, since I couldn’t call any friends or family for a while, I had a different plan of attack.
“Is Dr. Vendi good to go for tomorrow?”
“Yep. And I’ve got all her photos on disc.”
We don’t get to pick our coroners. It’s always luck of the draw, and this time, we’d lucked out. Dr. Graciela Vendi was one of those rare pathologists who did fantastic work and knew how to talk to a jury. Her testimony would bring home the brutality of the attacks on Hayley and Brian in vivid detail. The defense could blab all they wanted about unnamed dark forces. Here was reality-two young people hideously slaughtered on a lonely mountain. Hopefully it would sober the jury up, get their minds right.
Bailey added, “Your guy Declan checked out the discs, said they looked good. I have to say, I really like that kid.”
“Me too. But that’s a total accident. Vanderputz only put Declan on so he could suck up to his Hollywood contributors-”
“And spy for him.”
“Yeah. Didn’t quite work out the way Vanderputz planned.”
We both laughed. I raised a phantom toast in honor of my second chair.
With all the constant stress and worry about the crazy circus this case was turning into, I hadn’t been getting much more than four hours of sleep a night, and jury selection and trial preparation had left me feeling like I’d been through a meat grinder. All I wanted to do was put it behind me and go to sleep. I hoped that with a solid eight hours under my belt, I’d wake up feeling better about the twelve select citizens we’d wound up with-or at least be able to pretend I did.