Jury Town

by Stephen Frey

  Knowles & Williams was the largest and most prestigious Richmond law firm.

  As active as Eldridge was, it was easy to forget he was seventy-six. Today, he looked it. “But—”

  Eldridge held up a hand. “I’m retiring, Mitch, in ninety days. I need to take care of you before I do. So the managing partner at Knowles and I have agreed on a package for you. When I retire, you’ll go into the firm as a senior associate, two years away from partner. You’ll make two hundred thousand a year to start. He’s going to give you a decent signing bonus as well, so you can pay off some of that debt your wife’s pushed you into.”

  Immense relief flooded Mitch. “I don’t know what to say except thank you.” After the initial shock, a stunning realization hit him head-on. He had to disengage from Salvatore Celino. As long as Salvatore was alive, he’d be in the mobster’s debt—and no lawyer’s salary could pay that off.

  “But you’ll stay here with me until I retire.” Eldridge leaned over the desk. “And we have a problem you need to take care of immediately, a serious problem.” Eldridge pursed his lips. “Someone’s been going through my office.”

  For the third time during this meeting, Mitch’s eyes raced to his uncle’s.

  “I’m certain some of my files have been moved overnight several times in the last few weeks. Very slightly, but I noticed in the morning as soon as I got here.”

  “I’ll have the lock changed on your office door immediately.”

  Eldridge shook his head. “We need to take it a step further than that. After hours and as soon as possible, I want you to have a hidden camera installed. You must find out who’s been going through my office.”

  “I’ll get to it tonight.” He’d been the one going through his uncle’s office, of course, so there wasn’t really any need to follow through here. But if he didn’t, Eldridge might become suspicious. “We’ll find out who’s been in here,” he assured his uncle confidently, feeling emboldened. He’d had nothing to fear after all. He’d just been paranoid all along. “What else haven’t you told me about Project Archer?”

  Eldridge exhaled heavily. “You must keep this absolutely confidential.”

  “When have I ever violated that?”

  “Never. It’s just one of those things I have to say to everyone. You know that, Mitch.”

  Mitch nodded. “What’s the big secret?”

  Eldridge’s pause stretched out long enough that Mitch thought he’d changed his mind. “Project Archer didn’t start with Victoria Lewis,” Eldridge said finally. “It started with the United States attorney general.”

  Mitch caught his breath. “With Michael Delgado?”

  Eldridge nodded. “Delgado and I believe a growing list of high-profile cases are being manipulated through jury tampering. Whoever is behind this is using very personal information against jurors to blackmail them into voting certain ways. These cases aren’t just civil matters or isolated crimes. They’re cases that affect the very ability of state and federal governments to enforce laws. And, to the extent these bad verdicts keep coming down, they set precedents for other cases. We must stop these people.” The judge grimaced. “Even if we can’t figure out who ‘these people’ are.”

  “So you put jurors behind walls and guards where they can’t be manipulated.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mitch shook his head. “And one of them is going to be Sofia?”

  Eldridge nodded. “Victoria still had a few spots left to fill. Sofia’s struggling with that same question I asked you earlier. She won’t be able to see or even speak to her children for two years. But she’s in a different place than you are. She can’t earn what you will in private practice, not even close. She wants to see her kids go to college. What she earns at Jury Town will enable her to secure a very nice future for her kids and herself.”

  “She’s a very—”

  “Strange thing about her,” Eldridge interrupted.

  “Oh?”

  “She doesn’t like you very much.”

  An uncomfortable expression clouded Mitch’s face. He shrugged. “I barely even know her.”

  “She wouldn’t come up here until she was convinced you were gone. And when she first arrived, it seemed she had something important she wanted to say about you. After I asked her about the possibility of joining Project Archer, she didn’t want to discuss it anymore.” Eldridge held his gaze. “Any idea what was on her mind?”

  CHAPTER 22

  GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

  “Do we get David Racine or not?” Cameron asked as he sat down at the small wrought-iron table on the intimate slate patio. A small yard extended in a semicircle out from the slate. Otherwise, the quaint Cape Codder was an oasis in a desert of dense forest.

  “We’ll know tomorrow,” she answered, taking three sips of her favorite Merlot. She’d offered Cam a glass of wine, too, as soon as they’d arrived. But he’d declined.

  “Why are you so laser focused on David Racine joining Project Archer?” Cameron asked. “Why is he—”

  “Ms. Lewis.”

  She and Cameron glanced up simultaneously at the sharply dressed, African-American who’d just walked up to them from around one corner of the house. Tall and impressively fit, Dez Braxton was the man Cameron had hired to lead Victoria’s security detail after the attack on Stony Man Mountain. He was a highly decorated ex–Navy SEAL.

  “Yes, Dez?”

  “You need to move inside,” he answered as he held one long forefinger to the earpiece of his communication device. “I’ve got a number of my people here, but we can’t possibly cover the forest in front of you as well as everything else with any degree of confidence,” he said, pointing to the tree line at the edge of the grass. “You are vulnerable to sniper fire.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she answered politely, “but thank you, Dez.”

  “Victoria, you need to listen to him.”

  “I’m not going to let my life be dictated by—”

  “Ms. Lewis,” Braxton cut in, “I need you to go inside right now. A pickup truck is parked on the side of the main road less than half a mile away. No one’s in it, and we have no idea how long it’s been there. We’re running plates as we speak. Please, Ms. Lewis,” he said politely but persistently when she didn’t react, pointing over her shoulder at the patio door. “Let’s go.”

  She picked up the glass of wine off the iron table and stalked toward the door. As she was about to go inside, she stopped and turned back. “Dez.”

  He glanced up from a text. “Yes?”

  “I know you’re just doing your job. I’ll try to be better about listening.”

  “Good. Now go.”

  “This is already getting to be a major problem.” She eased into the chair behind her study desk—tapping the desk three times gently—as Cameron relaxed into the chair in front. “Now I can’t go out on my patio and enjoy a nice evening?” As she glanced at the broken column inside the gold frame, she slipped the bracelet from her wrist and put it down in the only open spot amidst the clutter. “And my driveway looks like a Beverly Hills Cadillac dealership with all those black Escalades out there.”

  “Dez Braxton is the best,” Cameron countered. “He doesn’t usually work outside DC, but I leaned on an old friend up in the District to help get him down here for you. You must listen to him.” Cameron pointed at the bracelet she’d just taken off, the plain silver band from which three pennies hung. “You’ve been wearing that a lot lately.”

  “It’s a charm bracelet my mother made me,” she answered. “What’s the update from Jury Town?”

  “We have four trials in progress, including the Commonwealth Electric Power case. Two more should start tomorrow, and no one’s reporting any issues. I spoke to Clint Wolf and George Garrison, the head of the guards. I also spoke to the judge in the CEP case. Everybody’s feeling good. Everything’s running very smoothly.”

  “Good,” she murmured, picking up the bracelet as the Merlot began taking the edge off.


  “Why did your mother take that particular lode of legal tender out of circulation?” Cameron asked. “There must be a story.”

  Victoria smiled nostalgically. “I found these three pennies one day while I was hiking up Stony Man Mountain with my father. In fact, I found them right on the overlook. I was six.” She shook her head. “I know you’ll laugh because you aren’t superstitious at all, but ever since that day, three’s been my lucky number.”

  “Yeah, that’s so hard to tell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You always tap the microphone three times before you start a speech. You tap a desk or table three times when you sit down. Sometimes you sip your drink three times in a row. And, of course, you never step on a crack anywhere.”

  “That last one’s just the OCD kicking in.”

  “If you were OCD, your desk wouldn’t look like a battle zone,” Cameron argued, nodding at the chaos.

  “I gave these three pennies to my father the day he went to prison,” she said softly as she gazed at them. “Right before I said good-bye to him.”

  Cameron’s eyes fell to his lap. “Oh.”

  “He said he’d give them back to me as soon as he was released, which he did. Know what his cell number was at Archer Prison?”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t two or four.”

  She took a long swallow of wine. “It was 333.”

  “Wow,” Cameron whispered.

  He’d shivered, Victoria noticed, as if her answer had sent an eerie chill up his spine. “And listen to this. With a year to go in his sentence, my mother was running out of money.” She took another guzzle of wine. She was finally starting to relax from the stress of the day. “The bank was about to take our farm, and she was a mess.”

  “Understandably.”

  “One night I had a dream about my mother playing the lottery using his prison cell’s number. So I convinced her to do it. I made her go to the store the next day, and I made sure she played 333. She won a hundred thousand dollars, and we saved the farm. That’s a true story.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Absolutely. My father gave these pennies back to me after he got out, just like he promised. Said they really helped him, and that they really were lucky. So my mother made the bracelet for me after he died two years later.”

  They were silent for a few moments.

  “You better stay off the cocaine,” Cameron said somberly. “Like I said the other night, I don’t want to experience that again.”

  Victoria’s eyes flashed to his. He figured she was vulnerable after telling the story, so he’d attacked. For her own good, but still. “I know.”

  “I’m just glad I never saw it while you were governor.”

  “I never did it while I was governor,” she said sharply.

  “Okay.”

  She hadn’t liked his tone. “Well, I didn’t.”

  “So when did you—”

  “About six months ago, I met up with an old friend from college, and she had some. We went out to dinner and when we got back to her house, we did it.” Victoria took a deep breath. “I’d done it with her at UVA all those years ago.” She sighed heavily. “She gets me some every once in a while. I don’t know, Cameron. I guess it was the pressure of getting Project Archer executed and, like you said, the ghosts and the demons from the prison. It’s not an excuse; it’s an explanation. I get that I’m weak, and I hate myself for it. And I’m not going to do it ever—”

  Victoria was interrupted by the sound of the patio door bursting open and footsteps sprinting toward the study.

  “Yes?” Victoria asked in a relieved voice as Dez rushed into the room. She had no idea who’d been coming at her. And, after what had happened on Stony Man, she found her heart suddenly beating a million miles an hour. “What is it?”

  “I need to get you out of here right now, Ms. Lewis. We have a situation.”

  CHAPTER 23

  JURY TOWN

  The front-end loader roared into the massive pile of gray ash towering over it, scooped up a huge bucket full of the toxic material, then backed off, turned right, and moved away from the cameraperson who was obviously filming from a stand of heavy brush.

  A moment later the front-end loader was roaring toward another camera in the grainy video, toward a second individual who was filming from inside a grove of trees. The vehicle headed past the cameraperson and then out onto a short dock, where it dumped its load onto a small barge.

  When the video finished and the lights in Jury Room Seven came up, Kate glanced first at Hal Wilson and then at Felicity West, who glanced back with raised eyebrows. It seemed obvious that both of them felt the same way she did: it was going to be very difficult for the Commonwealth Electric Power lawyers to convince them that coal ash had not been deliberately dumped into the river that ran beside the generating plant outside Abingdon, Virginia.

  Kate had played pool many times with her four older brothers, two of whom were very good.

  But not like Felicity. The tall redhead had just destroyed Hal Wilson in three straight games of eight ball. Wilson hadn’t been able to drop a single shot in. Now Kate felt like the next shark victim.

  A dozen players in the large poolroom had stopped their games on the four other tables to watch, which wasn’t helping Kate’s nerves. They, too, had noticed Felicity’s skill as she’d wiped the floor with Wilson three times in a row.

  “You break,” Felicity called as she chalked her cue.

  “You beat Hal,” Kate called back, nodding at the foreman of the Commonwealth Electric jury, who’d stuck around to watch. “You get the break, right?”

  “It’s okay. Go ahead.”

  Kate wasn’t going to argue. She knew she needed all the help she could get.

  She placed the cue ball on the tan felt near the left cushion, leaned down, curled her left forefinger around the smooth lacquered wood of the cue, took a deep breath, and fired.

  “Excellent!” Felicity shouted as the cue ball slammed into the triangle of balls at the far end of the long table with a loud crack, sending a stripe and a solid into separate pockets as the rack dispersed. “Nice break. You got one of each. Call it.”

  Kate heaved a sigh of relief as she glanced around the table. She’d been worried about scratching—whiffing on the strike or sending the cue ball flying off the table after hitting it. “Solids, I guess.” Neither option looked great given the way the balls had broken.

  “Okay,” Felicity said, “I’m stripes.”

  “Four in the side,” Kate called.

  She lined up the shot and gently rolled the cue toward the purple ball. It caromed on contact and almost dropped in the pocket, then bounced away from the cushion at the last second, to the groan of the crowd.

  In short order Felicity dropped the six stripes remaining on the table and then the eight ball—in a row. The crowd shouted and clapped.

  “That woman is good,” Wilson said to Kate as he placed his cue back in the stand hanging from the wall. “See you tomorrow at trial.”

  “Wait,” Kate called to him as he turned to go. “Let’s get Felicity and go to dinner.”

  Thirty minutes later the three of them were finishing a delicious meal in the Central Zone.

  “I’m going to gain twenty pounds while I’m in here,” Wilson muttered as he ate the last bite of apple pie, then patted his paunch.

  Felicity laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” he went back at her as he broke into a self-conscious smile. “Maybe you’re satisfied with the rabbit food,” he said, pointing at the large chef’s salad she’d barely touched, “but how could I possibly turn down a T-bone and baked potato with all the toppings?”

  “Let’s talk about the case,” Kate suggested, pushing her tray to one side as she leaned over the table. The hum of conversation was loud with nearly two hundred people eating. “Commonwealth is so guilty. That video we watched today proved it. And it sure sounds like everybody up the chain knew wh
at was going on, including the senior executives.”

  “We’re not supposed to do this outside the jury room,” Wilson warned. “You heard the judge the first day.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Hal. What difference does it make?”

  “And the video didn’t prove anything,” Wilson objected, unable to hold back. “It could have been made anywhere. We’ve got to hear from the guy who drove the front-end loader and the other guy who drove the barge. In fact, we’ve got a lot more testimony to hear.”

  “CEP is guilty of dumping coal ash in that river,” Kate said confidently. “We need to get on with it.”

  “What’s your rush?” Felicity asked.

  “I want to make history,” Kate answered bluntly. “I want to be a member of the first jury to render a verdict at Jury Town. Fifty years from now, they’ll write about us, especially when all the other states and the Feds do the same thing as Virginia. Think about it. It’s our chance to be part of something huge.”

  “I’m out of here,” Wilson said, standing up. “As foreman, I can’t listen to this. I’m going to watch Dirty Harry. I always loved that movie.”

  “You think they’re guilty, don’t you?” Kate asked Felicity as Wilson walked off.

  Felicity shrugged. “I guess. Like Hal said, we’ve got a lot more testimony to hear.”

  “Where’d you learn to play pool like that?” Kate liked Felicity. She had right from the start, since they’d eaten lunch together the first day of the trial.

  She shrugged again. “Around.”

  “Did you ever play professionally?”

  “Nah. You know, you’re pretty good yourself.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kate asked, her expression coiled in disbelief. “You killed me.”

  “I saw the way you broke. You’re good. Where’d you learn?”

  “Four older brothers. Maybe you could teach me a few things they didn’t.”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you do before you came in here?”

  “I was an engineer.”

  “You design bridges and buildings?”