A Past That Breathes

by Noel Obiora

  Amy gave the jury statistics on domestic violence, murders of spouses and lovers, and crimes between family members to explain why people in the inner circles of a victim’s relationships are usually looked at first in most investigations as persons of interest.

  “In Paul Jackson’s case, he went from being a person of interest to being a prime suspect for one reason, and one reason only: He was so guilty it took him four months—from January to May-—to come up with an alibi!” Amy said. About Rachel Johnson, Amy said the defense wanted the jury to go off on a wild-goose chase rather than focus on their client. “If the defense thought Rachel Johnson could shed light on their case, the defense should have called her themselves. They knew where she lived, they have her name, the police report gave them all they needed to make her a witness. They want to turn this case into sexual perversity in Los Angeles, we don’t. None of that evidence that was found on the bed had anything to do with Goldie.”

  Amy then went through some of the jury instructions the jurors would need to guide their decision. She explained the burden of proof instruction, the circumstantial evidence definition, the admission against interest, the absence of evidence, and availability of a party, among other instructions.

  When she sat down, the two closing arguments had taken the proceeding past the lunch recess. Judge Barney read out a few more jury instructions and recessed for lunch.

  Paul Jackson sat frozen in his seat. In the audience his sister and mother could barely hold their tears. Anthony, Jed, and Tiffany weaved a path through the audience in the opposite direction of traffic to join Kenneth and Cassandra at counsel table. Melissa joined Kate, Gonzalez, and Amy. As Kenneth, Cassandra, Anthony, Jed, and Tiffany began to leave the courtroom, Kenneth excused himself and went over to Amy.

  “I wish your college friend were here to hear your closing argument. She might have given you a second chance,” Kate said smiling at him. They were speaking for the first time.

  “I will take that as a compliment,” Kenneth replied.

  “You should. She never beats around the bush,” Amy said to Kenneth, and Kate looked at Amy curiously. Amy introduced Melissa to Kenneth, and Kate and Melissa left them alone.

  45

  A Long Embrace

  After returning from lunch, Judge Barney gave the case to the jury, and the jurors marched into their private room to deliberate. This was the conference room where Amy, Cassandra, and Kenneth had met the first week of trial. Usually, the lawyers made themselves available during jury deliberations to be called if the jurors had questions or the verdict was returned. Lawyers waited in the hallways with their clients’ families or gave the court’s clerk a number where they could be reached when needed, provided they could be in court within thirty minutes. Kenneth and Cassandra chose the latter option. Nancy and Paul’s family sat in the hallway and waited. Amy returned to her office, across the street from the courthouse.

  At 5:30 p.m. Nancy returned to the hotel in a more somber mood than Kenneth had seen her in since the trial began. “The jurors did not look like they were close to a verdict,” she said. “They came out of the courtroom looking like they just walked out of a morgue, when at trial they would come and go in groups of two or three chatting. Now, everyone is on their own, walking out separately, like they had a fight.”

  “That isn’t necessarily a bad sign,” Kenneth told her. He had worried that they might return a verdict quickly, which might mean they agreed on guilt. With Nancy’s explanation, he felt that there had at least been a disagreement in the deliberation and his first wave of panic subsided. He began to look forward to seeing Amy again and told Nancy he would be keeping the hotel suite until the end of the week.

  He waited an hour before calling Amy to give her time to get back from work. Amy said she had been expecting his call when he asked if she could meet with him. Something in her voice told him she looked forward to seeing him as well.

  “Give me an hour to jump in the shower and get dressed, then come over,” she said. Kenneth decided to take a shower as well.

  In exactly an hour, he met her in the lobby of her building. She was wearing a long black skirt, ankle length boots, and a turtleneck top with a silk scarf. She carried her jacket and a flat black purse. Her hair was neatly pulled back in a bun.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Are you worried about being seen together because of the case?”

  “No, I’m done with that case. Don’t even mention it again.”

  He could not agree more. They drove silently until they got on the Santa Monica freeway from Downtown Los Angeles, then started talking to fill their awkward silence. He asked about her visit to the hospital again, what the doctors had told her. “Nothing new,” she told him and in turn asked about his dad. He could not return after the first week like he promised, Kenneth explained.

  “Were you disappointed?” she asked.

  He paused. It was the first time he had thought of his dad’s absence in that manner. A part of him had avoided the disappointment of even thinking of whether he was disappointed. “I don’t know but I told him it will soon be on Court TV anyway,” he said.

  “Don’t be disappointed. My mom couldn’t stand it either. She said it’s like watching a great thriller with your child in it, not knowing if she is going to make it out okay.”

  “Makes sense,” Kenneth said. “My dad had issues with hypertension during his visit, that was partly why he had to leave. He wanted to see his regular physician.” He recalled they could not stop talking when they had met at Cool Jo’s Café. Suddenly they were like strangers, and it did not bode well for the evening he wanted with her. He drove to Santa Monica beach and found parking along the street. Taking a small bag out of the trunk of his rented car, he led the way across a sandy path toward the water. There were park benches along a running track that formed a sort of boundary around the beach. Couples were lying on towels and blankets they’d spread out on the sand, and in the distance, young people were walking barefoot at the edge of the water and playing with the waves that came crashing in.

  “Why did you pick this place?” she asked.

  “I wanted a quiet place to talk,” he said.

  She smiled. As soon as they got on the beach, her boots came off and she carried them in her hands. She walked ahead of him, her bare feet treading lightly. There was a seductive lightness about her when she began to relax, and he missed that more than anything when they were apart. The sound of waves coming onto the shore and pulling away got louder until she stopped at a fairly isolated part of the beach and turned to him.

  “How’s this place?” she asked, dropping her shoes on the ground.

  “It’s quite a large beach, are you sure?” he replied, breathing harder than she.

  “I’m positive,” she said.

  “Good.”

  She spread her coat and dropped her purse on it.

  “No, I brought something to sit on,” he said and brought out hotel swimming pool towels from the bag he was carrying, spreading out one for her and one for himself. He also brought out a bottle of red wine and wine glasses. “I don’t know if drinking here is legal. So, I hope we don’t get in trouble.”

  “That’s okay. I know people,” she said.

  “Let’s hope the City of Santa Monica gives a damn about the people you know. In the meantime, we’ll stick to the plan.”

  “Which is?” she asked.

  “Run like hell when the authorities show up.”

  She laughed. He poured a glass of wine for her and one for himself, and toasted the end of the trial. They were at a slightly elevated part of the beach, but only about twenty yards from the water. The moon was not luminous enough to reflect the color of the sea, just a dark bed stretched out into the horizon. Constant as though it was measured, the sound of the waves added a hypnotic mood to a gaze into the darkness. They sa
t quietly, starring out to sea.

  “You’re a pretty good lawyer,” she said without looking at him. He laughed because the comment was so unexpected, and she turned her body to face him.

  “You are not so bad yourself,” he told her. They began to kiss. When they stopped kissing it was out of sheer exhaustion. The towels could not keep the sand from her hair or even her body. He tried to dust the sand off her shoulders.

  “Wasn’t there something you wanted to talk about?” she asked.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. Let’s wipe the slate clean,” he said.

  “I’d rather not. I grew up a lot these past few weeks,” Amy said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know that I can tell you how…After that incident where your client’s father went to see my boss, I started retching in the toilet. At first, I thought it was just rage. Then I found myself throwing up in the morning.”

  “Are you pregnant?” he asked.

  “That was the question on my mind. Usually, I would panic. Gosh, I’m not ready. I’m not married. I’m Catholic. What am I going to tell Alana? And all these thoughts would go through my mind, but there was none of that. I just sat there on the bathroom floor thinking about me. How to take care of myself first instead of worrying about whether I would have to go this alone. Not ‘oh God, please forgive me,’ but ‘oh God, please bless me’; not ‘what would my mother think,’ but ‘what would my child need.’ It sounds like really simple common sense, but it was a massive paradigm shift in my thought process. I was so much, so much more calm and deliberate. And I…”

  Her voice began to break up as she came near tears, and looked away from him, out to sea again. She wiped her eyes and appeared to force a smile, then turned to look at him.

  “What did the doctors say?” he asked after she seemed to have collected herself.

  “You see…you have looked right past me to find out if the doctors said I was pregnant. Never mind my sob story, tell me what I really want to hear. Who knocked you up?”

  “No, no,” he protested.

  “Yes, yes, admit it.”

  “Okay, but that’s because you’re here and I can see you are well now. And you have not touched your glass of wine.”

  “The doctor said I was fine, thank you.”

  “Did he confirm that you are pregnant?”

  “Yes,” Amy said looking right into his eyes. They were quiet for a moment. “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me, Ken?”

  “There were three inseparable friends whose destinies seemed inextricably intertwined. Now you and Elaine are having babies, it is only fair that I should think I am having one, too,” he said, rather sorrowfully. Amy chuckled.

  “When you put it that way, it is hard not to forgive you for asking. But you’d have to find that out for yourself, like Elaine and I did for ourselves.”

  She considered him for a while and looked away into the distance.

  “About the way I treated you after the weekend we spent together, I’m sorry, but you cannot see me through the prism of anything that happened in this case or with anyone else in your community. You must see me only through your experiences with me and me alone. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. Your father came to see me after that incident. He told me how they vandalized your car. How your mother had called him to come to you finally, and how he knew that he could not convince you to do what your mother wanted, but that if you loved me, then I could.”

  “That’s how you knew that the ACB was also known as the Anti-Christ Brotherhood?”

  Amy grinned.

  “Big thought I told you that, but I didn’t even know that about them.”

  He finished his wine and lay down again on the sand, pulling her on top of himself and they started kissing again. Minutes later, their lips sore from kissing, and their derrières aching from sitting, they dusted each other’s bodies and headed back to the car. She would not go back to the hotel with him and he didn’t want to go to her place until the verdict was returned. This was why he waited for her in the lobby when he went to pick her up.

  •••

  On Thursday afternoon, the jurors had an interesting request for the judge. They wanted Conrad Wetstone’s testimony read back. Judge Barney called the lawyers to the courtroom to explain the request and hear any objections.

  Cassandra and Kenneth both appeared with Paul Jackson, but Amy was not in court. Kate appeared for her. All counsel acquiesced and the court reporter read the testimony to the jurors.

  Several jurors took notes. Kenneth continually looked over his shoulder, expecting Amy to walk in on the proceeding. As soon as the jurors returned to their deliberations after the reading, Kenneth and Cassandra explained the situation to Paul and his family.

  “In this case, the jurors have asked for a reading of the most crucial witness’ testimony and that, in my opinion, means they understood the facts presented in the case very well,” Cassandra said to Paul. Outside the courtroom, Kenneth explained the same factors to Sister Ramatu and her daughters.

  “Conrad Wetstone could be an advantage to either side. We thought he was pivotal to the DA’s theory of the case because it seemed logical that he knew there was a dead body in Goldie’s bathroom before he went to the apartment,” Kenneth explained.

  “I’m convinced it’s good for Paul,” Sister Ramatu said.

  “Keep your head up, Kenny. You’ve got this jury thinking, and that’s good. They didn’t just bite what the cops were feeding them, hook, line, and sinker,” Jo said.

  Kenneth nodded. She hugged him like she would Paul and continued her vigil with her mother, sitting on the bench in the hallway outside the courtroom. Kenneth excused himself from them.

  When the jurors came out of their deliberations for the afternoon recess, Sister Ramatu and Jo were sitting in the hallway, and as the jurors left for the day, they were still there, sitting in silent prayer. The second day of jury deliberation passed without a verdict.

  Kenneth pondered the outcome of the trial after the jurors left on Thursday without a verdict. Ten hours of jury deliberations seemed both encouraging and disturbing in equal parts. What were they talking about in that conference room? Which particular items of evidence were they stuck upon? Had some not paid attention during the trial? How were they divided? Are women against women? Were whites against Blacks? Minorities on the same side or either side? He sat in his hotel suite, another wave of panic swirling inside him. As much as Kenneth feared a conviction, he also feared a hung jury, which would clearly mean a new trial. He would not represent Paul Jackson again in a new trial, and he would try to dissuade Amy from serving as the prosecuting attorney.

  46

  To Everything…A Time

  On Friday, the court directed all counsel in the case to appear after lunch. Kenneth believed the jurors had reached a verdict. He and Cassandra arrived early. Nancy and Paul’s family were in the hallway waiting for them, as were a group of newsmen and camera men with press badges. Paul’s father was with his entourage, and the cameras seemed particularly interested in him. Omar stopped by to say he was in a courtroom on another floor and would be joining them as soon as he could. Alvarez, Tse, Fritz, and Gonzalez were with Amy, Kate, and Melissa. Many of Amy’s colleagues were in the courtroom as well sitting in the gallery. Melissa had alerted Andre, Amy’s former boss, before lunch and he joined them while the court was in session. The news vans also returned.

  The clerk of the court asked the jurors to wait in their deliberation room. This signaled to the lawyers that the jurors had not reached a verdict. Kenneth informed Paul’s family immediately. With everyone seated in the courtroom, the judge explained his purpose for calling the parties back.

  “It looks like we are headed for a hung j
ury,” Judge Barney explained. “Before the jurors went to lunch, they informed the clerk that they were seriously deadlocked, and it didn’t look like they could do any better. They said their division has held along the same lines for about a day now. We’ve heard loud arguments at times through the walls. So, it certainly isn’t that they haven’t tried. I wanted to see what you as counsel want to do.”

  “Do we know how many are on either side of this deadlock?” Amy asked. “Without knowing which side they’re leaning toward, of course,” she added quickly.

  “No,” Judge Barney said with a smile.

  “What does the court recommend?” Cassandra asked.

  “I would like to call them in, and just as Ms. Wilson here has suggested, ask them to tell us how they are divided in terms of numbers, without disclosing how they’re inclined to vote on the verdict. If they are fairly evenly split along the middle, I’ll tell them I have no desire to let them go until well into next week and send them back. If their division is rather lopsided, where only two or three jurors are holding up a verdict, then we’ll send them back for the day, and come back here to declare a mistrial at the end of the court day.”

  Cassandra was inclined to accept this arrangement, when Kenneth started to argue a contrary position.

  “Your Honor, it would seem to me that if the jurors have only one or two people in one position, then we are closer to a verdict than we are to a mistrial and should give them more time for that position,” Kenneth argued.

  “Perhaps you’re right, counsel. My experience, though, is that one or two holdouts after more than a dozen hours of deliberation starts to create a mob atmosphere in the jury room. And if the two holdouts change their minds, they do not do so entirely of their own volition,” Judge Barney explained.

  “Still,” Kenneth persisted, “it has been a grueling process. These jurors have been sitting here for the better part of three weeks and we have barely given them two days to deliberate. Can we give them until the middle of next week?”