Джон Гришэм - Rogue Lawyer

“Got it,” Tadeo says eagerly from the backseat. He thrusts his right hand forward and it is indeed covered with blood. Peeley’s blood. We stop at a burger place, and I carefully scrape it clean.

It’s midnight before we make it back to the City.

9.

The monster who killed the Fentress girls bound their ankles and wrists together with their shoelaces, then threw them in a pond. During Jenna’s autopsy, a single strand of long black hair was found wrapped up in the laces around her ankles. Both she and Raley had light blond hair. At the time, Gardy had long black hair—though the color changed monthly—and not surprisingly the State’s hair analysis expert testified that there was a “match.” For over a century, true experts have known that hair analysis is wildly inaccurate. It is still used by authorities, even the FBI, when there’s no better proof and the suspect has to be nailed. I begged Judge Kaufman to order DNA testing with a sample of Gardy’s current hair, but he refused. Said it was too expensive. We’re talking about a man’s life.

When I was finally allowed to view the State’s evidence, of which there was virtually none, I managed to steal about three-quarters of an inch of the black hair. No one missed it.

Early Monday morning, I ship by overnight parcel the hair and the sample of Jack Peeley’s blood to a DNA lab in California. It will cost me $6,000 for a rush job. I’ll bet the ranch I find the real killer.

10.

Partner and I speed away to Milo for another grueling week of lies. I’m eager to get my first glance at Glynna Roston, juror number eight, and see if there are any telltale signs of backdoor communications. Typically, though, things do not go as planned.

The courtroom is once again packed and I marvel at the crowd. For the eleventh court day in a row, Julie Fentress, the mother of the twins, sits on the front bench, directly behind the prosecutor’s table. She’s with her support group and they glare at me as if I killed the girls myself.

When Trots finally arrives and opens his briefcase and goes through the motions of pretending to be of some value, I lean down and tell him, “Watch juror number eight, Glynna Roston, but don’t get caught.” Trots will get caught because Trots is a blockhead. He should be able to covertly glance at the jurors and gauge their reactions, study their body language, see if they’re awake or interested or pissed, do all the things you learn to do in a trial when you’re curious about your jury, but Trots checked out weeks ago.

Gardy is in relatively good spirits. He’s told me he enjoys the trial because it gets him out of his cell. They keep him locked down in solitary, usually with the lights off because they know he killed the Fentress twins and the harsh punishment should start now. My spirits are better because Gardy took a shower over the weekend.

We kill some time waiting for Judge Kaufman. Huver, the prosecutor, is not at his table at 9:15. His gang of Hitler Youth assistants have deeper frowns than usual. Something is going on. A bailiff appears and whispers to me, “Judge Kaufman wants to see you in chambers.” This happens almost every day, it seems. We run back to chambers to fistfight over something we want to keep away from the public. But why bother? After two weeks, I know that if Huver wants the crowd to see or hear something, it’s going to happen.

I walk into an ambush. The court reporter is there, ready to capture it all. Judge Kaufman is pacing, in his shirt and tie, robe and coat hanging on the door. Huver stands smug and grim-faced by a window. The bailiff shuts the door behind me and Kaufman throws some papers on the table. “Read this!” he growls.

“Good morning, Judge,” I say, as smart-ass as possible. “Huver.”

They do not respond. It’s a two-page affidavit in which the deponent, or in this case the liar, claims she bumped into me the previous Friday night at the MMA fights in the City, and that I discussed the case with her and told her to tell her mother, a juror, that the State had no evidence and all their witnesses were lying. She signed it Marlo Wilfang before a notary public.

“Any truth to it, Mr. Rudd?” Kaufman growls, really steamed up.

“Oh, a little, I suppose.”

“You wanna tell your side of the story?” he asks, obviously not ready to believe a word I say. Huver mumbles loud enough to be heard, “Clear case of jury tampering.”

To which I snap, “You wanna hear my side first or you wanna string me up without all the facts, same as Gardy?”

Judge Kaufman says, “That’s enough. Knock it off, Mr. Huver.”

I tell my version, accurately, perfectly, without a single word of embellishment. I make the point that I’ve never met this woman, wouldn’t know her from Eve—how could I?—and that she deliberately sought me out, initiated the contact, then couldn’t wait to hustle back home to Milo and try to insert herself into this trial.

Often it takes a village to properly convict a killer.

Almost yelling, I say, “She says here I initiated contact? How? I don’t know this woman. She knows me because she’s been in the courtroom, watching the trial. She can recognize me. How am I supposed to recognize her? Does this make any sense?”

It doesn’t, of course, but Huver and Kaufman won’t budge. They are convinced they have me nailed. Their hatred of me and my client is so intense they can’t see the obvious.

I hammer away: “She’s lying, okay? She deliberately planned all of this. She bumped into me, had a conversation, then prepared this affidavit, probably in your office, Huver, and she is lying. That’s perjury and contempt of court. Do something, Judge.”

“I don’t need you to tell me—”

“Oh, come on. Get up off your ass and do the right thing for a change.”

“Listen, Mr. Rudd,” he says, red-faced and ready to take a swing at me. I want a mistrial at this point. I want to provoke these two into doing something really stupid.

Loudly, I say, “I want a hearing. Keep the jury out, call this fine young lady to the witness stand, and let me cross-examine her. She wants to get involved in this trial, bring her on. Her mother is obviously biased and unstable and I want her off the jury.”

“What did you say to her?” Kaufman asked.

“I just told you, word for word. I told her the same thing I would say to any other person on the face of this earth—your case is built on nothing but a bunch of lying witnesses and you have no credible proof. Period.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Huver says.

“I want a hearing,” I practically yell. “I want this woman off the jury and I will not proceed with the trial until she’s gone.”

“Are you threatening me?” Kaufman asks as things spin rapidly out of control.

“No, sir. I am promising you. I will not continue.”

“Then I’ll hold you in contempt and throw you in jail.”

“I’ve been there before. Do it, and we’ll have ourselves a mistrial. We can come back in six months and have this party all over again.”

They don’t know for sure that I’ve been in jail, but at this moment they figure I’m not lying. A fringe lawyer like me is constantly flirting with ethical boundaries. Jail time is a badge of honor. If I’m forced to anger a judge, or humiliate him, so be it.

We go silent for a few minutes. The court reporter stares at her feet, and if given the chance she would sprint from the room, knocking over chairs in the process. At this point, Huver is terrified of a reversal, of having his great conviction frowned upon by an appellate court that sends it back for another trial. He doesn’t want to relive this ordeal. What he wants is that glorious date in the future when he drives, probably with a reporter in the car with him, to a prison called Big Wheeler, where the State keeps its death house. He’ll be treated like royalty because he will be the Man—the gunslinger who solved the hideous crime and secured the guilty verdict that sent Gardy Baker to his execution, thus allowing Milo to have its closure. He’ll be given a front-row seat behind a curtain that will be dramatically pulled aside to reveal Gardy lying on a gurney with tubes in his arms. Afterward, he, Huver, will find the time to chat somberly with the press and describe the burdens his office places upon him. He has yet to witness an execution, and in this death-happy state that’s worse than being a thirty-year-old virgin. State v. Gardy Baker is Dan Huver’s finest hour. It will make his career. He’ll get to speak at those all-important prosecutors’ conferences held in cheap casinos. He’ll get reelected.