Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  The woman sighed. “Look, I didn’t ask to be here,” she replied. “I was summoned. Okay, I’m here. Frankly, I’d rather be in Tahiti, but I believe in people doing their civic duty. So, I’m willing to serve on this jury, if that’s what you want. Or not, if it isn’t. Do I believe that abortion should be legal? Yes, I do. Do I think that automatically makes the defendant in this case guilty? No, I don’t. That’s where I stand. The rest is up to you.”

  Lucy Kashahara had developed a code system. A check mark represented those from the jury pool that she believed would be best suited to sit in judgment of Corey Latham. An X was used for those who were to be excluded at all costs. In between, there were circles for those who were likely to be neutral, and a question mark for those who Lucy considered potentially risky. Next to Rose Gregory’s name, the consultant had placed a check. Next to Stuart Dunn’s, she had put a circle. Beside Karleen McKay’s name, Dana could clearly see a question mark.

  “You can’t be thinking of putting her on, can you?” whispered Joan, as she saw Dana hesitate. “She’s obviously pro-choice. She’s going to line right up behind the prosecution.”

  “I know, but she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be here,” Dana whispered back. “That means she isn’t coming in with a major agenda. I don’t think Bendali will accept a dismissal for cause, and we’ve only got one peremptory challenge left. I’m afraid we might find worse down the line.”

  “I’d pass her,” Charles Ramsey said from the other end of the table.

  “Do you think McAuliffe will put McKay on?” Mark Hoffman asked Brian.

  “Like us, she’s only got so many challenges,” Brian replied. “She’ll have to pass on some of the maybes.”

  Successful mystery book writer Allison Ackerman turned sixty during the month of jury selection. With peaches-and-cream skin and hardly any gray in her abundant auburn hair, she looked more like forty. For most of the month, she sat in Room C701, where she read, played solitaire, worked jigsaw puzzles, and watched as others came and went. She made it to the ninth floor in the second to last group of twenty.

  When it was finally her turn to be summoned to the courtroom, she followed the bailiff down the length of it to the front row of the jury box, settled herself in a black leather chair, and took a deep breath.

  The judge was as imposing a figure as any she might have created for her books, a monster of a man who appeared, on the one hand, to be paying scant attention, and on the other, to be in total control of the proceedings he presided over from his perch on the bench. The attorneys, by comparison, looked rather small. Not mean or insignificant in any way, just small. Small in stature, as though, if they weren’t careful, they would get lost in the big room.

  Finally, the author focused her attention on the accused. He sat quietly at the table farthest away from her, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, obviously paying attention, listening to the conversations that whirled around him, but making no effort to participate.

  Allison was aware that over the past several months the defendant had become a poster boy for the antiabortion movement, and she had to concede it was an engaging image. Corey Latham was wholesome and handsome, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to her concept of how a cold-blooded terrorist should look.

  The mystery writer did not particularly believe in the death penalty, even under normal circumstances. But in this case, appealing or not, if there were so much as a chance the defendant was guilty of bombing Hill House, she knew it would not trouble her at all to convict him and sentence him to death.

  “Why do you want to serve on this jury?” Brian asked her, the question catching her off-guard.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “I wasn’t aware that I did.”

  “Well, as I understand it, you’ve opted out of jury duty on three previous occasions.”

  “Well, we’re talking about a ten-year span here, but as I recall, on two of those occasions, I had manuscript deadlines that simply had to be met,” the author explained smoothly. “On the third occasion, I believe I had a promotion tour already booked that my publicist was unable to reschedule.”

  Brian was polite but persistent. “And this time, you couldn’t get out of it?”

  “I didn’t try.”

  “Do you see this case as material for some future novel? Has your agent already entered negotiations with your publisher?”

  Allison was not the least bit intimidated. “Sorry, but I don’t write legal thrillers,” she said with a smile.

  “But you do write about murder?”

  “Oh, yes. In every conceivable manner.”

  “And would you say that years of writing about murder have made you indifferent to it?”

  “Hardly,” Allison replied, with just a hint of mockery in her voice. “As it’s my livelihood, I take murder very seriously. At least as seriously as I’m sure you do.”

  “And do you think you could be impartial during this trial?”

  “Of course.” She lowered her voice a notch. “I’ll tell you a little secret. I never completely decide on my villain until the very end of the story.”

  Brian frowned slightly as he took his seat. Here was a woman that he knew was as close to being a perfect ally as he was likely to find in a juror, and she was sparring with him, playing games. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was exactly, but there was something about her he didn’t like. Maybe it was his sense that she carried her feminist agenda like a shield instead of a banner. On the other hand, she was solidly pro-choice, and he was going to need her.

  “The consultant says she’s a card-carrying member of FOCUS,” Mark whispered in delight.

  “I know,” Brian conceded with a sigh. “But I have this feeling about her.”

  “We’ve only got one peremptory left,” Mark reminded him. “Do you really want to spend it on her?”

  “No.”

  “McAuliffe will probably kick her, anyway.”

  “Let’s hope,” Brian said.

  Dana stared at the big black X beside Allison Ackerman’s name. Common sense and Lucy Kashahara were both telling her to excuse the author out of hand, but something stopped her, not the least of which was her one remaining challenge.

  “You’re a women’s rights activist, aren’t you?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Yes, I am,” the author replied without the slightest hesitation.

  “And you’ve been in the thick of the debate right from the beginning, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have. I believe women have been relinquishing their rights to alleviate men’s insecurities for far too long. It’s the twenty-first century, for god’s sake. Isn’t it way past time for us to be in control of our lives, our minds, and our bodies?”

  “Do you believe in winning at all costs?”

  “In what context?”

  “I’m asking if you’d be able to separate this case from your cause. Or if you would be willing to convict an innocent man simply to further your feminist agenda.”

  Dana thought she saw a flicker of respect in the author’s eyes.

  “Yes to the first point,” the mystery writer declared. “And no to the second. At least, not if I truly thought the man might be innocent.”

  “Do you believe that Corey Latham is responsible for the bombing of Hill House?”

  Allison shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “And I don’t expect I’d be able to answer that question until I had heard all the evidence both for and against him.”

  Dana considered the woman for a long moment. One challenge and three more jurors still to select. She had thought for a moment there that Brian was going to excuse the author, but he hadn’t. Maybe he was hedging his bets, relying on her pro-choice position, and hoping to hang on to the last of his challenges, as was she.

  Joan shoved the list, with the X beside Ackerman’s name in plain sight, under Dana’s nose. “Why are you hesitating?” she whispered. “You’ve got to kick this one. She’s got agenda written all ove
r her.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to dump her,” Ramsey said.

  Dana thought about how thorough and accurate Lucy Kashahara’s evaluations always were. Still, there was something about Allison Ackerman that she sensed in person rather than saw in the data that Lucy and Craig Jessup had compiled. The defense attorney bit her lip. She knew Bendali would not excuse the woman for cause, not after two clear declarations of impartiality. If she wanted her off the jury, it was going to cost her the last of her peremptory challenges. Dana leaned back in her chair with resignation. It was for making decisions like this, she knew, that she was being paid the big bucks.

  “I believe that abortion is a mortal sin,” Marie Delmonica declared. “And I believe we must all do everything in our power to put an end to it.”

  “Does that include murder?” Brian asked.

  “Abortion is murder,” the woman said. “An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth—a death for a death.”

  “Excuse for cause, Your Honor,” Brian said.

  “Mrs. Delmonica,” Bendali inquired, appearing to lean over the bench, “given your position on abortion, do you believe you could render an impartial verdict in this case?”

  The woman blinked rapidly several times. “I think I could be as impartial as the next person,” she said. “Am I sorry the abortionists are dead? No, I most certainly am not. Am I sorry the abortuary is destroyed, so that no more innocent babies can be murdered there? Not for a minute. But that doesn’t mean I’d automatically vote to acquit a man if I believed he killed those helpless children in the day care center, not to mention the babies who had just been born, and the triplets who were about to be born, and all those other innocent people I heard about. That’s murder, too, isn’t it?”

  They were running out of potential jurors, and Bendali was running out of patience. “I see no cause here, Mr. Ayres,” the judge declared.

  Brian deliberated. The woman clearly had an agenda. Even if Bendali didn’t recognize it, he did. He could feel it, and he could not afford to make a mistake here. He sighed deeply. “I ask that this juror be excused,” he said.

  “Now I bet you’re glad you didn’t spend the last challenge on Ackerman,” Mark breathed. “McAuliffe would have passed Delmonica, and we would’ve had ourselves a hung jury.”

  “That’s random selection for you,” Brian conceded. “You never know who’ll come up when.”

  “Look, I don’t care what pretty words you want to put around it,” Geoffrey Walsh declared. “What that guy did to that building and to those people is inexcusable.”

  “Would you be willing to entertain the concept that my client did not set that bomb?” Dana inquired.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, could you be impartial, could you reserve judgment, could you wait until you heard both sides of the case before you made up your mind about my client’s guilt or innocence?”

  The transit worker shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, lady, if he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t be going on trial for it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Walsh,” the judge said, before Dana could get the words out. “You’re excused.”

  It didn’t make any difference to Juror Number 116 whether he was selected to the Latham jury or not. Autumn was going into John Quinn’s slow time anyway and there was nothing his crew couldn’t handle without him. The independent contractor had taken full advantage of a mini building boom during the past six months to complete two major remodels on Capitol Hill, enlarge a garage in Magnolia, and add a guest house to a waterfront estate on Mercer Island. Fourteen-hour days, seven days a week had been his norm, which hadn’t left him with much time for anything more than a quick dinner and five minutes of family time before hitting the sack. But it had been well worth it. His wife calculated that he had already banked more than half again his usual year’s income.

  “Serving on this jury wouldn’t be a hardship for you?” Dana asked.

  “No, ma’am, it wouldn’t be any hardship,” the beefy, forty-four-year-old Ballard resident replied.

  “Then tell me, what do you think about the defendant in this case?”

  Quinn peered around her to take a good look at Corey Latham. “Don’t rightly know,” he replied. “He sure don’t look like the kind who could’ve done what it is they’re saying he did. But then looks don’t always tell the whole story, do they?”

  “In that case, would you be willing to listen to all the evidence presented before coming to any conclusions?”

  “Sure. Isn’t that how it’s done?”

  Dana sat down. John Quinn had a circle beside his name. Like Stuart Dunn, he was as neutral a juror as they were likely to find.

  “How do you feel about the bombing of Hill House?” Brian inquired.

  The contractor shrugged. “It was an awful thing, no doubt about it—all them people killed,” he said. “But I can’t say as I could tell you much more than that. I haven’t really been following the story.”

  “Are you a churchgoing man, sir?”

  “Yep. Every Sunday, like clockwork. And on Christmas and Easter, too. The wife insists. Thinks it’s good for the kids. And she likes to sing in the choir. I suppose it can’t hurt any of us too much, so I go quietly.”

  “Would you say you were a religious man?”

  “If you’re asking me if I believe in God, I guess I do. As much as the next man, anyway,” Quinn replied. “And if you’re asking me if I believe in Jesus being the Son of God—well, as I tell the kids, there’s nothing wrong with hedging your bets. But if you’re asking me if I believe in treating others the way I want myself treated, then I’ll give you an unqualified absolutely.”

  Brian did his best to suppress a smile. “Well, as long as we’re being right up front here, let me ask you another question—where do you stand on abortion?”

  “Don’t know that I stand one place or another,” Quinn replied. “Never came up against it. Me and the wife got two kids, which is all we wanted, and we just either been careful or lucky since then.”

  “And what would you say your position was on the death penalty?”

  “I guess I’m for it, but only under the right circumstances,” Quinn declared. “I mean, if you can really prove to me that that guy over there did what you’re saying he did, well then, okay, in my book, he deserves whatever he gets.”

  “You know, it’s weird,” Corey commented when court was adjourned for the afternoon. “I haven’t done anything, day after day, but just sit here—it’s been how many weeks now? And in all that time, I never once opened my mouth or even stood up. I just looked and listened. So why do I feel like I’ve been through the wringer?”

  “It’s the process,” Dana told him, every bit as weary as he was. “It drains everyone.”

  The weekly lunch at Al Boccolino had temporarily gone by the wayside, but Dana found an evening to have dinner with Judith Purcell. House of Hong, in the International District, was one of their favorites. They both found the crispy Chinese fried chicken to be irresistible.

  “I wish we could do this more often,” Dana said as they slid into a front booth and opened their menus, although they already knew what they were going to order.

  “Me, too,” Judith agreed, brightly. Not for anything in the world would the struggling artist tell Dana that she couldn’t really afford the meal. After all, she had her pride.

  But things were not going well. She had not had a new commission in two months, and even those she did have were not enough to make her anywhere near whole. Her credit cards were just about maxed to the limit, and she didn’t know what she was going to do.

  “I’ve been thinking about crispy fried chicken all day,” Dana declared. “I was standing in court, grilling prospective jurors, and I swear I could smell it, all the way from here to there.”

  “How’s the case going?” Judith asked.

  Dana rolled her eyes. “If we can ever get a jury seated, and the trial started, I’ll let you know.”

&
nbsp; “It’s still beyond me how you can do this,” Judith said, wagging her head.

  “It’s my job,” Dana reminded her.

  “Nonsense,” her friend said. “You get to pick and choose your cases. You didn’t have to take this one, and don’t try to tell me you did. Is it some sort of mislaid Catholic guilt? Is that why?”

  “Don’t be silly,” the defense attorney retorted, feeling her spine stiffen. “I happen to believe that Corey Latham did not bomb Hill House. Now what does guilt have to do with that?”

  “All right, never mind,” Judith said. “It’s too late now, anyway. So, are you close to getting your jury?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Dana said. She was also, she thought with an inward smile, close to putting Judith in an art gallery of her own.

  The building Sam had told her about would likely be available in November. The elderly woman who owned it had died, and her heirs were just waiting for her will to pass through probate. Sam had already spoken to them, and they were negotiating a price.

  Dana wished she could tell Judith, right here and now, but she knew it wouldn’t be fair, just in case there was a glitch, and it all fell through. No, she would wait until the deal was done. Then she and Sam would both tell her, and they would have a celebration. Judith’s birthday was in November. What a wonderful gift it would be.

  On the first Sunday in September, the Seattle Times did a feature story on Corey Latham’s lead attorney. It was titled “Who Is Dana McAuliffe?” and it was researched and written without the reporter ever getting past Angeline Wilder at Cotter Boland, or past Sam at the house on 28th Avenue in Magnolia.

  “It’s your fifteen minutes of fame,” her husband told her, as they spent the afternoon reading the paper and being lazy.

  “Oh goody,” Dana replied, without much interest.

  “On the eve of one of the most important criminal trials in American history,” the writer began, “it may seem odd that we know so little about the attorney who has been chosen to head the defense team of the alleged Hill House bomber. But Dana McAuliffe makes a point of being a very private person.”