by Wiehl, Lis
“Voir dire is the only time during a trial that you can talk directly with jurors. I’m not saying it is your chance to talk at them. No. It’s your opportunity to find out who they are and how they feel. How you phrase things can make a difference. Ask people if they believe in racial profiling, and most will say no. But ask them if people from Muslim countries should get extra screening, and a lot of them will say yes. Jurors will shade their answers if they are afraid of being judged.
“You want to find out as much as you can about them, but without asking them endless questions. The trick is to ask open-ended questions so they’ll say a lot more than just a yes or a no. So you don’t ask, ‘Do you believe in the death penalty?’ Instead, you say, ‘How do you feel about the death penalty?’ In fact, once they answer, don’t jump right in afterward. Give them a moment. A lot of times a juror will add something—something important.” Titus nodded at his own words.
“And after you listen to the answer, base your follow-up questions on it. As you can see from Mia’s line of questioning of the fellow who was pistol-whipped, those follow-up questions can provide you with a basis for cause strikes.
“Remember that this isn’t a deposition. It’s a conversation.” He stretched out the last word with the cadence of a preacher. “So you don’t talk like an attorney. You talk like a person. You don’t challenge. You don’t criticize. You listen. And the more you listen, the more you learn.
“You can of course strike anyone for cause. It’s only preemptory strikes that are limited. Each side has three. But trust me, you’re going to need those three. Because there are times you are going to have to go with your gut.” He turned to Mia. “So why did you choose to strike Juror Twelve?”
“I have found in rape cases that older women can sometimes be judgmental,” Mia said. “That’s just based on my experience. On the flip side, for this case I’d like to keep the older male jurors, because they might see the victim as their daughter or wife or sister.”
Titus turned to Eli. “Why did you continue to question Juror Sixteen?”
Eli had used one of his preemptory challenges on that juror. “I always worry about prospective jurors who use the words think or hope or try. Because often they might be dropping hints that they aren’t capable of being neutral. And I think that was the case here.”
Titus nodded. “Nonverbal communication can tell you a lot. If a juror looks down or past you, it could mean they don’t really care about what you have to say. On the flip side, someone who smiles or nods in agreement when you are speaking is obviously the kind of intelligent, thoughtful juror you want.”
Eli and Mia laughed right along with the students. And looking at Mia, at her flashing eyes and her slightly crooked smile, Eli fell harder than ever.
CHAPTER 7
Gabe rubbed the steam away from the bathroom mirror. With his right hand he made a fist and then flexed his biceps. It looked like someone had slipped a softball under his skin. Along his forearm, veins popped. Nobody at school made fun of Gabe anymore. And lately girls had been looking at him. Talking to him. Sometimes, he thought, even flirting with him. He was no longer invisible.
If only he had been able to put on this weight before football season had ended. It would have been so much easier to push up and down the field if he’d weighed thirty pounds more. Except Coach Harper might have asked awkward questions, the way he sometimes quizzed the other football players about how exactly they had managed to bulk up. But now football season was over, and Gabe didn’t have Coach Harper as a teacher.
“You’ve got to try to get bigger if you want to get any better,” one of the seniors on the team had told him. Well, Gabe had tried. He had done all that he could. Lifted weights until he felt like his arms would snap. Choked down protein powder drinks that were supposed to taste like chocolate but instead tasted more like chalk.
But nothing had helped. At least until now. Now he had the only thing that really could help.
These days his shirts strained across his pecs. He could bench forty more pounds than he’d ever done before. Yesterday, for the first time in his life, he had grabbed the ten-foot-high basketball rim while doing a layup. Soaring through the air, he had felt like he could fly. He had felt invincible.
Gabe’s mom was sweet but clueless. She thought that if you worked hard, things eventually paid off.
But sometimes all that hard work needed a little extra help.
It was like diabetics whose bodies needed insulin because they didn’t make enough. Or people who were depressed because their brains didn’t make the right chemicals. Gabe was suffering from an imbalance. His body just didn’t make hormones in the right proportions. Which was why he hadn’t grown in the right proportions.
He had asked some of the guys on the team how they had managed to remake their bodies, and one had finally explained it to him—and eventually, as the season was ending, slipped him the number of this guy named Tyler who could hook him up.
They’d met at a restaurant near Gabe’s school. Before Tyler showed up, Gabe ordered some food, but he was too nervous to eat it. Besides, it looked kind of greasy, and what if it sent the wrong message, like he wasn’t serious about being fit? Gabe had been slowly shredding his paper napkin when a guy walked out of the kitchen area carrying a white takeout bag and slid into the seat across from him.
Even though it was nearly freezing outside, he was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt and long navy-blue basketball shorts. The dude was seriously ripped. Not an ounce of fat on him, just pure corded muscle. He was like a walking advertisement for his product.
“Gabe?” It came out more like a grunt.
“Yeah.” Gabe hoped his own voice didn’t sound shaky.
Tyler nodded, but didn’t offer his own name. “Did you come alone?”
“Yeah.”
The guy kept his eyes on Gabe’s face until Gabe grew uncomfortable, then slowly slid the bag across the table.
As he had been instructed, Gabe reached across the table and shook Tyler’s hand. In his palm were ten twenty-dollar bills, folded in half. Birthday and chore money he had been saving for a mountain bike. Without counting them or acknowledging them in any way, Tyler pocketed them and then left with another nod.
Gabe made himself wait a few minutes before he put the white paper bag in his backpack. Then a few more minutes before he picked up his skateboard and left. He didn’t even look inside the bag until he got back to his room.
Then Eldon had walked in, surprising him. After having his own room all his life, Gabe kept forgetting that he could no longer be sure of having any privacy. When Eldon came in, Gabe was still examining the bag’s contents—a few syringes, a vial of clear liquid, and a bottle of pills. A two-week supply of two anabolic steroids.
Eldon stared. It was too late to hide everything or try to think of a cover story.
“Gabe, dude?” he said. “Is that what I think it is?”
Eldon and Kali, his mom, had moved in after Kali had been diagnosed with breast cancer, lost her job, and fallen behind on her rent. Before they came here, they had been living in their friend Danny’s unheated garage. They were Samoan, both built like squares. If Gabe was downstairs and Eldon was upstairs, he could feel the whole house shake when Eldon walked down the hall. And even though Kali had lost a lot of weight because of the chemo, she was still a sagging mountain of a woman.
Eldon lowered his voice. “Are those steroids?”
The heat climbed Gabe’s face all the way up to his hairline. “You can’t tell anyone.”
With a sigh, Eldon shook his head. “You know I won’t. But I don’t know, Gabe. Is it right?”
Eldon clearly didn’t have an imbalance. He had no idea what it was like. “It’s not like I’m going to be smoking dope or using heroin,” Gabe said. “This is only so I can improve myself.”
“Then why not do it, like, the natural way?” Eldon’s voice was mild, but Gabe still felt irritated.
“Where have y
ou been?” he said. “I have been doing nothing but lifting at school or going down to the basement to use my dad’s old weights. I’m drinking protein or weight-gainer shakes three or four times a day. But it’s not working. It’s easy for you to say I should do things the natural way. You’re built like a bulldozer. And I’m a toothpick.”
Even after he got the steroids, it still took Gabe a week to work up the courage to push a needle into his skin. He found step-by-step advice on the Internet and read it over and over until he had it memorized. On Netflix he watched a really old football movie, The Program, to see how the players injected steroids.
Still, the first time he used a syringe to pull fluid from the vial, tilted it up, and squeezed out a drop to get rid of any air bubbles, and then jammed the needle into his hip, Gabe had been so afraid that he might die. His heart was racing, his palms were wet, and his head felt light. Would you even know you were dying? Or would you just suddenly wink out?
The next time it was a little easier. Same for the time after that. So every Tuesday and Friday for the past five weeks, Gabe had gone into his room and locked the door. He didn’t need to hear any more comments from Eldon. And there, alone in his room, surrounded by Little League trophies, his homework, and posters of his favorite bands, Gabe jabbed a needle into his hip.
The steroids changed everything. He got bigger. He got faster. He got stronger. And girls noticed him now. They had never noticed before. Every day before he went to school, he rolled his shirt sleeves to precisely the right level to show off his new biceps. He brushed his teeth and even his tongue, gargled with mouthwash so minty it burned his mouth. He made sure his hair was perfectly mussed before he walked out the door.
He still had to work hard, of course he did, but the steroids had given him the base that had been lacking.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “I need to go, Gabe.” It was his little sister, Brooke.
Gabe gritted his teeth. The house was really too small for five people. Lately it just felt like he was never alone. Not even in the bathroom.
“Okay. Just a sec.” He wrapped a towel around his waist. As he turned away from the mirror, he caught a glimpse of ugly, red acne speckling the tops of his shoulders. He had heard it was a side effect of steroids, but he had never thought it would affect him. He draped a second towel across his shoulders, hoping it would hide it.
“Gabe!” His little sister’s voice was like a mosquito’s, an annoying whine. “Now!”
“All right!” he shouted. “Can’t you just give me a second?” He wrenched back the door. Brooke must have been leaning against it, because suddenly she tumbled in, her face scrunching up and her mouth opening as she gathered her breath to cry.
“Shut it!” he roared in her face, startling her so much she went completely silent.
Gabe stalked past her, his teeth still clenched.
CHAPTER 8
Gabe!” Mia yelled up the stairs when she heard her son bellowing at her daughter. She set down her purse and keys, then put her fisted hands on her hips. She hadn’t even been home for a minute, and this was how it had to begin?
A beat. And then, “What?” Sullen, but not so sullen she could call him on it.
Realizing she was about to yell at Gabe that he shouldn’t yell at his sister, Mia forced herself up the stairs. She barely had the energy to climb them, let alone lecture.
When had he gotten so big, she wondered as she took the last two steps to where he stood on the landing. Where had her little boy gone? Or her skinny teenager, for that matter? Now his shoulders were powerful, his chest broad. He had a towel around his waist and another across his shoulders. He looked like a man, not a boy. He looked, in a way that made her feel like someone had just slipped a knife in between her ribs and given it a good twist, so much like Scott.
Brooke’s door was closed, and from behind it came the rhythmic sound of crying. There was an edge of theatricality about it, but a big part of it sounded real to Mia.
“What did you say to your sister?” she demanded.
“She wanted in the bathroom, and she wouldn’t listen when I said she had to wait a sec. So I told her she had to give me a chance to get out.”
“When you’re Brooke’s age, sometimes your body doesn’t give you too much warning.”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “But she obviously didn’t have to go to the bathroom that bad or that’s where she would be right now, not off in her room having a pity party.”
Should Mia call him on the disrespect of the eye roll? But he would just deny it, and then the matter of how he had treated Brooke—which had clearly been inappropriate—would get lost. She worried, not for the first time, just how much, in addition to his looks, Gabe had inherited from his father.
“I need you to go in and apologize to your sister right now.”
“She’s making too big a deal out of it. She yelled at me, so I yelled at her just a little bit.”
“You’re ten years older than she is—and three times her size!”
He didn’t answer, just stuck out his lower lip, making a face she had seen all too often from Brooke.
“Go apologize to her right now, Gabe. And I don’t want any more arguing or eye rolling. If you don’t stop right now, there will be consequences.”
She hoped for both their sakes that he’d listen and she wouldn’t have to choose a consequence. No matter what she chose, it wouldn’t be simple. If she took away his phone, he would argue that he might need to call her in an emergency. If she took away his computer, he would surely need it for homework. If she grounded him, there would probably be a birthday party he had already promised to go to.
“Okay. I’ll go apologize.”
When he turned, she glimpsed an ugly rash of acne across his back. Next time she was at the store she would have to look for some kind of wash he could use in the shower. Stick it in the kid’s bathroom without saying anything. He got embarrassed so easily.
She stood in the hall for a moment, but she couldn’t really hear what he said to Brooke. At least it sounded gentle and more or less sincere. Lately, Gabe’s mood could change so quickly. Hormones were no fun.
When he came out, she said quietly, “Thank you, Gabe.”
He nodded, not making eye contact.
“Your working out is really paying off.” He lifted weights every day after school and then came home and did more down in the basement with Scott’s old set. “Good for you for sticking with it.”
He flushed with pleasure, then shifted his grip on the towel to free one arm, which he flexed to show off his biceps. “Want to buy tickets to the gun show?”
Now it was Mia who rolled her eyes. Still smiling, she went back downstairs and past the family room, where Eldon was watching TV.
“Hey, Mrs. Q.” He flopped one large hand at her in greeting. Eldon had always been a big kid, built like a tree trunk, but now Gabe didn’t seem that much smaller. It had been good for him to have another male in the house, even if it was a boy, not a man.
“Where’s your mom?”
Eldon’s mouth twisted. “Sleeping. She’s not feeling so good.”
Some days it seemed like this latest round of chemo would kill Kali before it saved her. She had once been built like Eldon, but now her skin looked oddly loose, like she could push it all down to her ankles and step out of it.
“I’m sorry. Hopefully a nap will make her feel better.”
Mia started to walk past the dining room, the one room that saw little use and thus the only room that was sort of clean. On impulse she went in and looked at the framed photo on the sideboard. It showed what had once been her family, the four of them on a beach in Kauai. Two weeks after that photo was taken, Scott had died in a single-car accident.
Mia had thought to compare Gabe’s face to Scott’s, but she had forgotten that in the photo Scott had been wearing sunglasses. If he hadn’t, would she now be able to look at his expression and read all the secrets he had been keeping from her?<
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Scott kept smiling at her from the photo as if saying, You’ll never know, will you? He had one arm around her waist and the other resting on Brooke’s shoulder. Even back then, Gabe stood a bit to one side, as if already anxious to flee the family unit.
Mia just hoped she could make it through her kids’ growing up with her sanity intact. Sometimes she looked around at her life and wondered what had happened. A year ago, it had been simple. She had been a stay-at-home mom. Scott had worked long hours, running his own accounting firm, trying to keep it afloat after the economy tanked.
After he died she eventually learned more than she had wanted to know about how Scott had failed. To keep his business going and his family fed during the lean years, he had run up thousands in credit card debt. Debt Mia was slowly chipping away at. Eventually he had decided that there was more money to be made as a dishonest accountant than as an honest one. And finally he had fallen in love with a twenty-two-year-old college student he had hired as an intern.
Then Scott had died, and Mia had gone back to work at King County. Tried to fit into the power suits she had left behind four years earlier when she had been pregnant with Brooke. Tried to be both mother and father to a preschooler and a teenager.
Even though ten years separated Brooke from Gabe, there were a lot of parallels. Both of them acted out. Both of them were determined to be independent while walking right into danger.
Mia gave herself a mental shake. She didn’t have time to be reminiscing. Some days she didn’t feel like she had time to think, period. She just had to act. She needed to start getting Brooke ready for bed, but first she needed to eat. Kali should have already fed the kids. Was there anything in the freezer worth nuking, or should she just make do with a bowl of cereal?
When she saw the state of the kitchen, she forgot all about dinner. The big blue mixing bowl sat on the white-powdered counter next to a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, an egg carton surrounded by scattered broken shells, and a half stick of butter that had been sitting out on the counter long enough that the edges were blurred.