Aftershock (36 page)

Dolly dragged Debbie out of there quick. And had her ready for court in under an hour.

If Debbie was nervous, you couldn’t see it. The prosecutor let her put her credentials on the record without any kind of challenge. His fear of looking like a fool again made what the judge said next inevitable: “The vulnerable-witness protection measures are hereby granted.”

“Now we have a jury to pick,” Swift said, grimly.

“W
e can play this one of two ways,” T.D. said. Swift listened like he was hearing the Word. I guess he was—jury selection is a special skill, and Swift had never seen a case where an expert was brought in just to help the lawyer do his job. Never mind that T.D. was in the absolute elite of that group.

Swift’s own prestige thermometer was way past full boil. The media was gobbling up his every word, and the hints that a jury-selection specialist was needed because there were so many “unique aspects” to this case had them ravenous.

T.D. went on one of those bottom-feeder “crime” shows I’d told Swift to stay away from. I couldn’t figure out why until he pulled the trigger. A pudgy woman with a voice that could curdle milk while it was still in the refrigerator asked him why, if the client was so innocent, did her lawyer need the services of a jury-selection specialist?

T.D. said, “You think the defendant is guilty?”

“I think the video rather speaks for itself, doesn’t it,
Doctor
?”

“There you go.
That’s
why I was retained. To help spot people like you and keep them off the jury. The last person you want on a jury is someone who’s already made up their mind before they heard all the facts. Even worse would be one who makes sure everyone else knows it.”

Not surprisingly, it was a very short interview. But everyone from around here who watched it got the message. And passed it on.

T
he way they work it is, they bring in a bunch of people and put them in the jury box. Then each lawyer gets to ask them questions. If they show they’re prejudiced in either direction, they get thrown out. But if they’re not, and either side doesn’t want them, they can throw them off themselves without giving a reason. “Pre-empts” is what Swift called them, and each side only gets a certain number.

I’d never heard that word before, but I knew what they were saying: If you’re down to your last magazine, you have to make every shot count. If you haven’t got enough to take them all out, you want to pick off the most dangerous ones. That’s not as simple as it sounds. You don’t care about who’s the most dangerous shooter, you have to figure out who’d be the most dangerous up close. And you only get seconds to decide.

When they’d discussed it the night before, T.D. kind of took
over. “We only got two ways to go. Either we want to hang the jury, or we want them to acquit.”

“Of course we want them to acquit,” Dolly said.

“You sure? See, if all we want is to hang the jury, we have to make sure the contrarians slip by. But if we want MaryLou to actually walk, we’ve got to cut those kind off at the knees.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Debbie said.

“I’m
sure
I’m not following you,” Dolly added.

T.D. was ready for both of them. “Some people have a personality disorder where they just have to go against the herd, right or wrong. They’re so committed to their own lone-wolf image that … Well, put it this way: if the others suddenly came over to their side, they’d
switch
sides. You get one of those on the jury, it’s as good as hung.

“But that cuts both ways. We do that, and we’re
seriously
dropping the odds that MaryLou gets acquitted. So we have to know what we want, going in.”

Everyone in the room looked at Swift. The new Swift. He didn’t let us down: “MaryLou did what she had to do. And her belief that she had to act was objectively reasonable. And, therefore, absolutely justified under the law. When we’re done, if we don’t get the appropriate charge to the jury, I’d bet my license on winning the appeal. The
expedited
appeal.”

I
t took four days to pick a jury. “The longest in the history of this county,” Swift told us. Not bragging, just stating a fact.

T.D. and Debbie had split up the assignment between them; T.D. told the lawyer, “If Debbie says no, it means she spotted one of them. Sight, smell, sound, there’s no difference. If Debbie feels a wrong one, he’s off. If you can’t get him to admit he thinks all
this ‘trauma’ stuff is bullshit, or that some girls are ‘thirteen going on thirty,’ or make him bite on the Polanski question, burn a pre-empt. We can’t have anyone like that anywhere near our jury.”

We didn’t. The DA had four people at his table. Took me a while to figure out that all four were DAs. Or “deputies,” like they called themselves. The DA himself couldn’t make it—he was giving a speech somewhere.

When the second DA got up and tried to ask a potential juror a question, Swift was ready for it:

“Judge, the prosecution can’t have four different people playing the same role.”

“Nobody’s playing a role—” Fat Face said, before Swift cut him off: “I don’t care what they call it, judge. But allowing four separate individuals to question each prospective juror is not only unprecedented, it’s giving the prosecution an unfair advantage. And costing the taxpayers a fortune, for no reason at all.”

“You’ve got four people at
your
table,” Fat Face whined.

“You mean five, don’t you?” Swift answered. “Or aren’t you counting the defendant? Add it up: two experts, one investigator, the defendant, and myself. I’m the only lawyer. And I’ve been the only one asking questions.”

“So you have two experts, and we don’t have any,” Fat Face stated the obvious.

“That’s for sure,” Swift fired back.

His shot didn’t miss. The judge told Fat Face he could have the entire DA’s Office sit at his table, but the rule was going to be one lawyer per witness, no exceptions.

What I heard inside my head was
Do not fucking annoy me again, or you’ll wish you’d stayed home
. Kind of wasted on Fat Face—he already wished he could have stayed home.

“O
pening statements,” the judge said.

Fat Face got to his feet, working hard to keep a sleazy smile hidden. “What’s that in his hand?” I whispered to Swift. I was on his left, T.D. and Debbie on his right wing, with MaryLou closest to him.

“PowerPoint,” Swift whispered.

I didn’t want to distract him, so I just shut up. I’d have to wait and watch to get the answer Swift thought he’d already given me.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is that rare kind of case where you look at each other and ask, ‘Why would they even bother with a trial?’ You will hear from the best witness ever devised—the actual crime captured on videotape. You will actually see the defendant shoot and kill one victim, and wound two others. You will see the defendant take out a pistol and execute the victim. Kill him in cold blood, with no more emotion than you might have in stepping on a cockroach.”

He clicked whatever he was holding, and the white wall right across from the jurors lit up. Every time Fat Face clicked, another line or two was added. Why he did this, I don’t know—it was nothing more than what he was already saying himself. Sure did use up some time, though. As soon as he finished, the judge called a “lunch break.” But first he took about half an hour telling the jurors they couldn’t talk to each other about the case until both sides had rested and all closing statements were completed.

There was a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t listen to. I was too busy watching the jurors pretend to be hanging on every word. Less than half of them even made a good try of it.

“We got the ones we needed,” T.D. said confidently.

“I agree,” Swift said. That was important. Not because of what it said, but because of the speaker’s voice: a man people listen to. Listen with respect.

“D
oes the defense wish to make an opening statement?” the judge said, making it clear he’d spent enough time on this case already. And he couldn’t be interviewed until after the case was over.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Swift said, in a “You’re kidding, right?” tone. When he got to his feet, he waited a beat, making sure he had every juror’s attention.

“You heard the prosecutor’s opening statement. And what you heard was a colossal waste of your time—”

“Objection!” Fat Face half-yelled. “The defense is not permitted to comment on anything except the evidence.”

“If the prosecutor had waited another couple of seconds, he would have understood that the defense is speaking directly
to
the evidence,” Swift cracked him with a counterpunch, then resumed before the judge could even rule. “You see,” he said, facing the jury, “the prosecutor’s opening was a waste of time because the defense does not contest a single word that came out of his mouth.”

Swift waited a long beat, watching the jurors closely. Then he went on: “The prosecutor repeated what everybody in this town, perhaps everybody in this country, already knows: on Friday, the thirty-first of this past May, MaryLou McCoy shot and killed Cameron Taft. They even made a little wall display out of the exact same thing. And that’s why I called it a waste of your time … because we do not contest a single factual statement made.”

Swift paused, pulling his audience even closer.

“But the prosecutor never answered the one question that you want answered, did he? Why would a young lady who never had so much as a traffic ticket in her life commit such a crime? Was she drunk? Was she on drugs?

“No, you all know she wasn’t. MaryLou McCoy is a star athlete, and she trained like one. Others in her age group might be smoking marijuana; MaryLou wouldn’t go near a cigarette.

“Who had a brighter future than MaryLou? She was headed to college, on a full scholarship. And she was going to play big-time softball, against the best in the country.

“Was she herself afraid of Cameron Taft? There isn’t a doubt in the world that she could have beaten him in a fair fight.

“Why would a young woman who we all expected to bring honor and glory to our town—to say nothing of the recognition we were all going to receive every time she was interviewed after a win—why would she even think she needed a weapon to protect herself?

“Why would a young woman the papers have been calling Mighty Mary since she was a sophomore throw such a bright future away?

“Was she insane? Absolutely not! This is not some kind of ‘temporary-insanity defense’ case. Get that out of your minds. MaryLou McCoy didn’t ‘snap.’ She did what she did for a reason. And that reason is what we call a ‘justification’ defense. We’re not going to make speeches; we’re going to show you why MaryLou did what she did. And why she had no choice
but
to do it.

“The prosecution can’t answer
that
question, so you can’t get anything from them but more repetitions of the same story they just told you. Telling you the story you all know by heart, and taking a ridiculous amount of time to do it.

“But the defense is going to prove to you that MaryLou McCoy had no choice. And when we’re done, you’re going to come back and tell this court that you may not approve of what MaryLou did, but you understand why she did it. And that, when she did it, she was
justified
.

“There’s only one verdict in this case: not guilty. We are
not
playing for the tie. We don’t
want
a hung jury. We
didn’t
want a plea bargain. And we don’t have any legal technicalities to spring on you.

“No, what we’re going to do is put the truth in front of you, and then ask you to do the right thing with that truth.

“We believe you’ll do just that. And if we didn’t have a deep, abiding faith in that belief, we’d be walking a different road. Listen to the prosecution’s case—if you can stay awake—and then we’ll answer the question you’ve all been waiting for: ‘Why?’ ”

Swift was already back in his chair before Fat Face could even get the word “objection” out of his mouth. But, being the toad he was, Fat Face couldn’t help himself:

“Your Honor, we ask the court to admonish counsel against
ad-hominem
attacks.”

“The defense will withdraw its comment on the banality of the prosecution’s presentation, Your Honor. But we do wish Mr. Curtis”—
So that’s his name
, I thought; then I decided I liked Fat Face better—“would speak English,” Swift slammed back, making the “we” into him and the jurors, and Fat Face into the “them.”

“That was sweet, hoss,” I could hear T.D. whisper. For Swift, that was the same as permanently increasing his chest size.

T
he prosecution’s supposed to go first, but Swift beat Fat Face to the punch again.

“Your Honor, if it please the court, we are willing to stipulate that on May 31, 2013, the defendant intentionally shot one Cameron Taft. Further, we do not dispute that she wounded two others in that same episode. We submit that, having so agreed, we can dispense with the need to hear those same facts ‘proven’ again.”

“Your Honor, this is outrageous,” Fat Face said, struggling to his feet.

“How so?” the judge asked.

“We have a right to put on a case.”

“And counsel is already saying he does not contest any aspect of the case you wish to put on.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Fat Face said, not making any friends
as he struggled with his desire for whatever moment of glory he expected, but couldn’t come up with a real answer.

“ ‘That doesn’t matter’ may not be the most eloquent argument this court has heard,” the judge said. “Nevertheless, I take it that you decline the defense’s offer to expedite this trial?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Fat Face said, every square inch of visible skin covered in repellent crimson blotches.

“Then continue,” the judge told him, his voice making it clear how interested
he
was in hearing the same stuff again.

F
at Face showed the same videotape that had already been You-Tubed all over the world. He showed the jury the close-up photos taken just before they opened Cameron Taft for the autopsy. Not stunningly effective—a .22 doesn’t make a big hole going in, and the slug had never left the dead man’s brain.