The Hanging Judge (25 page)

Ruby Johnson rose regally, adjusted the piece of paper in front of her, and read: “Do you and each of you solemnly swear that you shall well and truly try the issues between the United States and the defendant at the bar and render a true verdict according to the evidence and the law given to you?”

There was a fumbling “I do” from the group.

“You may be seated.”

This is it,
Redpath thought.
We have lift-off.
He inhaled and squeezed down a smile.

From this point on, unless there was a mistrial for good cause, this glorious jury was going to provide the government’s one chance to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Moon Hudson had committed the crimes he was charged with. The constitutional prohibition against placing a defendant in jeopardy twice for the same offense would bar any future trial.

“It is my unvarying custom,” Norcross was saying, “to select as the foreperson of the jury the person who happens to end up in Seat Number One. Mrs. Coolidge, you ended up in Seat Number One. Therefore, you will be the foreperson of this jury.”

Mrs. Coolidge, dear Mrs. Coolidge, with her intelligent, leathery face, passed a look at the older man sitting next to her. She squared her shoulders and nodded. No one was going to stampede her! The older man patted her on the forearm, a quick reassuring touch. The jury, this assembly of saints, was already beginning to coalesce.

“That does not mean, ma’am, that your vote will be any more important than the votes of your fellow jurors. As I have already told you, whatever verdict the jurors shall reach must be the product of your unanimous agreement.” Norcross paused, pulled his notes toward him, and cleared his throat to continue.

Suddenly, a rustle and thumping arose from the gallery, then a stamp of feet, and a small female voice piped out, absurdly high: “Clarence Hudson—convicted drug dealer!” Two other lower voices joined in, halting but clear, “Clarence Hudson—drug dealer!”

Grunts and mumbles rebounded through the courtroom as reporters and spectators in the gallery stretched to see what was going on. Redpath shifted around to observe the unfolding catastrophe: The court officer Tom Dickinson, pink-faced and furious, was moving in from his right, people in the back of the courtroom were beginning to stand up for a better look, and in the front row the three early-bird students were holding a scrap of pale-blue bed sheet between them. The banner, turned to face the jurors, read in neatly stenciled, foot-high black letters HUDSON
DEALS
DRUGS!!!

One of the protesters, the girl with the spectacular blonde hair, shouted, just as Dickinson grabbed her arm: “They won’t tell you!” Her thin voice grew shrill. “Hudson’s a convicted drug dealer!”

Dickinson jerked the banner out of her hands. Three or four other officers joined him and began pulling the students toward the door. In response, the young man with the sideburns deliberately slumped to the carpet, dragging an older, overweight officer with him. The kid had a good strong diaphragm and bellowed up from the floor: “They’re hiding it from you. Hudson’s a drug dealer!” A muffled grunt followed. “They don’t want you to …”

The third student, a girl with curly red hair and a round, pale face, cried out as her arm was jerked behind her back, and she was pushed toward the door. A spectator wearing a clerical collar shouted, “Hey, take it easy there!”

With a crash of the courtroom’s double doors, all three protesters were dragged, carried, or simply fell, out into the hallway. Several reporters scrambled after them, and the doors banged shut. No more than a minute had passed since the first outcry, but Redpath, sickened, could already feel his carefully constructed world cracking open and starting to collapse.

Norcross tapped sharply on the microphone with his pen, breaking in with a confident voice that pierced the hubbub: “Well! I do apologize for the unexpected entertainment.” The noise level in the courtroom immediately dropped. Norcross swept his gaze over the gallery and down to the jurors. The thumps and outcry in the corridor were receding, and the voices in the courtroom quieted further as people paused to catch what the judge was saying.

“You know, this is a wonderful job,” Norcross said, scratching behind his ear, speaking to the jurors. “You never know what fascinating thing will happen next.” His voice was calm, mildly amused. Most of the jurors smiled back, reassured, and two even chuckled and shook their heads. Life was funny.

“We’ll take a short recess to hand out the Academy Awards. Please don’t discuss the case, or any of this foolishness. We’ll resume in fifteen minutes or so. Ms. Johnson will escort you to your room.”

Norcross waited as the jurors passed silently out of the courtroom, but his look of sweet-tempered calm darkened when the door closed behind them. He said curtly, “The court will be in recess. Counsel will remain in the courtroom. I’ll see you in chambers shortly.”

32

“H
ow the
fuck
did they know to do that?” Eva was leaning in the doorway to Frank’s office. “How the fuck did they know?”

Frank was sitting in his chair with his head in his hands. “Had to be somebody coaching them,” he said blindly. “They knew to wait until he’d put the jury under oath.” He looked up. “Assholes! Five weeks down the tubes.”

“He won’t scrub the jury!” Eva said, aghast.

“Oh, I bet he will. I bet he’ll have to.”

Eva paced in a tight circle and stamped her foot. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Stop,” Frank said. “Please. You sound like a chicken.”

The judge’s secretary, Lucille, came into the library. She’d picked up on the mood and was looking steely. “Judge wants to see you. Pronto.”

Norcross was sitting at his desk with his long torso thrown back, staring at the ceiling. His face when he turned it to the law clerks was so angry and exhausted it was frightening—the countenance of a man who’d been staggering through the last quarter mile of the Boston Marathon, only to be told that, for technical reasons, the race’s length had just doubled. Another twenty-six miles still lay ahead, with another Heartbreak Hill.

“I’m going to ask this once,” he said. “Has either of you discussed this case with anyone—anyone—outside these chambers?”

“No.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Judge,” Eva said. “People ask me questions, and I just say I can’t talk about it.”

“Not your partner? Not Bonnie? Not your wife, Frank?”

“Judge,” Frank said. “I’m sorry, but they don’t care. They don’t even ask.”

“So how the heck did those brats know to do that?” Norcross asked. “We’ve busted our tails to keep Hudson’s record out. The trial’s one Achilles heel!”

“Most lawyers would know,” Eva said. She had, in fact, discussed the case with Bonnie, a little, and was feeling defensive. “Anybody who does criminal work.”

“No lawyer set this up.”

The phone buzzed, and Norcross made a sour face.

Without picking up the receiver, he shouted, “Lucille, take a message please.”

“It’s Claire,” Lucille called back. “Says she just needs a second.”

“Okay,” he said with a sigh.

Frank and Eva started to get up, but Norcross waved them down. This would be quick.

“Hi,” he said to Claire. “I’m pretty tied up at the moment.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re a busy boy. So, here’s my message, in shorthand: Don’t come at seven. I won’t be there. Come at eight, okay? Was that fast enough? I was afraid I wouldn’t reach you.”

“Great,” Norcross said dully.

“Whoa, you sound terrible. Must be some mess.”

“I can’t go into details, but you remember our friend Brittany? From the Pratt dinner? Well, she showed up in court today with two pals and a nice little banner informing my jury that Hudson was a drug dealer. It just dawned on me who she was. We’re trying to figure out how on earth she and her friends knew to do that.”

“Oh dear,” said Claire. Then, after a slight pause, “That might have been me.”

“You? I really doubt it.”

“Well, I bumped into Gerry a while back, and I may have mentioned you were concerned about the jurors knowing about Hudson’s past crimes, or something like that.”

“Ah.”

Another, more extended pause.

“God, I’m feeling stupid, David. Have I done something horrible?”

“You didn’t do anything. If anybody …” He faltered. He wanted to say, “If anybody’s to blame, it’s me,” but he put on the brakes, with Frank and Eva sitting there. “Anyway, we’re straightening it out now.”

“Oh, David, I’m so sorry. I’m going to strangle Novotny.”

“There’s an idea.” This was dragging on too long. Frank and Eva were killing time on the other side of the desk, heads bent down whispering, trying to look as though they weren’t hearing anything.

“I better go,” Norcross said. “Listen, let’s take a rain check for tonight, okay? I’m going to be totally shot by evening. I’d be rotten company.”

“Damn,” Claire said.

“I better go, okay? Let me give you a call.”

“Sure. This is a bad time to talk, right?”

“Right.”

“You have people there.”

“Afraid so.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m …”

“I’ll call you.”

Norcross hung up. “This is all my fault,” he muttered. “Today of all days.” The room was spinning a little. He swallowed and took a careful breath.

“Sorry?” Eva asked.

“It’s okay,” Norcross said. “I apologize for the third degree. Let me have ten minutes here to collect myself. Then we’ll get counsel in and give them the bad news.”

33

B
ill Redpath stood alone in the plaza outside the courthouse, drawing deeply on a Lucky Strike. It was very cold; mounds of snow were piled high against the planters.

The conference with Judge Norcross could not have gone worse. Redpath had told the judge, with all the passion he could muster, that he would waive any objection to the jurors’ exposure to the banner, and to the yowling about Moon’s prior record. He’d pointed out that Norcross could simply instruct the jurors to ignore their babble and refrain from speculating about whatever they’d heard or seen.

Gomez-Larsen had objected. If she got a conviction, and particularly if the jury imposed the death penalty, Hudson might get a new lawyer and argue that it was plain error, even with a waiver, to proceed to trial with jurors who’d been exposed to such highly prejudicial, totally inadmissible evidence. The prosecutor’s tone of buttery earnestness made Redpath want to grind her face into the carpet. She’d previously argued ardently that this “totally admissible” evidence should come in. It was better for everyone, she argued now, to bring in a fresh batch of jurors and avoid the risk of having to retry the case in a year and a half following an appeal.

Despite all his efforts, Redpath and Moon had been forced to watch as the judge resumed court, declared a mistrial, thanked the jurors and alternates, and dismissed them. Most painful had been Mrs. Coolidge’s farewell look over her shoulder as she passed out of the jury box, a generous, handsome woman just about Redpath’s age.

All his angels had flown. He’d never, this side of heaven, be so fortunate again.

At least, he thought, his son, Tom, would sympathize. As a public defender, the young man—not so young now, actually—knew the life. He’d set aside extra time to talk Sunday. A spring visit no longer seemed very likely.

Pigeons were patrolling the courtyard in mindless clusters, hurrying here and there officiously, like busy little prosecutors. Redpath suddenly hated them. He wished one of them—say, that whitish one, with the iridescent stripe—would stray close enough so he could kick it into a bus. An indignant voice was emerging from the revolving door behind him.

“That sucks! Can he do that? With no trial or anything?”

It was the pale, red-haired girl, speaking angrily to the long-haired blonde as they came out of the building and toward Redpath. The big boy with the sideburns loped behind the two girls, gawking around with a blissed-out smile, as though he were Adam just arriving in paradise, empty-headed and pure, carrying that inimitable look of the true high-minded, nonsmoking vegan.

“Why don’t you chill, Denise? It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Oh, sure, like, just deal with it.” She caught sight of Redpath. “Hey! I’m asking him.”

As they approached, Redpath took the measure of these barbarians. A gaggle of pigeons scattered out of their way, and an empty McDonald’s milk-shake cup tumbled in the icy breeze across their path. The same cold wind caught the blonde girl’s hair, lifted it, and blew it to one side in a shining mane. She glanced disdainfully at the one called Denise but said nothing.

“Um, excuse me? Sir? Mr… . ?” Denise fumbled as they got closer.

“Redpath,” the blonde girl muttered without changing expression.

Redpath blew out a lungful of smoke and fought off the impulse to bang the two girls’ heads together.

“Mr. Redpath, can we ask you a question?”

“It doesn’t matter, Denise,” the boy interrupted, sounding irritated.

“It matters to me, Peter.”

Redpath looked at them without saying anything. He was suddenly very tired. Was he getting the flu, or something? These were decent kids who’d signed up to fight on the right side. Only problem was, they’d shot up the village. Killed the wrong people.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.” He sipped out the last puff on his Lucky Strike, keeping his face impassive.

“Can the judge,” she flapped her hand back at the building, “that Norcross geek, can he just put us in jail if he wants to, for as long as he wants, without a trial or anything?”

Redpath patted his pockets and located his cigarettes. He shook one out and began to light it off the end of his old butt. The smoke blowing back into his eyes made him squint as he puffed. He tossed the butt on the ground, drew deeply, and blew out the smoke.

“Yep.”

The kid called Peter crushed out the butt with his sneaker, then carefully picked it up and put it in his pocket. He pointed at Redpath.

“I suppose you know you’ll wreck your lungs if you don’t stop smoking those things.”