Part Five. The Quarry

37

“IT WAS a quiet, rain-swept night on Raven Hill Road,” said prosecutor Troy Jefferson in his smooth prosecutor’s voice. “The kids were asleep, the cars were parked in the driveways and by the curb, the houses were dark. Everything was locked up tight, safe and sound. An unlikely night for-”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

I was standing at the defense table, Guy Forrest sitting to my left and Beth, with a white plaster cast on her wrist, sitting to his. Judge Tifaro peered over her half glasses at me. The eyeglass chains hanging from her temples gave her pique a schoolmarmish edge. “We’re only on the fourth sentence of Mr. Jefferson’s opening, Counselor. Don’t you think your objection is a bit premature?”

“Mr. Jefferson is implying that all the houses were locked up tight on Raven Hill Road the night of the murder, when he knows full well that there is no evidence that Miss Prouix’s house was locked at all. When he knows full well there is no evidence to disprove the possibility that anyone could have strolled inside that house at any time for any purpose, whether-”

“Mr. Carl, that’s enough. You’ll have your turn to discuss any failures of proof in your closing. Objection overruled.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said as I sat back down in my seat.

“Let me start again,” said Jefferson, smirking at me before turning back to the jury. “It was a quiet, rain-swept night on Raven Hill Road. The kids were asleep, the cars were parked in the driveways and by the curb, the houses were dark. Everything was locked up tight, safe and sound. An unlikely night-”

“Objection, Your Honor. He did it again.”

“Mr. Carl, I overruled the objection. Mr. Jefferson can say what he pleases. Sit down.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” I sat.

“An unlikely night,” said Jefferson hurriedly, “for murder.”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

“Oh, please,” moaned Troy Jefferson, spinning around to give me the eye.

“Mr. Carl?” said the judge, unable to conceal her exasperation.

“Whether or not there was a murder is a legal conclusion for the jury to decide after receiving your instructions. Mr. Jefferson can argue facts here, but an opening is not the time to throw all kinds of technical legal terms at the jury in the hopes of pushing them at this early stage to some legal conclusion that might not be warranted by-”

“Overruled,” said the judge. “Murder is the charge, and so he can use the word. Sit down, Mr. Carl. I’ve had enough out of you already and we’re only” – she glanced at her watch – “three minutes into the proceeding. I fear this is going to one be of those trials, so let make myself clear, Mr. Carl. I don’t want you interrupting Mr. Jefferson’s opening again. I don’t want to hear your voice even if the building is on fire and you are the first to see the flames. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Don’t thank me when I slap you down, Mr. Carl. It puts me in a foul mood. And, Mr. Jefferson, when Mr. Carl is giving his opening, I certainly hope you show him more respect than he has shown to you.”

“I certainly hope so, too, Your Honor,” I said.

The jury laughed at that one, which I appreciated. I smiled as I nodded their way. Some smiled back.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, to a few more chuckles.

Troy Jefferson glared at me before turning around and beginning again, but with his back now slightly hunched, as if anticipating the next interruption, and without the same lovely assurance in his voice.

God, I loved the courtroom.

I was in a strange, unsettled place just then, confused as to what had really happened or why to Hailey Prouix, confused by what I had learned in West Virginia, uncertain about who had done what to whom, certain only that the man I was defending was in a harder place than he should have been because I had screwed up in every which way. I was holding tight to a series of secrets that could destroy me and my client. I was keeping facts from Beth, my partner and best friend. I was playing a dangerous game. And yet, with all that, I still felt comfortable in that court of law, and the reason wasn’t too hard to fathom.

My life to that point had been pretty much an unmitigated failure. I had little money, less love, a few good friends that I could count on, but only a few, and a career that, despite its evident lack of financial rewards, had somehow veered out of my control. My last romantic relationship fitted the pattern of all those that preceded it, a twisted affair that ended badly, although this ending seemed to rise to a new and unprecedented level, seeing how it ended in death. No, the whole my-life situation was pretty dim. Somehow, after all this time, I still had not figured out the rules. Where was the rule book? I needed a rule book. I thought that graduating from college would do it, turn my life into something lovely and joyful and successful, but, no, it did not. Then I thought that getting into law school would do it, and then I thought that passing the bar would do it, and then I thought that surviving in my own practice for more than five years would do it. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. I didn’t have the least notion of what was really going on. Others knew, others with fancy cars and big houses and lovely spouses and bushels of children, they knew how to play the game and come out winners. How did they get hold of the rule book while my hands still were empty?

But in court there was no such problem. Here there actually was a rule book, the Pennsylvania Code, and it contained between the many covers of its many volumes the rules of evidence and the rules of trial practice and the rules of criminal procedure and that great guidebook of human behavior, the penal code. In the course of my career I had spent enough time elbow deep in the law to learn these rules cold. And the other rules, too, the rules of dealing with your adversary, relating to the jury, bolstering your witnesses during direct examination, destroying their witnesses on cross. Outside the courtroom I was lost, inside I was slick. I’m not bragging, there were thousands just like me, it seemed to be an epidemic, lawyers helpless outside the courtroom while eagles within, and I don’t claim to have been the best, or even close. Sometimes I would see a master go through the paces and grow sick with jealousy. So, no, I was not the best, but what I did best I did in the courtroom. It was the only place where I understood the rules.

So, in order to keep within the new rules laid out by Judge Tifaro, I spent the rest of Jefferson’s opening restraining myself from objecting at every other word. It was seemingly a difficult task, I was halfway to standing many times until I openly noticed the judge’s displeasure and meekly returned to my seat. I must have been a sight, squirming in the chair as I restrained myself, I must have been something to behold, and I know this because of the expressions on the faces of the jury members as they were beholding me, even as Troy Jefferson tried to continue.

It was a good opening, I must admit, laying out the facts that he would prove against Guy Forrest with a devastating simplicity. Motive. Guy and the victim had been involved with a fraud in the Juan Gonzalez case. Hailey had turned on him by stealing most of the money from their joint account and then sleeping with another man. Guy had every reason to be furious at her, murderously angry. And it showed. The night of her death Hailey Prouix had been hit in the eye before being shot to death. Opportunity. Guy was the only one we knew to have been in the house with the victim on the night of the murder. Means. Guy’s fingerprints were on his gun, his gun, which the forensic evidence would prove had fired the bullet into Hailey Prouix’s heart. And then there were those little factual touches that, like accent pillows on a couch, add so much. Instead of calling 911 for an ambulance after the shooting, Guy had called his lawyer. And after the cops came, Guy tried to run away with a boatload of cash and a bottle of Viagra in his suitcase. Oh, the facts were clearly on Jefferson’s side, and his opening would have been strong enough to clasp the iron shackles upon Guy Forrest’s legs on its own if the jury hadn’t been concentrating so much on my valiant efforts to restrain myself. In fact, it got to the point where I didn’t even have to squirm like a snake to get their attention. Jefferson would make a point, the jury would glance my way, I would raise an eyebrow, and they would understand to take what had just been said with a jaundiced eye.