The Fifth Justice (Michael Gresham Legal Thrillers Book 10)

by John Ellsworth

  “That’s rather difficult for me to imagine,” said the prosecutor. “A parent exposing their child to that filth? Are you certain that’s what you heard?”

  Chloe’s eyes fluttered. Justin was angry; I would later learn when the prosecutor asked whether he was certain. “Am I certain?” said Justin, “I found the chloroform and the gunny sack under the front seat of Reno’s Cadillac. I removed that chloroform and gunny sack in the middle of the night. They never knew.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  “Went down two doors and dropped them in the neighbor’s trash bin. I knew they wouldn’t miss them until too late. Plus, they’d never find them, either. So, was there a plan? What do you think a gunny sack and chloroform might otherwise mean, Miss Betts? I assume I may call you ‘Miss Betts?’”

  Touché. Justin had just changed my concept of Justin. He wasn’t just a dumbed-down version of John Wayne with six-guns and a big horse. No, Justin was a figment of Chloe herself, a very high-IQ personality able to function and compete with anyone. He had just proved that beyond any remaining doubts I had.

  The prosecutor smiled. “‘Miss Betts’ is just fine. But I’ll be the one asking the questions, Mr. Maybe. That’s just how it works here.”

  “Ask away, though I’m still wondering what else a can of chloroform and a gunny sack might mean to you besides a definite plan to kidnap a small child. I’m sure we’d all like to hear from you on that.”

  He looked across at the jury. Their eyes were for the most part locked on Linda Betts, waiting to see if she went along with Justin’s game. She did not.

  “Justin, when you stabbed Reno, what were you feeling just then? Anger?”

  “I was feeling afraid. He was much larger than me and much stronger. He’d hit her with his car. He’d beat Chloe so severely at times that she couldn’t move. Which meant I couldn’t move. Don’t forget while she was being struck and kicked it was me who took the attacks. I stepped in for her and tried to resist. I took the pain so she wouldn’t have to. Do you understand?”

  Linda Betts jaw dropped. She hadn’t expected such a clear explanation of how the protector alter takes over from the host personality during an attack. But now she’d proven beyond anyone’s doubt that Justin was, indeed, a separate personality completely capable of taking over from Chloe even without the trigger words “just a baby.” He’d stepped in and taken her place at the worst of the worst times, while she was being beaten. Suddenly, I loved the guy. So did everyone else, I was quite certain.

  “I think I understand,” Ms. Betts said solemnly. It was evident that she wasn’t going to entrap Justin in any admission against interest that might doom our defense case. It was evident, too, that the more she went, the more the jury felt a kinship with Justin Maybe. I watched her shoulders sag as she deflated from her early attack mode and seemed ready to retake her chair at counsel table. Which she did.

  “The People have no further questions. Thank you, Mr. Maybe.”

  Chloe’s affect never changed. The judge looked at me.

  “I have no redirect, Your Honor.”

  “Ms. Constance, you may step down from the witness stand and take your place at the defense table. Mr. Gresham, how many more witnesses will you be calling?”

  I turned to Marcel. The slightest shake of the head. We were on the same page. It was done.

  “No further witnesses, Judge. The defense rests.”

  The jurist turned his gaze to the prosecutor. “Any rebuttal witnesses, Madam Prosecutor?”

  “No, Your Honor. The People’s case is concluded as well.”

  “Very well. The jury will be excused for the remainder of the day while I meet with counsel and we settle our jury instructions. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for your service, thus far. Please remember the admonition, no viewing of news about the case, no online reports or summaries or discussions, if any person attempts to discuss the case with you, please bring that to the court’s attention. We stand in recess. Counsel, ten minutes, my chambers, please.”

  We’d been summoned. Linda Betts and I would spend most of the rest of that day going over the instructions the court would give to the jury before they went to the jury room to make their decision. It was a very important stage of the trial, and I wanted to be ready. In the meantime, Chloe was returned to jail. Just before the deputies took her away, after the jury and judge had departed the courtroom, I turned to her and gave her a long hug.

  “I’m walking you out of here tomorrow,” I whispered. “Keep the faith, honey.”

  She turned her face up to me. Her eyes were glassy. I could see the exhaustion there. It had been one hell of a day for this trooper. “I’m trusting you, Michael,” she whispered back. “You’re all I’ve got.”

  I wanted to suggest that she had Justin and Maddy too, but it was the wrong moment. I was all she had, legally. The case was squarely on my shoulders.

  And I was up to it.

  * * *

  Judge McClintock was finally satisfied with the jury instructions just after six o’clock that night. It had been a long, difficult afternoon, with both Betts and myself jockeying for a leg up with the jury instructions. The instructions are the law of the case the judge will give to the jury. They form the guardrail on both sides of the road, keeping jury deliberations in line with what the law says they should think about in deciding the case. In particular, there was the instruction on justifiable homicide. It read:

  Homicide is justifiable when committed by any person in any of the following cases:

  (1) When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person.

  (2) When committed in defense of habitation, property, or person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends and endeavors, in a violent, riotous, or tumultuous manner, to enter the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any person therein.

  (3) When committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a spouse, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of such person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the person on whose behalf the defense was made, if he or she was the assailant or engaged in mutual combat, must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was committed.

  When it was all said and done, when prosecutor Betts and I had exhausted our arguments to Judge McClintock, this was the instruction that had been fashioned from the California Penal Code. It was the key law of the case, especially number 3, where the person who does the killing does so in defense of another. This is what I would be arguing tomorrow during closing arguments. Without this instruction, Chloe was guilty of first-degree murder. With this instruction, that homicide was, as a matter of law, justified.

  Next stop: tomorrow morning, first thing, closing arguments to our jury.

  Judge McClintock bid us a good evening and told us not to overwork it, that we both deserved a night off.

  For me, I was exhausted, and I remembered my white knuckles from before. Riding next to Marcel in our rental car, as he drove us to our hotel, I looked down at my hands.

  No white knuckles.

  A good sign.

  Chapter 64: Trial

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said Linda Betts in a low and even voice, “the defendant is going to tell you this murder was legal. Her lawyer will try to persuade you that Chloe Constance was justified in murdering Reno Rivera.

  “Now, no one on my side of the room will blow smoke by telling you Reno Rivera was a good guy, because he was not. He was a snake, the lowest of the low. You could even say he deserved to die—maybe. But the law makes one thing clear: no citizen gets to take the law into her own hands—never. If Reno Rivera deserved to die, that was up to the law to dec
ide, not someone named Chloe. A citizen never gets to make that decision.”

  “Objection,” I called out, rising to my feet. “Counsel is trying to ignore the jury instruction the court will give the jury that legalizes homicide. Or at least justifies some homicides.”

  “Sustained. The jury is instructed to disregard the prosecution’s words, ‘A citizen never gets to make that decision.’ Please go on.”

  “Furthermore,” Betts said, never missing a beat, “even if he deserved to die he also deserved, like all American citizens, due process, the right to confront his accusers in open court, the right to an attorney—all of those Constitutional rights that even the defendant has used in trying to persuade you of her innocence. As for Mr. Rivera, he never got that opportunity. He was murdered before he had his day in court. And that,” she said, swinging to point at Chloe, “is the fault of that person right there. That person who would have you believe, one, the murder was justified, and, two, even if it wasn’t justified, it wasn’t her who did it, that it was someone else living inside of her. Well, that’s downright fairy tale land!”

  I had to sneak a look at the jury. They were, mostly, leaned forward, absorbing what this very skilled prosecutor was telling them. Did they notice Betts kept saying “murder” instead of “homicide,” as if they mean they same thing—which they do not? I would have to be sure and point that out to them. I would try to unring the bell Betts had rung. Which is very difficult, probably impossible, to do under the best of circumstances.

  Betts reviewed the testimony of her investigating detective, the testimony of Detectives Davidson and Rabinowitz from Illinois, and the testimony of the SDPD crime scene and crime lab witnesses. The medical examiner’s testimony posed no problem: Justin Maybe had attacked Reno Rivera, and Rivera was dead because of the wounds he received, plain and simple.

  The prosecutor finished with a flourish, reminding the jury that vigilante justice was justice run wild. That no one was safe from the vigilantes outside their house with torches and hangman’s nooses. She frightened enough of them that, when I stood up to have my turn, they were upset and half-turned away from me.

  Which is a common way to find a jury behaving after an excellent prosecutor like Linda Betts finishes them off. Frightened and ready to hang someone.

  “Well,” I began with a hint of a smile, “that was quite a performance. It made me want to run out and check the locks on my car. How about you all?

  “The problem was, Ms. Betts is making you afraid of the wrong person. It isn’t Chloe or Justin who pose a threat; they never have. Who represented the greatest threat to you, your kids, and your grandkids, in this case, was the dead guy, Reno Rivera. Where do we start with him? Rapist? Murderer? Kidnapper? Violent mass human trafficker? If it’s vile and if it slithers in the grass, you’re talking about Reno Rivera, because he answers to all those things. Or he did while he was alive.

  “But what I want to spend my time talking to you about is the jury instruction number fourteen. That’s number fourteen of the jury instructions Judge McClintock will give you. Let me put a copy up on the overhead so you can follow along with me.

  “As you read this instruction, you enter the world that few people ever get to enter: the world where one citizen may kill another legally. Did you hear me right? I said in some cases, those cases set out by the number fourteen, a citizen may kill another and have a court call it justified. That’s right; you can be within your rights when you pull a gun on someone like Reno Rivera and blow him away if the circumstances are right. Well, let’s look at those circumstances.”

  I then recounted Chloe’s own story, the story of a young woman still in her teens who was kidnapped by a sex slaver and shot up with enough drugs so men could do whatever they wanted with her. I recounted how Chloe’s personhood—her personality—had shattered in the face of that abuse, and I recounted how she had become more than one person. That included her new protector, Justin Maybe.

  Reno Rivera’s rape and impregnation of Chloe took up another five minutes of my presentation. His abuse of her, of her marriage, of her husband, and his intention to kidnap their son and put him in porno movies—all of it was again presented to the jury in living 3-D because it was all real. And if that wasn’t enough, I was able to show how that abuse continued with other, unrelated people, starting with Trang, the twelve-year-old Vietnamese girl raped and beaten by Reno and his minions—and his sex-trade customers—for months. Now the jury was turned back around, facing me, nodding as I moved through the testimony and tried to explain how that testimony fit, legally, inside the justified homicide box.

  Then came Justin Maybe’s turn. “Who among you,” I asked, “believes Justin is a separate personality? Don’t raise your hands,” I said, “the judge won’t allow that. But ask yourselves, did you hear him speak? In a voice that was not Chloe’s voice? And what about Maddy? Did you hear her speak in her own pressured voice, the voice of the rageful teenager? Were you able to come to grips with the psychological reality that some people have second and third personalities that can be so strong they take over the host personality and do things the host would never do? Do you know that now?”

  Despite my admonition not to vote, half the jurors had by now raised their hands—more or less, some more than others. Everyone seemed to nod.

  I then launched into my general points about proof beyond a reasonable doubt versus the defendant’s burden of proof, which was much less. In the end, the jury was back on my side of the courtroom, primed to vote.

  Ms. Betts was given the last word. She talked about proof beyond a reasonable doubt and how it didn’t mean beyond all doubt but just beyond a reasonable doubt. She did all she could to convince them the state had met its burden of proof. But many of the jurors were watching with those blank expressions on their faces wise trial lawyers know and fear. She wasn’t moving them at all.

  Then the judge gave instructions, and the jury retired to deliberate.

  It was 10:07 a.m.

  Game on.

  Chapter 65: News Stories

  The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 31

  Thirty-four year-old Chloe Constance, on trial for the murder of Reno Rivera of La Jolla, California, was found not guilty today after seven hours of jury deliberation.

  In killing Rivera, Constance ended the largest human trafficking ring in the United States. Some human rights groups are hailing Constance as a hero. She was defended by Attorney Michael Gresham of Chicago.

  Adrian T. Ellison, Reporter

  2 hours later, from the paper’s website:

  http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/, July 31

  Attorney Chloe Constance, appearing on CNN this evening, said a Vietnamese supply train carrying young girls was stopped and turned around. The girls were kidnapped by Rivera’s mob for use as sex slaves in the U.S. Growing numbers of reports of freed victims across America are coming in hourly as well.

  Adrian T. Ellison, Reporter

  10 p.m., from the paper’s website:

  http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/, July 31

  President Francis Salinas announced today her appointee for the U.S. District Court of Illinois to be Attorney Chloe Constance. Ms. Constance couldn’t be reached for comment. The White House Press Secretary has slated the President’s formal announcement and appointment for ten a.m. August 1, tomorrow morning in the Rose Garden.

  Adrian T. Ellison, Reporter

  Chapter 66: Chloe Constance

  On the first Monday in October, Judge Chloe Constance of the United States District Court in Chicago gathered with the other judges before court started. They sipped their tea and coffee on the second floor of the courthouse. Two of the six had been nominated to the court by the current occupant of the White House, a backslapper from Chicago. Chloe was enjoying her Oolong tea and blueberry scone when one of the magistrate judges, Matt Roylan from South Chicago, announced that his daughter had given birth over the weekend.

  “What did you get, Judge,
” asked Judge Emil Spielman from Waukegan, “boy or girl?”

  Judge Roylan smiled. “Just a baby.”

  Just a baby was all it took. Justin Maybe assumed control of Judge Constance. She stole quietly from the room and took the stairs up to her office, where she shrugged off her black jurist’s robe and gathered her backpack, ID, and keys.

  I watched as she emerged from her office, strode past my office, made her way up front, past our paralegal/typists—even failing to pat the back of Trang Anh Nguyen, one of the Judge’s favorite typists—and opened the main door and was gone. She had disappeared without a word to any of us. My name is Noah Ricker. I’ve served as Judge Constance’s—Chloe’s—Chief Law Clerk two years now. We met while I worked a brief clerkship at the law office of Chicago attorney, Michael Gresham. Before that, I was a Chicago Law grad who tested better than my peers, allowing me to graduate law school at the top of my class. Which resulted in an invitation to clerk for the Judge. In time, I have grown to know two of Chloe’s personalities, Justin Maybe and Maddy. Justin is Chloe’s protector. Maddy is a loose cannon of a teenager, who last week stole a car and took the judge on a wild ride along Lake Michigan. That particular frolic and detour had taken me two days to straighten out with the Chicago PD and the owner of the stolen VW bug. But I managed to pull it off and managed to keep a lid on, with some fancy footwork, a call to the U.S. Attorney, and two-grand in a white envelope to the high school senior whose name appeared on the vehicle’s title. The role of Chief Law Clerk requires much more than briefs and opinions. It also involves cleaning up after one-ninth of the U.S. District Court in Chicago.

  After Judge Constance disappeared without a word, I hurried to our main door and double-timed to the elevators. Nothing. Back stairs. Justin had avoided the elevators, knowing I would pursue.