Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  Alex grinned. “Hey, I’m a big kid,” he said, hugging her back. “I know all about that stuff. You taught me, remember?”

  “I’m not sure he’d ever admit it, but I think Alex really likes you,” she told Kirby on Sunday evening. “Of course, I’m not exactly surprised. You’re so good with him.”

  The three of them had spent the day at Seattle Center, and then stopped at Burger King for dinner. Now Alex was asleep in the room down the hall, and she and Kirby were getting ready for bed.

  “He’s a good kid,” Kirby said. “The kind I’d like to think I would have had, if I’d had a son. You’ve done a great job with him.”

  Judith sighed. “The way he hangs on your every word, I think he misses having a father.”

  Kirby climbed into the four-poster and plumped up the pillows. “I’m not sure I can tell you what I think you want to hear,” he said with a sigh.

  “You’ve already told me,” she said. “No strings. I know that.”

  “I’ve got too many issues of my own to deal with,” he said, “before I can take on anyone else’s. I’m not real reliable. I don’t stay in one place longer than it takes to start feeling too comfortable, if you know what I mean. And I’m starting to feel like I’ve already stayed here longer than I should.” It took him by surprise to realize he was actually telling her part of the truth, but he didn’t think it would do any harm, and it might even help. “I tried to be up front with you about all that.”

  “Oh you were,” she said lightly, slipping into bed beside him. “But you know us women. We always think, with enough good home cooking, we can change a man’s mind about anything.”

  He pulled her against him. “I wish I had it all together, so I could be what you want,” he murmured into her hair. “I wish I was as secure as you.”

  She let out a laugh. “Me, secure? Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just the way you act, I guess,” he said. “You’re so confident and sure of yourself. You and your friend both. I think you’re two of the most self-sufficient women I ever met.”

  “You mean Dana?”

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “Well, you’re right about her, but you’re way off about me,” Judith said with a little chuckle. “The last thing I am is self-sufficient. You should know that by now. I’m a definite leaner. Always have been, probably always will be.”

  “Really? You could’ve fooled me. Why do you think Dana is so much more secure than you?”

  Judith shrugged. “I don’t know. She just always seems to have everything going right for her, you know what I mean? It’s been that way as long as I’ve known her. It’s like she took control of her life the day she was born and never let go of it. She knows exactly what she wants and exactly how to get it. I don’t know how, but she does it. Even if something goes wrong, she’s always been able to get past it, and just keep on going.”

  “I doubt anything serious has ever have gone wrong for her. She seems so… complete.”

  “Well, she’s been my best friend since grade school,” Judith said with a yawn, “so I could tell you a thing or two. But of course, I can’t.”

  “Heavy private stuff, huh?” he asked, feeling the hair on the back of his neck begin to tingle.

  “Oh yes,” Judith murmured, snuggling up against his chest. “Very heavy.”

  SEVEN

  At twenty minutes past nine on Tuesday morning, Robert Niera knocked lightly on Abraham Bendali’s door.

  “Yes, Robert, come in,” the judge invited.

  “I think we may have a little problem, Your Honor,” the bailiff said.

  “What is it?” Bendali responded.

  “A juror has just approached me with this,” he said, handing a manila envelope to the judge.

  Bendali saw Stuart Dunn’s name written on the envelope. He opened it, and extracted the contents, spreading the photographs out across his desk.

  “Isn’t this something,” he murmured. He picked up the note that had accompanied the photographs, and the expression on his face darkened. “Just one?” he asked his bailiff.

  “Actually, five spoke to me,” Robert replied. “But I think more were contacted. Three of them got envelopes like this, two said they had been approached by other people.”

  The judge wagged his head back and forth. “Get opposing counsel in here,” he said.

  “All right, Ms. McAuliffe, what do you know about this?” Bendali barked as soon as the prosecution and defense teams had assembled in his chambers.

  “Absolutely nothing, Your Honor,” Dana replied, scanning the photographs. “I assure you, I’ve never seen these before, I don’t deal with people who promote this kind of politicking, and I’m as outraged about it as you are.”

  Bendali fixed her with a stony stare and a raised eyebrow. “Are you certain?”

  Not in the least intimidated, Dana glared right back at him. “Are you accusing me of jury tampering?” she asked.

  “Should I be?”

  “Hardly,” she said evenly. “Like any decent attorney, I like to win, and I’ll push the envelope as far as it can go in the interests of my client. But I never break the rules. If you don’t know me well enough to know that, perhaps Mr. Ayres would be good enough to vouch for my integrity.”

  Brian nodded. “I can, and I do, Your Honor,” he said. “I’ve known and worked with Ms. McAuliffe for well over a decade.”

  “Then it seems we have a leak proportionate to that of the Titanic,” Bendali declared. “What are we going to do about it?”

  The attorneys glanced at each other.

  “I guess we could call for a mistrial,” Brian said without much enthusiasm, because he was happy with the way his case was going, he liked the jury he had, and he really didn’t want to start over.

  “That would be an option,” Bendali said, and looked at Dana. “Ms. McAuliffe?”

  “Well, naturally, a mistrial isn’t what we’re looking for,” she said with a sigh, because she, too, liked the jury as seated. “My client’s been in jail for almost seven months now. Any further delay in clearing his name would be to his disadvantage. Obviously, he had no hand in this. And to penalize him for someone else’s misdeed doesn’t seem entirely fair. But, Mr. Ayres is within his rights.”

  Bendali looked thoughtfully at both attorneys. “I can’t see that sequestering the jury at this point would help any,” he said. “The damage, whatever it may be, is already done.”

  Joan Wills had been studying the photographs. “Excuse me, Your Honor,” she said now. “May I say something?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Well, sir, I’m one of the defense attorneys here, and even so, I find myself offended, not impassioned, by these pictures. I think I would resent having them sent to me. Is it possible some of the jurors might feel that way, too? And if so, then maybe no serious damage has really been done, and we don’t have to go to a mistrial.”

  The judge scratched his jaw. “Mr. Ayres, shall we have the jury in and find out, before I make a final decision?”

  Brian nodded. “By all means, Your Honor,” he said.

  With Robert Niera leading the way, the twelve jurors and four alternates filed into the courtroom and took their seats. To their surprise, not only was the courtroom empty of spectators, but the judge in his voluminous black robe was not seated on the bench; he was standing in the well, conferring with counsel.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bendali began. “Something has come to the attention of the court that we have to deal with. I understand that some of you have already spoken to the bailiff, but I now want to ask all of you a very important question.” The sixteen people sitting in the jury box glanced at one another. “Over the past few days,” the judge continued, “have any of you been approached, either indirectly or in person, by someone who appeared to have knowledge of your status as a juror in this proceeding, and attempted to influence you?”

  Almost immediately, seven hands went up,
and soon after, another six were raised. With a chart in his hand, Bendali surveyed the group.

  “Juror Number 76,” he said. “You didn’t raise your hand. Does that mean you received nothing, and spoke to no one about this case over the weekend?”

  “No,” cosmetologist Kitty Dodson replied, looking a bit embarrassed. “But I went out with a friend Friday night, and I haven’t been back to my place yet. Why? What did I miss?”

  A giggle rippled through the jurors. Bendali smiled. “Hopefully, nothing of any great importance,” he said. He checked his chart again. “Juror Number 7, were you home for the weekend?”

  “No, I wasn’t, as a matter of fact,” Eliot Wickstine, the pilot, replied. “Since we were off for three days, the wife and I went up to our cabin in Birch Bay. After that medical examiner’s testimony, I needed a break.”

  “I can relate to that,” the judge conceded, checking his chart a third time. “And how about you, Juror Number 94?”

  “I was home, safe and snug,” David Reminger, the computer programmer, reported. “I was online most of the time, catching up. I had no unsolicited phone calls, no unexpected deliveries, no unfamiliar e-mails. But I’m unlisted. I have a privacy thing, and I make it a point to be unreachable, except by post office box, which I haven’t checked yet today.”

  Bendali nodded. “All right,” he said to the group. “Other than those who were not contacted, how do the rest of you feel about what happened?”

  “I was surprised,” Elizabeth Kwan, the technical writer, said. “I thought information about jurors was supposed to be kept confidential.”

  “So it is,” the judge agreed. “However, as you can see, sometimes things happen.”

  “Well, I’m a barber,” Ralph Bergquist said. “And I snuck in a little work on Saturday. And this guy comes in, and he’s not one of my regulars, or anything. In fact, I’d never seen him before. But he sits himself down in my chair, and as soon as the towel is around his neck, he starts preaching at me, all about my moral duty to the preborn. So finally, I told him if I wanted preaching, I’d go to church, and then I kicked him out with only half his hair cut off. Served him right.”

  “My wife’s worried,” John Quinn admitted. “Which means, I gotta worry. She thinks some of these people are lunatics and might try to harm us.”

  At that, several jurors looked worried.

  “Right now, I’m fairly confident that persuasion is what this is about,” Bendali reassured them all, “not intimidation.”

  “If that’s the case, then I have bad news for whoever’s doing it,” Karleen McKay declared. “Because it had the opposite effect on me. I wasted my whole Sunday showing houses to a woman who may or may not be moving here from South Carolina, but who obviously was only interested in telling me how hard she was going to pray for my enlightenment.”

  “I’m with you,” Bill Jorgenson, the Boeing employee, said. “I might not have liked sitting through the medical examiner’s testimony a whole lot, but I know why we had to do it. Those photographs I got were something else altogether. It wasn’t fair. I needed the weekend to kick back, watch some baseball, relax a bit—not be put on overload.”

  “I think people are entitled to their opinions,” Rose Gregory said. “I watch Reverend Heal’s Prayer Hour every day, and he’s always been outspoken about his opposition to abortion, and about his support of the defendant in this case. But I don’t mind telling you, I was very disappointed when I realized his inviting me to his gala on Saturday night was just an opportunity for him to try to convince me to vote to acquit. I think I have a right to make up my own mind.”

  Bendali smiled. “Not just a right,” he told her, “but a duty.” He turned to the rest. “If all of you feel the way Juror Number 68 has just said she feels, then perhaps we don’t have a problem.”

  “I came in here thinking I was the only one who got those photographs,” Stuart Dunn said. “I thought, when I told, it would mean I would be removed from the jury, and I was angry about that. Once I realized most of us were approached, one way or another, I thought the only option would be a mistrial, and that made me even angrier, because it would mean those people had won. Well, I don’t think we ought to send that message.”

  “If I were to decide not to declare a mistrial,” Bendali said, “are there any of you who would feel uncomfortable about continuing to serve on this jury?”

  A number of jurors shook their heads, while several others simply shrugged.

  “My wife,” John Quinn said with a sigh. “It’s no problem to me, but she worries. We got two kids. We got a dog.”

  “Do you wish to be excused, Juror Number 116?” the judge asked.

  “Don’t do it, John,” Karleen McKay said. “Stuart’s right. Don’t let them win.”

  There was instant agreement from the rest of the group. The trial was just two weeks along, but Dana could not help noticing that the jurors had already bonded.

  “Is there a way to protect us?” Quinn asked. “I mean, protect our families and our homes?”

  “If it came to that, yes,” Bendali declared unequivocally.

  “Okay then, I’m not going to be a quitter,” the contractor said. “I’ll stick.”

  The other jurors nodded their approval.

  “One last question, then,” the judge concluded. “In light of what’s happened, do each and every one of you still believe you can come to a fair and impartial verdict in this case?”

  All sixteen people in the jury box thought about that for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Thank you for your input,” Bendali said. “I’m going to recess court for today. You’ll have my decision tomorrow.”

  “Am I right to assume that the other side has the list as well?” Aaron Sapp, the philosophy instructor, asked.

  The judge shrugged. “Good question,” he said. “At this point, it’s not known. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, it seems to me, if they do, and we get pressure from them down the road, then neither side will have the advantage,” he reasoned. “They’ll just cancel each other out.”

  EIGHT

  Abraham Bendali did not declare a mistrial, and Brian Ayres did not protest the decision. To be honest, the prosecutor couldn’t be certain that the backlash from the incident hadn’t actually worked in his favor.

  Dana came away with the same impression, and it left her both irritated and intrigued. “It’s probably an impossible task,” she told Craig Jessup. “But see if you can find out who leaked that jury list.”

  “Leave it to me,” the private investigator said with a casual shrug. “You know the old saying—the impossible just takes a little longer.”

  “Do you really think he’ll come up with anything?” Charles Ramsey asked. “Sounds like a wild goose chase to me. And at his prices, a rather expensive one, at that.”

  “He’s the best in the business,” Dana reminded him. “If the information’s out there to find, you know he’ll find it.” She looked at the senior partner. “We’ve spared no expense on this case so far. If I’m supposed to start counting the pennies now, no one’s told me.”

  “Oh no, it’s nothing like that,” Ramsey hastened to assure her. “I just meant there must be some better use we could make of Jessup’s time.”

  Detective Dale Tinker had been on the job for twenty-eight years, having graduated fourth in his class from the police academy. He was a beat cop for the first three years of his career, then worked vice for five years before requesting a transfer to homicide, where he had been ever since. He held just about every commendation the Seattle police department had to offer, and he had earned the respect of his peers. They called him the Iron Man.

  His hair was now almost totally gray, and the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth were permanently etched into his face. He tried to keep himself fit, but he liked beer too much, and a paunch had developed around his middle. He had just turned forty-nine, but he looked closer to sixty.

  He had passed the advancem
ent exam, and there had been talk, on and off, of moving him up, but nothing had come of it. A few glitches in his record, perhaps, some said. Lack of opportunities, others insisted; there was not a lot of room at the top. Something about domestic violence kept cropping up.

  Tinker had worked close to six hundred homicides in his career, clearing an impressive eighty-two percent of them. But he had never worked one that meant as much to him as this one did. He thought he had seen everything. He thought he was tough, seasoned, beyond shock. Then he caught the call to Hill House, and for the first time in his twenty-eight years, he threw up at a crime scene. Like a rookie. Nobody in his squad teased him. It just made him more human, they thought. If anything, they respected him more.

  He had handled this case from the beginning, tirelessly, relentlessly, waiting for the breaks to come his way, putting the pieces together, honing the ragged edges into a snug fit. He was not stupid, he knew this was his ticket to promotion, probably his last chance at it. When he took the witness stand on Wednesday morning, it was with confidence and determination.

  “Detective Tinker,” Brian began, as soon as the oath had been administered and the police officer’s credentials had been detailed, “you were in charge of the Hill House investigation, is that correct?”

  “I was in charge of the information-gathering phase of the investigation, yes,” Tinker replied.

  “And what did this phase consist of?”

  “Basically, it consisted of talking to survivors, talking to witnesses, evaluating witness statements, developing additional witnesses, linking information received from witnesses to possible suspects, interviewing possible suspects, and gathering potential evidence. In essence, following up on all the leads that eventually led to the apprehension of the defendant over there, the person we believe bombed Hill House.”