Hand of Fate (2 page)

Victoria pressed the Talk button. "I don't smell anything out here. The booth is practically airtight, anyway."

Jim wanted to tell her that "practically" wasn't the same as really and truly. It was the kind of argument they might have on air during a slow time, bantering to keep things moving along. But he didn't have the breath for it.

A part of Jim's brain remained coldly rational even as his body sent more and more messages that something was badly wrong. He hadn't breathed since that first fateful gulp of air when he opened the package. A vacuum was building up in his head and chest, a sucking hollowness, his body screaming at him, demanding that he give in.

But Jim Fate hadn't made it this far by giving in when things were tough. It had only been a minute, a minute-ten maybe, since he'd pulled the red string. But then he did give in to another hunger--the hunger for connection. He was all alone and he might be dying, and he couldn't stand that thought. He moved to the glass and put his hand up against it, fingers spread, a lonely starfish. And then Victoria mirrored it with her own hand, the anger between them forgotten, their matching hands pressed against the glass.

There was a band around Jim's chest, and it was tightening. An iron band. It was crushing him, crushing his lungs. His vision was dimming, but he kept his eyes open, his gaze never leaving Victoria.

With her free hand, Victoria groped blindly for the Talk button. "Jim, you've got to hold on," she yelled.

Jim's heart contracted when he heard how hoarse she sounded. She had to leave!

He lifted his hand from the glass and made a shooing gesture
,
again wordlessly ordering her to leave. Instead she pushed the Talk button again and said, "I hear sirens. They're almost here!"

But his body was ready to break with his will. He had to breathe. Had to. But maybe he could filter it, minimize it.

Without taking his eyes from Victoria, Jim pulled up the edge of his shirt with his free hand and pressed his nose and mouth against the fine Egyptian cotton cloth. He meant to take a shallow breath, but when he started, the hunger for air was too great. He sucked it in greedily, the cloth touching his tongue as he inhaled.

He sensed the shoots of poison winding themselves deeper within him, reaching out to wrap around all his organs. His head felt like it was going to explode.

No longer thinking clearly, Jim let his shirttail fall away. It didn't matter, did it? It was too late. Too late. He tried to take another breath, but his lungs refused to move.

He staggered backward. Grabbed at his chair and missed. Fell over.

Horrified, Victoria started screaming. A shiver ran through Jim's body, his arms and legs twitching. And then Jim Fate was still. His eyes, still open, stared up at the soft, fuzzy blue ceiling.

Two minutes later the first hazmat responders, suited up in white, burst through the studio door.

Chapter
2

Mark 0. Hatfield United States Courthouse
Federal prosecutor Allison Pierce eyed the 150 prospective jurors as they filed into the sixteenth-floor courtroom in the Mark 0. Hatfield United States Courthouse. A high-profile case like this necessitated a huge jury pool.

The seats soon filled, forcing dozens to stand, some only a few inches from the prosecution table. Allison could smell unwashed bodies and unbrushed teeth. She swallowed hard, forcing down the nausea that now plagued her at unexpected moments.

"Are you all right?" FBI special agent Nicole Hedges whispered. Nicole was sitting next to Allison at the prosecutor's table. Her huge, dark eyes never missed anything.

"These days, I'm either nauseated or ravenous," Allison whispered back. "Sometimes at the same time."

"Maybe the Triple Threat Club can find someplace to meet that serves ice cream and pickles."

The club was an inside joke, just three friends with connections to law enforcement--Allison, Nicole, and TV crime reporter Cassidy Shaw--who were devoted to justice, friendship, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

The courtroom deputy called for everyone to rise and then swor
e t
hem in en masse. Allison eyed the would-be jurors. They carried backpacks, purses, coats, umbrellas, bottled water, books, magazines, and--this being Portland, Oregon--the occasional bike helmet. They ranged from a hunched-over old man with hearing aids on the stems of his glasses to a young man who immediately opened a sketchbook and startled doodling. Some wore suits, while others looked like they were ready to hit the gym, but in general they appeared alert and reasonably happy.

There would have been more room for the potential jurors to sit, but the benches were already packed with reporters who had arrived before the jury was ushered in. In the middle of the pack was a fortyish woman who had a seat directly behind the defense table. She wore turquoise eye shadow, black eyeliner, and a sweater with a plunging neckline: the mother of the defendant.

After those lucky enough to have seats were settled in again, Judge Fitzpatrick introduced himself and told the jury that the defendant had to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that she did not need to do or say anything to prove her innocence. It was solely up to the prosecution, he intoned solemnly, to prove their case. Though Allison had heard the words at every trial, and the judge must have said them hundreds of times in his nearly twenty years on the bench, she still found herself listening. Somehow Judge Fitzpatrick always imbued the words with meaning.

When he was finished, he asked Allison to introduce herself. She stood, offering up a silent prayer, as she always did, that justice would be served. She faced the crowded room and tried to make eye contact with everyone. It was her job to build a relationship with the jurors from this moment forward, so that when the time came for them to deliberate, they would trust what she had told them.

"I am Allison Pierce. I represent the United States of America." On some of the potential jurors' faces, Allison saw surprise as they realized that the young woman with the pinned-back dark hair and plain blue suit was actually the federal prosecutor. People always seemed to expect a federal prosecutor to be a silver-haired man.

She gestured toward Nicole. "I'm assisted by FBI special agent Nicole Hedges as the case agent."

Nicole was thirty-three, the same age as Allison, but with her unlined, dark skin and expression that gave away nothing, she could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. She was dressed in her customary dark pantsuit and flats.

The judge then pointed out the defendant, Bethany Maddox, who wore a demure pink and white dress that Allison was sure someone else had picked out for her. The courtroom stirred as people craned their necks or got to their feet to get a glimpse. Bethany smiled, looking as if she had forgotten that she was on trial. Her defense attorney, Nate Condorelli, stood and introduced himself, but it was clear that the would-be jurors weren't nearly as interested in Nate as they were in his client.

Today was the first step in bringing to justice the pair the media had dubbed the Bratz Bandits, courtesy of their full lips, small noses, and trashy attire. What was it with the media and nicknames for bank robbers? The Waddling Bandit, the Grandmother Robber, the Toboggan Bandit, the Runny Nose Robber, the Grocery Cart Bandit--the list went on and on.

For a few weeks after their crime, grainy surveillance video of the pair had been in heavy rotation not just in Portland but nationwide. The contrast between two nineteen-yer-old girls--one blonde and one brunette, both wearing sunglasses, short skirts, and high heels--and the big, black guns they waved around had seemed more comi
c t
han anything else. On the surveillance tape, they had giggled their way through the bank robbery.

The week before, Allison had heard Bethany's parents on The Hand of Fate, the radio talk show. The mother had told listeners that the two young women were not bandits, but "little girls that made a had choice."

Bethany's mother had seemed surprised when Jim Fate laughed.

The father, who was divorced from the mother, had sounded much more in touch with reality, and Allison had made a mental note to consider putting him on the stand.

"God gives us free will, and it's up to us what we do with it," he had told Jim Fate. "Any adult has to make decisions and live with them--good, bad, or indifferent."

The two girls had done it for the money, of course, but it seemed they welcomed the accompanying fame even more. On their Facebook pages they now listed more than a thousand "friends" each. Allison had even heard a rumor that Bethany--the blonde half of the pair and the one on trial today--would soon release a hip-hop CD.

The challenge for Allison was getting a jury to see that what might seem like a victimless crime--and which had only netted three thousand dollars--deserved lengthy jail time.

The courtroom deputy read out fifty names, and the congestion eased a little bit as the first potential jurors took seats in the black swivel chairs in the jury box and in the much-less-comfortable benches that had been reserved for the overflow.

Now the judge turned to the screening questions. "Has anyone heard anything about this case?" he asked. No one expected jurors to have lived in a vacuum, but he would dismiss those who said their minds were made up. It would be an easy out, if anyone was looking for one.

But many weren't. Twenty-four-hour news cycles and the proliferation of cable channels and Internet sites meant that more and more people might be interested in grabbing at the chance for their fifteen minutes of fame. Even the most tangential relationship to a famous or infamous case could be parlayed into celebrity. Or at least a stint on a third-rate reality show. Britney's nanny or Lindsay's bodyguard might be joined by the Bratz Bandits juror--all of them spilling "behind-thescenes" stories.

The jurors listened to each other's answers, looking attentive or bored or spacey. Allison took note of the ones who seemed most disconnected. She didn't want any juror who wasn't invested. Like a poker player, she was looking for signs or tells in the behavior of a prospective juror. Did he never look up? Did she seem evasive or overeager? Allison also made note of the things they carried or wore: Dr Pepper, Cooking Light magazine, a tote bag from a health food store, Wired magazine, brown shoes worn to white at the toes, a black jacket flecked with dandruff. Together with the written questionnaire the prospective jurors had filled out earlier, and how they answered questions now, the information would help Allison decide who she wanted--and who she didn't want--on the jury.

There was an art to picking a jury. Some lawyers had rigid rules: no postal workers, no social workers, no engineers, and/or no young black men (although the last rule had to be unspoken, and denied if ever suspected). Allison tried to look at each person as a whole, weighing each prospective juror's age, sex, race, occupation, and body language.

For this jury, she thought she might want middle-aged women who worked hard for a living and who would have little sympathy for young girls who had literally laughed all the way to the bank. Nearly as good would be younger people who were making something of thei
r l
ives, focusing on good grades or climbing the career ladder. What Allison wanted to avoid were older men who might think of the girls as "daughter figures."

Barrrp . . . barrrp.. . barrrp. Everyone jumped and then looked up at the ceiling, where red lights were flashing. Judge Fitzpatrick announced calmly, "It looks like we're having a fire drill, ladies and gentlemen. Since they lock down the elevators as a precaution, we'll all need to take the stairs, which are directly to your left as you exit the courtroom." His voice was already beginning to be lost as people got to their feet, complaining and gathering their things. "Once the drill is over, we'll reconvene here and pick up where we left off."

Allison and Nicole exchanged a puzzled look.

"Kind of odd," Nicole said as she collected her files."I hadn't heard we were going to have a drill today."

Allison's stomach lurched as she thought of what had happened in Seattle last month. She clutched the sleeve of Nicole's jacket. "Maybe it's not a drill."

As Allison and Nicole turned toward the exit, they saw that one of the prospective jurors, a hunched old lady with a cane, was having trouble getting to her feet. They helped her up, and then Allison took her arm. "Let me help you down the stairs."

"No, I'll take care of her, Allison," Nicole said. "You go on ahead. Remember, you're evacuating for two now."

Allison had been so busy concentrating on the jury selection that she had actually managed to forget for a few hours that she was pregnant. Eleven weeks along now. She didn't quite show when she was dressed, but her skirt was only fastened with the help of a rubber band looped over the button, threaded through the buttonhole and back over the button.

"Thanks." She decided not to argue. At least Nicole knew her child was nowhere near here. What if this wasn't just a drill?

Allison hurried through the black padded double doors and toward the stairs.

Chapter
3 Channel 4 TV

Juggling a handful of colorful dry-erase markers, Channel 4's assignment editor, Eric Reyna, stood in front of the whiteboard at the station's morning story meeting. Around the table, staff passed copies of the three pages of potential story ideas that Eric had compiled. Everyone sat on a rolling office chair--everyone except the new intern, Jenna Banks. She was balanced on a bright-blue exercise ball that she claimed helped strengthen her "core."