Dark Justice

by Sinclair, Rachel

  If I couldn’t explain to the jury about that hair, my case was cooked. I was going to give it my all, but I secretly thought that things were going to turn out just like that case I watched when I was a baby lawyer - in that case, the attorney couldn’t account for the victim’s hair in the defendant’s trunk, so everything else that happened in that case didn’t matter at all. That case went down, hard.

  I thought that this case was going to go that same way.

  And if it did, I was going to want to crawl into a hole and die. I really liked this kid and he didn’t deserve this.

  The judge presiding over the case, Judge Carson, called the case to order and instructed all the attorneys that it was time for voir dire. In this case, there were 250 people called for the jury panel. We were to not only pick 12 jurors, but also 12 alternates. We had to choose so many alternates because there was such a high chance that something was going to end up going wrong somehow. With a case this huge, this important, any number of things could happen. Perhaps a juror ends up backing out because he or she was getting threats. Or it might be something as simple as a juror getting sick. What was important was that, no matter what happened, we had 12 people at the end of the case deciding Carter’s fate.

  This part of the proceeding was going to be the most important of the entire case. I knew that every potential juror knew about this case. It was pointless to try to find somebody who had no idea about it, but I was going to have to try to find somebody who didn’t follow this case closely. I realized that not everybody followed the minutiae of this case. There were quite a few people like that, I thought.

  It was like with the infamous OJ case - there were quite a few people who followed every single detail of that case. They read every magazine article, breathlessly, and could recite every detail, chapter and verse. And then there were those for whom the entire case was nothing more than ambient noise from which they couldn’t escape. They knew that OJ was accused of killing his ex-wife, of course. Literally everybody knew that. But, beyond that, they didn’t know much more.

  I needed to find people who were in the latter group. People who weren’t following this case closely.

  Voir dire took two entire days. The potential jurors came in in batches of 20 at a time. Neera stood up and gave her spiel about the process, emphasizing that the potential jurors were not to have their minds made up, and she weeded out those who had a firm opinion on the case and stated that they could not have an open mind. Then I did the same. Both of us questioned each batch extensively, for the better part of two hours. Then the next batch would come in, and the process started all over again.

  By the end of the process, Neera and I found 12 people who seemed like they were going to be open about the facts and evidence that was going to be presented, plus 12 others who would sit on the panel, listen to all the testimony and evidence, but who wouldn’t actually get a chance to vote for guilt or innocence unless somebody on the regular jury dropped out somehow. They were the alternate jurors.

  I felt sorry for them most of all. They were going to have to go through the entire process, hear everything, and not get a say. All for the measly amount that they got paid for their duty - $15 a day. If they sold their stories to the tabloids after this was all said and done, I wouldn’t blame them. At least they would be adequately compensated for their time.

  The jury was impaneled, and they were all informed that they were to be back in the courtroom at 9 AM the next day.

  The real circus was about to begin.

  Chapter 36

  I got home after we picked a jury, and my mother reminded me of something. “Dear,” she said when I got home. “I wanted to remind you that you need to go to Italy. December 1 at the earliest.”

  “Mom, December 1 is tomorrow,” I said. “It’s in the middle of trial. I’m sorry, but that’s a non-starter.”

  “You had the chance to delay the trial,” she said. “I remember that the judge told you that you could delay it until after the holidays. I don’t know why you didn’t take that opportunity.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Maybe because I thought about it, and I really think that this whole Chaz telling you things is hocus pocus. I’ll get to Italy when I can. But, for now, I’m in the middle of the trial of my life. The next few days are going to make or break me, not to mention make or break my client. I can’t just go traipsing to Italy. If I do that, I’ll have to pretty much forfeit my trial, and that’s not fair to Carter.”

  “Can’t you ask for a continuance?” she asked me.

  “On what basis? My mother’s spirit guide told her that I needed to go to Rome? I’m sorry, Judge Carson might be one of the more open-minded judges on the bench, but even he’s not that open-minded.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “But if you went to Rome, you wouldn’t have to have the rest of the trial. That’s all that I know. That’s all that Chaz has communicated to me.”

  I was ready to blow my stack. “Tell Chaz that if he can’t just come out and tell you directly why it is that I need to go to Rome that he can just shut the hell up.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” Arabella came out of her bedroom. She and Luna were sharing a room, but it was a large room, so they didn’t really mind it that much. I wanted that arrangement, not just because the condo only had three bedrooms, but also because I didn’t entirely trust her. I thought that her sharing a room with her younger sister would keep her in line, as far as not sneaking out of the house. Luna told me that that was something that Arabella did before she came to live with me - she would sneak out in the middle of the night and join some other teenagers on the beach. She was apparently present for a party where some drunken teenagers went swimming and ended up drowning.

  Once I heard that, I knew that I was going to do anything possible to make sure that Arabella was not able to sneak out. I put Luna in charge of making sure that she stayed put, and, thus far, it worked. Thus far, Arabella hadn’t pulled her vanishing act. Not that she wouldn’t, ever, but she hadn’t so far.

  I did have another room in the house that I could convert to a separate bedroom for one of the girls if I had to. It was a small room just off of the den. I thought that if I could just get a grip on Arabella, to where I trusted her, I could probably put her in there. I hadn’t yet brought that up to her, though, because I didn’t want her bugging me about it.

  “Nothing,” I said to her. “Mom is going to make dinner for the two of you and you’re going to hang out here with her. I really need to hunker down in the study, because I need to make sure that my opening statement tomorrow shines.”

  That was another thing that had happened these past few months - mom was actually starting to act responsible. She got rid of her pot, although she still enjoyed a daily Bloody Mary with her breakfast and usually ended the evening with a gin martini, and she had proved to me that she could be a reliable supervisor for the girls when I was working late. I never thought that I would ever think that mom could be an asset, but she really was. She and Arabella got along famously. They seemed to share the same sense of humor and adventure, and they both really enjoyed playing chess, so that kept them occupied for hours on end.

  In short, the past few months was a rough transition for all of us, but it definitely could have been much worse.

  Arabella shrugged. “That’s cool. Margot makes some pretty wicked roasted chicken and Brussels sprouts. That’s what she’s making tonight.”

  I had to smile at the fact that Arabella, after giving me a very difficult time about not having junk food in the house, finally gave in and started to enjoy the food that we fixed. Truth be told, I think that she probably felt better without all those simple carbs coursing through her system. I knew that not having all those simple carbs kept me calm, for the most part, so it probably had the same effect on her.

  I put my hand on mom’s shoulder and then went into the study, which was a small room attached to my bedroom, which was the master bedroom. It had my desk in there, and a sma
ll filing cabinet and a large table where I could spread out my evidence and try to make sense of it.

  My heart pounded as I looked at my witness list and the witness list that the state had provided to me. They were going to bring in the forensics guy who processed the scene, along with an expert that would testify that, considering the amount of blood that was found in Addison’s bedroom, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that Addison exsanguinated - in other words, she bled out. That expert was going to testify that there was not a chance that a person who had lost as much blood as Addison did could survive.

  This was an important point, because Addison’s body had still never been found. That expert was the only person who was going to be able to establish that Addison actually was dead and not just missing.

  The forensics guy who processed the scene was the person who was going to testify about Carter’s hair being at the scene. I knew that that was the one piece of information that I wasn’t going to be able to overcome. Another important piece of information that this forensics guy was going to testify to was the fact that all the blood in that bedroom belonged to Addison. I had initially thought that I could possibly show that the blood didn’t belong to her, but that somebody might have kidnapped her and then splashed around a lot of pig’s blood to make it look like Addison was dead. But I got the results back from the testing that was done on every drop of blood in that bedroom, and it was established that this blood did, in fact, belong to Addison.

  Their other witness was going to be the person who was going to take the stand and introduce Carter’s inflammatory Reddit posts. It was necessary to make a record about those posts, and, as such, an individual was going to have to testify about the chain of evidence regarding the posts. The individual who was going to take the stand on behalf of the state was a guy by the name of John Wilson. He was the moderator for the Reddit site where Carter allegedly wrote all those threatening posts about Addison. I was eager to cross-examine him, because I knew the truth about those posts - they were planted after the murder, and the moderator of the site apparently didn’t even keep up on that fact.

  Other than that, the state didn’t have any other witnesses to call. It was unnecessary, really, to call other witnesses, because their case was so cut-and-dry - Carter threatened Addison, Carter’s hair was at the scene, there was so much blood that she couldn’t possibly have survived. That was that, really.

  I, of course, was bringing in my alternate suspects, both of whom were pissed off beyond belief to have been subpoenaed. Senator Nash, who was no longer running for president, and who had attracted six different primary challengers for his senate seat, fought my subpoena tooth and nail. We went to court about whether or not he had to comply with my subpoena, and Judge Carson, to his credit, ordered that he did, in fact, have to comply. After all, the guy was having an affair with Addison. He did have reason to kill her, because his political career was going to be sunk if word got out that Addison and he were having an affair.

  Add to that the fact that there was still an open question on who fathered Addison’s kid - Jackson vehemently denied it, even though The Global Examiner ran stories stating that Jackson had admitted to fathering that kid - and there was clearly a reason why Senator Nash would have had it in for Addison.

  As for Jackson, I was going to show that he, too, had reason to kill her. After all, he had raped her, and she had the goods on him. If she would have talked about that rape, he would have gone to prison. Period. End of story.

  As it was, Jackson was still a free man, although a disgraced one. He was out as the head of Centurion Pictures, and nobody else would hire him. He was just too toxic. However, he managed to land on his feet. After all, before he became a studio head, he was a talented filmmaker. That was what he went back to - making independent films. His current film, Coming Away, a gay coming-of-age picture, was buzzy and the talk was that it would be in the running for an Academy Award.

  So, he really wasn’t punished for what he did to those women. Justice was done, in a way, because there was no way that he could abuse women in the manner that he did before, but there were plenty of people who really wanted to see him pay. Him winning an Academy Award for the film that he directed would be a slap in the face for sexual abuse survivors everywhere, but that’s how Hollywood went. If you have talent, you can be as shitty as you want to be.

  Jackson was going to be my other star witness. He, too, fought the subpoena to testify, and, I had to admit, getting the judge to order Jackson was much more difficult than getting the judge to order Senator Nash. It was more of a hazy thing, as Addison had not yet brought rape charges against him, so Jackson was still denying that he did anything to her. I couldn’t really bring in testimony that would show that Addison was talking to her friends about the possibility that she was going to bring charges against him, either. And, since my theory on why Jackson had motive hinged on showing that he raped her and she was going to bring him down, I was going to have to show that that rape actually happened.

  I was surprised that Judge Carson did allow that subpoena. Jackson did everything in his power to continue to try to quash it, including asking for an emergency protective order from the appellate court, but the appellate court sided with Judge Carson on this one. The upshot was that he was going to have to appear in court, and he was pissed.

  I also was going to call my own forensics guy who was going to establish that Carter was hacked and that somebody else planted those incendiary messages threatening Addison. I decided to call Chris Warford, the guy who actually did the hacking, although I knew that he had covered his tracks so well that there was no way I was going to get him to tell the truth on the stand.

  I also was going to call two people who were at the party where Jackson raped Addison. The two people, both of them minor-league actors, were named Tom Peoples and Sharona Wright. They told me that they were snorting heroin with Jackson and Addison, and that Jackson asked both of them to leave. As they left, they noticed that Addison was completely passed out.

  I sighed as I realized, in utter frustration, that my case was weak tea. I knew it. I had a pair of twos, while the prosecutor had a flush. Not a straight flush, at least, but definitely a stronger hand than mine. That Carter’s hair was at Addison’s house was really all that they needed to show.

  I looked at the wall, trying to think my way around my case. I put my head down on my desk and pounded it on the wood, over and over. There just wasn’t any way that I could make my case what it wasn’t, which was winnable.

  Declan came over, as I asked him to, and he knocked on the door of my study. “Hey,” he said, coming in. “How are you holding up in here?”

  “Not good. Not good at all. I mean, try as I might, I just don’t have a decent answer for that hair.”

  The only way to approach the issue of the hair was to question why it was that no other DNA belonging to Carter was found in that bedroom. No skin cells, no other hairs, just the one. But, try as I might, I couldn’t figure out who knew Addison who would have been able to obtain Carter’s hair and plant it there. There was just no way that Senator Nash or Jackson would have been able to get one of his hairs and plant it. Neither of them had any association with him, at all. I mean, how would a powerful senator and a movie studio head know a kid from Skid Row?

  There was just no good theory for that hair. I knew that I was going to sink because of it.

  “Emerson, all that we can do is try our hardest to put reasonable doubt into the jury’s minds. We might not succeed, but as long as we give it a college try, your reputation won’t suffer.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, no matter what happens, people are going to be banging on your door the day after the trial, looking for you to represent them. Everybody wants to hire you now.”

  He was right about that. Ever since my name started getting into the news, I had been inundated with phone calls from people wanting to hire me. But I turned them all down - I wanted to focus on this one case and not get d
istracted. Since Carter had paid me so much for this case, I didn’t really need to hustle for cases, for the time being.

  That said, as soon as Carter’s case was over, I was going to start taking new clients. I already had a waiting list, as there were 100s of people who were willing to wait for me to take them on. Sarah was keeping track of them, and she was going to call all of them once the case was finished.

  “I don’t know how you can be so casual about my losing this case. Yes, I know that no matter what happens, I’m going to land on my feet. But Carter won’t. He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. And you and I both know that he won’t survive in there. Everybody wants to be known as the person who knocked off the infamous Carter Dixon. He won’t last a week in prison, and you know it.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. I couldn’t believe that Declan was being so insensitive as to suggest that it didn’t matter if we won or lost this case. As long as I was able to build a practice off of the case, it was all good, according to him. Never mind the fact that a sweet innocent kid was going to be murdered in prison, probably within a week of him going down.

  “Relax. I’m just trying to look on the bright side,” he said, standing up and massaging my shoulders. “Ooh, you’re tight.” He gripped my kinked shoulder and kneaded it with his hands and then with his elbow. “You need to relax. Otherwise, you won’t be any good to Carter tomorrow. Just relax.”

  I shook my head. I was filled with self-doubt, and there wasn’t much that could be done about it.

  Chapter 37

  Emerson. December 1 - Opening Statements

  The trial began that Wednesday. Neera started with her opening statement, and then I went. I felt that she knocked it out of the park.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she said, looking each of the 12 jurors and 12 alternates in the eye. “Thank you very much for being here. I know that it’s been difficult for all of you, judging his case. I’ve seen the media reports. I know that many of you have been receiving threats, because all of your names have been leaked to the media. I apologize for this, and I can guarantee all of you that the person who leaked will be found and punished. But I wanted all of you to know that I recognize your sacrifice, and I appreciate it more than any of you know.”