The Ophelia Cut (31 page)

Each juror who passed hardship had filled out a twenty-three-page questionnaire. Hardy and Wu had read and scored all of them, and now they were trying to get their heads around 120 people, twelve of whom would become their jurors, four of whom would be alternates.

“I’d say good-bye to the rest of this week, at least,” Hardy went on. “I’m praying we get to start the actual evidence by Friday afternoon, but I’m not betting on it. You don’t have to stay through all this, you know, Gina. I’m not going to need you until we get to witnesses.”

Another result, and arguably a good one, of the trial’s foreshortened schedule was that Gina, taking pity on Hardy’s workload, had offered to sit in the back of the courtroom and help out as needed. An experienced trial lawyer, Roake would bring another perspective and a sharp legal mind to the defense table. It went without saying that for reasons of her own, she wanted to be close to McGuire, to keep him somewhat in check if she could, to be a buffer between Mose and Diz when the two alpha males decided they had to mix it up, which had happened in trial strategy talks more than once.

“Mose looked good,” Amy offered. “Well rested, personable.”

Hardy said, “Yeah, but I had to poke him about four times to wake him up. We’ve got to keep him from looking bored to death. Or falling asleep.”

“That’s a tall order for anyone in there.”

“Agreed. But the man is looking at the rest of his life in jail. It wouldn’t be so bad if he seemed like the kind of person that would bother just a little bit. You know, like other humans.”

Gina put her chopsticks down next to her bowl. She lowered her voice. “He doesn’t think he’s looking at the rest of his life in jail, Diz—even if the jury convicts him, which he thinks won’t happen, because people believe he’s justified.”

“They’re going to change their minds when they see the autopsy photos.”

“Maybe not. Especially if we get any fathers of daughters on the jury.”

Hardy’s shoulders lifted and fell, a laugh of sorts. “Yes, and good luck with that. You think Stier would ever let that happen?”

“Probably not, I agree. But let’s keep good thoughts. All we need is one.”

H
ARDY REMEMBERED THE
Big Ugly very well. The man was a formidable opponent. In their first trial, Stier was probably ahead on points when Hardy had an eleventh-hour revelation that blew the case wide open, exposing the real killer, who was not Hardy’s client. Without that truly fortuitous discovery, Hardy would have been licked, and his innocent client would probably still be in jail.

That was when Stier was relatively new to the DA’s office. Now he had several years under his belt, several big victories, was on his way to becoming a star. He’d lobbied Farrell hard for this assignment, and Wes, still bristling from the unproved and untrue implication that he’d colluded with Glitsky and Hardy to protect McGuire, had taken the opportunity to let the legal and police community know that he was exercising the full might of his office in going after McGuire and naming Stier the prosecutor.

So great was Stier’s reputation and confident demeanor that, when jury selection was complete, Hardy was left with a nagging unease that he had somehow screwed up. Badly. Against all of what Hardy considered common sense—and Amy agreed with him—Stier had allowed not one father of a daughter onto the panel. He had allowed five.

Hardy’s initial reaction that he’d outfoxed the fox gave way to a gut-wrenching certainty that he’d missed something substantial. Stier had put an unorthodox strategy in play right at the beginning, and Hardy had no idea what it was, which was deeply disconcerting. All that effort to get a jury he and Amy were reasonably comfortable with, he thought, and now he felt that if he were to do it over again, he’d be wise to do it differently.

Exactly how, he didn’t know.

Every working lawyer knew that the thing you wanted to avoid at trial, at all costs, was surprise. And Hardy felt absolutely bushwhacked at the outset.

Now, however, on Friday morning, he had to put all of those very real concerns and worries out of his mind. The courtroom gallery was again filled to capacity, but no longer with a jury pool. The hard blond wooden chairs contained a horde of local and national reporters and members of the DA’s office, including Wes Farrell, who, when he came in, had pointedly refrained from greeting either of his former law partners, Roake or Hardy, and sat on the prosecution side. Just behind Hardy, Moses’s wife, Susan, sat frozen-faced in the first row, perhaps missing her daughter Brittany who, as a potentail witness, was not allowed in the courtroom. Directly across from Susan, equally grim, sat a woman whom he’d come to learn was Jessup’s mother. Conspicuously not present was Abe Glitsky. Hardy couldn’t afford to think about him right now. That was a whole different subject.

Moses sat between him and Amy. He’d looked good all week in the suits Susan had brought down for him, had avoided going to sleep in the courtroom, and seemed almost carefree as he waited for the show to begin. He radiated the supernal calm of a man with many options before him.

And then—it always seemed sudden—everyone in the courtroom rose as Judge Gomez entered and took her seat at the raised bench. The lawyers introduced themselves to the court for the record, and the waiting was well and truly over. Stier had gotten up and was standing in front of the jury, facing them. He had a distinctive, athletic stance, with his arms slightly out in front of him, as though ready to field a ball.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Good morning.

“I want to thank you for your patience in sitting through jury selection. In a few minutes, I’ll be calling the witnesses whose testimony will prove the charges against this defendant. But to start, I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to give you an outline or preview of what the evidence will show. Hopefully, you will find it useful in understanding why we’re asking certain questions and in helping you organize the information the witnesses will be giving you.

“This is really a very simple case. The defendant took a club—a shillelagh, actually, a distinctive Irish weapon that sat for years under the counter in the bar that he owned—and he beat a man, Rick Jessup, to
death with it. He broke his arm. He fractured his skull. He hit him so hard and so often that the victim is almost unrecognizable in the autopsy photos, which, unfortunately, you will need to look at as the medical examiner explains to you the savagery and viciousness of the attack. He hit him so hard that he left an imprint of the club on Rick Jessup’s head.

“After the attack, the defendant threw the club away. The fact that it went missing right after the murder is itself significant evidence that it was the weapon involved. Even more significant is testimony you will hear from an expert who will tell you that a photograph of this defendant, taken in his own bar, shows him with the club, and that it is the same club used to kill Rick Jessup.

“I’m not going to take the time now to tell you everything that every witness will say. If I did that, my opening statement would be as long as the trial. I do want to let you know that witnesses will tell you they are certain—absolutely certain—that they saw the defendant with that club in his hands, walking down the street from Mr. Jessup’s apartment just about the time he was murdered. Even more compelling, the crime lab found Mr. Jessup’s blood in his car, on his jacket, and on a pair of the defendant’s shoes in a closet in his home.”

Hardy struggled to keep all emotion out of his face. Amy gently and slowly put a hand on McGuire’s arm. This moment was unavoidable, and it was a truly bad one if Hardy was going to argue that Moses hadn’t committed the murder, which would be the defense position. The discovery of the blood would have sealed the arrest even if there had been no other evidence.

Stier went on, “Why would the defendant do something like this? Why would anybody do something like this? Simple revenge.”

Stier continued, outlining Brittany’s relationship with Jessup, her alleged assault, McGuire’s first attack on Jessup, and finally, the accusation of rape that had sent Brittany’s father into a homicidal rage.

It was clear. It was clean. It was compelling.

Hardy hated every word of it.

Stier continued to roll along. “Ladies and gentlemen. Vigilante justice is not justice. This defendant took the life of another human being under circumstances that the law defines as murder. When you’ve heard this evidence and the instructions that the court will give you as to how to
evaluate it, that is the verdict I will ask for and the verdict your oaths will compel you to return. Thank you.”

H
ARDY OFTEN LET
fate decide his actions. He thought it kept him flexible, better able to roll with the punches, on top of his game.

Driving west on Lake, he decided that if a parking spot presented itself anywhere within reasonable walking distance to Glitsky’s, he would stop and check in. It had been nearly a month, a long time for them.

A space appeared at the very corner.

A minute later, he had walked down half of the dead-end block and up the twelve steps to Glitsky’s front door. He rang the bell, waited, rang again. This couldn’t be right, he was thinking. The parking place was too perfect. Glitsky had to be home. What else would he be doing? Although, to be fair, maybe Hardy should have called. But where was the spontaneity in that?

A long sigh later, he was halfway down the stairs when he heard the door open behind him. He stopped and turned, saw his friend barefoot in jeans and a plain white T-shirt with maybe a three-day growth of gray stubble. Hardy didn’t remember the last time he’d seen Glitsky in blue jeans and was sure he’d never seen him in a T-shirt. Or unshaved. “I’m looking for an Abe Glitsky. Old, feeble, often in the way.”

Glitsky nodded. “I’ll see if he’s in.”

“A
LL IN ALL,
I’d say it went okay,” Hardy said. He was drinking iced tea, sitting on the couch in his friend’s living room, while Glitsky, just awakened from a nap, had lowered himself down and sat Indian-style on the floor. The lieutenant—the ex-lieutenant, technically—was at a low ebb, and to keep both of their spirits up, Hardy was regaling his pal with the highlights of his opening statement, such as they were. “Ugly had left out a few little details that seemed to resonate, so I hammered them pretty hard. Like when Mose beat the shit out of Jessup the first time.”

“That was one of the
good
moments?”

“In the sense that it provides an alternative answer to what is otherwise unanswerable. Blood on the shoes. Blood on the jacket. Blood in the car. Deal breakers, if we don’t have the earlier fight.”

“Which, if I’m not mistaken, nobody witnessed.”

“Picky, picky. At least it gives them something else to think about.”

“If I were on the jury, I’d think about how Moses is a hothead who goes and beats people up.”

“He got it all out of his system.”

“Real good,” Glitsky said. “Not. They ever find the shillelagh?”

“No. But they’ve got some witness who’s analyzed the picture—you know, from the Wall of Shame at the Shamrock. There’s Mose brandishing the damn thing, big as life, terrific detail, and this witness is going to say that the trauma pattern on Jessup’s head is pretty much a dead match. Then I’m going to eat his lunch.”

“What’s your argument?”

“He didn’t do it. Plain and simple. And that means somebody else did.”

“You got any idea who?”

“Several. Liam Goodman, Jon Lo, a random hit man. We haven’t had a lot of time, but Mr. Jessup wasn’t everything he’s been painted as. He was involved in quite a bit of squirrelly stuff, and some of that might have proved embarrassing to people with money or power or both.”

“Liam Goodman the supervisor?”

Hardy made an extravagant gesture of possibility.

“Do you believe any of this?”

“Some days, some of it. Almost never all of it at once. We’re a work in progress at the moment, and here we are in the thick of it. I need more of everything—theories, distractions, exculpatory evidence. Everything.” Hardy drank some tea. “So how’s retirement suiting you? I ask ’cause I’m thinking about it myself.”

“Not really?”

“No, not really. That was by way of jest.”

Glitsky thought for a moment. “It’s somewhat overrated. You’d hate it.”

“You?”

“Pretty much. Time and then more time. Kids at school all day, Treya at her job. I’ve never been much of a TV guy.”

“Books,” Hardy said. “They can take up a lot of time. You’re a voracious reader, are you not?”

“To a point. More than, say, three hours every day, it gets a little old.
And if you say ‘golf’ next, this interview will be over. I’m good,” Glitsky said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“I had a reason to ask you about this retirement of yours. Get you out and about a little, which it looks like you could use.”

Glitsky leaned back against his reading chair. “I’m listening.”

“How would you feel about being a witness? In this case. For me.”

Glitsky’s mouth dropped open an inch in surprise. “As if I’m not already in low enough esteem among my former colleagues.”

“They haven’t treated you very well, have they? What do you owe them?”

“Nothing, but still . . . What would you want me to say?”

Hardy shrugged. “Just talk a bit about how you thought the investigation got pushed through so fast because it was so high-profile, because Goodman was pushing Lapeer for action and she caved to the pressure and went outside of due process. As soon as they got the rape motive, they made up their mind that it was Moses and stopped looking for anybody else.”

“Diz. Who cares what I think about any of this? Why is the judge going to let me say any of it?”

“Because I want to argue that there was pressure on the inspectors to arrest Moses, and they put undue pressure on witnesses, deliberately or no, to tailor testimony and make the IDs. This whole case is tainted by the politics.”

“They had three IDs and blood work, Diz. What do you want?”

“I want the jury to think that the cops—specifically Lapeer—didn’t look at anybody else. Some other dude did it, Abe, and the cops let him get away in their haste to round up the most obvious suspect.”