The Wrong Man

52

After my morning jog, I ate some eggs and made it to my law firm by eight-thirty. I was feeling pretty good, all things considered, after last night with Tori. It seemed like she had some remorse afterward, but I was getting used to baby steps with her, and that was okay by me. Especially because I had this one thing going on, this murder trial, that required some attention.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, but by nine-thirty Bradley and Shauna and Marie were there, and we’d been on the phone several times with Joel Lightner from his office. At three-thirty in the afternoon, my expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Sofian Baraniq, arrived.

At one time, Dr. Baraniq had been my entire case. That was back when my client was pleading, in essence, insanity, and the case would rise or fall on whether the jury believed Dr. Baraniq. That part of the case was gone now, and to some people’s minds, that meant Dr. Baraniq was no longer relevant to the case. But he was. I still planned on using him. And while my case no longer rested entirely on him, he was still crucial to our defense.

He was in a conference room with Shauna. I stopped in to say hello. I liked this guy. He had a boyish face but was bookish, too, with his glasses and trim beard and precise manner of speech. He had a sense of humor and self-deprecation that would make him credible but not arrogant to a jury. Most important, he could break down technical testimony into something that was accessible to lay jurors. A good expert is a teacher, and he spent most of his time teaching grad students.

“Good to see you again, Doctor.”

He was on his cell phone but quickly got off. He extended a hand. “Hello again, Mr. Kolarich.”

“Might as well call me Jason.”

“I understand the court has entered a ruling on my testimony.”

“The insanity defense is out, yes. But we have some other ideas for you. Shauna will explain.” I rubbed my hands together, experiencing an adrenaline dump as I plotted the beginning of our defense. “So I think you’ll be our first witness, Doctor. That’s my current thought. The trial starts next Wednesday, December first. You’ll be first after the prosecution rests. So it will be probably early the following week-probably about that next Tuesday or Wednesday-that we’ll need you.”

Dr. Baraniq was wagging a finger at me. “I do want you to recall, I have an obligation that following Tuesday after the trial begins. I mentioned that to you.”

That stopped me. I’d forgotten. “Something you can’t break,” I recalled.

“A religious obligation.”

Shit. It was possible, depending on what we could turn up in the meantime, that Dr. Baraniq would be one of only two witnesses, and I needed him to go first. The order mattered to me. If the prosecution rested by Tuesday, or even midday Tuesday, I needed Dr. Baraniq ready.

“I’m sorry, but I thought I reminded you,” he said again.

Apparently my frustration was evident. I flapped my arms. “Well, if you can’t do Tuesday, you can’t do Tuesday.”

Once again-shit. But it reminded me of something. I excused myself and pulled Shauna out of the room with me. We huddled in the hallway.

“He told us about this commitment back when we first met with him, Jason. But I think it should work out just-”

“I don’t care about that,” I said. “So listen. I want you to find a way to get his religion in.”

She drew back. “You want him to testify that he’s Muslim?”

“Yes, I do. It adds to his credibility.”

She didn’t get that. “First of all,” she countered, “it has nothing to do with anything. And second of all, if anything, we might get someone on the jury who doesn’t like Muslims. You may have noticed, there are some bigots in the city. You and I grew up with some of them.”

She was right about that. But she was missing the point. I shook my head. “Anyone who doesn’t like Muslims will love an American soldier fighting in Iraq like Tom. They’ll want to help him. So I’m not worried about that. But more than anything, it shows the strength of the doctor’s convictions. Why would a Muslim who clearly takes his religion seriously want to go out of his way to help one of the soldiers who was occupying a Muslim country?”

Shauna thought about that. “So he must feel very strongly about what he’s saying. That’s your point?”

“That’s my point.”

“And my point is it’s condescending to the jury. It’s insulting. It might look that way to the jury. If we overplay that hand-”

“Then don’t overplay it. He’s your witness, Shauna. Do it smoothly. Hell, use the Tuesday thing as an excuse. Ask him why he couldn’t be with us on Tuesday and he can tell you why. Or find a way to bring it in subtly.”

She played this over and came back with the same reaction. “I don’t like it.”

“We need to do it.”

“Jason!” Marie was standing in the hallway.

“I’m against this,” said Shauna. “I don’t want to do it.”

I leaned in to her, so Marie couldn’t hear me. “Shauna, I don’t have time for a lecture on political correctness or stereotypes or making this world a better place, okay? I have a guy with his life on the line. This is a fucking murder trial. So man up and get it done. If you can’t, I’ll take the witness and do it myself.”

“Man up?”

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t have time to hear it. And regardless of what I’d just said, Shauna was going to take this witness, not me. And I knew her well enough to know that she was going to do only what she wanted to do.

“What, Marie?” I said, walking away from Shauna.

“You have a phone call,” she said. “Someone named Sasha?”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“She said she was Lorenzo Fowler’s girlfriend,” Marie said. “And it’s urgent.”