Stephen Cannell - Runaway Heart

to that all morning."

"Visual orgies of that nature have to be enjoyed episodically," he deadpanned.

She laughed, deep throated and lusty and Herman liked her laugh.

"Seriously, are you feeling better?" She pulled her smile down like a poster after a show, leaning in and studying him.

"Ready to kick butt." He looked at Susan, who was searching through their pretrial motions, putting them in order. "Susie, did you file the application for the amended complaint?"

She nodded, "The court clerk got it this morning. Judge King should have it by now."

"Good." Herman felt strong, his heart was in battle rhythm, his head clear. So why, he wondered, was Deborah DeVere looking at him with one eyebrow raised?

"An amended complaint?" she asked.

"It's nothing. We just made a change on the plaintiff's list. No big deal. Now, Dedee, it's important that we get across to the jury the devastation that this bio-corn is going to cause the monarch population. Everybody can remember their first butterfly hunt, looking at it up close, seeing its feelers waving gracefully in the air, its tiny little head and big, beautiful eyes… the orange-and-black perfection. Everyone can remember thinking how delicate and tiny it was. We've got to make them remember; we've got to make them wonder what the world will be like without this wonderful species sharing the planet with us."

There was a knock on the mahogany door and a young man from Elite Messenger Service entered carrying a glass terrarium with three beautiful monarchs fluttering inside. Herman had actually netted the butterflies in the field next to Barbra and Jim's house over the weekend. Herman and Susan had spent last night at the hospital, so Herman had sent the messenger to pick them up from the housekeeper in Malibu. He peeled off some bills and handed them to the man, then signed the delivery slip and waited in silence until the messenger left. Dedee looked closely at the

terrarium while Herman tapped on the side. The butterflies landed and were now sitting on twigs, apparently unaware that their entire subgroup was facing biological extinction.

"Okay," Herman said. "Let's go barbecue some USDA Prime."

The courtroom was an ornate, old-fashioned job with Doric columns and spindled balconies. The U.S. and State of California flags flanked the bench against a curtained wall where the government seal was affixed. The room was large and overpowering; the building material mostly dark, polished mahogany.

Herman watched as the jury he had voir dired two days ago was led in. He thought it was a pretty good bunch. Herman never used jury specialists. The gaggle of defense attorneys opposite him had employed a virtual choir of experts during the three days of jury selection. Throughout that entire process they'd been huddled in a semicircle poring over demographic spreadsheets, graphs, and background checks. Herman used a much more primitive method. All he would do is look at each potential juror and try to decide whether he would like to go out to dinner with them. Would this person be fun to spend a few hours with? Herman looked only for a sense of warmth and humanity. Race, color, creed, sex, or financial condition meant nothing to him.

The jurors filed past and sat in their upholstered swivel chairs. Herman stole a look at his opposing counsels all ten of them. Some were government lawyers, others were hired by the three private research labs. The lead counsel was legendary Joseph Amato the Count Dracula of the legal community. He was dressed in hit-man black and seemed oblivious to his cocounsels, who were eagerly gathered around the defense table like orphans at a picnic, all of them scrunched together, their legal books piled around them, briefcases open, miniature tape recorders ready for last-minute whispered reminders.

The Institute for Planetary Justice had only Herman and Susan… and, of course, the butterflies. The glass terrarium sat covered with a hospital towel, awaiting the appropriate moment in his opening statement to be introduced to the jury.

"Oyez, oyez, oyez. Federal District Court Fifteen is now in session. The Honorable Judge Melissa King, presiding. All rise," the bailiff called out.

The courtroom rose in unison as the back door opened and Melissa King strode into court.

Jesus! The woman is ready to give birth any minute, Herman thought as she waddled through the door and around the mahogany platform, then labored up the three steps to the bench. Her narrow shoulders were thrown back for counterbalance. She had gained thirty pounds since she had thrown his last case out. A dishwater blond with a pinched expression and narrow eyes, she looked uncomfortable and angry in her last month of pregnancy. She eased herself into the big, high-backed judicial swivel, looked down at the court, opened a folder, and then while everybody waited began reading documents.

Aside from the jury and the attorneys, there was the usual array of courtroom groupies: old men and women who preferred daily legal jousts in air-conditioned comfort to the eighty-degree L.A. heat in the park across the street. They sat like a row of vultures in their baggy street clothes, cutting up apples with penknives and drinking tap water out of recycled Evian bottles.

"So, this is the butterfly thing… CO3769M." Judge King said, looking at her folder. "Is everyone present? Can we get moving?" No bullshit from Melissa this morning.

"Yes, Your Honor," Herman said. "The Institute for Planetary Justice is ready to try its case."

"Good morning, Herman. New suit?"

"Yes, Your Honor. I wanted to look nice for you."

She smiled down at him, but it was a grim, humorless little number that could peel the paint off a grain silo. Then she snapped her gaze over to the crowded defense table. "Are there enough of you over there, Mr. Amato?" she quipped.

Joseph Amato smiled and stood. "Your Honor, we represent the FDA, the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, the Pierpoint Laboratories, Gen-A-Tec, and Malorite Labs, et al. I've been selected as lead counsel. I think you've been supplied with a list of my cocounsels.

Judge King held it up. "I have my score card all ready, Counselor. Let's play ball."

Herman thought she was in fine form smart-assing her way along. He had absolutely no traction with the woman.

She turned to him. "An amended complaint form was delivered to me this morning by messenger. What's the deal?"

"Yes, Your Honor, we have dismissed on behalf of two plaintiffs and substituted a new one."

"I see you removed the Concerned Scientists. Did they become 'concerned' with your legal tactics?"

"Your Honor… uh… is it really necessary to…"

"Yes, Herman? What?" A clear challenge.

Herman paused. Shit. It pissed him off that she had just insulted him in front of the jury, but he also didn't want to start the case in a mud fight with the judge.

"Nothing, Your Honor," he said softly.

"And this new plaintiff, the Danaus Plexippus Foundation. What is that?" She went on reading from the amended complaint before her.

"It is the foremost foundation researching the world migration and breeding habits of the monarch butterfly."

"The foremost foundation?" she said, milking it for laughs. "In the whole world}"

"Yes, Your Honor… the whole wide world." Herman smiled, trying to keep it light.

"In the whole wide world. Well, fancy that." She heaved a sigh, tired of him already. "Okay, I'm going to take that under submission pending demonstration by testimony that the Danaus Plexippus Foundation does, in fact, have fiscal damages as well as a history of protecting the monarch butterfly and the public's interest in it." Melissa King shifted uncomfortably, as did Herman, who didn't like the sound of that. "Let's get this show-stopper rolling," she continued. "What's in the box, Herman?"