The Deep Blue Alibi

Thirty-seven

"You win cases in voir dire."

Steve had told Victoria that when they tried their first case together, defending Katrina Barksdale in a murder trial.

"Lawyers think they win with closing argument. Wow the jury with their oratory. But it's too late then. Jury selection's the most important part of the trial. Not opening statement. Not cross of the state's chief witness. And not closing argument. Voir dire! Pick right, win. Pick wrong, lose."

One of his many lectures. He could be so irritating when pontificating. But he was usually right. Which was even more irritating. Ever since she'd left the State Attorney's Office, Victoria had picked juries with Steve at her side. Now, on a rainy Key West day, she was standing alone. Okay, not quite alone. Her mother was perched like a snowy egret in the first row of the gallery. Virginal white the predominant color of her outfit. The Queen apparently trying to send subliminal messages of purity and innocence to the prospective jurors. A Max Mara skirt with a white jasmine floral design and an asymmetric hem, a white linen jacket with a tie front, and gunmetal sandals. The suede bag with lizard trim picked up the gunmetal color and provided what she called the "accento."

The Queen passed the time scribbling her observations about each potential juror, then handed the fine linen stationery to the bailiff, who slipped the pages to Victoria. Her helpful hints were confined to criticizing skirts that were too short, shoes that were out-of-date, and the mortal sin of carrying a knockoff faux-leather Prada handbag.

Hal Griffin sat at the defense table, trying to smile at each potential juror without appearing obsequious. His son slouched in the single row of chairs in front of the bar that separated the well from the gallery. Junior had warned Victoria that he was likely to fidget, as he was unaccustomed to being cooped up indoors. Would she mind if he dropped to the floor for eighty push-ups in the middle of voir dire? Yes, she would. Not wanting the defendant's son to be seen squirming in his chair, she advised Junior to run up and down the staircase to the ground floor if he started feeling antsy.

He'd passed her a note, too. Asking her out to dinner. She'd shaken her head and pointed at her briefcase. "Work to do." Junior had given her a sad smile, as if she'd broken his little heart.

Does he have any idea of the pressure of defending a murder trial?

With his father in the dock, shouldn't Junior be a little more understanding?

Now, she was annoyed with both Steve and Junior. Maybe with all men.

Reporters packed the first two rows of the gallery. Off to one side, the pool TV camera and a single newspaper photographer, all that was permitted under the rules of court. They would share their video and photographs with all the others.

Victoria forced herself to listen as Richard Waddle, the Monroe County State Attorney, made his introductory remarks to the jury panel. Nicknamed "Dickwad" by defense lawyers, the prosecutor was a jowly man whose pencil mustache combined with seersucker suits gave him a 1940's look.

"The jury is the cornerstone of justice, the bedrock of freedom," Waddle intoned. "Samuel Adams called the jury the 'heart and lungs of liberty.' "

Actually, it was John Adams, Victoria knew. His cousin, Samuel, was the patriot who ignited the Boston Tea Party, probably so people would drink his beer.

Waddle strolled alongside the jury box, pausing at each occupied chair like a train conductor punching tickets. "And when old Ben Franklin wrote the Declaration of Independence. ."

Thomas Jefferson, Dickwad.

"He guaranteed us the right to trial by jury."

Actually, that's in the Constitution. But close enough for government work.

When did she become so sarcastic? Victoria wondered. Easy answer.

When I hooked up with Steve.

"The jury is what separates us from the uncivilized world," Waddle prattled on.

And I thought it was pay-per-view wrestling.

Yep. Definitely Steve's influence.

"Without you good folks coming on down here, we'd have no justice system. So, on behalf of the state, I say thank you, kindly. Thank you for leaving your jobs and your homes, your friends and your families, putting your lives on hold to see that justice is done."

Trying to be folksy. Next he'll chew on a piece of straw.

"To make certain that no crime goes unchecked, no murder-"

"Objection!" Victoria was on her feet. "That's not the purpose of the jury system."

"Sustained." Judge Clyde Feathers didn't look up from his crossword puzzle. On the bench for thirty-two years, he had mastered the art of half listening. "I don't mind your speechifying, Mr. Waddle, but save your arguments for closing."

"Thank you, Your Honor." Waddle bowed slightly, as if the judge had just complimented him on the cut of his suit. Courtroom protocol required thanking the judge, even if His Honor had just chastised you, threatened you with contempt, and called you the anti-Christ.

"You good folks are the judges without robes," Waddle rambled on, oozing his charm over the jurors like syrup on waffles.

Victoria concentrated on memorizing the names of the panel so she wouldn't have to look down at her pad when questioning them. Steve again.

"Let them know you care enough to learn their names and where they live. 'Morning, Mr. Anderson. They fix the road on Stock Island, yet?' "

"What is your occupation, Ms. Hendricks?" Waddle asked.

Helene Hendricks, the heavyset woman sitting in seat number four, smiled back. "Dick, you see me driving the skeeter truck out of the county garage every day. You know darn well what I do."

Small towns, Victoria thought.

"It's for the record, Helene."

"I spray mosquitoes for the county. Been doing it twenty-two years."

"Ever been in trouble with the law?"

"Willis busted me for DUI a couple times." She looked into the gallery where Sheriff Rask was sitting. He gave her a little wave. "I told him any alcohol I drink is purely medicinal. When I sweat, it cleans out the pores of that damn insecticide."

An hour earlier, the sheriff had greeted Victoria warmly in the courthouse lobby. "Tell Steve I said howdy. Doesn't seem like Margaritaville without him."

Victoria said she hadn't seen Steve in several days, though he had called to tell her about the search for Conchy Conklin. She thanked him for the two deputies who'd been hanging around the Pier House, keeping an eye on her room. Then Rask scratched his mustache with a knuckle, lowered his voice, and allowed as how he was sorry if there were problems between Steve and her. "You two go together like whiskey and soda."

Or a fish and a bicycle, she thought. Remembering her American Feminism course at Princeton and the essays of Gloria Steinem.

"You tell Steve that Jimmy's been asking about him, too," Rask said. "Wants to chase some bonefish soon."

Rask walked away humming "Come Monday," the old Buffett song about missing your lover, then getting back together. Lobbying for his pal.

Now Victoria studied Helene Hendrick's body language. Something else she learned from Steve. Answering Waddle's questions, the woman appeared comfortable, slouching a bit, arms relaxed. If she folded into a protective ball when Victoria stepped up, she'd be spraying mosquitoes by the afternoon.

"The fact you work for the county," Waddle asked, "would that make you more inclined to favor the government?"

"They don't pay me that much," Ms. Hendricks said.

Victoria looked at Hal Griffin's notepad. He'd written a large "NO!" across Helene Hendricks' name. Wrong end of the socio-economic scale for his tastes. Problem was, it's hard to find a jury of peers for a multimillionaire.

The first people who filed into the box were typical Key West. A retired naval officer, a time-share saleswoman, a cigar roller, a shrimper, a tattoo parlor owner, a pole dance instructor, and someone who called himself a "pharmaceutical tester."

"That's a new one on me," Waddle said to the young man. "Didn't know there were any pharmaceutical companies in the Keys."

"There aren't," the man replied. "I just test the stuff my buds make in their garage."

Then there'd been a "wingwoman," who earned commissions accompanying men to bars and introducing them to women. Or in Key West bars, to other men.

There was the city rooster wrangler, a man hired to keep the free-ranging chickens to a manageable level. Like Ms. Hendricks, he was a government employee. Then there were two failed businessmen, one who went bankrupt with a shoeshine parlor at the beach and another who lost everything with an ill-conceived fast-food restaurant called "Escargot-to-Go."

Waddle addressed the entire panel. "This case involves circumstantial evidence. That means there's no eyewitness to the crime. No one's coming into court to say, 'I saw the defendant shoot poor Benjamin Stubbs with a speargun.' Now, you may not know this, but eyewitness testimony is notoriously flawed. In fact, circumstantial evidence is the higher-grade testimony. Yes, indeed, circumstantial evidence is sirloin and eyewitness testimony is chuck meat."

"Objection!" Victoria figured Waddle was testing her. Either that, or he thought she'd fallen asleep. "Misstatement of the law."

Judge Feathers nodded his agreement. "Sustained. Misstating the law is my job."

That evening, Victoria was alone in her hotel room, nibbling a Cobb salad and working on her opening statement. Judge Feathers had told everybody to be back at eight a.m. to resume jury selection. Junior had cheek-kissed her good night, saying he'd be at the bar at the Casa Marina if she changed her mind and wanted to join him. Uncle Grif and The Queen were enjoying his-and-her massages at the hotel spa.

Victoria believed The Queen had lied about her past relationship with Uncle Grif, but what could she do about it? If she fretted over that-or pestered them with more questions-she'd do a lousy job in court.

She forced herself to focus on the case and turned to Willis Rask's police report. But that only brought Jimmy Buffett into her head, and soon she was humming "Come Monday," which led to thoughts of Steve. What was he doing? Hitting the South Beach nightspots? What songs were playing in his head?

Standing at the kitchen counter in the little house on Kumquat Avenue with Bobby at his side, Steve wondered where Victoria was having dinner. Louie's Backyard? World's most romantic restaurant, waves lapping the shoreline just yards from the table? With Junior Big-Dick Griffin?

Drinking champagne and exchanging tender whispers? Steve briefly considered driving to Key West and crashing their party, again. This time without Lexy and Rexy. They wouldn't fit in the Smart, anyway.

No. Victoria wouldn't be doing that. With her work ethic, she'd be slogging away tonight, preparing for court. He wondered how jury selection was going. He'd taught Victoria a lot about voir dire, but she had one quality that didn't need any instruction. Likeability. Jurors responded to her. More than to him. Still, he felt he could spot a devious juror better than she could.

Dammit, I should be there.

He was Victoria's biggest fan, and part of him wanted her to win the Griffin trial. But another part wanted her to get in trouble and call him for help. Until she did, he would stay in Miami working on his father's case.

Another nagging thought. Their personal relationship.

Where the hell are we? Did she break up with me and I don't even know it?

"What are you thinking about, Uncle Steve?"

"Work."

"Uh-huh." Bobby peeked under the lid of the panini grill, where a grilled-cheese sandwich sizzled. "I miss her, too."

"Who?"

"Victoria. You're thinking about her, aren't you?"

"Sometimes you scare me, kiddo." Steve rotated the sandwich 180 degrees to crosshatch the ciabatta roll. "Finish your homework?"

"Bor-ing."

"C'mon, Bobby. You have to do your math homework."

"I'll bet you don't know the only even prime number."

"Don't mess with me. I'm tired of your teacher calling."

"Two." Bobby opened the grill lid. If the ciabatta burned, even a tiny scorch, he wouldn't eat the sandwich. "What's the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root?"

"I see summer school in your future."

"Twenty-four."

"And where are your shoes?" The skinny kid wore a Shaquille O'Neal Miami Heat jersey that hung to his knees. Maybe he had shorts on underneath, maybe not. "Remember the rule? No going barefoot in the kitchen."

"Dumb rule. My feet don't have boogers."

"Lots of rules are dumb, but you still have to follow them."

"You don't." Bobby used a spatula to take his grilled cheese out of the grill. "What's the largest prime number?"

"A hundred bazillion. Are you listening to me? I'm worried about your schoolwork." Steve thought he sounded like his own father, except Herbert never checked a report card in his life.

"It's over six million digits long, so it doesn't really have a name. But I can show you on the computer."

"And all this time I thought you only looked at Paris Hilton's anatomy."

"You know what we're studying in school? Algebra for dummies."

"Do your homework first, then come up with a new theory of relativity."

Bobby grabbed a Jupina pineapple soda from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table. "Can I help on Gramps' case?"

"Sure." Steve grabbed a slice of cheese-cheddar with jalapenos, great with tequila. "What do you think Reginald Jones meant when he said your grandfather decided to do something about all the crime?"

"Maybe Gramps was like Bruce Wayne. At night he became Batman."

"More like Bacardi Man."

"I know what you think. You think Gramps cheated."

"It has occurred to me. That's why I need to read the old transcripts."

"I already did, Uncle Steve."

"When?"

"This week. Instead of going to school, I took the bus downtown to the courthouse."

"Aw, jeez. You're a truant, too? We're gonna catch hell."

"I read Mr. Luber's murder trials. Seventeen convictions, no losses. Nothing was amiss."

" 'Nothing was amiss'? Who talks like that?"

"Rumpole of the Bailey. On PBS."

"Okay, so Pinky Luber tried seventeen murder cases and won them all. That's how he made his bones."

"He asked for the death penalty in eleven trials, and the jury recommended death every time."

"Helluva batting average."

"Gramps went along with the jury. Eleven death sentences. Six life sentences."

"Maximum Herb. I need to look at the appeals."

"No reversals. Not even one."

Amazing. Bobby had all the numbers. If only he were as thorough with his homework. "So whatever your grandfather was doing, the Third District and the Florida Supreme Court never figured it out."

"You said that Mr. Luber was a good lawyer before he got all twisted. Maybe he just got hot."

Steve poured two fingers of the Chinaco Blanco and grabbed another slice of cheese. A well-balanced dinner. Protein from the cheese. And tequila came from the agave plant, so that counts as a vegetable, right? "Nobody wins seventeen straight capital cases. Twelve jurors in each one. That's. ."

"Two hundred and four."

"Two hundred and four jurors you have to convince without one dissent. Can't be done."

"Maybe if you figured in the losing streak, it all averages out."

"What losing streak?"

Bobby took a bite of his sandwich, a string of melted cheese sticking to his lip. "In Mr. Luber's last five trials before the winning streak started, he lost three and had one hung jury. He only got one conviction."

"Holy shit." The newspapers never talked about the losses. It was always, Luber's Super Bowl streak. Seventeen wins, no losses. So how'd he turn it around?

"Maybe we're looking at the wrong cases, kiddo. We need the ones Pinky lost. See what he did differently. See what that paper shuffler Reggie Jones did. And most of all, see what your grandfather did."