Shoot the Lawyer Twice

by Michael Bowen

  A hand-printed white label on the plastic DVD case next to Rep’s computer read: CLEVENGER JURY ANALYSIS STIMULUS I THROUGH V. Rep had watched Stimulus I and Stimulus II, each a fifteen minute speech by a lawyer summarizing and arguing the evidence, one from the prosecution perspective and one from the defense side. Now he was watching the seventeen mock-jurors discuss the case under the impact of these two “stimuli.” He found the discussion bracing, as would anyone who imagined that his fate might one day lie in the hands of a jury:

  “What did she invite him onto the yacht for? Parcheesi?

  “She didn’t invite him on to rape her.”

  “But he didn’t rape her.”

  “He tried to.”

  “No he didn’t either. He didn’t even touch her.”

  “I thought he did. I thought that one lawyer said—”

  “No. He said there was ‘no physical mistreatment.’ I wrote that down.”

  “That’s not the point, though. The point is, did he threaten her?”

  “Yeah, ’cause I think if all it was was a threat, he’d just get a small fine or maybe thirty days or something.”

  “‘Sex or swim’ isn’t a threat. It’s just something you say.”

  “Why would she jump in the drink if she wasn’t threatened?”

  “Maybe she was high.”

  “Yeah, these rich kids today, they do blow like we did beer.”

  “How do you know that? About her, I mean.”

  “Maybe she overreacted.”

  “Maybe she’s just a crazy chick. You know, guilting herself over sex or something, so the guy says some dumb thing and she freaks.”

  “No, you know what, I can’t see that.” This from the office manager. “The woman jumped into Lake Michigan and swam half-a-mile. How can you say she didn’t feel threatened?”

  “Maybe she felt threatened, but that doesn’t mean she was threatened. I mean, what says the guy meant it that way?”

  “I wish we had more information.”

  “Well, the cops thought he meant it. FBI or whoever.”

  “But we’re not supposed to consider that.”

  “I know, I’m just saying. Those guys are professionals. They know what they’re doing. My nephew is a criminology major, and he says the stuff they can do in those labs is amazing.

  “That’s right. Like, this one time on C.S.I.—”

  “No lab can tell you what was in this kid’s head.”

  “Which kid?”

  “Either of them.”

  “What’s ‘threat’ supposed to mean, anyway? Does anyone have a dictionary?”

  And so on for almost forty-five minutes. Relevant and insightful comments interspersed with stuff so off-the-wall it made your gut churn. They finally took a vote. Twelve for conviction, five for acquittal.

  Hmm. At this stage, Rep knew, Jurimetrics wasn’t shooting for a definitive prediction. It was trying to find out which themes worked with which types of jurors. Kuchinski hadn’t given Rep the written analysis for this first round, but Rep could guess what it said: Clevenger would have initial partisans on the jury, but they’d probably be weaker personalities, easily led. They’d need something solid to grab onto if they were going to hold out against the hard-liners more viscerally sympathetic to the prosecution theory.

  Sighing, Rep watched Stimulus III and Stimulus IV. A not-that-young woman with a heavy Boston accent was pretending to be Carolyn Hoeckstra going through direct and cross-examinations. The direct was straightforward, although the lawyer doing it wasn’t anything like as good as Finnegan. The cross started out making obvious points, playing to defense themes that had worked well in Stimulus I:

  He didn’t have a weapon of any kind?

  No.

  He didn’t force his way onto the boat?

  No.

  He didn’t hit you?

  No.

  Didn’t grab your breasts?

  No.

  In fact he didn’t touch your breasts, did he?

  No.

  Or your buttocks?

  No.

  Didn’t try to kiss you?

  Not really.

  Then came a couple of zingers:

  You aren’t married, are you?

  Not any more. Not for over a year.

  But you’re on a prescription medication called Enovid?

  Yes.

  Which is a birth control pill?

  Yes.

  How long have you been using birth control on a regular basis?

  Since I was fifteen.

  Rep gaped. No way they could have dreamed of getting that stuff into evidence. But if you know what works, sometimes you can suggest it and sneak into a juror’s head without actually presenting it as evidence. And sometimes one juror is all it takes.

  Did you ever hear of a contest called BAD?

  Yes.

  What did BAD stand for?

  “Best Ass at Downer.”

  That would be Downer High School on the East Side of Milwaukee?

  Yes.

  That was a contest where a number of students at Downer High had their naked buttocks shown on a computer site, and other students…voted which one was best?

  Yes.

  This was voluntary?

  Yes.

  Did you take part?

  I finished third.

  That rang a bell. They’d somehow gotten part of that in. They’d had to work hard to do it, and now Rep understood why they’d made the effort.

  He clicked to the discussion following these additions to the mock jury’s information. It was much shorter. The BAD stuff made the office manager furious at the defense, but the students giggled. The vote this time was ten to seven—still for conviction.

  Stimulus V. The screen this time showed a woman with a big JURIMETRICS tag on her chest, to make it clear that she wasn’t one of the lawyers and she wasn’t playing a role; she was a neutral. She stood at the podium holding a single piece of paper.

  “Would it have any impact on your deliberations if you were told that, before this case was brought to trial in federal court, Carolyn Hoeckstra’s complaint to the Milwaukee Police Department the date of the incident was reviewed by a special prosecutor appointed by the Attorney General of the State of Wisconsin, and that prosecutor decided not to proceed with a criminal complaint against Mr. Clevenger?”

  That was the whole stimulus. Rep clicked impatiently to the discussion. He couldn’t believe that this had flipped the mock jurors, but it must have. The discussion quickly ran out of steam. Another vote: Nine-eight for conviction.

  Huh? Jury consulting firms sometimes make wrong calls. But a wrong call is one thing, and mistaking a toss-up for a slam dunk is something else. Jurimetrics couldn’t possibly have looked at these discussions and these votes and told Clevenger’s lawyers they were sure to win.

  Rep had to kill half-an-hour while he waited for Kuchinski to finish talking with Kazmaryck. Kuchinski waved Rep into his office as soon as the reception door closed behind Q.

  “Is this the only disk you have from Jurimetrics?” Rep asked, returning the plastic case to Kuchinski.

  “Yep.”

  “Have you looked at it?”

  “Nope. I don’t do things I don’t want to do unless I get paid for it. The left-coasters were lead counsel, so I let them kill a Saturday watching the mock jury stuff. I’d found Angstrom and gotten him to dig up three students, and I figured I’d done my bit. I spent that Saturday playing golf.”

  “You should take a peek.”

  “Why? ”

  “Because your co-counsel are holding out on you.”

  “Are they now? Those rascals. What makes you say that? ”

  Rep told him. Kuchinski spent ten poker-faced seconds digesting the information.

  “Well,” he said then, “we will just by-God see about that.”

  He picked up the phone. Rep took the hint and left.<
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  Chapter 21

  “Jesus, watch what you’re doing with that whip!”

  “Sorry.”

  “We’re short-handed as it is!”

  “I’m a little too into it, I guess.”

  A man in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a coarse white tunic and sandals, sheepishly gathered up three intertwined lengths of dark yellow rope. He had an impressive dark brown beard, and you had to get pretty close to tell that his matching shoulder-length hair was a wig. If you did get that close you might have noticed blue eyes and other facial features that looked a bit Aryan for a first-century A.D. Jew.

  “Okay,” said the younger man in gray hoodie and sweatpants who had admonished the whip-wielding actor playing Jesus, “let’s get set up and make this one count! It’s getting cold in here!”

  Melissa shivered in agreement. Four walls sheltered the stone-floored assembly area, but the Romanesque arches looking out on the cloister walk were open and let in plenty of brisk winter air. They pretty much had to be open, of course, because no one would associate Thermopane with the Temple in Jerusalem under Roman rule.

  The guy in the hoodie fussed with a digital video camera on a tripod. A dozen people took their places at small wooden tables forming a rough U in front of the arches. Coins heaped in mounds, paper dollars and euros overflowing wicker baskets, and carelessly strewn stock certificates covered the tables. Balance scales and papier maché doves in crude wooden cages completed the array of props.

  The people behind the tables continued the theme of deliberate anachronism. Three were dressed in the same type of Mediterranean garb as the Jesus actor, but four were in business suits sharper than any Rep owned, two were women in long skirts and blouses, and three were in Catholic clerical garb—a monsignor, a cardinal, and a pope, Melissa thought.

  The guy in the hoodie motioned to a coed, who awkwardly squatted to look at the flip-out screen on the video camera while she fingered the controls. Moving well away from her, he raised a still camera and spoke.

  “Pan slowly along the tables….Slooowwly….No hurry….Zoom in on the money….Again, get each kind….Now pull back steady to wide angle….And…and…Jesus, go!”

  The Jesus actor unfurled his whip of cords and snapped it over his head. He strode menacingly forward, lashed the floor, then raised the whip again and swished it in a vicious-looking, arm’s-length parabola. His hair flew behind him and his muscular body stretched athletically as he drew the whip back again in terrifying preparation for another lash. The money-changers scattered in entirely plausible panic. Tables clattered against the uneven stone as fleeing brokers upset them. Coins spilled noisily on the floor. Currency flung into the air swirled like confetti.

  “Perfect! ” the guy in the hoodie yelled. “Cut! ”

  Jesus angrily threw over a couple of tables that were still standing. He whirled right and left, as if he hadn’t had quite gotten the flogging out of his system.

  “Got it!” the director yelled.

  The whip swished through the air and mangled a euro floating around waist level.

  “Enough with the bloody whip, dammit!” the director shrieked. “Chill, Jesus! Down boy!”

  The actor playing Jesus froze and then sagged, as if reacting to a sudden drop in adrenaline. Three of the money-changers hurried up to him with congratulations and a parka. The one in papal gear, however, skirted the scene and found his way to Melissa. He doffed his tiara on the way, collapsed it, and stuck the now flat headgear under his left arm.

  “Greg Huebner,” he said, holding his right hand out to Melissa.

  “Good afternoon, father. Or should I say your Holiness?”

  “I figured it was my only shot.”

  “Were you just supposed to be a generic pontiff, or one of the popes in particular?”

  “Leo the Tenth,” Huebner said. “The one who authorized the sale of indulgences that made Martin Luther so cross. Digital magic will put a recognizable face on as many of the money-changers as we can: Jim Baker of PTL fame, Jimmy Swygert, Aimee Semple McPherson et cetera. We’re striving for ecumenical abuse. The title is Matthew 21:12-13.”

  “I couldn’t have quoted chapter and verse but I picked up the allusion,” Melissa said. “Will this be a movie or a still picture?”

  “Both. Forty-two seconds on Youtube as part of a subtly manipulative youth ministry recruiting campaign, and a mural for our food pantry.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not a little shy about calling the youth thing ‘subtly manipulative.’”

  “We have it on good authority that we should be as cunning as serpents. Now, I understand from Tereska that we might have a stray sheep thinking about returning to the fold.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that. Your cunning-as-serpents line is oddly apropos.”

  “Perhaps you’d better explain.”

  She did. Huebner listened in thoughtful silence but with growing and obvious consternation.

  “So you think she has information about Professor Angstrom’s murder, and you want to get if from her yourself instead of just turning her over the mercies of the cops.”

  “Right.”

  “And because she’s a very hard-shelled young woman, you’ve come up with a story about coming back to the Church in order to gain her confidence. Are you hoping that I’ll add some instant credibility to your pose?”

  “I may be an apostate but I’m not a moral cretin. I feel bad enough about deceiving a vulnerable young woman without asking a priest to collaborate with me.”

  “I hope you do find your way back. ” Huebner flashed a nimble, quicksilver smile. “We could use a little bracing moral certitude. But if you’re not looking for collaboration, what do you want from me?”

  “I want your advice on how to reach her.”

  “How sure are you that she’s the one who trapped you in the stairwell?”

  “As sure as you are about the existence of Purgatory. When I mildly alluded to the incident on Friday she blushed like a scolded sixth-grader.”

  “A burglary and a murder with the same victim,” Huebner mused, “and a possible cover-up of the burglary. I suppose they could be unrelated—just as randomly colliding electrons could have accidentally formed the spectacularly intricate and miraculously fascinating world around us. But a prudent man wouldn’t bet on it, would he?”

  “Once a Thomist, always a Thomist.”

  “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But if you want to know about Tereska you might start with her name.”

  “It’s Polish, obviously.”

  “But it’s not the version her mother picked. Her baptismal certificate has the American version: ‘Teresa.’ She adopted the Polish spelling in high school, in honor of Pope John Paul the Second, the Polish pope.”

  “I knew she was fervent, but I didn’t know she’d taken it quite that far.”

  “It goes beyond fervor with Tereska. Closer to obsession. Do you know her email address?”

  “No. I vaguely recall something offbeat from when she took one of my classes last year, but I can’t remember it.”

  “‘Outofatube@hotmail.com’”

  “Sounds like a heavy metal group.”

  “Tereska was conceived by artificial insemination. Thinking she has a hypodermic for a father has left an emotional gap in her life. She hasn’t lost a parent; as she sees it, one of her parents mysteriously just wasn’t there. Ever.”

  “Perhaps subconsciously she’s been looking for a father-substitute,” Melissa suggested.

  “Right. Like John Paul the Second. Or even the Church itself.”

  “Or Professor Angstrom.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” Huebner said. “But I’d rather leave the dime-store psychology to people with the credentials for it.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “If you’re going to reach Tereska you’ll have to do it at the emotional
level. Pascal was right: the heart has its reasons that the mind cannot grasp. Tereska is brainy enough to parse syllogisms with a Jesuit, but on this she’ll have to know with her heart before she can accept with her intellect.”

  “Would you be willing to talk to her? She admires you very much.”

  “And I admire Stephen Hawking. But when he says something that I know in my soul is wrong I shrug him off like a high school junior who thinks he’s a philosopher because he’s read three chapters of Nietzsche.”

  “Do you have any suggestions, then?”

  “Trust yourself. Your instincts seem solid and you’re on the side of the angels. Go with what feels right at the moment.”

  “You mean call her and keep lying to her?” Melissa demanded.

  “It’s easier to sell bread to a hungry man. Wait for her to call you. And as for lying—well, be cunning as a serpent. I know it won’t be pleasant, but you’ve started down that road and now there’s no other way.”

  “As understatements go, ‘won’t be pleasant’ is inspired. I’m not used to self-reproach. If I were a believer I’d say God is testing me.”

  “Fortunately, God grades on a curve.”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “Hey, if this were easy a Presbyterian could handle it.”

  “A little partisan humor?” Melissa chuckled in spite of herself.

  “Why not? Thomas More joked on the scaffold. Your situation isn’t as grim as his. Just be careful about your holy lie.”

  “I know. I might trip myself up.”

  “Not only that,” the priest said, eyes twinkling slyly. “You might start to believe it.”

  Chapter 22

  New Year’s Eve, 2007

  “Where will you be bar-hopping later on?” Rep asked Kuchinski as he poured Moët-Hennessey into three glasses. “Water Street or Brady Street?”

  “Neither, thank you very much. New Year’s Eve is like Saint Patrick’s Day: Amateur Drunk Night. I’m a professional.”