The Runaway Jury (20 page)

“Did you see anybody following you?”

“Well, frankly, I never left the room. It upset me so. My husband Cal ventured out a few times, and he did see this one guy, some Cuban-looking man with a camera on the beach, then he saw the same guy on Sunday as we were checking out.” It suddenly hit Stella that this was her exit, her one moment to appear so overcome she just couldn’t continue. With little effort, the tears began to flow.

“Anything else, Mrs. Hulic?”

“No,” she said, sobbing. “It’s just awful. I can’t keep …” and the words were lost in anguish.

His Honor looked at the lawyers. “I’m going to excuse Mrs. Hulic, and replace her with alternate number one.” A small wail went up from Stella, and with the poor woman in such misery it was impossible to argue that she should be kept. Sequestration was looming, and there was no way she could keep pace.

“You may return to the jury room, get your things, and go home. Thank you for your service, and I’m sorry this has happened.”

“I’m so sorry,” she managed to whisper, then rose from the witness chair and left the courtroom. Her departure was a blow for the defense. She’d been rated highly during selection, and after two weeks of nonstop observation the jury experts on both sides were of the near-unanimous opinion that she was not sympathetic to the plaintiff. She had smoked for twenty-four years, without once trying to stop.

Her replacement was a wild card, feared by both sides but especially by the defense.

“Bring in juror number two, Nicholas Easter,” Harkin said to Willis, who was standing with the door open. As Easter was being called for, Gloria Lane and an assistant rolled a large TV/VCR to the center of the courtroom. The lawyers began chewing their pens, especially the defense.

Durwood Cable pretended to be preoccupied with other matters on the table, but the only question on his mind was, What has Fitch done now? Before the trial, Fitch directed everything; the composition of the defense team, the selection of expert witnesses, the hiring of jury consultants, the actual investigation
of all prospective jurors. He handled the delicate communications with the client, Pynex, and he watched the plaintiff’s lawyers like a hawk. But most of what Fitch did after the trial began was quite secretive. Cable didn’t want to know. He took the high road and tried the case. Let Fitch play in the gutter and try to win it.

Easter sat in the witness chair and crossed his legs. If he was scared or nervous, he didn’t show it. The Judge asked him about the mysterious man who’d been following him, and Easter gave specific times and places where he’d seen the man. And he explained in perfect detail what happened last Wednesday when he glanced across the courtroom and saw the same man sitting out there, on the third row.

He then described the security measures he’d taken in his apartment, and he took the videotape from Judge Harkin. He inserted it in the VCR, and the lawyers sat on the edge of their seats. He ran the tape, all nine and a half minutes of it, and when it stopped he sat again in the witness chair and confirmed the identity of the intruder—it was the same man who’d been following him, the same guy who’d shown up in court last Wednesday.

Fitch couldn’t see the damned monitor through his hidden camera because bigfoot McAdoo or some other klutz had kicked the briefcase under the table. But Fitch heard every word Easter said, and he could close his eyes and see precisely what was happening in the courtroom. A severe headache was forming at the base of his skull. He gulped aspirin and washed it down with mineral water. He’d love to ask Easter a simple question: For one concerned enough about security to install hidden cameras,
why didn’t you install an alarm system on your door? But the question occurred to no one but himself.

His Honor said, “I can also verify that the man in the video was in this courtroom last Wednesday.” But the man in the video was now long gone. Doyle was safely tucked away in Chicago when the courtroom saw him enter the apartment and slink around as if he’d never get caught.

“You may return to the jury room, Mr. Easter.”

AN HOUR PASSED as the lawyers made their rather feeble and unprepared arguments for and against sequestration. Once things warmed up, allegations of wrongdoing began to fly back and forth, with the defense catching the most flak. Both sides knew things they couldn’t prove and thus couldn’t say, so the accusations were left somewhat broad.

The jurors got a full report from Nicholas, an embellished account of everything that happened both in court and in the video. In his haste, Judge Harkin had failed to prohibit Nicholas from discussing the matter with his colleagues. It was an omission Nicholas had immediately caught, and he couldn’t wait to structure the story to suit himself. He also took the liberty of explaining Stella’s rapid departure. She’d left them in tears.

Fitch narrowly averted two minor strokes as he stomped around his office, rubbing his neck and his temples and tugging at his goatee and demanding impossible answers from Konrad, Swanson, and Pang. In addition to those three, he had young Holly, and Joe Boy, a local private eye with incredibly soft feet, and Dante, a black ex-cop from D.C., and Dubaz, another Coast boy with a lengthy record.
And he had four people in the office with Konrad, another dozen he could summon to Biloxi within three hours, and loads of lawyers and jury consultants. Fitch had lots of people, and they cost lots of money, but he damned sure didn’t send anyone to Miami over the weekend to watch Stella and Cal shop.

A Cuban? With a camera? Fitch actually threw a phonebook against a wall as he repeated this.

“What if it’s the girl?” asked Pang, raising his head slowly after lowering it to miss the phonebook.

“What girl?”

“Marlee. Hulic said the phone call came from a girl.” Pang’s composure was a sharp contrast to his boss’s explosiveness. Fitch froze in mid-step, then sat for a moment in his chair. He took another aspirin and drank more mineral water, and finally said, “I think you’re right.”

And he was. The Cuban was a two-bit “security consultant” Marlee found in the Yellow Pages. She’d paid him two hundred dollars to look suspicious, not a difficult task, and to get caught with a camera as the Hulics left the hotel.

THE ELEVEN JURORS and three alternates were reassembled in the courtroom. Stella’s empty chair on the first row was filled by Phillip Savelle, a forty-eight-year-old misfit neither side had been able to read. He described himself as a self-employed tree surgeon, but no record of this profession had been found on the Gulf Coast for the past five years. He was also an avant-garde glassblower whose forte was brightly colored, shapeless creations to which he gave obscure aquatic and marine names and occasionally exhibited at tiny, neglected galleries in
Greenwich Village. He boasted of being an expert sailor, and had in fact once built his own ketch, which he sailed to Honduras where it sank in calm waters. At times he fancied himself an archaeologist, and after the boat dropped he spent eleven months in a Honduran prison for illegal excavations.

He was single, agnostic, a graduate of Grinnell, a nonsmoker. Savelle scared the hell out of every lawyer in the courtroom.

Judge Harkin apologized for what he was about to do. Sequestration of a jury was a rare, radical event, made necessary by extraordinary circumstances, and almost always used in sensational murder cases. But he had no choice in this case. There had been unauthorized contact. There was no reason to believe it would cease, regardless of his warnings. He didn’t like it one bit, and he was very sorry for the hardship it would cause, but his job at this point was to guarantee a fair trial.

He explained that months earlier he had developed a contingency plan for this very moment. The county had reserved a block of rooms at a nearby, unnamed motel. Security would be increased. He had a list of rules which he would cover with them. The trial was now entering its second full week of testimony, and he would push the lawyers hard to finish as soon as possible.

The fourteen jurors were to leave, go home, pack, get their affairs in order, and report to court the next morning prepared to spend the next two weeks sequestered.

There were no immediate reactions from the panel; they were too stunned. Only Nicholas Easter thought it was funny.

Fourteen

B
ecause of Jerry’s fondness for beer and gambling and football and rowdiness in general, Nicholas suggested they meet at a casino Monday night to celebrate their last few hours of freedom. Jerry thought it was a wonderful idea. As the two left the courthouse, they toyed with the idea of inviting a few of their colleagues. The idea sounded good, but it didn’t work. Herman was out of the question. Lonnie Shaver left hurriedly, quite agitated and not speaking to anyone. Savelle was new and unknown, and apparently the kind of guy you’d keep at a distance. That left Herrera, Nap the Colonel, and they simply weren’t up to it. They were about to spend two weeks locked up with him.

Jerry invited Sylvia Taylor-Tatum, the Poodle. The two were becoming friends of a sort. She was divorced for the second time, and Jerry was about to be divorced for the first. Since Jerry knew all the casinos along the Coast, he suggested they meet at a new one called The Diplomat. It had a sports bar
with a large screen, cheap drinks, a little privacy, and cocktail waitresses with long legs and skimpy outfits.

When Nicholas arrived at eight, Poodle was already there, holding a table in the crowded bar, sipping a draft beer and smiling pleasantly, something she never did inside the courthouse. Her flowing curly hair was pulled back. She wore tight faded jeans, a bulky sweater, and red cowboy boots. Still far from pretty, she looked much better in a bar than in the jury box.

Sylvia had the dark, sad, worldly eyes of a woman beaten by life, and Nicholas was determined to dig as fast and as deep as possible before Fernandez arrived. He ordered another round, and dispensed with the chitchat. “Are you married?” he asked, knowing she wasn’t. The first marriage had occurred when she was nineteen, had produced twin boys, now twenty. One worked offshore on an oil rig, the other was a junior in college. Very opposite. Husband One left after five years, and she raised the boys herself. “What about you?” she asked.

“No. Technically I’m still a student, but I’m working now.”

Husband Two was an older man, and thankfully they produced no children. The marriage lasted seven years, then he traded her in for a newer model. She vowed to never marry again. The Bears kicked off to the Packers and Sylvia watched the game with interest. She loved football because her boys had been all-conference picks in high school.

Jerry arrived in a rush, casting wary glances behind him before apologizing for being late. He gulped down the first beer in a matter of seconds, and explained that he thought he was being followed.
Poodle scoffed at this, and offered the opinion that right now every member of the jury was jerking at the neck, certain that shadows were not far behind.

“Forget the jury,” Jerry said. “I think it’s my wife.”

“Your wife?” said Nicholas.

“Yeah. I think she’s got some private snoop trailing me.”

“You should look forward to being sequestered,” Nicholas said.

“Oh I am,” Jerry said, winking at Poodle.

He had five hundred dollars on the Packers, plus six points, but the bet was only for the combined score in the first half. He’d place another bet at half-time. Any pro or college game offered an amazing array of bets, he explained to the two novices seated with him, virtually none of which had anything to do with the ultimate winner. Jerry sometimes bet on who’d fumble first, who’d make the first field goal, who’d throw the most interceptions. He watched the game with the edginess of a man wagering money he could ill afford to lose. He drank four draft beers in the first quarter. Nicholas and Sylvia fell quickly behind.

In the gaps of Jerry’s incessant chatter about football and the art of successful betting, Nicholas made a few awkward forays into the subject of the trial, without success. Sequestration was a sore subject, and since they had not yet experienced it there was little to say. The day’s testimony had been painful enough to sit through, and the thought of rehashing Dr. Kilvan’s opinions during leisure seemed cruel. Nor was there interest in the bigger picture. Sylvia in particular was disgusted by a simple inquiry into the general concept of liability.

* * *

MRS. GRIMES had been ushered from the courtroom and was in the atrium when Judge Harkin announced his rules for sequestration. As she drove Herman home he explained that he’d be spending the next two weeks in a motel room, on strange turf, without her around. Shortly after they reached their house, she had Judge Harkin on the phone, and gave him an earful of her thoughts on these most recent developments. Her husband was blind, she reminded him more than once, and he needed special assistance. Herman sat on the sofa, drinking his one beer of the day and fuming at his wife’s intrusion.

Judge Harkin quickly found middle ground. He would allow Mrs. Grimes to stay with Herman in his room at the motel. She could eat breakfast and dinner with Herman, and care for him, but she had to avoid contact with the other jurors. Also, she could no longer watch the trial because it was imperative that she not be able to discuss it with Herman. This didn’t sit well with Mrs. Grimes, one of the few spectators who’d heard every word so far. And, though she didn’t reveal this to His Honor, or to Herman, she had already developed some rather strong opinions about the case. The Judge was firm. Herman was furious. But Mrs. Grimes prevailed, and set off to the bedroom to begin packing.

LONNIE SHAVER did a week’s work Monday night at the office. After numerous attempts, he found George Teaker at home in Charlotte, and explained that the jury was about to be locked away for the duration of the trial. He was scheduled to talk to Taunton later in the week, and he was worried about being inaccessible. He explained that the Judge was
prohibiting any direct phone calls to and from the motel room, and it would be impossible to correspond again until after the trial. Teaker was sympathetic, and as the conversation progressed he expressed somber concerns about the outcome of the trial.