The Justice Game

65

Jason drove back to the office slowly. He didn’t want to face Andrew Lassiter. In fact, he wasn’t even sure that Lassiter would be there. Andrew believed so strongly in his jury vetting system that he would likely take Jason’s actions today as a personal slight.

Jason also dreaded seeing Bella Harper and Case McAllister. They believed in him. They had worked so hard on the case. Now, to save his own skin, Jason had sold them all out.

He rolled up his sleeves on the way home, stopping at a 7-Eleven to fill up with gas and grab a soda. He was in a funk. He felt as if he were walking around with his soul separated from his body, suspended in some weird state of purgatory after being purchased by Luthor and his e-mails. Yet even in the emotional darkness, Jason recognized a single ray of light. It might not be a way out… but it was a place to start.

Ironically, the documents sitting on the passenger seat provided the one advantage Jason had in his battle with Luthor. Jason assumed that Luthor had provided these documents to Kelly. If Jason hadn’t been so shocked when he first received the documents, he would have asked Kelly about Luthor right there in the hallway and watched closely to see if she flinched. He still planned to ask her at some opportune time during the trial.

Luthor’s only mistake thus far was that he hadn’t factored in Kelly Starling’s ethical standards. He had counted on her to keep the documents to herself and spring them on Poole during cross-examination, the way most lawyers would. That way, Jason wouldn’t have known until later in the case that Luthor was definitely working against him. Instead, Kelly had provided the documents to Jason early, and now he knew, right from the beginning of the case, that Luthor was trying to sabotage him, not help him.

It was a slim and temporary advantage, but it was something. In order to leverage this knowledge, Jason needed an investigator he could trust.

He pulled his truck into the parking lot of his office and let it idle for a few minutes. He pulled out his BlackBerry, took a deep breath, and called his father.

Listening to the phone ring, Jason almost hung up. He put his mind in neutral, forcing himself to say on the line.

“Yeah.”

“Dad, it’s Jason.”

A pause. “I know,” his dad said. “Caller ID.” He waited another few seconds. “It’s been months.”

There’s no law that says that you couldn’t have called me. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve been busy.”

They talked for a few minutes, a clipped and awkward conversation about the case. His father’s bias against MD Firearms was still evident. The man spoke with a thick tongue, and Jason could picture him sitting in his living room, wearing jeans and a white undershirt, empty bottles scattered around the room.

Jason stared out the windshield, wondering if this was the right move after all. “I could really use some help on this case, Dad. I need somebody I can trust to investigate a couple of the jurors.” He hesitated, his dad’s silence unnerving him. “I was thinking, I dunno, like maybe you could take a few days off to come and help.”

The silence on the line seemed interminable. Jason’s heart pounded in his ears. A second passed… two. Jason wished he had never asked.

“Seems like you’d want an investigator who didn’t need to be in rehab,” his dad said bitterly.

Jason didn’t know how to respond. “Dad, I did what I thought I needed to do. Julie and Matt too. If that hurt you, I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry, Jason. You need something. It’s what you’ve done your whole life. You come crawling home to fleece the old man; then I don’t hear from you for months.”

Jason wasn’t in the mood for this. It had already been a long day. He didn’t need his dad piling on. “You know what, Dad? Just forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

His dad snorted. “What do you need?”

But it was too late. Every time he tried to reach out to his dad, this was the reward. Rejection. Humiliation. Criticism. Jason just wanted to punch something.

“I don’t need anything from you,” Jason said.

And with that, he hung up.

A few minutes later, after calming down, he walked into the office. Bella was at her station.

“Turkey and cheese on your desk,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat it anyway. Trials are like a marathon. You’ve got to stop at the juice stations.”

Actually, trials are more like waterboarding, Jason thought.

He made his way back to the conference room, which looked worse than ever. He had to step over a box and a pile of documents to get through the door.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Jason said.

Andrew Lassiter thumbed through some papers. “We’ve got to get our shadow jurors in place,” he replied, not looking at Jason.

It was Andrew’s way of saying he was going to stick around despite what Jason had done in court. They talked for a few minutes about the shadow jury, neither saying a word about Jason’s selection of the actual jurors. Andrew thought that he could have a shadow jury in place by Thursday.

“Do the best you can,” Jason said. “And Andrew-” his friend looked up-“I appreciate you hanging in there with me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Andrew said, the eyes blinking. “You’re going to make me rich.”

Jason furrowed his brow. “How?”

Andrew put on his glasses, brushed his hair out of his eyes, and stared at Jason for a few seconds. “When we impanel this shadow jury, I’m going to bring in two extra jurors who will be just like the last two that you kicked off the panel. When the case is over, we’ll compare the opinions of the two you picked with the two I recommended that you leave on. It’ll make for great marketing materials: man versus machine-look what happens when you rely on your instincts.”

“Clever,” Jason said.

“Yeah. And if you lose with the panel you selected, particularly if my jurors would have gone the other way, it will be great for business.”

“No offense,” Jason said, “but I hope your marketing plan goes down in flames.”