Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

“You don’t think he likes you,” Genevieve said. “That’s irrational, and Nina, what we are about is logic. Trust me, Nina. Let me do the job you hired me to do. I won’t let you down.”

Nina turned to Winston. “Well, Winston?”

He took his time. “Let’s say you’re right and he’s a problem,” he said. They had come to the parking area and stood beside the blue Oldsmobile Winston had rented for the duration. “I’m handling a lot of the trial work. Maybe I can counterbalance that initial prejudice. I think we can work with him. You can win him over. As far as him being such an eager beaver, I don’t have a problem with that. I think he expects to learn something about the very rich. I think he’s interested in the money angle. That’s not bad in itself.”

“I told you in the beginning,” Genevieve said. “I can only give you my advice and you’re free not to take it, but we need to save that challenge. Don’t throw it away on Wright. This is what you need me for,” she argued, “to help you with those distinctions that don’t come natural. He’s gonna come around. I’m telling you.”

They were right about needing that last challenge in case of an emergency. Nina went over in her mind where in the process she could have saved another peremptory, so that she could spend one on Wright. She came up empty-handed.

“Okay. If Riesner doesn’t challenge, he’s in.” When they returned to the courtroom, Nina sat back in her chair, closing her eyes, hoping for help from her enemy when her friends deserted. Maybe Riesner would hate Wright.

No such luck. Riesner didn’t challenge.

Rather than brave the lightning storm of photographers in the public hallway, Nina slipped through the door by the jury box and into the private hall that led to the judge’s chambers, past a number of clerk’s offices. She intended to hang there for a couple of minutes until the group dispersed, then head out the locked door to the main hall a few feet away from the regular courtroom exits. She didn’t want her picture taken today.

She waited in the short part of the L-shaped area for a few minutes, until she judged the coast to be mostly clear, then headed down the longer stretch toward the door to the exit. Almost instantly, she spotted Winston, who had apparently had the same idea.

She could only see him from the back. He had stepped inside one of the clerk’s offices and was leaning over the desk, talking cheerfully with a frizzy-haired, vivacious redhead Paul always seemed to notice, too.

“He’s after her body,” a voice drawled. Genevieve had come up behind her. “Spends all his spare time down here lately. Guess it’s time to collect him. C’mon.” In spite of her cool manner, jealousy glittered in the corner of her eye.

Nina went along to help drag him away.

“This is it,” Nina said, watching wearily late Thursday afternoon as another pack of people were herded into the crowded courtroom and the clerk began to speak. “The home stretch.”

“Do you, and each of you, understand and agree that you will accurately and truthfully answer, under penalty of perjury, all questions propounded to you concerning your qualifications and competency to serve as a trial juror in the matter pending before this court; and that failure to do so may subject you to criminal prosecution?” droned the clerk for the sixth time.

“I do,” answered the new pack, while the insecure faces in the jury box looked on.

“We’re going to finish today,” Winston whispered as the people took their seats and some more paper-shuffling started the last round. “I feel it.”

“Alan Reed,” called out the clerk. Genevieve didn’t have to show her the report on him; they had been talking about him the day before and praying he wouldn’t be called to the box.

An openly conservative man of fifty-seven, he was divorced and still harboring grudges about it, according to Paul. He spent his weekends hunting and fishing with his buddies. At the top of his report, Genevieve had drawn a skull and crossbones.

After a few questions it was obvious to Nina that Reed was precisely the kind of juror they couldn’t have. Genevieve gave a thumbs-down signal under the table and Winston couldn’t help shaking his head at one or two of the answers.

“Ms. Reilly. I believe this is the last peremptory challenge,” Milne said, waiting.

Nina asked for a moment, then went over the jury chart of their selections so far and Genevieve’s thumbnail summaries one more time. Mrs. Lim, they all agreed on. The five other women: a divorcée in her fifties who was the caretaker for her disabled adult child, a student, a mountain climber, a clerk and a housewife-they would stay. The two men, a biologist and a history teacher, did not excite her, but might be open to their arguments. Clifford Wright, they disputed, but Genevieve and Winston had won the day on him. He was definitely in. She zeroed in on the candidates who troubled her most.

“Ignacio Ybarra, age twenty-three, telephone lineman, very quiet, has a little girl but is having trouble keeping contact with her because of some bad feelings between him and her grandmother. Close to his parents and a large extended family. Likes hiking, college degree. Very religious, goes to church twice a week.” Not great.

“Kevin Dowd. Retired, early sixties, plays golf, made a fortune in investments, drinks too much, likes women too much, looking for a party.” Yuck.

“Sonny Ball, late twenties, tattoos, earrings, mostly inaudible responses, looking for work for the past three years, a couple of brushes with the law. His parents live in Oregon. They’re estranged. Paul suspects he was a dope dealer.” Horrible, but others who had taken the stand had been even worse for different reasons, and they only had six peremptories in all.

Altogether, thirteen people. One had to go. But who?

She studied the four faces, searching for clues, feeling nervous. The men looked back, offering nothing definitive. Ignacio Ybarra looked resigned. Kevin Dowd smiled, sure he was in. Sonny Ball wet his lips with his tongue and gave her a slit-eyed look that hovered somewhere between a wink and a leer.

Reed stared at her, chin tipped up, arrogant. He expected to be cut, and so disguised none of the disdain he felt for her and her client.

Let him have his wish.

“The cross-complainants will thank and excuse Mr. Reed,” Nina said. Genevieve fidgeted unhappily. She had pushed to use the last peremptory on Sonny Ball. Winston bowed his head. A sigh stretched across the courtroom. Several jurors sat back in their chairs, finally relaxing.

It took only another two hours to select two alternate jurors who would listen to the testimony but deliberate and vote only if another juror became incapacitated. Patti Zobel would be fine. She was another divorcée. Couldn’t anybody stay married up here? Was it the air or something? And Damian Peck, the other alternate, a pit boss at Harvey’s whose dentist wife made more than he did, also seemed a decent bet.

“Swear the jury,” Milne said finally, and the fourteen people in whose hands Lindy would find triumph or misfortune stood up and held up their right hands.

On a sun-bleached Monday in May, seven months after Mike Markov’s fateful birthday party, the time for opening statements arrived.

Hoping to avoid the media, Nina had left home early but found herself pulling into a courthouse lot already jammed with television news trucks and people swinging video cameras. Up above, in the pine trees ringing the lot, a flock of small brown birds kept up a chorus of cheeping to rival the noisy excess of the mob below. In all the cacophony and confusion, she forgot her briefcase and had to return to her car to retrieve it.