Paul Madriani: The Jury Part 20

On mental autopilot, I grapple for some reason why Crone will not level with us. I have long since dismissed the excuse of commercial secrets. No sane person is willing to go to prison for life to protect such interests. David Crone may be accused of a lot of things, but being mentally unbalanced is not one of them. He is hiding something and has a good reason. I can only hope that it is not a glaring motive for murder.

The lights in the mirror are giving me a headache. The vehicle behind me has its high beams on, like flares exploding behind my eyes. I flip to the night mirror to cut the glare. In the summer, it is the setting western sun that blinds you. In fall and winter it is headlights, approaching and behind. Now all that is left in the mirror from behind are little yellow parking lights, the one on the left burned out. And so it goes, the nightly evacuation of the city.

Sarah will be waiting for me at home. We touch base daily in the afternoon by phone. Quite the little lady, she now fixes dinner. I have learned that my daughter loves to cook. My ch.o.r.e is the dishes, the nightly domestic task that I actually enjoy. Unlike my job, interminable delays and unfinished projects, it is a task I can complete in minutes and view with satisfaction, mundane as it sounds.

I take the off-ramp to the bridge. Over the span it is stop-and-go, vehicles backed up for the tollgates on the other side. This takes twenty minutes. Stalled lights behind me as far as I can see. I look at myself in the mirror. The stress of a trial takes its toll. There are times in the morning when, just out of bed, I do not recognize the face looking back from the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet.

Sitting here stalled in traffic, I keep turning over in my mind all the pieces, like a puzzle, looking for the ones that fit. Tash and Crone, Kalista Jordan and William Epperson. And Jordan's mother, popping out of the weeds as she has. I haven't seen her much around the courthouse, now I know why. Tannery has been keeping her under wraps.

I make my way to the tollbooth and through, then head for the last stretch, the few blocks home. Within minutes I am in the driveway. It is now totally dark. I step down out of Lena and reach for my briefcase on the pa.s.senger seat. As I do, I notice a vehicle pulling up a few houses down on my side of the street. It is a dark van; its headlights out, parking lights on, except for the left one that seems not to be working. It is the absence of lights as it slides to a slow stop at the curb that draws my attention. In that brief and absent observation, it registers. It is the same van that was parked across from the jail where I left Harry.

chapter.

twelve.

this morning I am sleep deprived, the result of a recurring nightmare, three nights running. It always starts the same way. I am in the courtroom, but instead of wearing my coat and tie I am dressed in a baseball uniform. I can feel the bat in my hand, preparing for the pitch. Bases loaded. A jury of scowling and angry umpires is in the box. Each night I draw closer to a verdict, but never quite get there, hanging on the edge just as I wake. So vivid is this that I have no difficulty remembering the details even as Harry and I make our way to the courthouse down the side street from the parking lot this morning.

We edge toward the front steps of the courthouse as we see the trucks with their video satellite dishes parked just around the corner. Another day, another dollar, we run the gauntlet.

By the time we reach the steps they've engulfed us, soundmen with their boom mikes jousting while the cameramen wield their lenses like bazookas. It is the latest rage in entertainment, anything salacious from the courthouse. Crone's trial is now hot news. In this case, there is the added undercurrent of race; unstated in the press or on the tube, it is conveyed by constant photographs of Crone and the victim, profile shots facing off on the same page. Two of the local network affiliates have crafted these into their nightly logo for the so-called "Jigsaw Jane murder case of Dr. David Crone." Harry is thinking of having them printed on his business cards.

The cry for racial justice, while not heard in the courtroom, is openly discussed on the talk shows at night and in sidebars in the newspapers. a.s.surances from Judge Coats to the contrary, Harry and I can only wonder whether the jury is properly insulated from this. We could demand that they be sequestered, locked away in some hotel under lock and key with bailiffs to watch over them for the duration. This would definitely cut against us. It is a fact that jurors incarcerated for trial will invariably hold it against the defendant.

Harry and I fight our way up the steps past the cameras, push and shove.

"Who's today's witness?" One of them sticks a boom mike in my face. I shove it aside with a shoulder and walk by.

"Why is the session closed to the press?"

"You'd have to talk to the judge," says Harry.

"Is it true that there's a witness to the murder?"

This last stops Harry in his tracks.

"That's news to me," he tells them.

"Then it's not true? Are you telling us it's not true?"

"I'm not telling you anything." Under a gag order, Harry has said all he can. The rumor has been floating for days.

"Then you're not denying it?"

I say nothing. Harry is mum, responding only with looks to kill.

There are a thousand ways your client can be tried in the press. One of the least enviable is to be gagged by the court as false stories begin to spread on the airwaves. We can't be certain that jurors won't hear these and begin to engage in their own speculation.

We push our way through the throng. As in medieval combat, two of the soundmen employ their boom mikes like pikes, dangling them in our faces as we surge forward up the steps. Harry uses his briefcase like a shield to ward them off.

"Can you tell us who the witness is?"

"Can't tell you anything," says Harry. "And if you don't get that d.a.m.n thing outta my face, you're gonna be wearing it where the sun don't shine." Tonight's sound bite if they don't find anything more interesting.

"Would we be wrong to report that there is a witness to the killing?"

"Has being wrong ever bothered you before?" Harry is starting to get hot.

"Are you saying we'd be wrong?"

One of the bailiffs just inside the courthouse lobby sees our plight. A burly guy, he opens the door and uses an arm, cutting a swath through the working press like Moses parting the Red Sea. Inside is the metal detector, a line with guards checking briefcases, sanctuary and some sanity.

I am fighting off a headache, and the day hasn't started. I was up most of the night prepping for the unknown, periodically watching the dark van parked across the street from the house. It left a little after three, pulling away from the curb and rolling almost to the end of the block with its lights out, then rounded the corner and disappeared.

It was too dark to see any occupants inside. Maybe I'm getting paranoid. It was probably somebody visiting in the neighborhood. This morning I say nothing to Harry about it.

We make it through the line and take the elevator. By the time we reach the courtroom we are down to the usual suspects, lawyers with their clients engaged in last-minute deals out in the hall, forlorn witnesses and family members lost in the sea of department numbers. There are two local reporters outside of Department 22, newspaper regulars with s.p.a.ce in the pressroom. Here the action is less frenzied. There is no need for frenetic film at five.

They pose the expected questions: "What's going on?" "Can you tell us who the surprise witness is?"

One of them, Max Sheen, has worked here for two decades. He has carved out a beat so that he knows every lawyer in town. He's on a first-name basis with every judge, at least those who want to get reelected. It is rumored that Sheen has his own key to the courthouse, with access to the clerks' filing room downstairs.

I tell them no comment, that we're under a gag order, and Sheen takes his appeal to Harry. "Can you at least tell me how long she's likely to be on the stand? Something for the one-o'clock deadline," he says.

Sheen may already know more than we do about today's activities.

Harry knows him, the kind of person my partner would cultivate if he wanted to drop his own news bomb in the middle of a trial and not have his fingerprints all over it. They step to one side, Harry and the two reporters, a conversation out of earshot.

Harry has always entertained such types, with private phone numbers in his Rolodex in Capital City. He has been busy making new friends here. It's all very cordial in the corner between them, intent looks and a lot of scribbling off by one of the benches. I don't want to hear what Harry may be telling them. Ignorance is bliss. When they're finished, Sheen flips his notepads closed and casts an eye at the courtroom door. It is locked, with heavy brown paper taped over the long slit windows from the inside. We have to knock to be admitted.

"I hope you didn't step in it," I tell Harry.

"What? With Mr. Sheen? Never! At least not so's Coats could track my shoe size."

This is not much comfort. If Harry gets caught violating the gag order, it is not likely that the judge will make fine distinctions between Harry and me when he starts handing out fines or jail time.

Finally the lock turns on the other side of the door, and we are admitted to the courtroom by the bailiff inside.

Evan Tannery is already at his counsel table, seated next to one of the investigating detectives. I have seen this cop scurrying with notes into the courtroom, whispering with Tannery during breaks. If he is here today, as a representative of the people, my guess is that he is the one who finally nailed down Tanya Jordan's testimony. Tannery would want him front and center so that she is less likely to recant or change any of the details of her story.

"Counsel, you have a second?" Tannery wants to huddle.

"Sure."

He comes over to our counsel table as we unload our briefcases and Harry starts to pore through one of the boxes delivered earlier by his delivery boy.

"Our witness is a little traumatized," he tells us. "You can understand. She's lost her daughter."

"I understand perfectly." He wants a stipulation. I can smell it. Some area of inquiry he wants to put off-limits on cross.

"We should go easy on her."

"We have no interest in beating her up," I tell him.

"I didn't think you would. Would you be willing to shorten her testimony a little?"

"In what way?"

"Accept declarations in lieu of certain portions of her testimony?"

Harry wants to know how we can stipulate to anything until we know what she is going to say.

Tannery insists these are not contentious areas, but merely intended to reduce the stress on the witness.

"Certainly you'd be willing to accept that she is the mother of the victim, that they had a close familial relationship? These are painful areas. No need to drag the witness through the details."

"If she testifies at trial, are you willing to forgo testimony in this area?" I ask.

Tannery has to huddle with his friend the cop. They debate the issue. I can tell the detective isn't happy. Finally Tannery turns back to us.

"Agreed."

I look at Harry. He shrugs his shoulders. This sounds good. The details of a close family relationship would highlight emotional issues that could inflame the jury. If we can temper them with a stipulation, so much the better.

"And one more," says Tannery. "It would be pointless to drag the poor woman through her personal background. Her political affiliations, social acquaintances-ancient history," he says.

"What are we talking about?" asks Harry. "How ancient?"

"We're talking about the period of time when she was a student in Michigan. We'll stipulate that she was involved in demonstrations, what some might have called, at least at that time, a radical movement."

Harry looks at him askance. "Are we talking a conviction here?"

"No felonies," says Tannery.

"But she was arrested?"

"Minor disturbance," says the prosecutor. "A refusal to disperse. She was arrested with a number of other people. She did no time."

"Was she a minor at the time?"

Tannery shakes his head. This means that the conviction is not sealed. He would have to disclose it even though we could not impeach her testimony on this basis alone.

"And where did this violation take place?" I ask.

"On the university campus," says Tannery.

My eyebrows rise a little. "Exactly where on the campus?"

"Near the defendant's faculty office."

"She was picketing him?" asks Harry.

"With a number of other people," he says.

"So she has a prior history with the defendant?"

"No history," says Tannery. "She didn't like what he was working on. She made her feeling known just like a lot of other students at the time."

He has a prepared stipulation, one page. He hands it to me and I read, but before I finish the bailiff is on his feet.

"Please rise. Superior Court in and for the county of San Diego is now in session. Honorable Harvey Coats presiding."

Coats comes down the corridor leading from chambers in a swirl of black and ascends the bench. He takes his seat, a tufted high-back executive chair. "Be seated." We all sit down. I am still reading Tannery's stipulation, with half an eye up on the bench.

Coats shuffles through a thin sheaf of papers he has carried with him, looking for his starting place.

"The record will reflect that the jury has been excused, that the press and public have been excluded from these proceedings. Mr. Tannery, are you prepared to make an offer of proof?"

"I am, Your Honor. If we could have a moment. Mr. Madriani is reviewing a doc.u.ment. It may save the court some time."

Tannery is getting his ducks lined up, his own yellow legal lined notes in order, waiting for me to finish reading.

"Mr. Madriani, am I to understand that your client has opted not to be present today?"

"That's correct, Your Honor."

Coats makes a note. Because today's proceedings are in the nature of a motion to admit evidence, Crone is not required to be present. He will have an opportunity to hear what Tanya Jordan says if she is allowed to testify in front of the jury. For a man who has kept a virtual diary of the trial up to this point, he has a curious reluctance to confront the victim's mother. Harry thinks it is the doctor's guilty conscience, though he says he is not certain Crone possesses one, guilty or otherwise.

"The people call Tanya Jordan," says Tannery.

The bailiff does not call her name but instead heads toward a side door, the one that leads to the holding cell. They have brought Tanya Jordan in this way so that she wouldn't have to run the gauntlet of the press out in the hall. A few seconds later, she enters the courtroom.

Tanya Jordan is tall, stately. She wears a gray business suit, skirt and jacket, and a blouse with a plain white collar. Despite Tannery's depiction of the distraught mother, there is no air of trepidation on her part. If she is intimidated by the formal surroundings of the courtroom or the specter of cross-examination, she doesn't show it.

Nearly six feet tall, she is slender and carries herself with a grace and a.s.surance that is likely to impress a jury. Her eyes are straight ahead, fixed on the judge up on the bench as she walks toward the counsel tables and the clerk. She raises her right hand and takes the oath, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, then climbs the two short steps into the witness box and takes her seat.

Tannery moves to the lectern that is positioned between the counsel tables.