by Derek Blass
“You know, the only fucking development I want is dinner and my bed,” a man said from the water jug at the back of the room. He filled his glass and then stood there staring. Everyone else was silent. Tawny forgot the man's name but remembered he said he was in insurance. He had a black tie on with a cream shirt and matching black pants. His clothes were clean and neatly pressed. Everything about him was neatly pressed but plain. “Am I the only one who's pissed here?” he asked quizzically.
The black man who previously offered Tawny his seat shook his head. “Nope. I'm pissed too. But what the hell are we gonna do about it?” The insurance man didn't respond and slouched back into his chair.
“I haven't even been able to get in touch with my family,” the whiny woman said. Tawny remembered her name—Rebecca. “They won't let us make phone calls in here. How are we supposed to let our families know what's going on?” No one responded to that either.
Tawny watched as the jockey walked back and forth across the room. He stopped and looked up at her. “You got a problem?”
“Uh, no. No, not at all. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Well, whether anyone else caught the news on channel nine last night.”
The jockey looked around and when no one answered, he said, “I didn't see it. Doesn't look like anyone else did either. Why?”
“I only caught the tail end of it, but did you recognize that woman sitting behind the prosecutor today? The Mexican woman with the short black hair...”
“Yeah, kind of a hard one to miss,” the insurance man chortled.
“She's a reporter for channel nine. I caught the very end of her story and basically just heard the anchor say something about a video.”
“Her story was about this case?”
Tawny shrugged her shoulders and pulled away a piece of hair that had gotten stuck on her lip. She got embarrassed with this amount of attention, but at the same time didn't much mind. It was the dichotomy of the adult geek. “I don't know because I didn't hear enough. But, I'm assuming that if she's sitting right there in the courtroom...”
“And they said something about a video?”
“I heard '...video excluded from evidence.' That's it. I paid no more attention to it. I hate the news. It just gets me so down so I try not to watch it except for...”
“Has anyone else heard about this?” the jockey asked, interrupting Tawny. No one indicated they had. “I guess we'll see what happens during the trial then.”
Tawny shook her head, taking a bit more of an assertive tone. She didn't like being cut off. “The lawyers didn't mention anything about a video today. If there was a video of what happened, and we were going to see it...”
“...it would have come up,” the jockey finished, jumping in again. Short man syndrome, she thought to herself.
The door opened and the judge came in followed by a bailiff. Tawny kind of likened him to her father. They both had creased faces with shiny, taut skin. Yellowing teeth with thinning, but not balding, hair. The judge wasted no time in getting to his point, “I have good and bad news for you. First is the good news. I have spoken with the lawyers in this case and we will be doing this trial in two days. In other words, tomorrow will be the last day the lawyers present evidence to you. After that, you deliberate.”
The insurance man muttered, “Thank God.”
“The bad news is that I am going to sequester this jury.”
The jurors gave each other a collective “huh?” The judge explained, “It means you will be kept at a hotel, not far from the courthouse. You are to have no contact with anyone, except one two-minute phone call to your families to tell them what's going on. You are not to watch television. You are not to read a newspaper. Do not talk to anyone other than jurors. And, when you talk to one another, do not deliberate until you have heard all of the evidence. There will be bailiffs with each of you at all times except when you are in your rooms. In fact, none of your rooms will have televisions. Do you all understand?”
“How can you do this?” the whiny woman asked. “I have a family!”
The judge's upper lip twitched a bit and he answered without looking at her. “I understand this will be an inconvenience to some of you, but we have to get this right. There is simply too much media coverage, too much garbage being shoved down people's throats.”
“Why is this such an important case?” the black man asked. Tawny had talked to him before they came into the deliberation room. His name was Lucius.
“That's something I cannot answer, sir. Nothing about the case other than procedural issues. Is there anything else?” the judge asked his bailiff. The bailiff whispered something into his ear and the judge said, “Oh, yes! You will all be compensated for your lodging and will be provided two meals. The hotel will send a shuttle over for all of you soon. Thank you,” he ended in a sing-song voice and walked out of the room. At least they got a couple of meals, Tawny thought to herself.
The insurance man stood up. “Aren't any of you going to get mad? This is infuriating!” He went over to the door where the judge had exited and cautiously opened it. Seeing nothing he turned back to the rest of the jurors and spit out an exasperated, “...fuck!”
“Listen son, calm down and watch your tone around the ladies.” The voice came from an old man that Tawny had barely noticed until now. He wore a green and white flannel shirt with a pair of faded jeans and suspenders. He had a bushy, curled mustache that almost hid his upper and lower lips.
“Just because you don't have anything going on old man, doesn't mean the rest of us can afford this time off.”
“Hey,” Lucius said, “the man's right. You just need to calm down.” And with the sentiment turned against him, the insurance man took his seat. Tawny looked around the room. Small wall sconces cast a dim light on the other jurors. They were seated around the perimeter of the room, everyone facing each other. Her eyes rested on a younger man, his head bobbing to some imaginary tune.
“Well, I for one think he did it,” came a voice from Tawny's left. It was Dawn, the fake entertainer, and real stripper. This was the first comment anyone had uttered regarding fault. Tawny immediately saw the insurance man and Rebecca pull back, as if to draw a line.
“Based on what? You haven't even heard them tell their sides of the story yet. Plus, we're supposed to wait to talk about the case,” the insurance man said.
“Oh hell, who needs to hear their sides? The lawyers told us what we were gonna hear. There ain't gonna be no surprises. Screw the judge and his rules too,” she said while scratching her neck. She wore a pair of black, stretch pants and a T-shirt that was purposefully torn down her chest. Three earrings hung from both ears and made clinking noises anytime she moved. She popped her gum constantly. Tawny hated that noise almost more than anything else. “Plus, the damn cops in this city are bastards. They'll do things like this. I had one girlfriend that was attacked and raped by a cop. He threat'nd her if she ever told anyone, she'd be dead.”
“This is like an episode of tales from the hooker,” the insurance man said under his breath.
“What'd you say, you scrawny little man?” Maybe she couldn't hear it because of the incessant chewing, Tawny thought. The man just hung his head and stared at the ground. “That's what I thought, you two little pricks running around here like y'all are the bosses,” she said while looking at the insurance man and then the jockey. “Truth is, ain't no one gonna control me.” The broken English made Tawny sad inside, but she did feel a small laugh surge through her lungs. “You feelin' me, girl?” Dawn said to her. Tawny just smiled.
“You've got to listen to what the men say tomorrow though, darling,” the old man said.
“I know, you sweet thing. What's your name again? Why don't we start there? We don't even know each other's names.”
“I'm Earl, darling. Earl.” Just as the insurance man was looking around to see if he should participate, the bailiff came back into the room.
; “Time to go, folks.” Dawn stood up first and got close to the bailiff as she crossed through the door. She stopped and tugged on his shirt. “Big ol' man like you has got to know who did it?” The bailiff took her hand and gently moved it away.
“No, ma'am. I don't know a thing except that your shuttle is here.” Dawn pouted a bit and then continued on out of the room. Tawny was amazed. This was the jury of your peers. This was the group of twelve people set to decide that man's fate.
F O R T Y-F I V E
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Cruz, Martinez and Mason sat around a patio table at Mason's house. He sent his family away during the trial in an effort to protect them from the abounding idiots. The change from three to two days was a strain and a relief at the same time. A strain because he wasn't prepared to cram everything into that short of a time frame. A relief because the trial was eating away at his strength even a day in.
That was a new enemy, the elephant in the room for Mason. He couldn't last at this much longer. The trials felt more and more drawn out. He started to lose grasp of all the facts, all the nuances of matters. Working twice the amount of time was the only way to keep it all straight, and that took a toll on his marriage. He stood in front of the tall mirror in his room each day, naked, analyzing the deterioration of his body. His gut protruded. His cheeks were starting to sag. His pectoral muscles looked more like breasts than muscles.
The mirror in the bathroom was no greater help. He stood in front of it and examined his teeth, which despite his best efforts were turning slightly yellow. Lines zagged across his face like fish under water. His eyes looked haggard most days. There was still a glowing ember deep within him, to prosecute, to bring the criminals in society to justice. However, the ember was fading and would have to be passed on to someone else soon.
A glass of whiskey on the rocks sat in front of each of them. Mason picked his up and watched the light brown liquid play among the cubes of ice.
“Mason, why so solemn?” Cruz's voice stirred him from his thoughts. He looked up and pulled back the corner of his mouth but said nothing.
Trying to redirect the mood surrounding the table, Martinez said, “So, what's the order of things tomorrow?”
When Mason didn't pick up the conversation, Cruz said, “We go first. I assume Mason is going to briefly put on the expert regarding ballistics and then use your testimony. Right, Mason?”
“Yep, that's what I was thinking,” Mason responded, finally looking at them.
“You know you've got this in you, right, Mason?” Cruz said. Both he and Martinez peered at Mason to get some semblance of how he was feeling.
“Oh, I know. It's just one more day of trial. No big deal.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “It's really the bigger picture. I'll be honest with you guys—this shit makes me feel old.” He let a grin out with the admission, enough to set the other men a little bit more at ease. “My battery's on low, fellas. I'm not sure I've got another one of these in me, but I don't want to go out a loser either.”
“Wait,” Martinez started, “you're conceding defeat?”
“No...come on. It's not like that. But I've been around long enough to have seen this play out. Without the video, this is a very, very difficult case to prove. People aren't prone to putting a cop away for thirty years when the only evidence against him is another person's testimony. Sorry, but that's just reality.”
“Mason, you're gonna crush Shaver on cross,” Cruz said. “What we lost with the video we make up, even if not to the same degree, on his cross examination. You do have a chance to go out on top, and that cross examination is your chance!”
Mason hadn't really looked at it that way.
“There is so much you can do to whittle away his credibility on cross. You can bring out his violence, his hate of minorities.” Cruz's own comment made him flash back to his youth. The incident with his friend lying next to him, hanging on to life. He recalled Shaver's face then. “There's something I haven't told you guys” They both looked at him. “When I was a teenager, my friend and I had a run-in with some of the city cops. My buddy split, took off when the cops drove in front of our house. I had no idea why he did, or why I followed him. They ended up catching us and they just about beat my friend to death.”
Mason and Martinez kept listening. Cruz was visibly shaken up. “The cop that beat my buddy, that took joy in seeing us cry in fear, was Shaver.”
“What?!” Martinez exclaimed.
“Cruz, why didn't you tell us about this?” Mason asked.
“Hold on,” Martinez said, “This fucking Shaver? The one in this case?”
“Yes.”
Martinez threw his hands in the air. His brown skin turned red. His eyes narrowed and turned the same color. “How can you be sure?”
Cruz looked at him sideways. “It's not something you forget. His face was etched in my mind all this time. When I saw him at his house, I almost puked.”
“I can't believe you haven't told us this before,” Mason said again. “How have you been sitting there silently?”
“It's my damn issue, isn't it?” he said, his own face burning crimson. “Plus, it had nothing to do with this case.”
“Well, you can't be sure of that,” Mason said.
“Are you gonna try him for a crime that I say he committed fifteen years ago? Come on. It's irrelevant to this case.”
Mason had to agree with that, but it was still inconceivable to him that Cruz remained silent about it for so long. It was a remarkable display of repression. Mason had never gone through anything that traumatic. He went to ask another question but Cruz held his hand up, cutting off the conversation.
Cruz said, “Back to the case, because we don't have time to sit around flabbergasted. I'm simply trying to let you know what Shaver is truly like. This was not a one-time incident. This was most likely something he did with frequency. So, I think you can elicit that in his cross examination...” Martinez slammed his glass on the table and went inside. “Fuck, what's the big deal? It's not the end of the world.”
Mason looked at the young attorney. He was clearly talented but also had so much room to grow. There was leadership potential in Cruz, if he stepped out of himself a bit more. There was no doubt the young man was a bright star.
“I think you're right, Cruz. I'll try to elicit those emotions from him. No guarantee though.”
“Of course not, but I have confidence in you.” That was nice to hear, because Mason wasn't feeling so stellar. “What demonstratives are you going to use?”
“Todd created a chronology of events that will be a primary piece for me. I have pictures of forensic evidence, the spent shells, Shaver's gun. I'll use most of them during the expert's testimony.” Martinez pushed the sliding glass door back open and tripped onto the patio.
“Goddammit!”
“Hey, you aren't getting drunk, are you?” Mason asked.
“No,” Martinez answered indignantly. “Just missed that damn step.” Mason and Cruz kept looking at him. “Get outta here! I've barely had half my drink.”
Mason slipped a bundle of documents over towards Cruz. They were shrunken copies of the demonstratives.
“How bad's it gonna be tomorrow?” Martinez asked.
Mason slowly took his glasses off of his face. “The truth?”
“Of course the freakin' truth. I need to be prepared for this.”
“Pretty damn bad. Sphinx is a good lawyer,” Mason said. Cruz watched Martinez's face for changes in expression. “Quite honestly, there's a whole bunch of shit to toss at you. The association with your wife's brother, Raul. The chase for Shaver. The arrest. You're in for an ass-whooping.” Martinez shrugged his shoulders and leaned on the wall.
“He can get those things, but that doesn't change what happened at Livan Rodriguez's house.”
“That's exactly right,” Cruz applauded. “Doesn't change the fact that Shaver walked into that man's house and killed him in cold blood.
All Sphinx will be trying to get at is your credibility. And I don't see how Sphinx has a chance to bring your credibility as low as Shaver's will be. That whole 'man in blue' thing isn't going to last long at all.”
“All right then, one more question. You think we're gonna win?” Mason and Cruz looked at each other. It was impossible to predict how a jury would come out. A jury was like a black box. You could do your best to get the right elements in there, but once deliberations began the chemistry project took over. Some personalities did well with others. Some personalities clashed. Other personalities took over while some remained weak. Juries were comprised of victims and aggressors much like the greater society. The victims blamed outside forces, usually beyond their control. The aggressors were unwilling to bend to fate. How the jury comes out often depended on the mix of these subtypes of people.
“Well?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Cruz finally answered. Mason just looked away.
F O R T Y-S I X
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Not that bad, Tawny thought to herself. They got a meal at the hotel and then a decent room. She was sure some of the jurors lost their minds without a television, and it was undoubtedly something she would hear about. She had just read a book and fallen asleep to the heavy sound of the inhale and exhale of her breath.
The ride over to the courthouse was groggy and silent. The only person who looked more put together than yesterday was Rebecca. She was sitting in the front seat of the van, as uptight as ever. Tawny sighed and dug through her purse for some gum. The insurance man was sitting next to her. She extended her hand with a piece of gum in it. He shook his head no without saying anything else. Jerk.
The courthouse sat on a full block of the downtown area. There were two entrances and the bailiff said they would be using the back one to avoid the congestion. Tawny figured he meant the morning commute congestion. That was until they got about half a mile away from the courthouse.