The Runaway Jury (34 page)

Fitch received reports every hour from Dante and Joe Boy. Late Monday morning, he called an acquaintance in Austin, a man he’d worked with six years earlier in a tobacco trial in Marshall, Texas. It was an emergency, Fitch explained. Within minutes, a dozen investigators were scouring phone books and making calls. It wasn’t long before the bloodhounds picked up the trail.

Pamela Kerr had been an executive secretary for the Texas Bankers Association, in Austin. One phone call led to another, and a former co-worker was located working as a private school guidance counselor. Using the ruse that Pamela was a prospective juror in a capital murder case in Lubbock, the investigator described himself as an assistant district attorney who was trying to gather legitimate information about the jurors. The co-worker felt obligated to answer a few questions, though she hadn’t seen or talked to Pamela in years.

Pamela had two sons, Jeff and Alex. Alex was two years older than Jeff, and had graduated from high school in Austin, then drifted to Oregon. Jeff had also finished high school in Austin, with honors, then gone to college at Rice. The boys’ father had abandoned the family when they were toddlers, and Pamela had done an outstanding job as a single mother.

Dante, fresh off the private jet, accompanied an investigator to the high school, where they were allowed to rummage through old yearbooks in the library. Jeff Kerr’s 1985 senior picture was in color—a blue tux, large blue bow tie, short hair, earnest face looking directly at the camera, the same face Dante had studied for hours in Biloxi. Without hesitation he said, “This is our man,” then quietly
ripped the page from the yearbook. He immediately called Fitch on a cellphone from between the stacked tiers of books.

Three phone calls to Rice revealed that Jeff Kerr graduated there in 1989 with a degree in psychology. Posing as a representative from a prospective employer, the caller found a Rice professor of political science who’d taught and who remembered Kerr. He said the young man went to law school at Kansas.

With the guarantee of serious cash, Fitch found by phone a security firm willing to drop everything and began scouring Lawrence, Kansas, for any trace of Jeff Kerr.

FOR ONE normally so chipper, Nicholas was quite reserved during lunch. He didn’t say a word as he ate a heavily stuffed baked potato from O’Reilly’s. He avoided glances and looked downright sad.

The mood was shared. Leon Robilio’s voice stayed with them, a robotic voice substituted for a real one lost to the ravages of tobacco, a robotic voice which delivered the sickening dirt he once helped hide. It still rang in their ears. Three thousand kids a day, one third of whom die from their addiction. Gotta hook the next generation!

Loreen Duke tired of picking at her chicken salad. She looked across the table at Jerry Fernandez, and said, “Can I ask you something?” Her voice broke a weary silence.

“Sure,” he said.

“How old were you when you started smoking?”

“Fourteen.”

“Why did you start?”

“The Marlboro Man. Every kid I hung around
with smoked Marlboros. We were country kids, liked horses and rodeos. The Marlboro Man was too cool to resist.”

At that moment, every juror could see the billboards—the rugged face, the chin, the hat, the horse, the worn leather, maybe the mountains and some snow, the independence of lighting up a Marlboro while the world left him alone. Why wouldn’t a young boy of fourteen want to be the Marlboro Man?

“Are you addicted?” asked Rikki Coleman, playing with her usual fat-free plate of lettuce and boiled turkey. The “addicted” rolled off her tongue as if they were discussing heroin.

Jerry thought for a moment and realized his friends were listening. They wanted to know what powerful urges kept a person hooked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I could quit. I’ve tried a few times. Sure would be nice to stop. Such a nasty habit.”

“You don’t enjoy it?” Rikki asked.

“Oh, there are times when a cigarette hits the spot, but I’m doing two packs a day now and that’s too much.”

“What about you, Angel?” Loreen asked Angel Weese, who sat next to her and generally said as little as possible. “How old were you when you started?”

“Thirteen,” Angel said, ashamed.

“I was sixteen,” Sylvia Taylor-Tatum admitted before anyone could ask.

“I started when I was fourteen,” Herman offered from the end in an effort at conversation. “Quit when I was forty.”

“Anybody else?” Rikki asked, finishing the confessional.

“I started at seventeen,” the Colonel said. “When I joined the Army. But I kicked the habit thirty years ago.” As usual, he was proud of his self-discipline.

“Anybody else?” Rikki asked again, after a long, silent pause.

“Me. I started when I was seventeen and quit two years later,” Nicholas said, though it was not true.

“Did anybody here start smoking after the age of eighteen?” Loreen asked.

Not a word.

NITCHMAN, in plain clothes, met Hoppy for a quick sandwich. Hoppy was nervous about being seen in public with an FBI agent, and was quite relieved when Nitchman appeared in jeans and a plaid shirt. Wasn’t like Hoppy’s pals and acquaintances around town could instantly spot the local feds, but he was still nervous nevertheless. Besides, Nitchman and Napier were from a special unit in Atlanta, they’d told Hoppy.

He replayed what he’d heard in court that morning, said the voiceless Robilio made quite an impression and seemed to have the jury in his pocket. Nitchman, not for the first time, professed little interest in the trial and explained again he was just doing what his bosses in Washington told him to do. He handed Hoppy a folded sheet of paper, plain white with tiny numbers and words scattered on the top and bottom, and said this had just come from Cristano at Justice. They wanted Hoppy to see it.

It was really a creation of Fitch’s document people, two retired CIA boys who puttered around D.C. enjoying the mischief.

It was a faxed copy of a sinister-looking report on Leon Robilio. No source, no date, just four paragraphs under the ominous headline of CONFIDENTIAL MEMO. Hoppy read it quickly while chomping on french fries. Robilio was being paid half a million dollars to testify. Robilio had been fired from the Tobacco Focus Council for embezzling funds; had even been indicted, though charges were later dropped. Robilio had a history of psychiatric problems. Robilio had sexually harassed two secretaries at the Council. Robilio’s throat cancer had probably been caused by his alcoholism, and not by tobacco. Robilio was a notorious liar who hated the Council and was on a crusade of revenge.

“Wow,” Hoppy said, showing a mouthful of potatoes.

“Mr. Cristano thought you should sneak this to your wife,” Nitchman said. “She should show it only to those she can trust on the jury.”

“Right about that,” Hoppy said, quickly folding and stuffing it into a pocket. He looked around the crowded dining room as if he was completely guilty of something.

WORKING from law school yearbooks and the limited records the registrar would release, it was learned that Jeff Kerr enrolled as a first-year law student at Kansas in the fall of 1989. His unsmiling face appeared with the second-year class in 1991, but there was no trace of him after that. He did not receive a law degree.

He played rugby for the law school team his second year. A team photo showed him arm in arm with two pals—Michael Dale and Tom Ratliff—both of whom had finished law school the following year.
Dale was working for Legal Services in Des Moines. Ratliff was an associate for a firm in Wichita. Investigators were sent to both places.

Dante arrived in Lawrence and was taken to the law school, where he confirmed the identity of Kerr in the yearbooks. He spent an hour looking at faces from 1985 through 1994, and saw no female resembling the girl known as Marlee. It was a shot in the dark. Many law students skipped the picture taking. Yearbooks were sophomoric. These were serious young adults. Dante’s work was nothing but a series of shots in the dark.

Late Monday, the investigator named Small found Tom Ratliff hard at work in his tiny windowless office at Wise & Watkins, a large firm in downtown Wichita. They agreed to meet in a bar in an hour.

Small talked to Fitch and gathered as much background as he could, or as much as Fitch would give him. Small was an ex-cop with two ex-wives. His title was security specialist, which in Lawrence meant he did everything from motel watching to polygraph exams. He was not bright, and Fitch realized this immediately.

Ratliff arrived late and they ordered drinks. Small did his best to bluff and act knowledgeable. Ratliff was suspicious. He said little at first, which was what could be expected from a person unexpectedly asked by a stranger to talk about an old acquaintance.

“I haven’t seen him in four years,” Ratliff said.

“Have you talked to him?”

“No. Not a word. He dropped out of school after our second year.”

“Were you close to him?”

“I knew him well our first year, but we were not the best of friends. He withdrew after that. Is he in trouble?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Perhaps you should tell me why you’re so interested.”

Small recited in general terms what Fitch had told him to say, got most of it right and it was close to the truth. Jeff Kerr was a prospective juror in a large trial somewhere, and he, Small, had been hired by one of the parties to dig through his background.

“Where’s the trial?” Ratliff asked.

“I can’t say. But I assure you, none of this is illegal. You’re a lawyer. You understand.”

Indeed he did. Ratliff had spent most of his brief career slaving under a litigation partner. Jury research was a chore he’d already learned to hate. “How can I verify this?” he asked, like a real lawyer.

“I don’t have the authority to divulge specifics about the trial. Let’s do it like this. If I ask something which you think might be harmful to Kerr, then don’t answer. Fair enough?”

“We’ll give it a shot, okay? But if I get nervous, then I’m outta here.”

“Fair enough. Why did he quit law school?”

Ratliff took a sip of his beer and tried to remember. “He was a good student, very bright. But after the first year, he suddenly hated the idea of being a lawyer. He clerked in a firm that summer, a big firm in Kansas City, and it soured him. Plus, he fell in love.”

Fitch desperately wanted to know if there was a girl. “Who was the woman?” Small asked.

“Claire.”

“Claire who?”

Another sip. “I can’t remember right now.”

“You knew her?”

“I knew who she was. Claire worked at a bar in downtown Lawrence, a college hangout favored by law students. I think that’s where she met Jeff.”

“Could you describe her?”

“Why? I thought this was about Jeff.”

“I was asked to get a description of his girlfriend in law school. That’s all I know.” Small shrugged as if he couldn’t help it.

They studied each other for a bit. What the hell, thought Ratliff. He’d never see these people again. Jeff and Claire were distant memories anyway.

“Average height, about five six. Slender. Dark hair, brown eyes, pretty girl, all the bells and whistles.”

“Was she a student?”

“I’m not sure. I think maybe she had been. Maybe a grad student.”

“At KU?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was the name of the hangout?”

“Mulligan’s, downtown.”

Small knew it well. At times he went there himself to drown his worries and admire the college girls. “I’ve knocked back a few at Mulligan’s,” he said.

“Yeah. I miss it,” Ratliff said wistfully.

“What did he do after he dropped out?”

“I’m not sure. I heard that he and Claire left town, but I never heard from him again.”

Small thanked him and asked if he could call him at the office if he had more questions. Ratliff said he was awfully busy, but give it a try.

Small’s boss in Lawrence had a friend who knew the guy who’d owned Mulligan’s for fifteen years. The advantages of a small town. Employment
records weren’t exactly confidential, especially for the owner of a bar who reported fewer than half of his cash sales. Her name was Claire Clement.

FITCH RUBBED his stubby hands together with glee as he took the news. He loved the chase. Marlee was now Claire, a woman with a past who’d worked hard to cover it up.

“Know thine enemy,” he said aloud to his walls. The first rule of warfare.

Twenty-four

T
he numbers returned with a vengeance Monday afternoon. The messenger was an economist, a man trained to look at the life of Jacob Wood and put a concise dollar figure on it. His name was Dr. Art Kallison, a retired professor from a private school in Oregon no one had heard of. The math was not complicated, and Dr. Kallison had obviously seen a courtroom before. He knew how to testify, how to keep the figures simple. He placed them on a chalkboard with a neat hand.

When he died at fifty-one, Jacob Wood’s base salary was $40,000 a year, plus a retirement plan funded by his employer, plus other benefits. Assuming he would live and work until the age of sixty-five, Kallison placed his lost future earnings at $720,000. The law also allowed the factoring of inflation into this projection, and this upped the total to $1,180,000. Then the law required that this total be reduced to its present value, a concept that muddied the water a bit. Here, Kallison delivered a quick,
friendly lecture to the jury on present value. The money might be worth $1,180,000 if paid out over fifteen years, but for purposes of the lawsuit he had to determine what it was worth at the moment. Thus, it had to be discounted. His new figure was $835,000.

He did a superb job of assuring the jury that this figure dealt only with lost salary. He was an economist, quite untrained to place a value on the noneconomic value of one’s life. His job had nothing to do with the pain and suffering Mr. Wood endured as he died; had nothing to do with the loss his family had endured.

A young defense lawyer named Felix Mason uttered his first word of the trial. He was one of Cable’s partners, a specialist in economic forecasts, and, unfortunately for him, his only appearance would be brief. He began his cross-examination of Dr. Kallison by asking him how many times a year he testified. “That’s all I do these days. I’ve retired from teaching,” Kallison answered. He took the question in every trial.