In Self Defense (33 page)

***

If the media had been hard on Clare, it had been just as hard on Stephanie Burdick.  Although the socialite had always lived the lion’s share of her life in the public eye, and mostly by choice, her former antics now paled in comparison.

She couldn’t go anywhere without a camera or a microphone being thrust in her face.  She couldn’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing or hearing herself branded -- not just as the other woman, but as the reason that Richard Durant, the brilliant and dynamic force behind Nicolaidis Industries, was dead.  It didn’t do any good for her to say she had no idea what her lover was attempting to do.  The fact that he was attempting to do it -- and that he was doing it so he could be free to marry her -- was all anyone seemed to care about.

Stephanie didn’t wait for the verdict.  She booked herself on a flight to Paris, closed up her apartment, and left word that no one should expect her back any time soon.

***

The jury deliberated for three days.  Twice, they sent questions back to the judge.  Twice, the judge replied.  At the end of the third day, the foreman sent a note to the judge, telling her that the jury was unable to reach a verdict.  She refused to let them quit.

“If, after a week, you’re still unable to come together, then I may consider it,” she said.  “But certainly not after just three days.”

Finally, on the fourth day, there was a breakthrough, and at two o’clock in the afternoon, the jury announced that it had reached a unanimous verdict.

***

Clare was trying to keep everything straight in her head.  Court was scheduled to reconvene at four o’clock, and she had less than an hour’s time to get herself together and leave for downtown.  But first, she had to take care of the children, because whichever way the verdict went, she didn’t want them getting caught in the crossfire.

Elaine agreed to come to Laurelhurst and take them back home with her, and Doreen packed their suitcases.  Clare arranged for the tutor to go to Ravenna.

Her sister-in-law gave her a long hug.  “Chin up,” she whispered.  “We’re pulling for you.”

Finally, there was nothing left but to give instructions to Doreen.  “Just in case,” she said.

But the housekeeper was having done of it.  “I’ll be right here,” she said.  “Just like I always am.  And I’ll see you later.”

Clare darted out of the house and into David’s waiting car, just ahead of the paparazzi.

“Hey Clare,” one of them called out, “where do you think you’ll be sleeping tonight?”

“People can be so cruel, without even realizing it, can’t they?” she said with a sigh.

“Or perhaps without caring,” David suggested.

***

The courthouse was a madhouse.  Employees scurried around like rabbits, directing the spectators, positioning the media.  Spectators overflowed corridors and scrambled for seats, pushing and shoving one another in their haste to be one of the lucky few.  Members of the media, deliberately of course, stood in everyone’s way, and got in everyone’s face.

After all, this was it.  This was what the whole past six weeks had been about -- from the first day of jury selection, through all the testimony, through final deliberations -- this all-important moment, when the verdict was read.  No one wanted to be left out.  No one wanted to miss a word of it, or a reaction, or even a facial expression.  No one wanted to be the one that got to hear about it secondhand.

The pundits had been remarkably divided, as many sympathizing with the defendant as condemning her.  As a result, the public was equally divided.  The one thing everyone agreed on was that this was not your run-of-the-mill case.

For starters, not many women in Seattle killed their husbands.  And not many of the few who did then claimed they did it because their husbands were trying to kill them.  It was a complex defense, really, a remarkable defense, actually, and for those not particularly interested in the intricacies of the legal system, the whole case had provided a tantalizing peek inside the lives of the rich and famous.

“Don’t want it anymore -- just kill it off,” one pundit remarked.  “Like a dog or a cat or a hamster.  Mark my words, folks, however this case is decided, it will give our image of being a throwaway society a whole new dimension.”

***

Clare and David were ushered into the little room next to the courtroom where they had already spent so much time, and two guards took up positions outside the door.

“How much longer?” she asked.

David glanced at his watch.  “Not much,” he told her.  “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

“What do you think?”

“Hard to say.  Four days of deliberation generally means they had a hard time getting to unanimity.  It probably means they were forced to compromise.”

“Compromise how?”

“Instead of an acquittal,” he said, “they might have opted for a lesser charge.”

“Which one?”

“Hopefully, manslaughter.”

“What would that mean?”

David shrugged.  “First-degree murder gets you life.  Second-degree murder gets you twenty-five to life.  For first degree manslaughter, you’re probably looking at eight to fifteen years.”

Clare shuddered, and then raised her chin.  “It would be dreadful, of course,” she said, “but at least it would mean it would finally be over.  I really need this to be over.  I need the children to be able to get on with their lives.  They’re victims here, too.”

David didn’t know what to say.  In his experience, four days to verdict didn’t bode well for his client.  Not when the jury had compromises to fall back on.  And while a manslaughter conviction was certainly better than a murder conviction, it wasn’t exactly what he would call a victory.  And, too, it may not be manslaughter.  It was very possible that there were only one or perhaps two holdouts for acquittal, and it just took time to bring them around.

Of course, he knew, it was equally possible that the holdouts were for conviction.

He wanted to say something reassuring, but reading a jury was always the hardest part of the job he did.  You could think you picked the right ones only to have them jump up and bite you in the backside, just as easily as you could discover that ones you thought would never go your way had stepped up to champion your cause.  You just never knew what dynamic would surface when twelve strangers locked in a room had to get together and speak with one voice before they were allowed out.  In the end, it was anyone’s guess.

***

The spectators were packed in and restless, shifting around in their seats, murmuring to one another.

Mark Sundstrom and his assistant, Tom Colby, seemed to be brimming with nervous energy, fully anticipating a verdict in their favor.  The court clerk flitted anxiously from one busy work chore to another.  Even the jurors appeared to be on edge.  They entered the courtroom nervously, with tentative expressions on their faces, and they did not look at the defendant.

But none of them could be as unsettled as Clare, who alternated between wanting to laugh, and cry, and vomit.

The judge sat implacably on the bench.  This was her show and she was in no particular hurry to have it begin.  It was not until the hour hand on the wall clock clicked onto the four that she banged her gavel and called the court to order.

“I understand the jury has reached a verdict,” she said, more of a formality than a question.

“Yes, Your Honor, we have,” the foreman, a slight man in his fifties, said.  Clare thought she remembered David telling her the man was an electrical engineer.

Like a well-rehearsed play, the court clerk walked over and took the verdict form from the foreman and passed it up to the judge.  Naomi Lazarus opened the form, read the contents, and without a single muscle in her face revealing a hint of what it said, passed it back to the clerk who then returned it to the foreman.

“The foreman will read the verdict,” the judge instructed.

The courtroom held its collective breath.

The foreman pulled a pair of eyeglasses from his jacket pocket and peered at the verdict form.  “We the jury,” he read, “in the matter of the People versus Clare Durant, on the charge of murder in the first degree, find the defendant . . . not guilty.”

Everyone in the gallery started talking at once.

David felt his heart lurch in his stomach.

Mark Sundstrom shrugged his shoulders.

Clare was numb.  What did it mean, she wondered.  She didn’t know what it meant.

The judge banged her gavel for order.

“We the jury,” the foreman continued, “in the matter of the People versus Clare Durant, on the charge of murder in the second degree, find the defendant . . . not guilty.”

This time there was an audible gasp from the spectators, and then silence.  They knew there was only one charge remaining.  What they didn’t know was that it was the one the prosecution had not wanted to include from the beginning.

David held his breath.  Manslaughter was the charge he had worried most about, but he had fought to include it, if only because it would give the jury a viable option if they felt they needed it. 

“We the jury, in the matter of the People versus Clare Durant, on the charge of manslaughter,” the foreman read, pausing to glance up at Clare before he continued, “find the defendant. . . not guilty.”

It didn’t matter which side anyone was on, there was pandemonium in the courtroom.

Mark Sundstrom sank back in his chair, dumbfounded.

David Johansen couldn’t believe his ears.

Clare appeared disoriented.

“What happened?” she asked her attorney.

“I really don’t know,” he told her honestly.  “But you’re going home.”

***

“In a remarkable turn of events,” the local anchors on the evening news broadcasts began, “Clare Durant, heiress to the medical giant Nicolaidis Industries, was acquitted of all charges today in connection with last year’s shooting death of her husband, Richard Durant, former CEO of the conglomerate.

“After four days of deliberations, it was generally assumed that the jury had reached a compromise verdict in this case that has had much of the city riveted for over a month.  But if there was any compromise, it wasn’t evident in the results.”

***

If the jurors were surprised by their instant notoriety, they managed to hide it well.  At least half of them were more than happy to step before the cameras as soon as the judge had dismissed them, and tell all about the trial and the verdict.  They stretched out their fifteen minutes of fame as long as they could.

“I felt she was innocent right from the start,” one of them said, “and I waited for the prosecution to prove otherwise.  They were doing a pretty decent job of it, too, until we found out about what her husband was trying to do to her.”

“You believed her husband was trying to kill her, did you?” a reporter asked.

“At the very least, I believe she believed it,” another juror said.

“I was on the fence most of the time during the trial,” admitted a third.  “I could see it going either way.  But after going back over everything and analyzing each piece of evidence, I’m pretty confident we ended up in the right place.”

Still another signed a book deal and even chose the title: 
Why I
Changed My Vote
.  “Maybe what took me so long to come around was that I just wanted to believe she was guilty,” he said.

“If you’ve ever been on a jury,” a fifth told reporters, “you know it’s different from just about anything else.  It’s like a war, only without any real weapons, except words, of course, and you know one side is going to win eventually, but you don’t know which side it’s going to be.  So it goes back and forth until you just get worn down, or worn out.  We had two strong people in there, one battling for guilt, and one battling for innocence.  They were both very persuasive.  That’s why it took so long.”

***

People flocked to Laurelhurst, those that Clare was close to, and those who now wanted to be close to her.  Doreen did her best to fend them off, and pretty much succeeded, until a week after the verdict, when it was Erin Hall who rang the doorbell.

“I just thought you’d want you to know, we tracked down the black truck,” the detective told Clare.  “It traced back to a man who grew up in the Lacey Trailer Park at the same time your husband did.  Apparently, they were friends.  From what we could piece together, he was doing a favor for a friend when he ran you off the road.  He took the fifty thousand dollars, did what he was paid to do, and by all accounts, took off for Mexico.”

Clare shook her head.  “It doesn’t really matter,” she said.  “It’s over, it’s done.  If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just put it behind me and get on with my life.”

Erin nodded.  “Good idea.”  She turned to leave and then stopped and turned back.

“I guess I also wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said, and Clare could tell her words were sincere.  “I’m sorry you had to go through all this.  And I’m sorry for the part I played in it.  I wish you’d told us about your husband.  I’d like to think we’d have believed you.  I’d like to think we could have helped.”