Killer Ambition

60

The moment my office door swung closed, Declan exploded. “That woman is a classless, lying menace! Just because she’d sell stories to the tabs, she thinks everyone else is as tacky as she is. We’ve got to call a press conference. We’ve got to tell them it’s not true-”

“No.” I was just as steamed as he was, but I had experience with this kind of trash talk and knew better. “That’s just what she wants. The minute we answer this garbage, we give her exactly what she’s looking for: a sideshow that discredits the prosecution and deflects attention from her guilty client.”

“But won’t Andrew Chatham back you?”

“Who knows? And even if he did, it’ll just look like he’s protecting his source: me.”

Bright spots lit up Declan’s cheeks as he set his jaw. “I want to beat the crap out of her.” He looked at me with consternation. “I don’t know how you can be so calm about this, Rachel.” He sat down heavily and stared at the floor.

I smiled. “Truth? The first few times I got knocked around by the defense, it made me insane. Matter of fact, I once got so mad at a defense attorney, I offered to dismiss the case against his client if he’d do the time.”

“Back when you were a baby DA in Misdemeanors, right?”

“Try three years ago on a double homicide.”

Declan shook his head and we both laughed.

My cell phone played “Killer Joe.” “Bailey’s heard the news,” I told Declan.

“Frame-up?” she demanded. “Why the hell would we give a rat’s ass about this friggin’ clown?”

“In case you didn’t notice, Terry said a lot of other ridiculously stupid-”

“That garbage about you selling your story-people who’re dumb enough to buy that line aren’t going to make it on the jury anyhow. But this noise about a frame-up-”

“What makes you so sure she’s pointing the finger at us? Remember how many times we heard Russell’s people say that everyone in the industry could be a suspect? They’ve got practically a whole city’s worth of straw men they can prop up.”

Bailey was silent for a moment. “It’s pretty hard to believe that a pissed-off actor would murder a director’s kid and her boyfriend just to frame the manager.”

“Cops would make more sense…” Who else would’ve had the ability to plant blood and prints? Still, I had a feeling Terry wasn’t aiming at LAPD. “We’ll hash this out later. One thing’s for sure, I’m going to hammer them hard about discovery. I’m not buying that they don’t have anything yet. They’ve got to have witnesses lined up if they’re going to prove Ian was framed.”

“You’d think,” Bailey said.

“You have time to come over? I’m going to put together the jury questionnaire and we should talk about who we want.”

Most prosecutors don’t consult their investigating officers about pure trial work like jury selection, but most prosecutors don’t have someone as smart and experienced as Bailey.

“Give me half an hour. I’ve got to return a couple of calls, one of ’em to our witness on maternity leave.”

“Good enough. I’ll get us lunch.”

Declan and I got down to work on the questionnaire. Not all lawyers are fans of juror questionnaires. And I don’t think they should replace the gut feeling you get when you actually talk to jurors, see their body language, their reactions in the moment. But used correctly, the questionnaire can help us weed out the liars. That’s critical in big cases, because the more high profile the case, the more we risk getting groupies who’re in love with the defendant, or the spotlight, or who want to write a book-or all of the above. After half an hour, we took a break to get sandwiches and chips from the snack bar. When we got back, Bailey had pushed a flower arrangement to the side and was leaning back with her feet up on the table next to the window.

I threw her a pastrami sub and a bag of potato chips and dropped mine and Declan’s on the desk.

“In general we want people who aren’t impressed with celebrity,” I said. “So no tabloid readers-”

“Get a list of Melia’s friends. That ought to put a dent in the jury pool,” Declan joked.

“And since Hayley and Brian were just kids, I’d say we like women more than men,” Bailey said.

Her words hit me between the eyes. “You know, this is the first time in maybe a week that I’ve heard anyone mention the names Hayley and Brian,” I said. Bailey nodded grimly and Declan looked pained. Too many stupid lawyer tricks and not enough time spent remembering what’s really important. I’d make sure it didn’t happen again.

“Old or young?” Declan asked.

“That’s a tossup,” Bailey said. “Young jurors might identify with the victims, but older ones will be less likely to identify with Mr. High Life Powers and his trophy babe.”

“This all started with Brian and Hayley staging a kidnapping to extort money out of her father,” I said. “That’s more likely to turn off our usual law-and-order types, who are generally older.” Even if only subconsciously, older or more conservative jurors might wind up feeling like Brian and Hayley had brought it on themselves. “Younger jurors might be a little less judgmental about it.”

“Any exceptions you guys can see to our general preference for educated professionals and people with jobs?”

As a rule, the prosecution wants smart jurors-the smarter the better. And people who hold down jobs tend to feel more civically responsible than those who don’t. All of these stereotypes are generalizations, of course, but we get only a few minutes with each juror, so we have to rely on them to some degree. After all, clichés are clichés because they’re usually true, and jury selection is always, at bottom, a crapshoot. We just play the odds.

By three o’clock we’d settled on our prototypical best juror: female, professional, and someone who’d turn a skeptical eye on the defense conspiracy theory-which prompted Bailey to say, “God help us, we’re looking for Rachel Knight.”

“God forbid,” Declan said with a smile. “We’d start late every single morning.”

I gave him a mock glare. “What a card. I could laugh for…seconds.”

After Bailey left, Declan and I finished up the questionnaire on our own. He offered to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. I needed the air and the exercise. At seven o’clock it was still fairly light outside, but the air was a little cooler and it felt good to stretch my legs. As I reached Pershing Square, I noticed a film crew was setting up for a shoot. I was passing by, looking at the area they’d roped off for the scene, when I heard someone say, “Hey, isn’t that the prosecutor bitch?” A young white guy with blonde dreadlocks who was unloading lights from one of the equipment trucks craned his neck to look at me and replied, “Sure is. Hey, Ms. Prosecutor! What’re you gonna do when you lose? Maybe work a food truck?” That inspired a heavyset girl in Doc Martens and cutoffs. “Say, ’ho! Whyn’t you get on up here so I can show you what we think of your bullshit case-”

Shocked and a little worried, I started to back away, when a booming voice behind me cut her off. “Yo, Buckwheat, you want to talk about showing something? Get on up over here!” The girl muttered under her breath and turned away. “Yeah, I thought so,” said the voice I now recognized as Drew’s. “Come on, Rache, you’ve earned a martini on the house.” He put a protective arm around me and steered me past the crew and in through the back door of the Biltmore.

“I wouldn’t mind waiting if you want to go back there and ‘show’ her, uh…something,” I said. “I can promise you no charges will be filed.”

Drew smiled. “Finally, I find a perk in being friends with a prosecutor.”