Killer Ambition

76

After court, the three of us met in my office and tried to figure out what the Nevada witnesses had to do with the case. I’d turned on my cell phone so I’d hear it if Graden called, but the default ringtone started playing almost immediately, telling me the reporters hadn’t given up.

“How long’s it been since you answered any of their calls?” Bailey asked.

“Weeks?” I had no idea. “You’d think they’d give up.” I shook my head and turned the ringer back off.

“I couldn’t come up with anything Powers or Antonovich was doing in Vegas. No film shoots…nada,” Bailey said.

“Me either,” Declan said. “The only thing I heard was that they were looking into investing in a casino, but that was a while ago.”

I hated not knowing what the defense was up to. Because when it comes to a jury trial, what you don’t know can and usually will hurt you…badly. The case was a roller coaster, and all I could do was lean out of the car to try and see the tracks a few feet ahead. But when I walked into court the next morning, I stepped into a minefield no one could’ve anticipated.

Judge Osterman took the bench five minutes early. Jimmy called the court to order, and the loud buzzing and milling in the gallery came to such an abrupt stop, it made my ears ring.

“Juror number four left a message with my clerk,” the judge said. “If the parties would come to sidebar, I’ll let you all read it.”

Juror number four was the black single mother who was my favorite. I looked at Bailey and Declan and shook my head as I rounded counsel table and moved to sidebar. This couldn’t be good.

It wasn’t. Her mother had been rushed to the hospital last night. The doctors said it was a heart attack and they didn’t know if she’d make it. The juror needed to stay with her mother; she was the only family her mother had left. She provided the names of the doctor and the hospital, in case the court needed verification. She apologized and said she deeply regretted causing the inconvenience.

“I did have my clerk verify all the information, and it checks out,” the judge said. “Obviously we have to let her go.”

“Oh, I agree, Your Honor,” Terry quickly replied.

The speed of her response told me she’d figured out that juror number four was probably in our camp. But there was nothing I could do. This was legitimate cause to excuse her.

“Yes,” I said, feeling as though I’d been kicked in the gut…again. Every time I started to feel like we were back on our feet, some new disaster fell out of the sky to knock us flat.

The judge called the jurors out, explained that a personal emergency had come up for juror four, and said that the clerk would now draw an alternate at random to replace her. I held my breath as Tricia mixed up the name cards for the five alternates in a glass bowl and pulled one out. She opened the card and read. “Alternate number five.”

It was the talent agent. He’d been my big gamble. We could be golden, or we could be totally screwed now. It was anyone’s guess.

As I pulled out my legal pad, Terry called her next witness. “The defense calls Suzanne Forester.”

A plain-looking, heavyset woman in her forties with steel gray hair and no makeup took the stand. I recognized her as one of the Nevada witnesses.

Bailey leaned over and whispered, “Here we go.”

I nodded. Whatever she had to say would give us a good idea of what the rest of the Nevada witnesses had been summoned for. As she raised her right hand and took the oath, I was almost more curious than nervous about what was to come.

Terry established that Ms. Forester lived in Las Vegas and had worked for the past ten years as a hotel maid. “Are you a member of a union?”

“Yes, a hotel workers’ union.”

“And did you work for the Pink Panther Hotel and Casino approximately five years ago?”

“Yes. I worked there until it got sold.”

“What happened when it was sold?”

“The new owners shut down the hotel and laid us all off. They said they were going to renovate, and when they were done, they’d hire us all back.”

“Did they renovate?”

“Yeah.”

“And did they hire you back?”

“No. They didn’t hire none of us back. They went non-union.”

“I see. And who were these new owners who refused to hire you back?”

Her eyes scanned the courtroom. “Him,” she said, pointing to Ian Powers. “And him.” She pointed to Russell in the audience.

“So they broke their word and never rehired you or any of the rest of the employees?”

“No. And then, a little while after they reopened, they sold the place.”

“They don’t own it anymore?”

“Far as I know, they’re out.”

“And have you found other work?”

Suzanne Forester shot an angry look at Ian Powers and huffed, “None of us have. Ever since those two dumped all their union workers, all the casinos been finding ways to get rid of us.”

I leaned over to Bailey and whispered, “So this is the conspiracy? How…?”

Bailey shook her head. Terry spent the rest of the morning calling the other Las Vegas workers, but there was little for me to do on cross. She wasn’t trying to show that any of these people were involved in setting up Ian Powers. Terry was just using these people to lay the groundwork for the “real” straw man. A quick scan of the jury told me most of them seemed confused. I knew they wouldn’t be for long.

Back in my office at the noon break, Bailey and I tried to figure out how the defense would do it.

I opened my container of yogurt and stirred up the fruit. “They’ve got to show that someone in Russell’s inner circle who could’ve known about the kidnapping is tied in closely with the union-”

“And that there’s someone in the union crazed enough to commit two murders just so he or she can set Ian up. It’s so…out there.” It was. But I’d seen worse theories find traction in the jury room.