Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

“This is the question Nicky worked up.”

  Stow’s eyes flashed across the lines of type. I waited, but he said nothing, showed nothing. He handed back the paper, his hands steadier than mine, which trembled slightly as I took it.

  “In a high-profile murder case like this one,” I told him, “they’ll have a large panel. I believe the jury office has arranged for two hundred people to gather in courtroom 6-1 tomorrow.”

  Courtroom 6-1 was easily the most notorious in the city, perhaps in the country, if you judged it by the famous cases that had been tried there: the husband-and-wife team who had tortured and videotaped teenaged girls before killing them, the shooters who’d rounded up middle-class customers eating dessert in a small café and then gunned them down.

  But unlike some places haunted by the ghosts of the wicked, 6-1 had the uncanny quality of seeming to wash itself clean after each hideous case, as though somehow it were born anew, ready again for whatever the cells might vomit up.

  “Six-one,” Stow said with a smile. “The court of the damned!” He gave a sneering laugh that was both contemptuous and, I suspected, ashamed. “That’s rich!”

  I ignored his comment. “I need to make sure you understand the challenge fully, Stow. As each prospective juror’s name is pulled from the drum, the registrar will swear him or her in and ask the following question. Indicate to me any changes you feel ought to be made.”

  I cleared my throat. “Justice John Stoughton-Melville is a public figure. He has been written about extensively in the media. Would the fact that he is an officer of the court, or would any other thing you might already know about him, affect your ability to render a true verdict in this case?”

  Stow was silent for several minutes. I made the mistake of thinking he was actually considering the question. When he finally spoke, Nicky and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  “I won’t be able to turn around when I’m in the dock. I won’t be able to see who’s behind me.”

  “Of course not, Stow.” Two sentences! He was becoming positively loquacious. I hastened to explain. “The guards are trained to keep you from having any contact with spectators. Even eye contact. Especially eye contact.”

  “Who’s there? Who’s behind me? Sometimes I can see someone out of the corner of my eye. A woman. She sits to my left. She’s never there when I’m led in or out. I’ve tried to catch sight of her face, but I can’t. Who is that, Ellis?”

  Nicky’s mouth hung open. I kicked him under the table. “Stow, I think we’re through for tonight. I take it you approve the challenge question. That’s enough for now. We can proceed with the jury selection based on your lack of objection to—”

  “Is there a woman who comes? Maybe I dreamed her. Was a woman present during the prelims?”

  I kept my eyes glued to my notes. “I don’t know, Stow,” I told him. “The court is open to the public.”

  Was his confusion an act? If so, it was a good one. But I could act, too. I could, for instance, pretend that no woman had come every day to follow the progress of Stow’s case. I could pretend that Anne, like Stow himself, had never been in the courtroom.

  “What’s his problem?” Nicky asked the moment we got to the car. “He totally flipped!”

  “Stow will be okay once he’s in court.”

  “You hope,” my young companion commented, doubt clear in his voice.

  I didn’t bother to respond. I didn’t want him to hear doubt in my voice.

  The next day, when Nicky and I met at Old City Hall courthouse, its Victorian hulk almost ladylike with the rising sun casting a pink glow on every cornice, crenellation and curlicue, I remembered myself in a pink glow, too.

  I have just turned forty, one of the youngest men ever appointed to the bench. But am I afraid? No. I bound up the steps, I wink at the figures carved above the main door, I sweep past the McCausland stained-glass window with its depiction of the founding of the city, I race across the two-toned polished wood floor. I tear open the double etched-glass doors to the courtroom, I run to the empty bench, sit behind it, throw open my arms and embrace the whole damn room. I am home at last. The elderly gccard finally catches up with me. When he sees who it is, he says, “Welcome, Your Honor. ” Your Honor. Your Honor. Your Honor.

  “Earth to Ellis. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, Nicky. Old City Hall looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  “If you say so.” Nicky took a swig of coffee. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I changed the subject. “We should have told Stow more about the judge who’ll try his case.” I took one more peek at Old City Hall. “But Justice McKenzie is so young. He looks your age.”

  “No way! Bobby McKenzie’s forty-five,” Nicky laughed. “But old as he is, he’s still too young to remember who you are—er—were.”

  “Very funny, boy. Too bad F. Robert McKenzie isn’t such a comedian. Are you forgetting he allowed every bit of Ellen’s evidence?”

  “Which we agree contains a lot of stinking garbage ...”

  I conceded that with a nod. “But,” I said, “he’s a stickler for efficiency. And what about his legendary hair-trigger temper? He’s already torn a strip off me three times for ‘woolgathering.’”

  Nicky looked up. “What’s that about, anyway?” he asked. “The daydreaming?”

  “If I knew, Nicky, I’d tell you. I guess I just have a lot to think about these days.”

  “Well, don’t forget about Bobby’s temper. And don’t forget about your own, either.”

  “You’re getting me mad at you right now, Nicky!”

  He just laughed again. Then he became dead serious. “We never did get around to talking to our client about the jurors we need.”

  “If we were in the States,” I said, “we could hire experts to question potential jurors, but here we must do it ourselves, and all we can know about them is that they are Canadian citizens, that they speak English, their addresses and what they do for a living. And of course, we can inquire whether they’re prejudiced for or against Stow by anything they already know about him. We have to deduce all we can from their dress, their demeanor and our instincts.”

  “Sucks,” Nicky said. Then he added, “So what kind of juror are we looking for?”

  “When I used to defend men accused of sexual assault,” I replied, “I tried to stay away from jurors who were in any way similar to my client. I reasoned that if both the client and the juror were male, white, thirty-six, blue-eyed, for example, the juror would be more inclined to convict because he would want to separate himself from the accused as strongly as possible. “But here,” I emphasized, “I think the opposite would apply. I think the more a juror identifies with Stow, the more sympathetic he will be to our cause.”

  “Yeah, right. We’ll get ourselves a dozen more Supreme Court Justices.”

  “Not quite, Eddie Murphy! I meant older men.”

  “I disagree. I think we need women. Young and old. Women are always more sympathetic to domestic ordeals.”

  “They might identify with Harpur. Or worse, with Ellen. They might take a feminist stance.”

  “Rats.” Nicky admitted, “I hate this. It’s going to make me lose lunch.”

  “You won’t lose lunch. Jury picks on big cases are always in the morning,” I replied, trying to be as funny as he was—or thought he was.

  “I’ll call twenty names at a time,”Judge McKenzie told the two hundred gathered in the cavernous courtroom, paneled in red maple that seemed to swallow his voice, even though he used a microphone. “When I call your name, form a line to my left.”

  As the court clerk spun the wooden drum that held a card for each of the two hundred names, I looked over to the oak table on the other side of the room, where Ellen sat with her Officer-in-Charge and her Assistant Crown. I couldn’t get my girl to look at me. I longed to tell her we were simply adversaries, not enemies, but I hadn’t spoken a personal word to her in days. It was an odd feeling knowing that if I won, she lost.
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  It sounded easy enough to pick twelve suitable jurors out of two hundred prospects, but it wasn’t, because half the crowd had excuses for being unable to serve. Prepaid vacations, appointments with medical specialists, elder-care obligations, work assignments that could be done by the prospective juror and nobody else. I whispered to Nicky, “Bunch of lousy slackers!”

  “Are you ready to ask your question, Mr. Portal?” the judge interrupted.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered, sputtering and jumping to my feet as the first prospect, an Allan Martin, entered the witness box. A female court officer in gray slacks and a dark blue blazer stepped up to him and asked if he wished to swear on a holy book—she gestured toward several piled on the railing before the witness—or to affirm the truth of his answers on his own word.

  The man chose the Bible. The officer, a woman who would become the jury’s matron as soon as the twelve were chosen, asked him to place his right hand on it. Instead, he yanked the book out of her hand, grabbed it tightly and brandished it aloft.

  Nicky cringed and so, I saw, did Ellen. The sour little man swore his oath. His voice was too loud, too determined. I studied him for some clue as to his attitude toward the duty he faced, his fairness, his intelligence. If he indicated that he could, in fact, remain impartial despite his previous knowledge of Stow, I could still reject him as a juror. Ellen and I each had twenty peremptory challenges. We could each reject twenty jurors just because we didn’t like the look of them. But we could ask them no questions except the one Nicky had worded and Stow, by his silence, had approved.

  I stood. “Mr. Martin,” I began, “Justice John Stoughton-Melville is a public figure. He ...”

  “I know damn well who he is,” the prospect shouted. “And I know who you are, too, Ellis Portal. You’re a drunk, a womanizer, a drug addict and a convict. You and that criminal over there,” he pointed at Stow who, for once, seemed to be taking some notice, “you two are a disgrace to this country. You both belong in jail, and I for one would be happy to help send you there.”

  I had to laugh. One tiny snicker.

  But Justice McKenzie heard me. He launched into a tirade.

  “You find something funny about this juror, do you, Mr. Portal?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “You think it humorous that a citizen of this country would use the sacred trust of the duty set upon him to demean the court?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “You find it a laughing matter that a man who is innocent until proven guilty is condemned by the very people who have been charged to fairly judge him?”

  McKenzie’s face was growing red. The veins were standing out on his neck. His fists were balled so tight that his knuckles were blue.

  I glanced at Ellen who, like me, was trying not to enrage the judge further by bursting into laughter.

  As for my sidekick, Nicky was looking from the outraged juror to the outraged judge as if it had occurred to him that McKenzie was going to hold me in contempt of court. That would mean that he would have to defend Stow himself.

  Justice McKenzie, however, had enough of humiliating me, and waved to three uniforms to assist the jury matron in clearing the two hundred potentials from the courtroom. In about one minute, they all disappeared as if swallowed.

  Then McKenzie turned his attention to Allan Martin. Throughout, the potential juror stood rigid and self-righteous. A fearless smugness suffused his face. Unfortunately, the courtroom is a place above all others where a person can make himself the center of attention and wreak havoc by doing so. The prospective juror did not flinch when Justice McKenzie turned on him. He was waiting for it.

  “You, sir,” the judge began in a voice that was calm, cold and authoritarian, “you, sir, have jeopardized these entire proceedings. Do you realize that?”

  “I do,” the juror answered defiantly.

  “And you appear to be entirely unrepentant?”

  “I am.”

  “Mr. Martin,” Justice McKenzie said, his voice beginning to rumble ominously, “you have no right to judge anyone in the court until such time as you become a sworn juror and have heard all the evidence presented relevant to the case at bar.”

  Justice McKenzie steadied himself with his two fists on the bench, gave me a meaningful look and declared to the juror, “It is you, sir, who are a disgrace to this court! It is you, sir, who are a reprobate and a scoundrel. It is you who have engaged in criminal behavior. It is you, sir, who belong in jail, and I am sending you there right now!” Mr. Martin’s belligerence disappeared like air from a popped balloon, and he trembled as he found himself being escorted to the cells. Stow was staring at the offending citizen with a bemused expression. He, like me, understood that the judge’s fine display had been meant to warn me and my daughter that we must be on our guard for the duration of the trial.

  “Your Honor.” I rose. “I move that we call another panel. Today’s prospective jurors have been tainted.”

  Ellen rose. “Not so, Your Honor. There’s no need to delay these proceedings. The accused ...”

  “Sit down, both of you. I’m not calling for another panel. Get together and figure out how to go with the panel we’ve got. This court is recessed until 2 p.m.”

  Ellen and I managed to agree that we’d talk over lunch. But then we argued as to whether we should have Oriental or Italian. Then we argued over whether we should go to Queen Street or Chinatown. Finally, unable to concur, we took Nicky’s suggestion. Over pastrami sandwiches, we discussed everything but the jurors. Nicky listened in fascinated silence as Ellen and I bickered. First, she brought up her mother.

  “Why do you think she comes to court every day, Dad?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she comes to see how you’re doing on your big case.”

  “Oh, get real, Daddy,” Ellen answered. “I’ve been a prosecutor for eight years. Mom’s never been in court before. She’s not there because of me.”

  Ellen balanced a delicate sliver of dill pickle between two fingers. She looked at it and not at me when she said, “Mom is in love ...”

  “Just one minute,” I answered, deciding that Nicky might as well know all my secrets. “She divorced me. And to marry somebody else, as I recall. What happened to that plan, anyway?”

  Ellen popped the pickle into her mouth and waved her fingers dismissively. “It didn’t work out. She broke the engagement. Not that you can blame her for wanting to do something. You were considering moving to a larger cardboard box prior to the divorce. What happened to that plan?”

  “How can you be so disrespectful?”

  Nicky looked a little surprised at the growing heat of the conversation.

  “I’m not disrespectful, I’m realistic,” Ellen declared. “And you should be, too.”

  “About what? I thought we came here to discuss the jury panel. You’d better get realistic about that. We need a new panel. This one is spoiled.”

  I turned to Nicky, sure he’d agree with me, but he seemed to be hanging on Ellen’s every word.

  “McKenzie said no and he means it,” Ellen declared.

  Again I turned to Nicky. He was nodding yes vigorously. “Whose side are you on?” I asked him.

  “The side of justice,” he said, tucking into his sandwich.

  “You call it justice when you’re ganging up on me?” I challenged. “And as for your mother, I don’t know what she wants from me. Maybe you’d better tell her to lay off.”

  “Take it easy,” Ellen snapped. “I didn’t say Mom is in love with you.” Frostily, she changed the subject. “Look, we’re here to discuss the jury panel, and I suggest we get to that topic right now.”

  “All right.” When we fought, I was always the one who felt guilty. When Ellen was small and now that she was a major player. I was willing to do anything she wanted. Except jeopardize my case.

  We all came up with a compromise. McKenzie agreed that the same panel be recalled and that they be questioned not only as to any prejudice
they might harbor due to Stow’s reputation, but also any bias they might now hold due to what they had seen and heard in court that morning. Sixty names were pulled from the drum, and by noon the next day, the first few jurors had been chosen.

  “Number one’s a fan already,” Nicky whispered. “Watch how she looks at you. She’s flirting. In a grandmotherly sort of way.”

  “Shut up. McKenzie’s on us.”

  It took until 5:30 that day to get twelve suitable jurors. As I participated in the selection, I stood close to the prisoner’s box in the middle of the courtroom, close enough for Stow to whisper instructions to me. This was standard procedure, and I decided to do it more out of respect for the traditions of the court than from any conviction that Stow would actually express interest in the men and women who would sit in judgment upon him.

  As it turned out, I was wrong. “Too young,” he whispered to me when a university student was called. I agreed, but I didn’t need to spend a challenge. I felt I could force Ellen to use her challenge to dismiss the kid.

  I was right. Ellen challenged the student. I still had all twenty challenges left.

  “Too timid. Won’t stand up to pressure,” Stow whispered. I agreed with him and spent a challenge to get rid of a slight woman who looked about to burst into tears.

  “Stay away from the women,” Stow whispered. “They’ll sympathize with the so-called victim.”

  Did he mean Harpur? The instruction chilled me.

  Ellen was taking her time. She painstakingly scrutinized posture, eye movement and voice as each prospect stood in the witness box for evaluation.

  Watch her,” I told Nicky, sitting back down at the defense table, where I could get a better look at Ellen’s reactions to the prospects. “She’s trying to load the jury with people who hate Stow on sight.”

  “It’s her right!” Nicky hissed. “She’s one smart lady. Why aren’t we doing the same thing?”

  Yes, my daughter was going for the jugular. Cutthroat. That’s what everybody and everything seems to be these days, too cutthroat for an old man. “Help me, then.”

  Nicky nodded. The next prospect entered the box. Nicky never let his eyes leave the man’s face as he stood and began, “Justice John Stoughton-Melville is a public figure. He has been written about extensively in the media ...”