Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  The fishing boat in which Andrews died was tied to the dock. Yellow crime scene tape and a uniformed officer I didn’t recognize posted there prevented curiosity seekers from walking out onto the dock or bothering the boat.

  Not normally voyeuristic, for some reason I was drawn outside. I might not have another chance to see the crime scene and I was drawn to seize the opportunity presented.

  I slipped out the back door and walked carefully across the yard, grateful for my flat shoes, scanning for snakes. I stopped in front of the officer, who had watched me make the journey from the house.

  “This certainly is a beautiful lake, isn’t it?” I asked him. I still didn’t recognize the man at all, and he apparently didn’t know me, either.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You gotta admire a man who can afford a place like this.”

  “Is that the boat where he died?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  “It sure is a mess, isn’t it?” I tried to see out into the boat, which was about twenty feet from where we stood. It was full of blood and other things, hopefully remnants of successful fishing trips it is.”

  Without glancing back at the boat, he replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I was getting the picture that I wasn’t going to learn any pertinent information from this officer, whether he knew me or not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I asked him, “Do you think the general committed suicide?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Ma’am.”

  “Is there anything at all you can tell me?” I asked him. “Not if I want to keep my job, Ma’am.”

  Because cases come to my courtroom long after the crime has been committed, there are very few crime scenes that I’ve actually witnessed first hand, but I’ve seen hundreds of crime scene photographs. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but a personal view gave me visceral information.

  The quiet, for example. I heard nothing out here, even sounds from inside the house. And the cloying odors. The entire area smelled like dead fish and dank, rotting vegetation. What a nasty place to die. Pictures would never convey the frightening aura of solitude and danger I felt simply standing here.

  This lake was private. There was no public access and no other visible houses around it. Like most dark lakes in Florida, I was sure there were alligators floating beneath the surface and snakes just around the water’s edge.

  The entire effect was eerie, like a horror movie, but more vivid. The short winter day was ending and I told myself that the cool breeze was responsible for the gooseflesh on my arms.

  But if there were visible clues to a murder here, they weren’t obvious to me.

  I said goodbye to the officer, went back inside, found George and insisted that we leave. He was more than ready, so we writhed back through the television cameras and ignored Frank Bennett when he asked whether George would like to comment on Robbie Andrews’s accusations against him.

  I could have spent the evening discussing everything thoroughly with George, because for the first time in a long time, he seemed willing to talk about it. But I thought we’d had enough for one day, there would be many long, leisurely hours to hash it all out, and our relationship would get back to normal.

  Spending time in a house of mourning gave us both a desire to be alive, I guess. We went to bed together and made long, slow, quiet love, tainted with the understanding that Deborah Andrews’s loss allowed me the opportunity to reclaim my beloved, although we were a long way from our previous relationship.

  I hoped George and I had weathered a rough spot, and with Andrews’s nomination permanently defeated by his cruel death, we’d now pick up the pieces and somehow resume our lives. I craved peaceful days, shared evenings, and passionate nights. Maybe, after a few weeks, a romantic vacation in Bermuda.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tampa, Florida

  Monday 7:00 a.m.

  January 24, 2000

  MONDAY MORNING, I IGNORED my continuing unease as I ran the dogs, showered, dressed, picked up the Newton file, made plans with George for dinner and scurried off down the back stairs to the garage. Greta’s top was still down from Saturday, and I didn’t bother to put it up. The wind can’t hurt my very short hair, and the morning was already turning into a fine Florida day.

  Some federal judges use their law clerks as chauffeurs, but I really enjoy my time with Greta. Some say Greta’s too flashy for a judge to drive. But if you’re from Detroit like I am, cars are the essence of life itself. How could I give up Greta just for a job?

  I drove carefully but quickly down our version of Palm Beach’s Avenue of Palms, over the bridge off Plant Key away from Minaret and turned east onto Bayshore Boulevard toward downtown Tampa. The view was, as always, spectacular. Hillsborough Bay, particularly along the Bayshore, is truly beautiful.

  Not many years ago, the Hillsborough River, Hillsborough Bay and Tampa Bay were completely dead. After a massive cleanup campaign, fish, dolphins, rays and manatee are regularly spot ted here. If a body of water can be reclaimed, a loving marriage can be reclaimed, too, I thought.

  Greta and I passed the old mansions along the north side of the Bayshore, interspersed with the newer condominiums and a few commercial establishments, like the Colonnade Restaurant. It was closed this morning, but by lunchtime, it would be filled to capacity with the Old Tampa crowd, as well as the current crop of snowbirds that filled the place to capacity every day to enjoy the spectacular view.

  I followed Bayshore over the Platt Street Bridge toward the Convention Center. As I approached Davis Islands, then Harbour Island, and turned north on Florida, I passed what used to be called Landmark Tower and is now the Sun Trust building.

  A small cloud covered my emotions. One of my friends who’d worked in that building died this year. I hadn’t thought of him for several months. The recent death of my friend had popped into my mind several times since Saturday. I tried to shake it off and reclaim my earlier hopefulness as I quickly passed the building, then a series of storefronts and Sacred Heart Church along the four-block stretch to the courthouse.

  My office is one of the last ones housed in the old Federal Building, circa 1920. It is a beautiful old building with wood details way too expensive to duplicate today. In 1920, the Middle District of Florida was a much smaller place than it is now. The building is old, decrepit and much too small.

  Which is why we have a new federal courthouse just down the street. Maybe, when the Chief Judge, the man we call CJ (who I’m sure hates me), is promoted or retires, I’ll get to move to the new building with all the other judges. I took his parking spot the first day on the job and he’s never forgiven me for the small trespass. Since then, I’ve done quite a few things he doesn’t approve of. He has no real power over me, which irritates him even more.

  I am the most junior judge on the local federal bench. In seniority, age and the CJ’s affection, I have the least desirable location. I have no rank among my peers and receive no special privileges.

  My courtroom and chambers are on the third floor, in the back. Getting there from the parking garage helps me keep my schoolgirl figure.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Tampa, Florida

  Monday 9:02 a.m.

  January 24, 2000

  FORTUNATELY, THE TRIP FROM Plant Key to the garage at the old courthouse is a short one. I was able to park Greta, jog up three flights of stairs, walk into my office, grab my robe and get onto the bench only two minutes late. Not bad.

  The parties, seated at their respective tables looked very subdued. The Whitman Esquire Review attorneys numbered six, with two additional paralegals in the gallery. The president of the paper was the client representative. The woman sitting next to him was Mr. Tampa, the author of the offending piece of trash they were all here to defend. I’m told the Ann Landers newspaper advice column was once written by a man. I guess truth in media doesn’t extend to gender identification.

  Boxes of exhibits and other papers were stowed behind
the rail that separates the gallery of visitors from the rest of us so as not to be seen by the jury.

  In what every trial lawyer would recognize as deliberate contrast, the plaintiff, Nelson Newton, sat by himself at the counsel table closest to the jury box. He had only one wrinkled, dirty, letter sized manila folder on the desk in front of him. He was holding an ink pen that looked like he’d picked it up at a car rental desk.

  Newton’s somber navy blue suit, shiny from too many trips to the cleaners, could have come from J.C. Penney twenty years ago or the Salvation Army this morning. He wore a yellowed, dingy and frayed white oxford cloth shirt with a button down collar. His red, white and blue striped tie had soaked up its share of spilled lunches.

  Dressing for court is a little like selecting the right costumes for a play. The idea is to have credibility with the jury, to look like a person they can root for; one they’ll want to win. A trial is a contest and there are winners and losers, as much as we try to pretend otherwise. The game is not decided on points. It’s one roll of the dice when the case goes back to the jury room; you never know who’s going to get lucky and who’ll go home broke.

  The last time he tried a case in front of me, Newton had worn this same outfit every day for three weeks. He’d told me it was his lucky suit. The jury gave his client two million dollars that time on what I’d have said was a loser before the verdict came in. “Counselors, any last minute issues before I bring in the jury venire?” Little butterflies danced in my stomach. After all these years, my performance anxiety had reduced to a manageable level, but it was still there. I wondered if Laurence Olivier or John

  Barrymore, great stage actors, ever conquered stage fright.

  Media types, if they were in attendance, were of the print variety. No cameras were allowed.

  This was the part of the trial to which I had to pay very close attention. It was my job to guide us through the morass of potential reversible error that lurked around every question during jury selection.

  Both lawyers said, simultaneously, “Ready, your honor,” and I motioned the Court Security Officer to bring in the jury pool, the sixty men and women who had been waiting out in the hall for this moment.

  I focused my attention totally on the process. My butterflies were still there, but I knew they’d calm down after the first half-hour. The trial had begun and my passion for my work lifted me into that place where time passes too quickly to measure.

  Prospective jurors filed in, one at a time, and sat in the gallery. The clerk called out the numbers and names of each registered voter. The tension in the room rose to a level that resembled a high hum. As each name was called, the clerk directed the jurors to take one of the twelve seats in the jury box and then filled the six extra chairs the Court Security Officer had set up in front of the box.

  One could take a bite out of the air in the courtroom at this stage. After a few days, a trial takes on a more relaxed feel. But in the beginning, the participants are uncomfortable and the jurors are mostly bewildered; the parties try like hell to select a jury that will be biased in their favor; everyone on both legal teams is tired and sleep deprived, worried about that one last thing they hadn’t done in preparation.

  That tension was like nothing else in the world: The trial lawyer’s equivalent of an Olympic event. Ready, set, go. Sometimes, I really missed the entire experience, but after splashing the cold water of insight on my face, I always came to my senses.

  This jury venire looked like all the rest. Mostly women, casually dressed. A few men, college aged students or retirees. Each carrying something to read during the long waiting periods inherent in the experience. All were here either because they couldn’t get out of jury service one more time or they didn’t have anything else to do.

  Resting my hands on the desk to keep them from shaking with stress, I began to ask the preliminary questions from a prepared list I use in every trial: Did anyone know the litigants or the lawyers; did they have personal knowledge of the facts; was there any reason they couldn’t be fair? Stuff like that. Yes answers would get them released from service, for cause.

  Then, unlike a lot of federal judges, I always turn the questioning over to the lawyers. After some earlier mistakes when I first took the bench, I’d learned not to let the lawyers get out of control, though. I limited their voir dire, or questioning of the prospective jurors, to one hour each. How they used that hour was up to them, but they got one hour, no more, no less, to determine how or if they wanted to use their preemptory challenges.

  On television, two or three cases are tried in an hour. In real life, a trial is slow and tedious. Even the short ones. Jury selection alone could take several days for some cases. As a trial lawyer, I’d once tried a case for sixteen weeks. As a judge, I’d bend over backwards to keep that from happening.

  The plaintiff, Newton, would begin every phase of the trial and was positioned closest to the jury box because he had the burden of proof. He stood up and slowly buttoned the middle button of his single-breasted jacket, fumbling a little on purpose, beginning with his first gesture to win the jury over to his view of the case.

  Newton walked over to about the middle of the rail in front of the jury box and stood there, letting them get a good look at him.

  He was short and overweight. What hair he had left was grey and cut in a fringe around his spherical head. His eyebrows were grey, too, making his violet eyes more startling somehow.

  Newton put on his best good ole boy accent, even though he was educated at Harvard just like I was, and said, “How many of you all believe you’re entitled to personal privacy regarding your own life, assuming you’re not doing anythin’ illegal and ain’t hurtin’ nobody?”

  The jurors identified with him instantly. That connection was the one thing he had that couldn’t be contrived. All good trial lawyers perfected the art, or they quickly accepted another line of work.

  “Please raise your hand if you agree.” Every hand went up. He looked at them all, one at a time, made eye contact and nodded slowly, confirming a silent contract with each one.

  “Are any of you all public figures?” No one admitted it, if they were. “Does anyone know what a public figure is?” He said the word as if it rhymed with “jigger.”

  The bewilderment I saw on their faces surprised me. Hard to believe there was anyone left in America who didn’t know what a public figure was.

  The Andrews nomination had spawned countless hours of discussion by the media about the character assassination our law allows of public figures. Obviously, just because some people thought Supreme Court appointments were required viewing, that didn’t mean everyone agreed.

  One juror, a young man in the back row dressed in a Pewter Pride golf shirt, raised his hand. “A public figger like who?” he asked, “say one of the Bucs?” He meant one of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team. Everybody nodded, apparently in agreement that Bucs were public figures, since it was impossible to live in Tampa without being aware of the team.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Newton nodded, too. “Does anyone here recognize me to be a celebrity or a politician?” All heads shook negatively. I suppressed a smile. That must have been a blow to his ego at the same time it supported his case.

  Newton had never been modest. In fact, over the years his name had probably been in the paper at least as many times as any local football player. The walls of Newton’s office were lined with the newspaper and magazine accounts of his trial successes. He’d been on television enough that some of the jurors might have seen him.

  “Well, lemme ask y’all this,” he started, and my antennae went up. I sat a little straighter. I’d developed a sixth sense about trials. I knew I was going to have trouble from the defense team by the posture of lead defense counsel.

  Newton continued talking to the Bucs fan in the third row who had answered his last question. “Suppose your wife had an affair, Mr. Bates. Now, I’m not sayin’ she did, because I don’t know nothin’ of the kin
d. But let’s just s’pose she did, for the moment, alright?”

  Mr. Bates looked unsure, but he agreed by nodding slightly. “Would you like it if The Tampa Tribune printed that information in the paper?”

  “No!”Mr. Bates responded emphatically, and he looked quite indignant about it, too.

  “If The Tribune printed that your wife had an affair and it wasn’t true, do you think they should get away with that?” Newton put his hands in the pockets of his suit coat, which made his elbows stick out like chicken wings while he rocked forward on the balls of his feet.

  “Certainly not!” Mr. Bates showed his indignation plainly. “And if The Tribune did print such a thing, such a scandalous thing, do you think it would hurt you or your wife or your children in any way?” Newton asked.

  “Your honor!” Defense counsel jumped to his feet, almost shouting his objection. “He is trying to prejudice this jury by asking questions that he knows do not represent the true facts in this case. He knows he is a public figure under the law and what was printed about him was absolutely true. He’s trying to mislead this jury and taint the whole panel. I move for a mistrial.”

  Newton was guilty of all this, just as the defense attorney was posturing to undo the damage as early as he could.

  Again, in deliberate contrast, Newton acted unperturbed. “Judge, I think it’s for the jury to decide what the true facts are in this case. That’s why we’re here. And I’m entitled to explore their opinions. That’s what voir dire is for, as counsel well knows. I oppose any motions for mistrial and,” he stopped for a moment so that his point would be emphasized, “I promise to be polite and not interrupt defense counsel if he will stop interrupting me.” The jury snickered. Newton was smooth and sure. He knew the game and he knew how to counter all the other side’s moves. There is no substitute for experience in the local jurisdiction. The home field advantage applied to the game of trial, just like any other high stakes game.