Steve Martini - The Jury

“Sustained,” says Coats.

“She used those words? She wanted to turn these documents over to her people?”

“That’s exactly what she told me.”

The judge is now pounding his gavel. “The question and the answer will be stricken. The witness is instructed not to answer a question when there is an objection pending. Do you understand?” Coats points his gavel at her like a gun, then aims it at Tannery.

“And you, sir. You know better than that. The only reason I am not imposing sanctions is that the jury’s not in the box. Try that when they are, and you’d better bring your toothbrush. You’re gonna be spending the night in the bucket.”

“Sorry, Your Honor. I got carried away.”

“Yes. You’re going be carried away by my bailiff, you keep that up.”

Tannery feigns a little mock humility. Eyes downcast, feet shuffling, body English substituting for an apology. He shuffles through a few papers, then picks up without missing a beat.

“Let me ask you,” he says. “This information concerning the nature of Dr. Crone’s current research, were you able to obtain information regarding this matter from another source? A source other than your daughter?”

Coats is looking at him over the top of his glasses, ready to swat him with his wooden hammer.

“Yes.”

“And what was that source?”

“Another employee at the center.”

Tannery turns to look at me as he poses the final question. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I can feel it coming; lawyer’s coup de grâce.

“And can you tell the court the name of that employee?”

“His name is William Epperson.”

Crone is waiting for us at the jail. Harry called ahead to make sure the guards would deliver him to one of the attorney-client consulting cubicles over the dayroom where “the Professor” has been pumping iron and putting miles on the treadmill while we’ve been in court.

The news that Epperson served as a source of information for Kalista’s mother hit us out of the blue. Harry has tried and gotten nowhere with Epperson. Now we are faced with the prospect of hostile testimony, what we have feared from the former basketball star from the inception.

“What did Crone say when you gave him the news?”

“If he was surprised, he didn’t voice it,” says Harry.

“You think he knew?”

“If he didn’t, he’s the coolest character since James Dean. Didn’t seem to phase him in the least. Said he had absolute confidence in us.” Harry looks at me with a crooked grin.

“Maybe he didn’t know what else to say.”

“He could have shown a little fear,” says Harry. “That would be a nice change.”

“So the man’s got ice in his veins.”

“He’s a fucking snow cone. Which leaves us right where we started. Kalista Jordan being dead, anything she told her mother we can keep out. That’s hearsay,” says Harry. “But Epperson’s another matter. He’s alive and available. If Tannery puts him up on the stand and Epperson testifies that Crone was mixing some genetic stew with the entrails of wombats to come up with a new formula for African IQ, our closing argument is gonna resonate like the Nazi national anthem. It wouldn’t be a long leap for the jury to conclude that Kalista was killed because Crone found out she was about to go public on some hair-raising racial experiments. You’re going to find yourself defending the angel of death,” he tells me.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why would he hire her in the first place if he was working on something that was racially charged? Why take the chance?”

“Who’s he going to hire?” says Harry. “There’s not a lot of skinheads running around with Ph.D.s in whatever it was.”

“Molecular electronics,” I tell him.

“Whatever. Crone needed qualified researchers to get funding. And the presence of a minority or two didn’t hurt. He knew how to play the game. Maybe he didn’t have a choice. You have to remember Crone had to get the funding, the corporate grant, from that company.”

“Cybergenomics.”

“That’s the one. If he had to take Epperson to obtain a research grant, it could be he was induced to hire Kalista Jordan for the same reason. They knew each other before they went to work there. Epperson was still with the company when Kalista was hired. He didn’t come on board at the center until after,” says Harry. “What if they were working together to get information on Crone? If Kalista’s mother is telling the truth and she fired up her daughter with tales of activism from the days of yore, the daughter could have gone to Epperson, enlisted his help.”

“And you think they were out to set him up?”

“If the mother is to be believed. And if Epperson comes through for him on the stand, Tannery’s got a good chance of selling it to the jury.”

I think about this for a moment. “There’s something wrong, which doesn’t fit.”

“What is it?” says Harry.

“Why would a corporation like Cybergenomics touch anything like that? I mean if Crone was engaged in research with a social and political downside why would they get involved, sully their corporate image? I can’t imagine there would be that much money involved in it.”

Harry mulls this over for a moment, deep in thought as we walk through the courthouse lobby. “What if. .” He’s thinking out loud. “What if their funding was for something else? What if Crone was working on the racial stuff on the side? Something the company didn’t know about? If news of it got out, think what would happen to his funding.”

“Dry up overnight,” I say.

“It could be worse than that,” says Harry. “If Crone was diverting funds for something else, playing hide-and-seek with grant money, you’re talking some nasty criminal shit. Now there’s something to kill for.”

Harry and I suffer the same thought instantly. We utter the words in unison: “A financial audit.”

We turn to look at each other, stopped dead in our tracks. Anybody watching us from the top of the escalator, looking down, might half expect by body language alone to see some luminescent green light flicker on behind our eyes.

“Was there one?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

Then I remember I had some of the documents, working papers on the early grant request for the Huntington’s study on the children.

“That would give us something to start with. The project number and the name they used for the principal research. It was on the grant request.”

“What do we know about the funding?” I ask Harry.

“Squat,” he says. Suddenly the sickening thought: We’ve been looking in all the wrong places.

I think maybe I might have filed the grant request in one of the cabinets back in the office, but then I realize where I left them. They were copies only, and when we finished with them I left them with Doris Boyd.

I tell Harry I’ll call her in the morning. He can stop by and pick them up. “That’ll give you a start, anyway. Tell us where to begin looking.”

“If that’s it,” says Harry, “Crone would be under a legal hammer.”

“Like a moth under a mallet.”

“He could have been personally liable for the funds,” says Harry.

“That’s if they were feeling charitable. Didn’t nail him criminally for diversion, embezzlement,” I say.

“That wouldn’t look too good on his resume next time he goes out fund hunting. And it’s tough to get a grant when you’re in the joint,” says Harry. Though I suspect Harry has known a few clients who have done it.

“You think this is what Jordan and Epperson were doing, chasing the money trail?”

“I don’t know.” Harry doesn’t want to think about it. “Maybe we’re just worried about nothing,” he says. “I mean, we can’t connect all the dots.”