“You may return to the jury room, get your things, and go home. Thank you for your service, and I'm sorry this has happened.”
“I'm so sorry,” she managed to whisper, then rose from the witness chair and left the courtroom. Her departure was a blow for the defense. She'd been rated highly during selection, and after two weeks of nonstop observation the jury experts on both sides were of the near-unanimous opinion that she was not sympathetic to the plaintiff. She had smoked for twenty-four years, without once trying to stop.
Her replacement was a wild card, feared by both sides but especially by the defense.
“Bring in juror number two, Nicholas Easter,” Harkin said to Willis, who was standing with the door open. As Easter was being called for, Gloria Lane and an assistant rolled a large TV/VCR to the center of the courtroom. The lawyers began chewing their pens, especially the defense.
Durwood Cable pretended to be preoccupied with other matters on the table, but the only question on his mind was, What has Fitch done now? Before the trial, Fitch directed everything; the composition of the defense team, the selection of expert witnesses, the hiring of jury consultants, the actual investigation of all prospective jurors. He handled the delicate communications with the client, Pynex, and he watched the plaintiff's lawyers like a hawk. But most of what Fitch did after the trial began was quite secretive. Cable didn't want to know. He took the high road and tried the case. Let Fitch play in the gutter and try to win it.
Easter sat in the witness chair and crossed his legs. If he was scared or nervous, he didn't show it. The Judge asked him about the mysterious man who'd been following him, and Easter gave specific times and places where he'd seen the man. And he explained in perfect detail what happened last Wednesday when he glanced across the courtroom and saw the same man sitting out there, on the third row.
He then described the security measures he'd taken in his apartment, and he took the videotape from Judge Harkin. He inserted it in the VCR, and the lawyers sat on the edge of their seats. He ran the tape, all nine and a half minutes of it, and when it stopped he sat again in the witness chair and confirmed the identity of the intruder-it was the same man who'd been following him, the same guy who'd shown up in court last Wednesday.
Fitch couldn't see the damned monitor through his hidden camera because bigfoot McAdoo or some other klutz had kicked the briefcase under the table. But Fitch heard every word Easter said, and he could close his eyes and see precisely what was happening in the courtroom. A severe headache was forming at the base of his skull. He gulped aspirin and washed it down with mineral water. He'd love to ask Easter a simple question: For one concerned enough about security to install hidden cameras, why didn't you install an alarm system on your door? But the question occurred to no one but himself.
His Honor said, “I can also verify that the man in the video was in this courtroom last Wednesday.” But the man in the video was now long gone. Doyle was safely tucked away in Chicago when the courtroom saw him enter the apartment and slink around as if he'd never get caught.
“You may return to the jury room, Mr. Easter.”
AN HOUR PASSED as the lawyers made their rather feeble and unprepared arguments for and against sequestration. Once things warmed up, allegations of wrongdoing began to fly back and forth, with the defense catching the most flak. Both sides knew things they couldn't prove and thus couldn't say, so the accusations were left somewhat broad.
The jurors got a full report from Nicholas, an embellished account of everything that happened both in court and in the video. In his haste, Judge Harkin had failed to prohibit Nicholas from discussing the matter with his colleagues. It was an omission Nicholas had immediately caught, and he couldn't wait to structure the story to suit himself. He also took the liberty of explaining Stella's rapid departure. She'd left them in tears.
Fitch narrowly averted two minor strokes as he stomped around his office, rubbing his neck and his temples and tugging at his goatee and demanding impossible answers from Konrad, Swanson, and Pang. In addition to those three, he had young Holly, and Joe Boy, a local private eye with incredibly soft feet, and Dante, a black ex-cop from D.C., and Dubaz, another Coast boy with a lengthy record. And he had four people in the office with Konrad, another dozen he could summon to Biloxi within three hours, and loads of lawyers and jury consultants. Fitch had lots of people, and they cost lots of money, but he damned sure didn't send anyone to Miami over the weekend to watch Stella and Cal shop.
A Cuban? With a camera? Fitch actually threw a phonebook against a wall as he repeated this.
“What if it's the girl?” asked Pang, raising his head slowly after lowering it to miss the phonebook.
“What girl?”
“Marlee. Hulic said the phone call came from a girl.” Pang's composure was a sharp contrast to his boss's explosiveness. Fitch froze in mid-step, then sat for a moment in his chair. He took another aspirin and drank more mineral water, and finally said, “I think you're right.”
And he was. The Cuban was a two-bit “security consultant” Marlee found in the Yellow Pages. She'd paid him two hundred dollars to look suspicious, not a difficult task, and to get caught with a camera as the Hulics left the hotel.
THE ELEVEN JURORS and three alternates were reassembled in the courtroom. Stella's empty chair on the first row was filled by Phillip Savelle, a forty-eight-year-old misfit neither side had been able to read. He described himself as a self-employed tree surgeon, but no record of this profession had been found on the Gulf Coast for the past five years. He was also an avant-garde glassblower whose forte was brightly colored, shapeless creations to which he gave obscure aquatic and marine names and occasionally exhibited at tiny, neglected galleries in Greenwich Village. He boasted of being an expert sailor, and had in fact once built his own ketch, which he sailed to Honduras where it sank in calm waters. At times he fancied himself an archaeologist, and after the boat dropped he spent eleven months in a Honduran prison for illegal excavations.
He was single, agnostic, a graduate of Grinnell, a nonsmoker. Savelle scared the hell out of every lawyer in the courtroom.
Judge Harkin apologized for what he was about to do. Sequestration of a jury was a rare, radical event, made necessary by extraordinary circumstances, and almost always used in sensational murder cases. But he had no choice in this case. There had been unauthorized contact. There was no reason to believe it would cease, regardless of his warnings. He didn't like it one bit, and he was very sorry for the hardship it would cause, but his job at this point was to guarantee a fair trial.
He explained that months earlier he had developed a contingency plan for this very moment. The county had reserved a block of rooms at a nearby, unnamed motel. Security would be increased. He had a list of rules which he would cover with them. The trial was now entering its second full week of testimony, and he would push the lawyers hard to finish as soon as possible.
The fourteen jurors were to leave, go home, pack, get their affairs in order, and report to court the next morning prepared to spend the next two weeks sequestered.
There were no immediate reactions from the panel; they were too stunned. Only Nicholas Easter thought it was funny.
Fourteen
Because of Jerry's fondness for beer and gambling and football and rowdiness in general, Nicholas suggested they meet at a casino Monday night to celebrate their last few hours of freedom. Jerry thought it was a wonderful idea. As the two left the courthouse, they toyed with the idea of inviting a few of their colleagues. The idea sounded good, but it didn't work. Herman was out of the question. Lonnie Shaver left hurriedly, quite agitated and not speaking to anyone. Savelle was new and unknown, and apparently the kind of guy you'd keep at a distance. That left Herrera, Nap the Colonel, and they simply weren't up to it. They were about to spend two weeks locked up with him.