Southern Lights

by Danielle Steel

  “He has a right to a trial,” the public defender said through pursed lips. It was like talking to a wall, and Alexa went back to her office more than anything annoyed. The trial was going to be a media circus, and he was going down for a hundred years. So be it. She had work to do. She had meetings with the FBI all week, forensic witnesses to line up from nine states, testimony to organize, her opening statement to finish. She had a thousand ducks to get in order, and only a few weeks left to do it. There were so many investigators on the case now that she didn’t know all of them by name, and the FBI was sitting in on every meeting, to make sure that all proper procedure was maintained. No one wanted a mistrial and to do it all again. A change of venue had been discussed but rejected since Quentin was known now in every state. The case had made national news. And the judge they had been given was notorious for being tough on the press, so that was good. For the next several weeks before it started, and as long as it took after, Alexa was going to be eating, sleeping, and dreaming the trial.

  She called Savannah from the office every day, but never had time to talk long, and by the time she got home at night, it was too late to call her. Savannah understood and was busy with her life in Charleston, with school, friends, and her boyfriend.

  It was two weeks before the trial, as Tom was watching the news in his den one night, when he saw a news conference come on and realized it was Alexa. He shouted to Savannah to come in and watch it, and Daisy came in too. They stood in front of the television and watched Alexa speak eloquently about the upcoming murder trial involving eighteen victims. There were swarms of police and FBI around her, but the microphones were all pointing to Alexa as she gave careful, coherent, intelligent answers to the questions they asked her. She looked calm, cool, and competent. Not knowing what the fuss was about, Luisa came in too, and stood there, watching her for a moment, and then walked away with pursed lips set in a hard line.

  When the press conference was over, Tom looked at his oldest daughter and complimented her mother.

  “She was very good. That’s going to be one mess of a trial for her to handle, and the media’s already going crazy. I thought she was very impressive, didn’t you?” Savannah agreed with him and was very proud of her, and Daisy was excited too. She’d never seen anyone she knew on TV before, and she smiled up at her sister.

  “She looked like a movie star,” she said as Savannah smiled, and Luisa came back in and told them it was time to go down to dinner. She made no comment about the broadcast, and it had obviously irritated her. She seemed to be absolutely incapable of being gracious about Alexa. She didn’t want to hear about her, see anything of her, or have anything to do with her daughter, and she was constantly aware that Tom had forced her to have Savannah there. All she wanted was for her to go away.

  The coup de grâce for Luisa came three days before the trial when the invitations to Travis and Scarlette’s wedding arrived in the mail and Savannah got one. She was opening it as Luisa came home from the hairdresser. She recognized it immediately and snapped at Savannah.

  “Where did you get that?” She acted as though she had stolen it or was opening someone else’s mail.

  “It’s mine,” Savannah said, instantly sounding defensive. “It came in the mail. It had my name on it,” she said to the evil stepmother who tried to turn every day into a living hell for her and sometimes succeeded. Without her father to defend her constantly, Savannah’s life would have been miserable. He buffered everything for her, but now and then Luisa got the best of her anyway.

  “They sent you an invitation to the wedding?” She looked horrified and snatched it from Savannah’s hand. She marched into Tom’s study with it five minutes later and waved it at him in fury. “I will not have her at our son’s wedding!” she said, trembling with rage as she faced him. “She doesn’t belong there. She’s not his full sister. And I won’t be humiliated at my own son’s wedding.” He understood quickly what had happened when he saw the invitation she was holding and shook his head.

  “If she’s here when they get married, you can’t not have her at the wedding. She’s not going to sit home like Cinderella while the rest of us are there.”

  “And if she’s not still here at the time of the wedding?” She didn’t want her coming back for it. She wanted her gone. Forever. And surely not coming back for a family event as important as this. Everyone who was anyone in South Carolina would be there, and from neighboring states.

  “Then it’s up to Scarlette and Travis if they want to invite her. May I remind you that we’re not giving the wedding? Scarlette’s parents are. It’s entirely up to them.” He tried to sidestep it, but Luisa wouldn’t let him.

  “Who put her on the list?”

  “I have no idea,” he answered.

  Luisa called Scarlette about it five minutes later and told her daughter-in-law in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want Savannah at their wedding.

  “Mother Beaumont,” Scarlette said gently, “I don’t think that’s right. She’s Travis’s sister, and I like Savannah very much. There are going to be eight hundred guests at the reception, although only three hundred at the church. I don’t think it will hurt anyone to have her at our wedding.” Scarlette persisted, making it clear that she was not going to be rude to Savannah.

  “It will hurt me!” Her future mother-in-law shouted into the phone. “And you wouldn’t want that, would you?” It was a clear warning shot across her bow.

  “Of course not. I’ll seat her at the opposite end of the tent from you,” Scarlette reassured her, and Luisa hung up on her brusquely and was in a rage for the next two hours.

  “Maybe I’ll be gone,” Savannah said quietly to her father a little later. “The trial should be over by then.”

  “It would be fun for you to come to the wedding. Half of Charleston will be there. With eight hundred guests, you won’t be able to find anyone you know, if you want to. Luisa will calm down about it.” He reassured her, and tried not to look as upset as he was himself. Luisa was like a dog with a bone and just wouldn’t let go of it. She wanted Savannah out of their lives. It was a difficult position for a seventeen-year-old girl to be in, and even harder for him, constantly torn between his wife and his daughter. It was hurtful for Savannah and exhausting for him. Daisy tried to stay under the radar as much as possible.

  Savannah spoke to her mother that night and mentioned the invitation to her, and Alexa startled her daughter when she said she had gotten an invitation to the wedding too.

  “Would you go, Mom?” Savannah couldn’t imagine her going, not if Luisa would be there.

  “No, sweetheart, I wouldn’t. But it was nice of them to ask me. You can go if you want to. I don’t think I should. Luisa would have a coronary, or she might poison my soup.” Savannah laughed at what she said.

  “There will be eight hundred guests there. Dad says she’ll never even see us if we’re there.”

  “I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, Savannah.”

  “I know, Mom. But I’d like to go, and I’d rather go with you.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s talk about it after the trial. I can’t think about it right now. Weddings are the last thing on my mind.” Alexa was going in a thousand directions at once.

  She’d had another press conference that day, and the public defender had given one too. The PD insisted that this was all an unfortunate misunderstanding, of an innocent man who had been framed, and it would be cleared up at the trial. She said she had every confidence that Luke Quentin would walk free, as the innocent man he was.

  She looked and sounded even crazier when Savannah saw it on TV later that day. Daisy was watching with her and looked confused. Savannah had the news on in her room now constantly. Her mother was on TV every day.

  “Did he do it or didn’t he?” Daisy asked her.

  “That’s up to the jury to decide. But he did it. Believe me. They’re going to convict him and send him to prison.”

  “Then why did the other
lady say he didn’t?”

  “That’s her job. She has to defend him. And it’s my mom’s job to prove he did it.” Daisy nodded. She was getting daily lessons on the criminal justice system from Savannah. The judge had banned cameras in the courtroom, but once the trial started, it would be a madhouse in the hallways and on the courthouse steps.

  The day the trial started, Savannah watched the news before she went to school. She watched it again in the cafeteria during her lunch break, and knowing that Savannah’s mother was the prosecutor, a crowd of students gathered around. Alexa had been surrounded by reporters before she went into the courthouse, but she didn’t stop. They would be doing jury selection for the next several days.

  Arthur Lieberman, the judge in the case, was a stern-looking man in his fifties. He had short white hair, and eyes that took in everything in his courtroom. He was an ex-Marine and tolerated no nonsense. He hated the press, and he didn’t like attorneys, neither for the prosecution nor for the defense, who wasted his time with useless motions and frivolous objections. He called Alexa and Judy Dunning into his chambers at the beginning of the case, and gave them a sobering lecture and stern warnings about what he expected of them.

  “I want no nonsense in my courtroom, counselors, no funny tricks, no playing with the jury in any way, no improper procedures. I’ve never had a trial overturned, there has never been a mistrial in my courtroom, and I don’t intend this one to be the first. Is that clear?” Both women nodded and said, “Yes, Your Honor,” like dutiful children. “You have a client to defend,” he said, looking at Judy, “and you have eighteen victims to prove the defendant is responsible for killing. There is no more serious matter than this one. I don’t want any irresponsible shenanigans in my courtroom, or histrionics or unnecessary drama. And watch what you say to the press!” he admonished and dismissed them summarily.

  Jury selection began half an hour later and seemed endless. Alexa sat at the prosecutor’s table flanked by Jack Jones on one side and Sam Lawrence on the other.

  Alexa had come to respect Sam as they prepared the trial. He was a nitpicker, about everything. But she discovered rapidly that he was right, and he had made her even more careful than she normally was. They had shared lunch at her desk many times in the past months. He was in his fifties, she knew he had been a widower for years and had devoted his entire life to the FBI. She knew that when they won the case, it would be in part due to his help. He hated Quentin, and the case, and was as determined to put him away as Jack and Alexa and the DA. That was his only goal, she realized early on, not trying to screw her over or take the case away from her, even if the regional FBI director would have liked to. Senior Special Agent Sam Lawrence wanted the best person to do the job, and to prosecute the case, and Alexa had his full support. He smiled as she sat down next to him, and jury selection began.

  It was a long, exhausting process. A hundred potential jurors had been selected, after all those were dismissed who were pregnant, sick, couldn’t get away from their jobs, spoke no English, were taking care of dying relatives, and had been able to come up with convincing reasons to be excused. And Alexa knew that there would be many more with similar excuses amid the hundred who sat crowded into the courtroom, praying they’d be sent away. The judge explained to all of them that it would be a long case, that it involved multiple homicides, and that testimony and arguments would go on for many weeks or even more than a month. Those to whom that presented an undue hardship, or had medical conditions that prevented them from serving, were to identify themselves to the clerk of the court. He pointed him out, and within minutes, there was a line of about twenty people standing in front of the clerk. The other eighty sat waiting expectantly to be questioned by both attorneys to see if they would qualify or be dismissed. Among them were people of all races, ages, both sexes, all of whom looked like ordinary people and were, everything from doctors to housewives, teachers to mailmen to students, all sat staring expectantly at Judy and Alexa.

  Luke Quentin had been quietly brought in as the process began, wearing a suit, and he was neither shackled nor cuffed. Since he had shown no signs of violence during the months in jail, awaiting trial, he was allowed to appear like a civilized person, and not in handcuffs and chains, so as not to unduly influence the jury or make him look more menacing, although they knew what he was there for. Alexa noticed when she glanced cursorily at him that he was wearing a brand-new white shirt. She did not meet his eyes, but saw that Judy smiled a reassuring smile at him when he came in, and patted his arm when he sat down. He looked calm and collected and anything but scared, as his eyes roved over the jury, as though he were planning to pick them himself. Technically, he had the right to question them too, but Alexa doubted he would.

  The first juror was Asian and misunderstood Alexa’s questions four times, and two of Judy’s, and was thanked and dismissed. The second was recently arrived from Puerto Rico, a young woman who looked terrified and said she had four children and two jobs and couldn’t stay, and she left too. Alexa knew the kind of juror she wanted, solid citizens, preferably of an age to be the parents of people the same age as their victims, and of course the parents of girls. The public defender was going to do everything in her power to keep them off the jury. It was a game where each attorney attempted to set the chess pieces up to her best advantage. The prosecution and defense each had twenty peremptory challenges, simply based on the fact that they didn’t like the answers to their questions. Relatives of law enforcement officers, or anyone too closely related to the legal or the criminal justice system, were rarely kept on juries. Cops themselves were dismissed, so were certain professions, notoriously lawyers, anyone who might be prejudiced, or who had a relative who had been murdered or the victim of a violent crime. They tried to weed out all forms of bias or excessive sympathy for either side. The process was laborious, and slow, and took the entire week, which Alexa had expected. She thought it might take even longer.

  And during the entire process, Quentin sat quietly meeting each juror’s eyes, and either smiled at them or drove his eyes right through them. He seemed to alternate between an aura of intimidation and one of innocence and gentleness, or indifference. Most of the time, he ignored his defense counsel, although she leaned over to whisper explanations to him frequently, or ask him questions in notes. He would nod or shake his head. And at the prosecution table, Alexa consulted frequently with Sam and Jack, but most of the time she made her own decisions about the jurors she rejected or kept.

  Two of the jurors were dismissed when they said they knew the judge, and he agreed, many claimed health problems, others wanted to serve but were not the jurors Alexa wanted, or Judy let them go because she felt, as Alexa did, that they would be likely to convict. It was a guessing game for both of them, and they could use only the material at hand, they couldn’t pull their ideal jurors out of a hat. They had to carefully assess how these people would react to the evidence, the crimes, and the defendant. It was an educated guessing process and at the same time a crapshoot, where you tried to divine human nature and predict how they would respond to what they heard, and if they would fully understand the rules that applied to them, which the judge would explain once the trial started. They had to convict beyond a reasonable doubt, or acquit. Their final decision had to be unanimous. All twelve had to agree, and anything less than that meant a hung jury. And the last thing both Judy and Alexa wanted was either a hung jury or a mistrial, and to have to try the case in front of a different jury all over again, although Quentin might have liked a mistrial, to stall the process of convicting him and sending him to prison forever.

  The judge decided on the sentence, not the jury, and would do it a month after the verdict. The one thing they didn’t have to worry about was the death penalty. New York’s State Court of Appeals had overturned the death penalty in 2004, and had been battling motions to reinstate it in the years since. For the time being, there was no capital punishment in New York State. If convicted, Luke would ser
ve life in prison without parole, but would not be sentenced to death. So the jury didn’t have the burden of knowing that their decision could cost his life, which made things a little easier for them. All of his other cases had been associated to the one in New York, and he was being tried for the rape and death of all eighteen women in this trial. He had been charged with eighteen counts of rape, and eighteen counts of first-degree murder, with malicious intent.

  It was late Friday afternoon when twelve jurors had been selected, and four alternate jurors had been chosen, in case one of the regular jurors could not serve and had to be replaced. Of the twelve regular jurors, eight were men and four were women. Alexa didn’t mind that. She thought that men might be more protective of young women, more outraged by the crimes and more sympathetic, and angrier at Luke Quentin. She was counting on it. Four of them were old enough to have daughters that age, two were slightly younger than she wanted and would be hard to predict, but she had used up her challenges by the time they were selected. All were employed and seemed respectable and intelligent. Of the four women, all were older. Judy had objected to young women on the jury. But the four alternate jurors were mostly young women in their thirties. All races were represented, white, Hispanic, Asian, and African-American. Looking at them, Alexa was convinced they were a good jury and had worked hard to pick them, and get around some of Judy’s objections. Judy wanted men on the jury, because she thought they would be more sympathetic to Luke. Alexa didn’t agree, but in the end, they both liked the makeup of the jury. There were always loose cannons, and unpredictable surprises, but from what she could tell, with the knowledge they had of them, Alexa thought this jury was a good one. They would know after the trial.

  Once the jurors were dismissed for the day, Quentin was handcuffed and then shackled, and led out of the courtroom by four deputies. He looked confident and relaxed, and stopped to glance at Alexa on the way out. Her face was expressionless, and his was slightly mocking, and then he moved on.