The Jury Master

by Robert Dugoni

  “Typical. A year ago you would have eaten it out of the Dumpster. Now you’re a connoisseur.”

  He resealed the lid and replaced the bowl in the fridge. Then he grabbed an ice bag from the freezer and rummaged in a drawer under the counter for the roll of duct tape. In the living room he sprinkled fish food in the tank and watched the grouper dart ahead of the angelfish to get at the tiny shrimp. Sloane had bought the tank on impulse; fish seemed the right pet for a bachelor living near the ocean. He set down the ice bag, tore a strip of tape with his teeth, and set to the task of salvaging a seat cushion so he’d at least have a place to sit and ice his ankle when he heard the familiar three soft knocks on his door.

  Melda stood on the landing holding a bundle of envelopes. “I bring for you your mail, Mr. David. This time, it is not too much. Just the bills and the junk.”

  He had spent a year asking her to call him David, but it was a habit not meant to be broken. The mail reminded him of his mailbox. “Did you happen to notice that my mailbox was broken, Melda?”

  She looked puzzled. “Broken? In what way is broken?”

  “The door was open. The lock . . .” He tried to explain. “The lock was punched through.”

  She made a fist. “Punched?”

  “Missing. The lock was missing.” He could tell from the expression on her face that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Never mind. Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?”

  She shook her head. A smile creased her face. “I make apple pie. Tonight I bring for you a piece after my bingo.”

  Melda made apple pie for therapy. Sloane knew that the morning had unnerved her. He patted his stomach, still tight if no longer as hard as it once had been. “You must have a sixth sense, Melda. Whenever I get motivated to burn a few calories you bake an apple pie.”

  “You don’t want me to?” she asked, disappointed.

  “Have I ever said no to your apple pie?”

  The smile returned. “Tonight, then. I go to my bingo, then I bring for you pie.” She started down the landing, stopped, and put a hand to her temple. “I’m sorry. I not remember so well anymore.”

  “Something else?”

  “The telephones—they have been fixed?”

  “Fixed? Was there something wrong with your phone?”

  She shook her head. “No. Your phone.”

  “My phone? What was wrong with my phone?”

  She shrugged. “A man comes while you are gone and explains that the phones, they have broken and are in need of fixing.”

  “Did he say what was wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand these things. Trans . . . something is problem. I just show him your phone.”

  “Inside my apartment?”

  The storage closet off the carport housed the telephone equipment for the building. Sloane knew enough about the system to know that a problem would not have been limited to an individual apartment—especially not his, since he had not been home to report it.

  “He says something about testing your phones. I watched him.”

  Sloane picked up the phone from its cradle on the kitchen counter. It had a dial tone. “It seems to be working okay. Did anyone complain about problems with their phone?”

  She shook her head. “No. No problems.”

  “Did this man ask to go into the storage closet?”

  “No,” she said, more hesitant.

  “Did he test other phones?”

  “No. Just yours.” Melda looked startled. “I do something wrong?”

  The lawyer in him was already connecting the break-in of his apartment with the telephone repairman. If he was right, it eliminated the hypothesis that the break-in had been a random one.

  “Mr. David? I do something wrong?”

  Sloane shook his head. “No. I’m sure it’s fine, Melda. You’re sure it was the telephone company?”

  She nodded.

  “Did this man leave a card or some paperwork?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about a name?”

  “No name . . . He was nice man. Very pleasing.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine.” He made a mental note to call the telephone company Monday morning and ask if they had a record of a service call, though he suspected he already knew the answer. He wondered if the man could be a relative of one of the victims from his cases, someone with an ax to grind. “Can you describe this man for me? What did he look like?”

  She thought for a moment. “Smaller than you.” She flexed her arms and hunched her shoulders. “Thick muscles.”

  “What about his face? What did his face look like?” She ran a hand across the top of her head. “Short hair. Flat on top . . . Oh! He has bird on his arm.”

  “A bird?”

  “Eagle. You know.” Melda grimaced. “What is word? Colors . . .” She pointed to the inside of her forearm. “With needle.”

  “A tattoo?”

  “Yes. Tattoo. An eagle.”

  As if on cue, the telephone rang. “Well, I guess it’s fixed,” he said.

  She smiled. “I see you tonight.”

  “I won’t forget.” He closed the door and answered the phone.

  “David? Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.” It was Tina. “What are you doing home? I thought you were going on vacation.”

  “I had a change of plans,” he said. “Why are you calling if you didn’t think I’d be home?” he asked, then realized it was after five o’clock on a Friday night. “You really are bucking for a raise.”

  “Keep the money. Nothing’s worth this.”

  He heard more than her usual sarcasm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was going to leave you a message in case you called in. I didn’t want to blindside you first thing Monday morning.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising.”

  “It’s not. The proverbial shit is hitting the proverbial fan. Abbott Security sent over seven files this afternoon. Paul Abbott fired all of his other lawyers and wants you to handle them. Lucky you.”

  “I know. Bob Foster gave me the good news this morning.”

  “Really? Well, did His Majesty also tell you that one of the cases is set for trial—Monday?”

  “This Monday?”

  “This Monday.”

  Sloane laughed out of frustration. “We’ll get a continuance.”

  “No, we won’t. Amy Dawson rushed down ex parte to San Mateo Superior this afternoon, and Judge Margolis flat-out denied her. Apparently it’s Abbott’s third change of counsel. He sounds like a hell of a guy. Remind me to lose his address for the client Christmas party. And Judge Margolis made some vague reference to a top-gun lawyer being prepared, so you better be on top of your game. Abbott’s called three times to talk to you, and the last time he wanted your cell phone and your home number and wasn’t being polite about it.”

  “How bad is the file?”

  “Amy said it’s not great. One of Abbott’s security guards apparently robbed the jewelry store he was supposed to be guarding. The guy was a convicted burglar. They hire only the best, don’t they?”

  Sloane would have bitched, but bitching to Tina could be like preaching to the choir, and the law was like a marriage: for better or for worse—it was his job. “I better find out how deep the water is. Tell Amy I’m on my way in. Order us some Hunan, will you?”

  He hung up and began to prepare mentally for a long evening. Then he tossed his mail into his briefcase—with the amount of time he spent at the office, most of his bills were delivered there anyway—pulled his sodden sweatshirt over his head, and hurried into the bathroom for a quick shower.

  14

  Camano Island,

  Western Washington

  CHARLES JENKINS SAT back on the heels of his muddied boots, pulled the leather glove from his hand, and wiped a forearm across his brow, leaving flecks of dirt to mix with beads of perspiration. Though the weather was cool, sweat discolored the front and back of his sweatshirt
beneath the bib of his overalls. Overhead, a flock of Canada geese flew in formation across the Northwest summer sky, a V backlit by the fading light of a dying sun. On the southern horizon Mount Rainier loomed, the glaciers a golden glow.

  Jenkins slid his hand back into the glove and continued to pull weeds from a row of tomato plants, sifting through the pungent mulch of coffee-brown soil, horse manure, and yard waste, picking out twigs and rocks. In the pasture behind him the white Arabians galloped, kicking their hind legs and snorting as they lowered their heads and charged Lou and Arnold. Next to eating, his dogs’ greatest pleasure in life was annoying the nine-hundred-pound animals. Their persistent barking was tolerable only because there were no neighbors for them to disturb. A thick forest of old-growth cedar, hemlock, and maple bordered Jenkins’s ten-acre pasture to the west and north. A dairy farm bordered the east, an expanse of green lawn that lay like a blanket over soft rolling hills. Puget Sound was a quarter mile to the south, with only the white clapboard Presbyterian church and the two-lane road that circled Camano Island in between.

  Sensing a moment of rare silence, Jenkins sat up and looked over his shoulder to see if the Arabians’ hooves had finally found their mark, but Lou and Arnold remained upright, their sleek bodies rigid, ears perked, noses sniffing at the air.

  Jenkins’s senses remained just as sharp, though he’d had a bit of help. When he ventured into Stanwood that afternoon for bird netting to protect his prized vegetables, Gus at the hardware store told him someone had been around asking for him by name. That was also when Jenkins spotted the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

  The car came from the east, slowing as it neared the church, an obvious landmark someone had given the driver. He lost it momentarily as it passed behind the clapboard building, and picked it up again as it emerged on the far side and turned onto the dirt and gravel easement. The car slowed as it made its way up the road, then disappeared again behind the thick blackberry brush that marked the surveyor’s line between the church’s property and his own. No matter. He knew the path like the lines of his own hand. The gravel would end, giving way to a dirt road pocked with potholes. At the fork, just beyond another tangle of blackberry bushes threatening to overwhelm his dilapidated toolshed, the driver would turn right because the path appeared wider and, therefore, used more often. He would drive until he reached the creek, a dead end, and have to carefully back the car out. The left fork was so narrow the brush would scrape the sides of the car and not clear until the carport, a questionable wooden structure attached to the three-room caretaker’s cottage. The more adventurous visitors would actually get out of their car and knock on the front door. Tonight the knock would go unanswered. The owner knelt in the garden pulling weeds from a row of his tomato plants.

  At the sound of the car door shutting with a thud, Lou and Arnold bounded through the thigh-high brush nipping and jumping at each other. Their sudden appearance and sheer size—two Rhodesian ridgebacks each weighing 130 pounds, with a natural Mohawk of hair along their backs—would cause instant alarm. But their wagging tails and slobbering would reveal them to be harmless. Jenkins questioned their pedigree. Said to have been bred in South Africa to track and hunt lions, his dogs wouldn’t hunt a squirrel.

  Jenkins bent down and continued mixing the compost with the native soil. Minutes later he heard Lou and Arnold ripping through the tall grass at a frantic pace and sensed from their stops and starts that they were bringing someone to him. Reaching him, they circled, tongues hanging from the sides of their mouths. Jenkins removed his gloves, picked up the garden hoe, and stood, his six-foot-five-inch, 230-pound frame stretching from the ground like the stalk in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fable. He wiped the dirt from his right hand onto his left pant leg, moved as if to repeat the motion, but spun instead to his right with a grip on the handle of the garden hoe, the blade whipping backhand through the air.

  15

  SLOANE SLID THE binder back onto its shelf, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His optometrist had said he’d likely need reading glasses by forty, but the strain indicated that he was a couple of years ahead of schedule. The good news, however, was that, as with most legal fires, the forest fire Tina had painted over the telephone turned out to be a brush fire. Sloane’s instincts were correct: Judge Margolis wanted to force a settlement, and rightly so. The case should not be tried. After an hour on the telephone with Abbott, Sloane finally convinced him to fund the settlement and be done with it, but not before he had to threaten to refuse to represent Abbott Security if he did not. Abbott made threats of his own but, in the end, agreed.

  Ordinarily it would have taken Sloane half the time to get through the file. Over the years he had forged the ability to block out everything that could distract from a task at hand. Work was his therapy—avoidance therapy, perhaps, but it had helped him to cope.

  Not this time.

  His mind kept wandering, slipping back to the break-in at his apartment, and Melda’s subsequent revelation of a telephone repairman at the building beforehand. His legal training mandated that he see them as related, if for no other reason than that neither could be logically explained and that Sloane’s apartment was the focus of both. He sat down at his desk and manipulated chopsticks to pick at the remnants of a carton of spicy beef that filled the room with the aroma of red peppers, green onions, and garlic, and washed down the final bite with a bottle of Tsingtao beer. He had no hard evidence that the two incidents were related; still, he had the persistent feeling he was missing something, some crucial fact that would put the two oddities together. It was the curse of being a lawyer: No two facts were unrelated; there was always a thread. There was always a conspiracy. No wonder lawyers were the most persecuted people he’d ever met—the persecution was of their own doing.

  Do you have any enemies, Mr. Sloane?

  In his mind’s eye, Sloane saw and heard the police officer who came to his apartment to investigate the burglary. He had asked Sloane that question as they surveyed the damage.

  “It looks to me like you pissed someone off,” he’d said. “Do you have any enemies, Mr. Sloane?”

  Sloane told him it could be any number of people, given his occupation. “Why do you ask?”

  The officer led him to the front door of the apartment and pointed to the lock. “The lock was disengaged, not broken.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “It means there was no forced entry. Nobody broke the door down. They either had a key or picked the lock; someone who knew what he was doing. Any ideas?”

  “None,” Sloane said to his empty office. He dropped the chopsticks into the empty carton and threw both in the garbage can by his desk, then pulled his mail from his briefcase, flipping through it until coming to the 9 ¥ 12 rust-colored envelope. His name and address were hand-printed on the front.

  Tina knocked, opened his door, and walked in.

  “You’re still here?” He put the envelope down as she handed him a draft of the settlement agreement he had dictated to put on the record Monday morning.

  “In body only,” she said. “My mind departed at five.”

  “I didn’t expect you to do this tonight.”

  “Now you tell me.” She brushed an errant hair from her cheek and tugged at the sleeves of the Irish-knit cardigan draped over her shoulders. “What? Do I have something on my face?” She wiped the side of her mouth in the reflection in the window.

  He had been staring at her. He had thought Tina attractive the moment she was introduced as his assistant, but had really noticed her when she walked unescorted into the firm’s twenty-five-year anniversary party wearing a black backless gown and a strand of pearls. They had sat together, each without spouse or date, and danced more than once. But then the clock struck midnight, and Tina left quickly. It was just as well. There could be nothing between them. She was his employee; a relationship would only lead to disaster, like all his relationships, a convoy of failures. But un
like those women, who were eager to be married, Tina gave no indication that that was something in her future. Sloane had come to respect her as intelligent and mature beyond her years, always putting the well-being of her son, Jake, first.

  “I was just wondering who’s watching Jake.”

  She turned from the window. “Would you believe his father? I called to see if hell had also frozen over.” She put up a hand. “My mother says I shouldn’t say those things, that I need to be more diplomatic. ‘Frank’s not a bad man. He’s just not a very good father.’” She rolled her eyes, then nodded to the beer. “You got any more of those, or did you drink them all?”

  Sloane popped open a beer and handed it across the desk. “You want some Chinese? I have an unopened carton of garlic chicken.”

  “I ordered for myself. You paid.” She held up the bottle. “Cheers, here’s to a rip-roaring Friday night.” They tapped bottles, and she sat in a chair across his desk. “So where were you going?”

  “What’s that?”

  “On your vacation, where were you going?”

  “Oh, just up to the mountains for a few days. Yosemite.”

  “Rock climbing?”

  “Nothing serious. I’m not in shape for it. I just like the mental challenge and the exercise.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “I appreciate you sticking around tonight. I hope I didn’t ruin any plans.”

  “Yeah, I had a hot date—my mother really loves the Antiques Road Show . . . Don’t worry about it. It gave me a chance to study, and it gave Jake a chance to spend time with the man supposed to be his father. Oops, there I go again.”

  Sloane chuckled. “Studying?”

  “Don’t say it like you’re shocked.”

  “I was laughing at your comment. Are you going to school or something?”

  “Or something.” She laughed, toying with him. “You are shocked.”

  “Give me a break here; you’ve never said anything. Are you taking classes?”