The Justice Game

60

The Fourth of July fell on a Saturday, meaning that businesses and courts would be closed the following Monday. Accordingly, the Crawford trial was scheduled to start first thing Tuesday morning.

For Jason, the Fourth of July would be a twelve-hour workday like virtually every other day for the past three months. He rose early and checked the Kryptonite blog, though he hadn’t heard a thing from Luthor in twelve weeks. He took a quick shower, decided he could skip shaving today since no clients were coming to the office, and threw on a pair of shorts, the same T-shirt he wore yesterday, and a pair of worn-out Crocs. It was already 6:30, so Bella would probably be there. Andrew Lassiter would show up at about nine and work until midnight.

The day promised plenty of sunshine, heat, and mugginess. The beach would be hopping. With tourism in full swing, the allure of the surf drew tens of thousands. There would be fireworks at night and concerts at three different venues.

Jason would ignore it all. He would spend the day and evening hard at work. At most, he and Bella might drive a mile down the road to the empty parking lot of the vacant Surf and Sand movie theater and see if they could watch the fireworks from there.

Until then, he would spend the day preparing for the fireworks that started Tuesday morning.

To Jason’s surprise, he was the first one in the office. He went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. He watched it brew, thinking about a thousand things he still needed to do before the trial started.

Jury selection would begin first thing Tuesday morning. The entire case was being telecast on truTV, the channel that had replaced Court TV. Big portions were also scheduled to air on CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and some local public-access stations.

Once the actual jury was in place, Bella and Andrew would recruit a shadow jury, composed of Beach-area residents with the same micromarketing profiles as the real jury. The shadow jury would view the actual court proceedings and provide real-time feedback on how various witnesses and exhibits affected them. Jason would adjust his trial strategy accordingly.

It was an ambitious plan for an outfit as small as Jason Noble, Attorney at Law. Robert Sherwood would be proud.

But trying to pull it off was taking its toll.

Bella came dragging in at 7:45, looking pale, eyes bloodshot, wearing no makeup. She had on a baggy white T-shirt and black capris that must have taken ten minutes to squeeze into. She was huffing from the climb up the steps and smelled like she’d already been through a pack of Camels.

“Good morning,” Jason said.

“Hardly. It’s July Fourth, and here we are, grinding away at the office, no plans for tonight, no social life, no barbecues with the family. Instead, we get to sit around all day and figure out how to keep a good Christian widower from getting any money to compensate for the loss of his wife.”

“You need some coffee,” Jason suggested.

By 9:00, Bella was in full swing, putting together trial notebooks, organizing documents, making arrangements for witnesses. She gave Andrew Lassiter a hard time for arriving late; as usual, he ignored her, heading back to the conference room he had commandeered for his jury research.

At 10:00, Jason ventured out to the reception area, where Bella was hard at work.

“I’m going to make your day,” Jason said.

Bella looked up at him and grunted, as if it was already too late to salvage this one.

“We’ve got all the juror information we’re going to get from Rafael Johansen,” Jason said. “Andrew is inputting the micromarketing data and should have his recommendations for jury selection ready by Tuesday morning. I think we can finally fire Johansen. Want to do the honors?”

“Are you kidding?” asked Bella, rubbing her hands in obvious delight. She had clashed with the arrogant investigator every step of the way. “I think I might be able to squeeze that in.”

Jason smiled. “Go easy on him. He’s given us some good stuff.”

At 8 that evening, Jason decided it was time to show a little leadership. He walked down the hall to the conference room where Andrew Lassiter sat hunched over his laptop. The man had his nose practically on the screen; his black-rimmed distance glasses sat on the table.

He looked up at Jason, his brown bangs hanging in his eyes.

“Let’s go see the fireworks,” Jason suggested. “Take a few hours off.”

“Can’t.”

“Yes, you can. C’mon.”

Andrew put his glasses on, tossed his hair back, and looked at Jason. “I’ve got way too much to do.”

“It can wait.”

Andrew blew out a breath. “I’ve still got holes in this jury information.” He scrolled through his spreadsheets. “Basic stuff. Do they attend church? Magazine subscriptions? Political parties? Private schooling? Rafael only gave us complete information on about two-thirds of these people.”

Jason knew the data wasn’t perfect. There were sixty jurors on the panel, and even Rafael’s clandestine operations had their limits. But Jason knew that Andrew Lassiter would improvise, using the available data to help select the best possible jury.

Jury selection was the least of Jason’s worries.

“I’ll let you sit next to Bella,” Jason promised.

This brought a smirk from Lassiter. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll pass,” he said.

Jason had better luck with his assistant. At first, she tried to play the martyr too. But when Jason went into begging mode, Bella gave in.

They hopped in his truck, fought the traffic for a mile and a half, turned left on Atlantic Avenue, and eventually found a parking spot on 53rd Street a few blocks from the beach. They headed first to a souvenir store on the strip, and Jason bought two aluminum beach chairs. He and Bella walked barefoot across the sand and set up their chairs a few feet from the high-tide line. It was just before sunset and the sky was gorgeous. They leaned back to enjoy the festivities.

The beach wasn’t crowded, but there were plenty of others who’d had similar ideas. Families on blankets, couples huddled together, small bands of tourists throwing Frisbees or footballs, locals with their dogs. A few father-and-son combinations were already lighting sparklers and setting off their own firecrackers.

Bella and Jason faced the southern end of the beach. “I think they set them off from a barge in the ocean, down that way,” Bella said.

They watched the other beachcombers while the light faded, Bella making snarky remarks that had Jason smiling to himself. She started talking about the case once or twice, but Jason shut her down-“No shop talk tonight.” With work off-limits, it didn’t take long for them to run out of things to say. They waited for the fireworks in relative silence.

As Bella predicted, the fireworks were launched from a barge anchored several hundred yards offshore, lighting up both the night sky and the spectators on the beach, turning the ocean waves luminescent purple, red, blue, and green. Each new burst brought a smattering of ooohs and aaahs, and an occasional after-burst or particularly bright explosion seemed to suck the collective breath out of the crowd.

Jason hadn’t been to a fireworks display in years and found himself, strangely, thinking back to the times his dad had taken him to Stone Mountain on July Fourth when Jason was little. They always left a little early, catching the grand finale over their shoulders on the way to the car as they tried to beat the traffic out of the parking lot.

It was one of the few pleasant memories Jason had of time spent with his dad.

“Did you see that?” Bella asked, suddenly transformed into a kid. “I love those ones that spiderweb out like that.”

As Jason left the beach that night, the sand squeezing between his toes while he walked toward the boardwalk, Bella huffing and puffing beside him, gushing about what a great idea this had been, Jason found himself feeling melancholy. He wondered about his dad. The last word from Matt Corey had been that his father was still struggling at work. He had been cleared in the internal investigation but, in Detective Corey’s opinion, that had only prolonged the inevitable.

His dad was going to crash. And nobody would be there to help pick up the pieces.

“Don’t you agree?” asked Bella, between breaths.

“Sure,” Jason said.

“Good, I’ll pick you up at nine.”

“For what?”

“Church,” Bella said. “You just agreed that you needed to get away from the office more. Maybe go to church or something.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Jason said. “This is my last break until the trial’s over.”

In truth, he was anxious to get back to work. The pressures of an impending trial had an amazing way of keeping him from thinking about anything else for very long.

That was a blessing.