The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  “Must be why I feel so energetic,” he said with a weak smile.

  Her father had been a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University for thirty years and had raised Cassandra alone after her mother died, when she was ten. He had often taken her to the university to sit in on his lectures when he couldn’t find someone to watch her, and she had sat in the back of the class listening to his strong, confident voice while she drew picture after picture of her mother.

  Cassandra put on a pair of wireless connec-specs and blinked twice to open her father’s identity folder on the iGlass.

  “More questions?” asked her father.

  “Only a few.”

  “What are you going to do with all this information you’ve been gathering, anyway?”

  “It’s just for work,” she said.

  “Mmm-hm. You work too much.”

  “I enjoy it.”

  “You should enjoy some life, too,” said Jarius.

  “I do, Daddy,” said Cassandra. She tapped the iGlass and adjusted the spectacles. “You ready?”

  “Fire away.”

  “I would never break the law, no matter how minor. Strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree?”

  “Oooh,” said Jarius. “A question about gray areas. I like the tricky ones.”

  * * *

  “The key breakthrough was when the developers were able to quantify reasonable doubt,” explained Cassandra. She and Cervantez were alone in a conference room on the twelfth floor of the Hall of Justice. They had blocked out the entire afternoon for Cassandra to walk the criminal defense attorney through the Surrogate system.

  “So no more ‘shadow of a doubt,’ eh?” said Cervantez. He was scanning the digibinder Cassandra gave him on the system.

  “Well, not exactly,” admitted Cassandra, “but close. Using an interlaced algorithm, the system is able to attribute value to physical evidence, testimony, and other facts, and then weigh it as any human juror would do. If the calculation exceeds the equivalent of reasonable doubt—”

  “Guilty,” said Cervantez, rapping the table.

  “Yes.”

  “What if they’re wrong?”

  “They haven’t been yet.”

  Developers had presented Surrogate juries with tens of thousands of case studies from the past decade and the system had demonstrated a verdict variance with the human juries of 3.1 percent.

  “What is that? A verdict variance?” asked Cervantez.

  “It means that for every one thousand trials, the Surrogate system reached a different verdict from the human jury in thirty cases,” explained Cassandra. “In each of those cases, our independent investigative department, working with the Department of Justice, determined that the Surrogate jury had likely reached the correct verdict. The human juries were wrong.”

  Cervantez pushed back his chair and walked to the window. He looked out over the city. “I don’t understand how we’ve come to this. Machines judging people.”

  “They’re not machines,” said Cassandra. “They are replicate human consciousnesses.”

  “They are machines,” said Cervantez, turning away from the window, his voice rising. “What do they know about guilt? Innocence? Human compassion? Not a damn thing. They’re just electrical impulses!”

  “So are humans,” said Cassandra.

  “Like hell they are,” said Cervantez, turning back to the window. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe this then, counselor,” said Cassandra evenly. “It’s estimated that more than twelve thousand people are wrongfully convicted each year. With refinement, the Surrogate system has the potential to reduce that number to zero in time. Isn’t that something you can work for? How many of your clients who were innocent are sitting in a prison cell right now? It may not be many, but it’s too many, and I know you believe that.”

  Cervantez looked to the ceiling as if searching for a message scrawled on the white paint above him and sighed. “Fine,” he said, walking back to the table and picking up the digibinder. “What else do I need to know?”

  “Let me show you the HD holograms,” said Cassandra. Cervantez rolled his eyes.

  The avatars were purely aesthetic, she explained as she clicked a controller. Twelve light forms slowly solidified across the table from Cervantez: seven women and five men. In short order, with the exception of an errant shimmer of light, the images appeared corporeal. Each hologram was an accurate representation of the Surrogate juror, created from a multitude of photographs collected from e-life platforms.

  “The thought is that eventually holograms will be unnecessary,” said Cassandra, “but we discovered attorneys in the beta stages were more comfortable arguing before avatars. Go on, give it a try.”

  Cervantez stared at her, his lips pursed cynically. Then he rubbed a hand over his head, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. He shot a look at the twelve avatars and stood up slowly.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “You now know that Ammie Moore did not kill Russell Lipke—​a violent, perverse man who was soliciting sex from vulnerable young women on street corners. After hearing all the evidence and testimony in this case, you now know she didn’t do it. How do you know? Simple.” Cervantez stopped pacing and turned to look directly at the avatars. “She told you she didn’t. She told you under oath in vivid detail how Russell Lipke started attacking her in the car and how she desperately struggled to get away, accounting for his skin cells found under her fingernails. She told you how he struck her across the mouth, breaking her lip and accounting for her blood found on the car seat. She described how the car door suddenly flew open and Charles Jackson, her ‘boyfriend,’ pulled her from the car and then in a rage proceeded to stab Russell Lipke to death. She told you through sobs and tears how she ran off, scared out of her mind, and never looked back. That’s the truth. That’s what happened.”

  Cervantez paused and shook his head at the tale’s tragedy before continuing.

  “Now I know the prosecution says, ‘Then why didn’t she tell the police that’s what happened when they first questioned her?’ But what did Ammie say when I asked her that question? You remember. She was afraid Charles Jackson would kill her. And do you know why you can believe she feared for her life? Because here is a woman who has been physically and emotionally abused since she was a child. We know her father beat her until she was old enough to run away. And we know Charles Jackson beat her to keep her on that corner so he could get his payday. Ladies and gentlemen, here is a woman who has suffered at the hands of every man in her life. The very men who were supposed to take care of her and protect her. And how did she respond to all these men who raised their fists against her? Did she stab them to death? No. Shoot them? No. She ran. Just like she did this time. She ran.” Cervantez leaned over the table and looked pointedly at each avatar. “And that is why I know you will find her not guilty. Because you know she didn’t do it.”

  In the silence that followed, Cassandra clapped slowly and softly. “That’s a pretty good closing argument,” she said.

  Cervantez snorted. “It would be. If your surrogate jury gave a damn.”

  * * *

  It was late before Cassandra deemed Cervantez sufficiently prepared for jury selection the next morning and let him leave for home. His righteous indignation had not eased with his understanding of the system, but he had committed to learning how it worked, she had to give him that. She was gathering her equipment together when Judge O’Connor entered the conference room. It was the first time she’d seen him out of his judicial robes.

  “How are things going, Ms. Howard?” he asked.

  “Very well,” said Cassandra. “I think we’re ready for tomorrow.”

  “Glad to hear it.” O’Connor picked up the hologram control and examined it. “And Mr. Cervantez? He’s cooperating?”

  “Absolutely,” said Cassandra.

  “Good, good,” said O’Connor. “Maybe I shouldn’t share this, but he was not my first
choice. Strikes me as a bit of a pessimist. Reminds me of something Churchill once said: ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’ Are you an optimist or a pessimist, Ms. Howard?”

  “I’m a realist, Judge,” said Cassandra, stepping around his play of soft intimidation and taking the hologram control from his hand. She placed it in her case.

  “Be sure to let me know if you run into any problems,” said O’Connor. “I don’t want any misunderstandings or antics to delay this trial.”

  “Of course not,” said Cassandra. “We don’t want one of the other pilot programs to move ahead of us, now do we?”

  O’Connor considered her, smiling tightly, and she chastised herself for having possibly stepped over a line. Finally he said, “No, we don’t. Do you know the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence, Ms. Howard?”

  “That would be John Hancock.”

  “Yes, it would be. But I wager you don’t know the second. Second never draws the same recognition as first does. First is history; second is merely trivia. I intend this case to be history. Everyone should be clear on that.”

  Cassandra snapped her case closed. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, Judge,” she said.

  “Good.” O’Connor held the door for her. “It was Josiah Bartlett, by the way.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Cassandra.

  “Josiah Bartlett was the second man to sign the Declaration of Independence.”

  “Is that right?” Cassandra passed through the doorway into the hall. “You learn something new every day.”

  * * *

  Forrest pulsed Cassandra on her way home, again inviting her to get a drink. She pulsed back, again declining. At home, after feeding Baedeker and checking on her sleeping father, she spent time on her yoga, trying to clear her mind and focus on her center. Since middle school, when she reached her full height of five eleven, Cassandra had felt alien in her body, awkward and encumbered. She took up yoga in college as a way for her mind and body to relate. But tonight she was unable to fully close her mind down. Ammie’s face stubbornly snapped into her consciousness and her timid voice repeated in Cassandra’s ear.

  When her father woke, she tried to get him to eat, but he complained that swallowing was painful. Instead they spent the evening with Cassandra asking him more questions. Jarius seemed to appreciate the short “strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree” answers. It was all he had energy for. In the quiet of the darkening room, it was just Cassandra’s even-toned voice and her father’s shallow breathing. Occasionally she had to ask him to repeat his answer and lean in to hear it. After a time she came to the end of the identity query.

  “No more questions, Chickpea?” asked Jarius. He sounded wryly disappointed.

  “No more questions,” said Cassandra. “We’re done. Why don’t you get some rest?”

  Jarius closed his eyes. He whispered something Cassandra couldn’t understand.

  “What’s that, Daddy?” she asked.

  But he was asleep, the cat curled beside him.

  * * *

  The HD hologram of a red-haired woman with oversized glasses rotated slowly in front of Judge O’Connor’s bench.

  “Ms. Renee Elder, fifty-two, works as a floral designer. Divorced with two children. Grew up in Grand Rapids, moved to Detroit to attend Wayne State University to study art education but didn’t finish. On tab two you can see the various organizations she associates with, any volunteer activity, religious affiliations, and so on. And on tab three are her stances on a range of issues, from the death penalty to climate contamination.” O’Connor looked up from reading the identity brief and addressed the attorneys. “Any objections?”

  “None, Your Honor,” said Cervantez.

  At the next table, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Jessica Blick leaned over to consult with Forrest.

  “Your Honor,” she said, “this juror would be acceptable if we modulated her emotional quotient as related to her oldest daughter’s problems with drug addiction. The daughter’s been in and out of rehab for several years.”

  “Mr. Cervantez?” asked O’Connor.

  “I don’t see what the daughter’s experimenting with drugs has to do with Ms. Elder’s suitability for this jury,” said Cervantez. “In fact—”

  “Mr. Cervantez,” cautioned O’Connor.

  The defense attorney sighed and looked at Cassandra, who was drilling down on the identity construct and calculating bias percentages. She whispered to Cervantez her recommendation and the attorney nodded.

  “Your Honor, we would accept a modulation of thirty-five points to fall within the impartial range,” he said.

  “That wasn’t so hard now, was it, Mr. Cervantez?” said O’Connor. “Does that sound acceptable to you, Ms. Blick?”

  Forrest nodded and Blick said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Good, that’s what I like to see. Everyone working together,” said O’Connor. “Then if there are no more objections we have juror number three.” The hologram of the red-haired woman dissolved to be replaced by an older white man with a lean, shaved face and perfectly styled silver hair.

  “Mr. Ian McMasters,” said O’Connor.

  Two hours later a jury had been selected, and O’Connor scheduled the trial to begin the following morning.

  Cervantez leaned over and whispered to Cassandra, “I think somebody is anxious to start writing his next book.”

  * * *

  Remote-controlled vid-drones whirred and hovered in the back of the courtroom like hummingbirds, streaming the trial live to subscription criminal justice channels.

  Blick’s first witness was Detective Darrell Foster, a square-jawed man with a closely trimmed Afro. The bailiff clipped a response sensor to the detective’s right index finger and affixed a visceral patch below his left temple. A subcontractor had developed the advanced polygraph technology for Real Thought Analytics to interface with the Surrogates, who could judge the truthfulness of a witness’s account through the extensive physiological feedback.

  With Blick’s guidance, Foster described the murder scene and the steps of the investigation that had led to the arrest of Ammie Moore. Throughout his testimony, he shot uncertain sideways glances at the avatars projected in the jury box. Under cross, Cervantez established that police had not found the knife used to kill Russell Lipke or any bloody clothes they could identify as belonging to the defendant.

  “And finally, Detective Foster, I’m curious why you failed to interview Ammie Moore’s boyfriend, Charles Jackson,” said Cervantez.

  “You mean her pimp?” asked the detective.

  “Yes, a violent man known on the street as C-Jack.”

  Foster shrugged. “We couldn’t find him.”

  “I see,” said Cervantez. “Did you look very hard, Detective Foster, or had you already decided a poor drug addict nobody would believe was good enough?”

  “Objection,” said Blick.

  “Withdrawn,” said Cervantez. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  When he returned to his seat, Cassandra leaned over to remind him the Surrogates would not be affected by inflammatory language.

  “Old habits die hard,” said Cervantez with a grin.

  Ammie was dressed in a blue pantsuit that came from a wardrobe Cervantez had picked up over the years from thrift shops and kept in a closet in his office. He’d also gotten the doctor to up her dose of khem so that she didn’t reveal telltale signs of withdrawal. With her hair brushed and wearing makeup, Ammie almost looked as if she could be an innocent college student. Cassandra told Cervantez the measures were unnecessary because the Surrogates would not assign any judgment based on a defendant’s appearance, but Cervantez insisted; it was more for Ammie’s dignity than the jury, he said.

  The remaining witnesses included the medical examiner, who testified to the nature and angle of the more than a dozen stab wounds found on the victim, and an expert from t
he state crime lab, who established that trace evidence of blood and hair found on the passenger seat belonged to the defendant. It took time for the expert witnesses to become comfortable with the idea that they were freed from having to simplify technical descriptions into layman’s terms, because the Surrogates had access to scientific portals that provided comprehensive glossaries. Once the ME and lab tech got the hang of it, they almost delighted in spouting industry acronyms and jargon.

  At one point Cervantez stood and said, “Your Honor, I understand the witness does not have to simplify her testimony for this jury, and that’s great, but if she could dumb it down for me, I’d appreciate it, because I have no idea what she just said.”

  Blick rested her case near the end of the day and O’Connor adjourned court until morning. The media in the hallway was a roiling cluster of vid-porters, but Cassandra shook off shouted questions to make her way out of the Hall of Justice.

  * * *

  Jarius that night appeared weaker, more tired. He refused to eat again despite Cassandra’s urging.

  “Tell me about the trial,” he said as Cassandra cleared the food tray. She sat by the bed and, as if reading him a story before sleep, told him all that had happened in court that day.

  “Doesn’t sound too good for that girl of yours,” said Jarius at the end.

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Cassandra.

  “You think she did it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Cassandra. “All that matters is what the jury thinks.”

  “I know,” said Jarius, “but I want to know what you think.”

  Cassandra considered before answering. “I think she’s innocent.”

  Jarius took her hand. “None of us is innocent, Chickpea,” he said. “Not one of us.”

  Later, after she finished shaving him, he asked her to play the violin. He had always thrilled to hear her play, even when she was just learning and the screech of the instrument filled the house as she practiced. Later he would often cajole her into joining him in a duet while he plinked on the piano. She had begrudgingly obliged as a teenager, but now she held the memory of those musical evenings with great fondness.