Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die

by Carol O'Connell

  "You could make a citizen's arrest."

  "Naw, I'm gonna buy him a beer. Poor guy, he's had a rough day." Riker clapped one hand on MacPherson's shoulder. "C'mon, you're with me. I wanna know what the hell went on in that jury room."

  There was no sound of sirens yet. He knew they should be gone before the first police car arrived. Jo would have located a public phone by now. However, he had a feeling that she would not leave her name as the 911 caller. Riker walked the incompetent shooter up the ramp in silence, and there was time to wonder who the lady had been following tonight. Himself? Was Jo taking the blame for Bunny's death? Was she worried that another friend would be the next target? Or was it Ian Zachary she was tailing? He glanced at the ashen face of MacPherson and decided to include him on the short list of men who so interested Johanna Apollo.

  From the bowels of the parking garage, Ian Zachary called out, "Can I come? I'll buy!"

  Riker sat back and enjoyed his favorite brand of bourbon – Free Booze – as Ian Zachary laid out more cash for the cocktail waitress. Turning to the small thin man between them, Riker said, "You're perfectly safe.

  This is a cop bar."

  Once again, MacPherson failed to get the joke. He appeared not to understand that cops usually arrested people for waving guns around in a menacing way. Perhaps there was something to the Reaper's stupid-juror theory. But then he decided that this man had simply lost the ability to think clearly; he had spent too much time in seclusion, hiding from a maniac who wanted him dead. Riker could empathize with that, though he had never been a man in hiding. That was not his way. And he would never tremble so in public.

  Upon entering this old SoHo haunt, he had made his usual scan of the crowd, checking out young males for signs of psychosis and concealed weapons. And now his gaze settled upon a blind man's white cane; it leaned against a bar stool draped with a black coat. Squinting for clarity, Riker decided that this man in the silly wig was young, but he could read no finer detail between the long red curls and the oversized dark glasses. The blind man dipped one hand into his coat, and Riker froze, waiting for a bullet. The man withdrew a wallet, set his money on the bar, and Riker began to breathe normally again. It was unlikely that this was the same white cane that had tapped past him in the parking garage twenty blocks away, but he wished he could see this blind man's eyes.

  Two drinks had gone by, and he had learned nothing of the events that had led MacPherson and his fellow jurors to a not-guilty verdict. But he knew that something shameful had happened in the jury room. That much was in MacPherson's eyes as the man evaded every question.

  "Well, what is a juror anyway," Ian Zachary was saying, pontificating to no one, for Riker had ceased to listen and poor MacPherson was sliding into shock. "A juror," said Zachary, "is someone too stupid to get out of jury duty. Now, this man here, he was one of the rocket scientists in that courtroom. He's a math teacher."

  MacPherson corrected him, saying in a small cracked voice, "Was a math teacher. I lost my job. I still have a wife, though." He looked down at his bony hands tightly folded in his lap. "But she always cries when I call home." He also seemed at the point of crying, and his last drink had done nothing to calm his nerves. "The jurors weren't stupid. Those poor people were only – "

  "Hey, I was there, too," said Zachary. "Remember me? The defendant? When the prosecutor polled the jury in open court, one by one, they all voted not guilty. And you? You just tried to kill me with blanks, you fool."

  "I only wanted you to know how it felt to be me."

  "You mean you didn't have the guts to kill me. You're a coward."

  "No, he isn't," said Riker. "He didn't run, did he? You and your fans set him up, nailed him down to New York City – even the building he lives in. And the Reaper's probably camped out at his front door right now. I say the man has guts."

  However, MacPherson was an idiot.

  Riker scribbled a brief note on a cocktail napkin, then pulled Marvin Argus's business card from his pocket. "It's time to call for protection, pal. You're naked now." Under the cover of the table, he pressed the napkin and the card into the man's hand.

  "It doesn't matter anymore," said MacPherson. "I just want it to be over." He glanced down the note, then rose from the table, mumbling, "Men's room." He turned his back on them and walked toward the sign for the rest rooms at the rear of the bar.

  "He's one scared rabbit," said Zachary. "Or maybe not." He slid along the seat of the leather booth, moving closer to Riker. "Wouldn't it be a kick if that was just an act? What if he turned out to be the Reaper?"

  "Yeah, right." Riker's attention was divided between the blind man at the bar and MacPherson, who stood by the pay phone, shaking his head and debating the wisdom of making a telephone call to the FBI.

  The Englishman prattled on, oblivious to anything but the sound of his own voice. "No, he's not smart enough to get away with slaughtering all those people. And then there's the FBI agent in Chicago. Did you know he was one of the Reaper's kills? The newspapers never made the connection on that one. The Chicago cops wouldn't give reporters any details. But you may recall that one of my fans works in the morgue."

  The blind man turned his head toward Riker, then quickly looked away and counted up his change from the bartender. Not blind? A fraudulent beggar, a con artist, in a cop bar?

  Looking past Zachary to the window on the street, Riker drank steadily as he endured another ten minutes of crackpot theories on the Reaper. He was buying MacPherson some getaway time.

  Now the shock-jock noticed that their drinking companion was still absent from the table.

  "What's with him, I wonder? You think he's in the men's room slashing his wrists?"

  "He's long gone," said Riker, though only a minute had passed since Argus's white car had pulled up to the curb and carried the juror away. "He slipped out? You just let him go?"

  Riker rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and said, "I'm not a cop any – " "I know," said Zachary, "but if he dies tonight, it's on your head, isn't it?" No, MacPherson would at least live through the night. The feds could not afford one more screwup on the Reaper case. And Riker could do nothing to save the man; he could not even protect himself – not with a gun, not when the mere sound of the shot could render him breathless and useless. He needed no more proof that his life as a cop was done.

  "Maybe you're the one who needs protection." Riker ripped open the man's orange coveralls, revealing a bulletproof vest of better quality than police issue. "Don't put all your faith in body armor. The next time that poor bastard comes after you, he might use real bullets – and he might make a head shot."

  "Highly unlikely. You saw him," said Zachary, paying no mind to the broken zipper on his coveralls. "The man's harmless. But I still think the Reaper was one of the jurors. My favorite candidate is the jury foreman – the hunchback."

  "Johanna Apollo?" No, this was not possible. Riker closed his eyes. Bad dream, bad dream. If Jo had been on Zachary's jury, Mallory would have -

  "You really didn't know?"

  When Riker opened his sorry eyes, Zachary had moved closer, and he was smiling.

  "Fits, though, doesn't it? She makes a great suspect. Think about it, Riker. A unanimous verdict of not guilty. Was the jury really all that stupid, or did someone influence them? Only a psychiatrist could've run that jury room and turned all the ballots my way. That's why I sent her long-stemmed roses every day for a month. I figured her for a groupie."

  "Shut up, you psycho."

  What else had Mallory failed to tell him? Just as he was wishing that she was within strangling distance, he saw her seated at the end of the bar. All her attention was trained on the fake blind man in the red wig. And now Mallory slid off her bar stool to follow the little man out the door, leaving Riker to the job of tucking Ian Zachary safely into bed.

  Chapter 12

  THE FAUX BLIND MAN WAS ACCUSTOMED TO BEING followed. Mallory had guessed as much when he changed trains three times, but she had
remained with him, riding one car behind, though sometimes losing sight of the bright-red wig among the other passengers. He led her to Grand Central Terminal, almost deserted at this hour, and she watched him enter the downstairs men's room, a very suspicious act in itself. That public facility was a documented pesthole. Only vagrants did not avoid it, but he was not in that class. She had cost-estimated the black coat at something beyond the purse of a beggar, though his wig was cheap nylon hair and a very unnatural red. He must want people to notice him, but why?

  She watched the rest room door and waited for him, guessing that he would change his appearance before he emerged. He would certainly lose the silly wig.

  Mallory waited – and she waited.

  Twenty minutes had passed. Only one man exited the men's room, but this was not the smooth-skinned youth, the fake blind man. This man was elderly, not aged with a white fright wig, but authentically wrinkled and peppered with liver spots.

  She entered the men's room to make her own inspection, not yet willing to believe that she had been thrown off a surveillance detail by some rank amateur in a ridiculous disguise. This could not happen – not to her. One by one, she opened all the stalls, kicking open the ones that were locked, disturbing the slumbers of homeless men with authentic body odor and haggard faces, and definitely not her fake blind man in disguise. Angry now, she overturned the trash can on the floor, but found no sign of a red wig or a white cane. There was only one door, no other way out. A young man had walked into this room and vanished. Mallory decided not to share this humiliation with Riker.

  "Yes, Victor, I'm quite sure that she was police," said the elderly lawyer as he draped the black coat on a chair. The white cane came loose and crashed to the floor, startling his companion. But then, every little thing made Victor Patchock nervous. The youngster was in one of his silent moods, and so the old man carried on both sides of the conversation. "Yes, she followed me right to the rest room door. Well, actually, she was following the red wig. Commendable plan, my boy." He had finally come to appreciate the bizarre logic of a fugitive calling attention to his appearance.

  The lawyer stood before the only unshuttered window and looked down at the quiet street below. The Upper East Side was such a good neighborhood, but what a dreary, tiny room. His last offer to move Victor to some better accommodation had been declined. The young man had even worsened his lot by removing the doors to the closet and bathroom, then stripping the place of all bulky furnishings which might conceal an enemy. From where the old man stood, he could see a razor on the edge of the bathroom sink, and the drain was clotted with hair from the younger mans clean-shaven head. Victor had always been boyish in appearance, but now the bald pate made him seem downright babyish – if a baby could sneer and go insane.

  The old lawyer plucked his own camel-hair coat from a hook on the wall. "It's late, and I need my rest." He did love this fresh excitement of being followed by a pretty woman, a touch of after-midnight sex. The drama had certainly enlivened his golden years and deepened his sympathy for this young man who could not go home again. But, of course, there were limits. And now, as if in gentle rebuke, denying a toy to a child, he said, "I can't get you a new gun. Sorry."

  Mugs's lips curled back over needle-sharp teeth as he crept toward the door, his ears flattened back and fur bristling. Whatever he sensed out there in the hall, he was planning to take it by surprise and make short work of it. The cat looked up at Johanna, pleading for her help in this venture, for he had never mastered the art of opening doors. Suddenly he was angry and hissing. She was opening the closet – the wrong door.

  Johanna found her jacket, dipped one hand into the pocket and pulled out the small silver gun. In barefoot silence, she stepped up to the hallway door and stood on tiptoe to see through the peephole. No one there.

  Perhaps it was only a mouse after all, something small hiding below and beyond the perimeter of the fish-eye lens. She opened the door.

  Riker had been sitting on the hall rug and leaning against the wood. Now he fell backward into the room and came face-to-face with the cat. "Hey, Mugs, ol' buddy."

  The cat, somewhere between disgust and disappointment, padded off to his pillow basket, where he turned around three times, then curled into a ball.

  "Hello, Jo," said Riker, still flat on his back and looking up at her. Johanna's weapon was concealed behind her back. "Riker, I've got two FBI men watching me. So, thank you, but I really don't need more protection tonight."

  "Argus's men?" He rose to his feet. "Sloppy bastards. I didn't see either one of them when I got here."

  She waved him to the couch, and while his back was turned, she slipped the silver gun into the pocket of her robe. "What are you doing here?"

  "I just found out that you were on Ian Zachary's jury. That was a shock and a half."

  "But you had so much information – "

  "Your notes? No, they never mentioned you as the jury foreman."

  And now he surprised her one more time. He asked none of the predictable questions, like How could you let that bastard get away with murder?

  Over the next half hour, they settled into an easy truce. Their pact was sealed with Johanna's hoard of precious goat cheese and a fine bottle of red wine pulled down from the rack on the wall. They sat on the couch, side by side, their feet propped up on the coffee table. Johanna had eased into a rare mood of happiness, so mellow, so peaceful. And she was the one who finally returned to the subject of Ian Zachary's trial.

  "I didn't even try to get out of jury duty." She refilled Riker's glass with the last of the bottle. "I was closing down my private practice and referring my patients to other doctors – finding good homes for all my puppies. And I was almost done. So it was easy enough to clear my calendar. I didn't really think the defense lawyers would want a psychiatrist on Zachary's jury. But they never objected to me, never asked a single question. They didn't waste any time on the other two women either. After a while, I figured it out. They were using all their challenges to stock the jury with men who fit the demographics of Zachary's radio show. It was a local program then, just the Chicago area. You know the type of fans he has? Young males, badly educated and immature. Most of them in going-nowhere jobs. Seven of the jurors fit that profile."

  "That explains why the defense team didn't care about you. They only needed one of those bastards for a hung jury. So what happened in that jury room? How did they get a unanimous verdict?"

  "I can't tell you any more, Riker. I won't lie to you, and I won't drag you into this."

  He leaned down to pick up the leather jacket he had dropped on the floor, and now he pulled out a gun much larger than the one she had recently concealed in a cushion of the couch. With just a cursory understanding of his affliction, she knew it was madness for Riker to carry this weapon.

  "Jo, I'm the one with the gun, and you're trying to protect me!"

  He looked down at the revolver in his hand. "I took this away from MacPherson tonight. Is he the one you followed into the parking garage?" "Where is he now?"

  "Marvin Argus took him away. That's his whole job in life, isn't it, protecting the jury? Maybe that's why he pulled his men off your surveillance detail. Well, I guess I'll be sticking around for a while."

  Before he could ask any more questions about MacPherson, Jo selected an open wound that might distract him. "Does your doctor know what causes your seizures? Any physical problems?" She already suspected that the pathology was trauma related, but men were rarely open to this suggestion.

  "Seizure," he said, as if the word might be new to him. "You mean like a fit? I don't throw fits. I'm thinkin' it could've been a heart attack." He seemed to prefer this more life-threatening explanation. Of course he did. Men had heart attacks, women had fits.

  "Riker, you know I've seen it happen before. That day you lost control of the van."

  He shook his head. No, he had not lost control; he had no frailties. All this was said with the set of his jaw, and then he turned
away from her. Johanna was accustomed to this old obstacle, old as time. Men were the vainest creatures on the planet. Obviously, he believed that he had successfully concealed the previous episode.

  Her first day on the job, training day, he had nearly wrecked a company van. There had also been a loud noise on that occasion, the sound of one car hitting another with the bang of two-ton missiles meeting head-on. The van had suffered no impact, though it had spun out of control and wound up with both front wheels on the sidewalk before Johanna could pull up the emergency brake. She had opened the passenger door and hit the pavement running to check on the other two drivers. Both of them had been in better shape than Riker. She recalled that awful moment when she had turned back to see him frozen behind the windshield. In the throes of a seizure, his lips had turned blue for lack of oxygen, and every cord on his neck had been strained to a rope of flesh. The seizure had passed off before she had time to climb back into the van. He was already breathing again, gulping air, and waving off her attentions, insisting that he was just fine. Riker had not driven a van since that day, and they had never spoken of the incident.

  And there would be no more discussion tonight. He busied himself arranging couch cushions in front of the door to her rooms. Riker was planning to lay his body down as a human shield to protect her.

  She stared at the revolver he had lain on the glove table by the door. This was fresh proof of her trauma theory. The cylinder chambers that she could see were empty. It was not loaded. Of course not – a gunshot would have paralyzed him. He had come to protect her with only the bluff of an empty revolver, and Johanna regarded that useless weapon with tenderness and great awe.

  Special Agent Marvin Argus stared at the sleeping man on the hotel-room couch. He had tired out MacPherson with the argument for the witness protection program. Or perhaps the man was faking, escaping into feigned sleep. The runaway juror seemed to dislike him for no reason that Argus could fathom.