“The letter speaks for itself,” the Jury Consultant says.
“Yes, it does,” the Housewife says. “It’s irrelevant. We’re talking about guilt beyond a reasonable doubt here. David isn’t guilty.”
“Let’s leave the sleaze behind and get back to the original point,” the Express Messenger says, the sarcastic lilt so contrived that he undoubtedly received a D-plus for sarcastic technique in one of his acting classes. “You could read this letter as Lacey saying she’d lie for Daddy.”
“I feel like I agree,” the Student says. “You could read the letter that way. Or it could mean nothing.”
The Express Messenger grins at her—his way of trying to be charming, I guess. Has he no shame? She’s too young for him. And I know this is old fashioned of me, nothing I’d share publicly, but there are the racial differences. I’m not a biased person, taught many minority students, but even in this day and age, mixed relationships are difficult. That aside, she’s a nice, bright girl, and he’s a ne’er-do-well. Good thing she has a level head on her shoulders.
“Should we vote again, or something?” the Foreperson asks.
“It’s far too soon for that,” I say. “I find this discussion illuminating. I’m not ready to draw any firm conclusions yet.”
The Housewife lets out an audible sigh of frustration. How rude of her! How irritating. She’s making me grumpy.
“Let’s take another five-minute break and talk about it after,” the Foreperson says.
“Good idea,” the Express Messenger says. “I have to take a lea … I have to use the little boys’ room.”
THE HONORABLE
NATALIE QUINN-GILBERT
Two knocks on my door, a pause, and two more. The pattern repeats. All the court personnel know it: the signature greeting of Edison Halleck, presiding judge of the Superior Court for Sepulveda County. It’s an affectation he views as endearing and that everyone else but me views as narcissistic. It’s not narcissism but, rather, a deep-seated nerdism that Ed has managed to hide from most of the world. Many dislike Ed Halleck, mostly because he’s an effective administrator. I’m a fan of Ed Halleck. It’s just that since Jonathan died—Jonathan was my husband—I can’t stand to be in Ed Halleck’s presence. There are two reasons for this.
“A moment, Natalie?”
I invite him in, though I don’t really have a moment. There’s the motion to suppress evidence I’ve had under submission for eighty-two days, and if I don’t decide it by the ninetieth day, the State will withhold my paycheck until I do. I have several other motions that might also be running up against the ninety-day deadline. I don’t know; I’ll have to ask Mick Redmond. You’d think I’d get a pass because of this Sullinger trial, but the august superior court bureaucracy, under the stewardship of one Edison Halleck, doesn’t give passes. That’s the first reason I don’t want to be around him: it’s his job to scold us ordinary judges about tardiness and clogged dockets. I never thought of this before, but he reminds me of the time when I was a seventeen-year-old girl, working a summer job at a long-defunct burger place called “Next Door,” which required us to take an order and cook a hamburger by the time the customer was at the cash register. “Push ’em through!” the manager, a gropy, vindictive junior-college dropout named Jerry, would holler at us. “Push ’em through!” I still don’t know whether he was talking about the customers or the burgers, or both. Anyway, that’s Ed Halleck’s role in this courthouse: get the other judges to push the cases through.
He flashes what he believes is an endearing smile, and the smile is endearing, but not for the reasons he thinks. Ed thinks he’s debonair, and mostly he’s right. He has a firm jaw, Roman nose, full head of silver-white hair, and imperial bearing, as if he came out of central casting. (Jonathan went bald at a young age.) Ed’s smile, however, reveals upper front teeth reminiscent of Howdy Doody, or perhaps Alfred E. Neuman. The smile is a leavening feature that gives this dignified man an improbable boyish quality.
“So, your jury is finally deliberating,” he says. “Word around the courtroom is that it’ll be a defense verdict.”
“Blaylock is as good as advertised. As good as she advertises herself.”
He chuckles and then looks solemn. Here it comes: the lecture about managing my caseload more efficiently.
“Sit,” I say.
Rather than sitting, he walks behind my guest chairs, half leans on the edge of the credenza, and crosses his legs.
“Now that the trial is over, I was wondering about a dinner,” he says. “To celebrate this court’s biggest trial in … well, in forever.”
Which leads me to the second reason I don’t enjoy seeing Ed Halleck. Ever since Jonathan passed, he’s pursued me romantically. Well, not ever since Jonathan passed. Ed waited the socially acceptable minimum period. Minimum, maximum—there is no socially acceptable period where Jonathan is concerned—no timetable, no expiration date.
“Ed, we’ve been over this. I’m just not ready to date yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.”
He looks at me sadly. I’ve hurt his feelings.
“Natalie, are you …? I meant, a group of us will have dinner. Judge Kroft, Judge Dudnik, Judge Strenger, Commissioner Ward, your courtroom clerk and bailiff …” He shrugs. “It was just a thought. No obligation if you’re fatigued or have other plans, or … I certainly wasn’t trying to …”
“Of course you weren’t. I’m so embarrassed.”
He straightens up and dismisses my concern with a wave of his hand.
“The dating thing is …” I say. What is the dating thing? I force myself back on track. “It’s just that so many people are trying to fix me up all the time, trying to force me to join those computer-dating sites. So I assumed that … Knee-jerk reaction, you know. I’m so tired from the trial, I … Saturday night would be lovely. If there’s room, let’s ask Christina Kelleher, the court reporter, to join us. She did a terrific job under trying circumstances. Blaylock insisted on dailies when they were totally unnecessary. Poor Christina was transcribing late into the night—probably didn’t get any sleep.”
“I’ll have my assistant arrange it,” he says, smiling—no, forcing—a boyish smile. He’s out the door without another word.
My head is spinning from the humiliation of assuming Ed was asking me out. He’s asked me out before, but … Hasn’t he? Of course not. What would his wife, Ellen, think?
THE HONORABLE
NATALIE QUINN-GILBERT
I find Mick in the courtroom, at his desk, processing papers. Without him, I couldn’t have survived, wouldn’t be surviving. And I’m not talking just about my job.
“Judge, why are you wearing your coat?” he asks. “The heating is back up, and it’s very warm in here. If you’re cold in chambers, I could—”
“I’m going for a quick walk.”
“You can’t do that, Judge!” His face registers pure horror. Bottle-cap eyes, Jonathan would call them. “The jury’s out. What if they come back with a verdict?”
Poor man. I know he’s worried about me. He doesn’t have to be. I understand his shock. I’ve never before left the courthouse, possibly have never left my chambers, while a jury was deliberating. Well, to every thing there is a season. I reach into my pocketbook and pull out my cell phone.
“I’ll tell you what, Mick,” I say. “I’ll carry this appliance with me, and if the jury comes back, you just call me, and I’ll come running. I’m going to the park.”
“You won’t go far, Judge?”
“Just the park. I promise.”
“Shouldn’t Bradley go with you?” he asks, his brown eyes still wide with fear and devotion.
“I’m afraid it’s Bradley who can’t leave. The jury is his responsibility for now. If something happens, call me.”
I leave the courtroom, make a right down the corridor, and almost collide with Assistant Di
strict Attorney Jack Cranston, who regards me with a look of horror on par with Mick’s.
“Is there a … a … a something, Judge?” he asks, just as inarticulate now as he was during much of the trial. “Are you looking for us … me?”
“The something is that I’m taking a walk, Mr. Cranston. The jury is still deliberating. I’ll be within walking distance with a cell phone if anything changes.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” he says, forcing a smile. “Pretty day outside.”
“I wouldn’t know. That’s why I’m taking a walk. To find out firsthand.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I have to be in Judge Halleck’s courtroom now.” He turns and scurries away. He doesn’t like me much these days. I can’t say I blame him. My rulings went against him on some major issues.
“We’ll see each other in due course, Mr. Cranston,” I say.
Jonathan liked Jack, thought Jack was a good lawyer. Jonathan also recognized that Jack isn’t a politician. Of course, everyone recognizes that Jack Cranston isn’t a politician—except Jack Cranston. He thought he’d prove otherwise through his prosecution of David Sullinger, but he was wrong. The DA should never have pressed murder charges. Manslaughter, maybe, but not murder. Not after interviewing Sullinger’s daughter.
I proceed down the hall, avoiding any further awkward encounters, leave the courthouse through a back entrance available only to court personnel, and walk out onto the street. It’s a chilly February morning, in the high thirties.
I told Mick I was going to the park, which is only a block away from the courthouse. It’s a welcome oasis amid a desert of concrete and glass, the gardens well maintained by the city. There is a homeless problem. I wish our government would do something to help those poor souls. They say there’s no money, but you can always find money to do the right thing.
I pass the park and go another seven blocks to the river. The walk is easy. I do love these catwalk flats I bought online from StylishShoes.com. Mick told me about the website. The shoes are functional yet formal enough for court. Not stylish, but fortunately, judges don’t have to be fashion plates during court days. The black robe makes its own statement.
The tourists, panhandlers, boaters, and anglers congregate at the end of Gallatin Street, but I know a quiet spot down London Road. The street looks, to the uninformed, like a cul-de-sac, but a concealed gate provides access to the river. The path down is rocky, through a glade of willows and white alders. Then, if you walk along the shore for about a hundred feet, you find an old gazebo. The county hasn’t maintained it, so it’s a little rickety, but it has a lovely view over the river. Now, in the February cold snap, the splintery beams creak and moan in the gelid wind—a counterpoint to the rustle of the trees. Jonathan and I met on this gazebo, although we told people we’d met at a State Bar conference in San Diego. I was never sure why we did that—maybe to keep private one small part of our very public lives.
Like me, he found this a convenient place to escape from the constant disputation that is the American justice system. “Disputation”—what a Jonathan word.
A renaissance man, Jonathan could distinguish the migratory birds from the indigenous ones. The winter before he passed, we saw snow geese, dunlin, Clark’s grebes, and American coots. “I thought you were the original American coot,” I said, and he laughed. Now I wish I hadn’t said it. I don’t know why I wish that.
I pull my coat tight around me and try to identify the birds, but the only species I recognize is a crow, probably the same fellow who perches on the telephone pole outside my chambers window and laughs at me (haw, haw, haw, not caw, caw, caw) as I sit cooped up at my desk, parsing sentences in search of a truth that really doesn’t exist in words.
There’s a rustle of underbrush, a soft, uneven thump of footsteps, and I turn to find a disheveled man gaping at me. He’s got the old-before-your-time complexion of so many homeless—leathery and pallid at the same time. And yet, he has a youthful aura that intensifies the tragedy. I’d guess he’s no older than thirty. I take a step to leave, but he moves in front of me, blocking the path.
“Excuse me, sir, I need to pass by,” I say firmly. I’m over the momentary shock. As a criminal-courts judge, I’ve encountered hundreds of dangerous people, perhaps more, many of whom I’ve sentenced, many of whom have been released from prison, and they haven’t hurt me so far. In this, I was much braver than Jonathan, who was otherwise a courageous man. Jonathan feared that someone would retaliate one day. Perhaps that was another, unspoken reason he never became a judge himself.
The homeless man steps aside as if I’m the one who’s startled him.
“You’re Judge Gilbert, right?” he says in a surprisingly congenial voice.
“Judge Quinn-Gilbert.” Why in the world would I correct him? Years of habit on a point that seemed important for so long but now is trivial.
He takes his grimy Cubs cap off and half bows—a gesture that’s both obsequious and courtly.
“My late husband was a huge Cubs fan,” I say.
“I like the Padres. I just wear this one because …” He puts the cap back on his head. “It’s Timothy Morales, ma’am. I’m doing really good.”
I scrutinize the haggard face but still don’t recognize him.
“Good for you, Timothy,” I say. It seems the prudent response under the circumstances, though I wonder about this fellow’s definition of “really good.”
“Yeah, I’m still on the streets, but I’m staying away from the meth like you told me to.”
“Are you staying away from the alcohol, too?”
He half shrugs and holds his shoulder to his cheek for a beat, embarrassed. The eccentric shrug triggers the memory. He was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and pled guilty. Thanks to a pretty good public defender—they get a horrible rap in the movies—he cleaned up well in court, looking almost like a fresh-faced college student. He was articulate and, I felt, truly remorseful in pleading for leniency. I decided to sentence him to time served and a diversion program.
“I just want to thank you, Judge Gilbert, for what you done for me.”
“You can thank me by laying off the wine and going to your meetings. I’m still counting on you, Timothy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Excellent,” I say, and head back up the dirt path to the street.
No, Timothy Morales isn’t doing really good. Perhaps I should have given him more jail time. Perhaps more time would have scared him straight. Not that I regret my decision. A judge shouldn’t spend energy questioning her past decisions. Judges who do that eventually flame out. No, you do the best you can, hope you haven’t punished the innocent or exonerated the guilty, and move on. That’s another reason Jonathan never became a judge: he couldn’t let his past mistakes be—always blamed himself when matters didn’t go his way.
If I believe this, then why do I feel I’ll blame myself no matter what the jury decides about David Sullinger?
I arrive back at the courthouse in twenty minutes and go inside to find my clerk. He’s sitting at his desk and speaking on the telephone. When he sees me, he bolts up out of his chair, shouts into the phone, “Bradley, she’s back!” and slams the receiver down.
“Judge, we’ve been trying to call you for the last forty minutes,” he says. “My God, where have you been?”
“Strange. I didn’t get a call.” I dig into my purse for my cell phone and check for messages. It’s powered off. “I guess I forgot to turn it on,” I say without embarrassment or apology, because, after all, I am the judge.
“Well anyway … the jury—they have a note. They’ve been waiting.”
JUROR NO. 52
THE EXPRESS MESSENGER / ACTOR
Half the jurors hate me, but fuck ’em, they’ll get over it. I didn’t start it. The Foreperson started it by asking me straight out, “Do you want Dillon’s testimony read
back?”
“Yeah, I think I do,” I replied, making the Architect, the Housewife, the Foreperson, and even the Student groan. The fricking Foreperson, who asked me the question in the first place, groaned. The Grandmother huffed. What’s the rush? I wondered. I want to hear some of the testimony because Dillon was such a bad witness that I’m not sure I really listened to what he was saying. The substance, you know? Isn’t it partly about substance, not just appearance?
“Let’s ask to have it read back,” the Jury Consultant said, coming to my rescue. “That’s what we’re here for.”
So now we’re sitting here waiting because the bailiff says the judge had an unexpected matter come up.
The door opens. Finally. The bailiff says, “Line up numerically,” and we comply and march into the courtroom. The judge is on the bench, the lawyers are at their tables, the court reporter is at her machine, and the girl with the tattoos, Kelsi Cunningham, is the only reporter present. David Sullinger isn’t here. As always, when we walk into the room, everyone stands, including the judge, and they don’t sit down until we do.
“The jury has sent the court a note,” the judge says. “Is that right, Madame Foreperson?” The judge looks weird. Her cheeks and nose are all red, like she’s sunburned or something. Or like she’s been drinking.
The Foreperson hops out of her chair the way my mom does when one of her bowling teammates rolls a strike. “The jury would like to have Dillon Sullinger’s testimony read back.”
“Which part of it?” the judge asks.
The Foreperson glances around, her eyes glazing over with confusion. “All of it, Judge?”
Jack Cranston smiles. Why is he smiling? He’s losing. Dillon was his key witness, and Dillon was terrible. I just want to hear the testimony one more time, that’s all.
Judge Quinn-Gilbert shakes her head, and she, too, looks like she wants to smile. “Unfortunately, Madame Foreperson, we can’t read back the entirety of Dillon Sullinger’s testimony. He was on the stand for half a day. Is there any particular portion of the testimony you want to hear?”
We, the Jury Page 15
