The Jury

chapter five

"He was wrong,” says Crone.

“Who?” Harry is sitting at the table, the one bolted to the floor of the small conference room near Judge Coats’s courtroom.

Crone is busy readying himself for court, running a comb through long wisps of thinning dark hair so that he doesn’t look like the mad professor. He peers into a stainless-steel mirror on the wall to make sure his tie is straight, this despite the fact that the ends are uneven. He is not what you would call a natty dresser. Even with these final acts of preening there is a certain professorial slouch in his stance and a slept-in appearance to his clothing. He doesn’t wear a suit. Instead, he opts for the less formal appearance of a corduroy sport coat over a plaid shirt, and gray Dockers, none of which he has allowed to be pressed. It is as if seamless trousers and wrinkled cloth were a badge of academic honor, a message to the world, and the jury, that he flies by some other convention. A generation ago this might have been a problem. Today half the jury pool shows up in T-shirts and jeans and has to be scanned for weapons before they are admitted to the jury commissioner’s waiting area.

“The coroner, Max Schwimmer,” says Crone. “If he’s going to testify under oath, then he should get it right. And it’s not ten percent.”

“What are you talking about?” says Harry.

“The percentage of left-handed people in the population. It’s more like fifteen, not ten.”

“I’ll be sure and make a note,” says Harry. He gives me a look out of the corner of one eye as if to say, That’s gonna save us. Harry has not warmed to Crone. There is something in the air between them, like ozone following lightning. Neither of them will bend to make the first gesture toward the other in order to dispel this miasma of ill will.

Crone is into the little things, meticulous about details, and religious when it comes to numbers. In Crone’s eye, mathematics governs the universe. To get an equation wrong is a mortal sin.

He is a man always in charge, brimming with confidence. Except for the orange jumper, on the days we don’t go to court you would swear he was running the jail. He strides the dayroom jostling and bumping shoulders with career cons whose sole concern with science is whether some street vendor stepped on their crack too many times to get high. David Crone shrinks for no one, and he seems to mingle with everyone as if there is something to be learned from each new experience in life.

I have seen him in animated conversations with droopy-eyed losers, men whose arms were covered with tattooed messages punctuated by needle tracks. Crone always seems to leave them smiling. As strange as it might seem, he has found a home here. There is no family to miss, since he’s never been married.

They call him the professor. “Professor’s buffin’ himself up again.”

Crone does a session with the weight machine every morning and is beginning to look fit, having lost that stodgy pudginess with which he started the trial. Jail has provided him with an element of discipline that his life lacked, and Crone, efficient in every aspect, has made the most of it.

He plays cards, mostly blackjack, with other prisoners in the dayroom each evening. I have interrupted some of these games to meet with him. They play for cigarettes, the con’s currency, even though Crone doesn’t smoke. They have cheated on him, resorted to elaborate signals and even used shills on the tiers above the tables to read and telegraph his hand. Still they cannot figure out how he keeps winning, the man with the gray-celled supercomputer between his ears. They could shuffle in four more decks and it might slow his counting of the cards to light speed.

This morning Aaron Tash has accompanied Harry and me to the courthouse to talk to Crone. Tash has been trying to see him for days, but I have left strict instructions that the two are not to talk except in my presence. Tash works with Crone at the university, his number two on the genetics project until Crone was placed on leave following his arrest.

Why he continues to report to Crone, who is suspended from his job, I am not sure, but I’m not anxious to have them talking through glass at the county jail on a phone that is monitored by deputies. The possibility of Crone saying something that could be construed as incriminating is too great, particularly if the issue of Kalista Jordan’s employment came up.

Tash is in his mid-forties, tall, six-four, even with his knees bent and his back hunched a little, which appears to be his normal posture. He is a wiry, sinuous man, with a graying fringe of hair surrounding a bald dome. He is the antithesis of Crone: a man whose personality, if he has one, is cool and reserved to the point of being glacial.

He appears entirely committed to Crone and his cause. Still, he is a university employee and, I assume, anxious to retain favor with the powers that be. For all I know, he could be eying Crone’s job. There is no telling what he might be induced to do if the regents sensed they could be on the hook financially for Jordan’s death. After all, they were on notice of her complaint for harassment.

Tash is carrying a thin leather briefcase under one arm. Whatever its contents, it took the guard less than three seconds to check and clear it on entering the jail.

This morning they don’t take us into the small consultation chamber with its inch-thick acrylic partition, but into a larger meeting room with a stainless-steel table bolted to the floor and plastic garden chairs. The smaller room isn’t large enough for the three of us.

Crone is not there, but I can see him through the windows down below in the dayroom, talking to some inmate, the guard waiting for them. The other man, some behemoth, has just come off the weight machine, covered with sweat and looking like some Nordic bad dream, cheekbones from a horror flick, a blond ponytail, with tattoos on both arms from the pits to the wrists. It could be worse; at least he is laughing with my client. I begin to wonder if Crone has been carrying out fiendish experiments here-Dr. Vikingstein, I presume.

He breaks it up, and followed by the guard, Crone climbs the stairs. A couple of seconds later they unlock the door for him to enter from the jail side.

As soon as he sees us all there, Crone is filled with bonhomie.

“Aaron, I see you’ve met Mr. Madriani, and Harry Hinds. Harry’s an interesting man. Personally, I think he has a way with words.”

“Oh, really. In what way?” asks Tash.

“I think Harry should be writing lyrics for music.”

This gets a snarl from my partner.

“Oh, you’ve written songs?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Tash looks sorry that he asked.

Crone is looking back into the mirror at the other end of the room. I can see him laughing in the glass.

“You have to watch what you say in here, Aaron. I am told they can read lips.” He nods toward the mirror. “How’s everything at the center?”

“People are pulling for you,” says Tash. “They know you didn’t do it.”

“Gee. Maybe they should all talk to Harry.”

Crone is misjudging Harry badly. The man has a boiling point in the vicinity of liquid oxygen and can be just as explosive.

“I’m glad for the support. It means a lot to me. Please tell them that.” Perhaps Crone has a place to return to after all.

“I will.”

“But you didn’t come all this way to tell me that?”

“No. You need to see these numbers,” says Tash. He gestures with a finger, tapping the briefcase under his arm.

Crone holds out a hand.

Tash pulls a letter-sized folder from the briefcase, and from this he draws a single sheet of paper. It appears to be the entire contents of the briefcase. He hands the page to Crone, and the two men study it, Tash looking over his shoulder. Little musings under their breath, nothing said outright as they pore over the page.

Why Crone was doing this, volunteering his time on a project from which he has been suspended without pay, no one could say. But I suspect it is a labor of love, and the fact that he is the ultimate optimist. In his mind at least, he is going back.

Crone traces the page with one finger, his eyes following. He is two-thirds of the way down when he backtracks to the middle. “Here’s the problem.” He looks at Tash. “You see it?”

Tash shakes his head, and Crone smiles, still master of the universe.

“Give me your pencil,” says Crone.

Tash reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and comes out with a mechanical pencil.

Crone takes it and presses the button on the end twice with his thumb to get some fresh lead. He places the sheet of paper against the wall and starts to write. From this distance it looks like he is scrawling numbers, computing in his head faster than his hand can commit the figures to paper. He scratches over some of the printed numbers, formulas from what I can make out, then writes in the margin, making large scrawled arrows pointing back to the printed text.

“You see it?” Crone shoots a glance at Tash, who has a perplexed expression as he follows the pencil scratching on paper.

Tash’s eyes suddenly light up like some kid’s who’s just been given an electric train set for Christmas. “Oh. Of course.” He slaps his forehead with one hand. “Then that means that down here we were off.” He borrows the pencil back and makes his own contribution in the margin.

“You got it,” says Crone.

“That’s held us up for almost a week,” says Tash.

“Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”

“Ask him.” Tash gestures toward me.

“Mr. Madriani, I thought I made it clear. You cannot interfere with my work.”

“No, what you made clear is that you won’t cooperate in your own defense,” says Harry. “In my book, that’s grounds for counsel to pitch the court for an order to withdraw from the case.”

“Go ahead,” says Crone. “I won’t object.”

“Harry, please.” I give him a forced smile, a signal to back off.

“I must have access to Dr. Tash,” says Crone. “I want you to instruct the jail personnel that he is entitled to meet with me whenever.”

“Only your lawyers meet with you whenever,” I tell him. “Dr. Tash is a visitor. No matter what I say, he would be limited to visitors’ hours. I should also remind you that he’s on the state’s witness list as well as our own. That creates a problem. I cannot allow you to talk out of my presence.”

“Besides,” says Harry, “if you do, the conversations can be monitored.”

“Let them listen,” says Crone. “They wouldn’t understand a thing. I would challenge them to make heads or tails of these numbers.” He holds up the piece of paper.

“Then you wouldn’t object if they copied it?” I ask.

“I certainly would.”

“That’s what they may do if he comes here alone.” The fact is they could do so now. Because Tash arrived with us, Crone’s lawyers, the guards in the jail have simply assumed that he is part of the defense team. We did not vouch for him. We merely told them he was with us.

“The guards may not be able to interpret those numbers, but an expert, another geneticist might,” I tell him. “He or she might also be able to tell prosecutors whether what you’re working on has any relevance to the state’s case.”

This produces sobering expressions from Crone and Tash.

“Even with us here,” says Harry, “the D.A. could always put Dr. Tash there on the stand and ask him what the two of you talked about.”

“Is that true?” Crone looks at me.

I nod.

“I could tell them anything I wanted,” says Tash. “How would they know?”

“Then you’d be committing perjury,” says Harry.

He looks as if this wouldn’t bother him much.

“Well, we’ll just have to take that chance,” says Crone. “I must have access to Dr. Tash. You have to understand, we’re at a critical stage. Everything we’ve done for the last five years is coming to a head. You see what’s happened? The delays.”

“Then counsel’s going to have to be present whenever these meetings occur, and we’re going to have to keep them to a minimum. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Crone looks at me, considers for a moment, then nods. “Very well.”

“No telephone conversations. No meetings,” I tell him. “Unless they are approved by me in advance and either Mr. Hinds or myself is present.”

Crone nods. “Right.”

Tash doesn’t. He just looks at me, steely-eyed down his long, imperious nose, all the while showering me with his benevolent smile. He turns back to scratch a few more numbers on the sheet of paper with Crone looking on. As he writes I realize that Tash is himself part of the fifteen percent that Crone was talking about. He is writing with his left hand.