Directed Verdict (23 page)

He was now three weeks from the biggest trial of his life, wholly unprepared, and all he could think about was this strange and wonderful woman who dominated his thoughts. This wasn’t friendship; it was love.

There. He had said it, if only to himself. He loved her. It made no sense, the timing was bad, and she might not love him. But none of that mattered. This was an issue of the heart, not the head. He loved Leslie Connors. And he would tell her that and let the chips fall where they might. As soon as he had a chance. As soon as he got the courage. Brad Carson, the intrepid trial lawyer, fearless in the courtroom, and a coward in the game of love. He would tell her.

As soon as the case was over.

* * *

Back on American soil, as they waited for their connecting flight at Reagan National, Nikki slipped away and called her home answering machine. She had sixteen new messages, an average number for a socialite of her caliber. She skipped through the first twelve, then heard the voice she was hoping to hear. Rasheed Berjein. Sounds of vehicles punctuated the background. Rasheed was on a pay phone.

He softly but distinctly repeated a phrase in Arabic, then hung up. Nikki was not fluent in the language, but she had learned a few phrases during her trips to the Kingdom. She and Rasheed had agreed that they would use this one as the code.

“Everything is fine,” he had said.

“Thanks be to Allah,” Nikki mumbled sarcastically. She smiled and holstered the cell phone without finishing her messages.

24

AHMED ARRIVED AT
Norfolk General District Court, Traffic Division, ahead of schedule, at precisely 8:30 a.m. He passed through the metal detectors without event, turned left down the hallway, and located Courtroom No. 2, one of two traffic courtrooms in the building. Ahmed sat in the second row and watched the parade of American reprobates arriving for their day in court.

Ahmed’s instincts told him to be leery of a setup, but reason told him he had already gained too much advantageous information for this to be a sting. Still, he would feel better once he met the informant and gained some insight into motive.

Within a few minutes of one another, three of Barnes’s best operatives took their spots in the courtroom. The first was a twenty-six-year-old in oversize baggy jeans, a ratty T-shirt, lots of jewelry, and at least two earrings. His keys and wallet were attached to his belt by a chain. He took a seat directly behind Ahmed. The second posed in the front of the courtroom as a washed-up attorney in a pair of frayed dress slacks, a stained red tie, matching suspenders, and an ill-fitting sports coat. A third man, a middle-aged investigator with no distinguishable features who could blend into any crowd, stood on the other side of the courtroom.

* * *

The informant entered the doors of the General District Court at 9:50, fashionably late. She cleared the metal detectors and went straight into the women’s rest room. She leaned forward over the sink and looked closely at her face in the mirror, giving herself a little pep talk, calming her nerves. She washed her hands in hot water, vigorously rubbing them together and drying them roughly on the paper towels. Still ice-cold. She determined not to shake hands with Ahmed.

She walked slowly into the courtroom, eyes darting around the gallery, taking in every look, every movement, evaluating every person for whether they belonged. She had spent enough time here recently to know the lawyers, the court personnel, and the rhythm of the General District Court—who belonged and who didn’t. She clung to a small leather briefcase with both hands. She walked deliberately to the second row and sat down next to Ahmed.

He stared impassively ahead. “You?” he hissed.

She ignored the comment. “I told you to come alone,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion.

“I did,” Ahmed said calmly.

This whole meeting was high risk, but she had to raise the stakes. Ahmed seemed so at ease, so in control. She had to do something to rattle him. These first few minutes were critical.

“Just behind the counsel table on the left.” She nodded toward a lawyer seated there. “Partially bald. Red tie. Red suspenders.” She had never seen him in this courtroom before even though the same lawyers seemed to show up every day. Plus, he had only a few manila folders in his hand, each representing a separate case, and no traffic court lawyer could survive on such meager volume. In General District Courtroom No. 2, the lawyers handled cases by the truckload. The other lawyers had manila folders everywhere.

She stood to leave. “He’s one of yours,” she whispered. “The meeting’s off.”

Ahmed grabbed her forearm with thick fingers and jerked her back into her seat. The uninhibited force of it, right there in the middle of General District Court, made her tremble.

“Impressive,” he hissed. Then he released her arm. “I’ll send my men out.”

Ahmed turned and nodded to the man sitting directly behind them.

“Leave. And take your friend with you.” Ahmed nodded toward the man at the front table. The informant kept her gaze straight ahead, watching in silence as the men left.

She felt her heart pounding in her throat, each beat ringing in her ears. Goose bumps, clammy skin, her stomach in knots, the works. But still she willed herself to relax—deep breaths, stone-cold face, deliberate movements. Who would take control? Who would blink first? Who would flinch from the task before them?

“If you ever try that again,” she whispered, her voice steady now, “the whole deal’s off. I deal with you. No intermediaries. No extras.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ahmed swallow hard. He’d better get used to taking orders from a woman.

“Did you bring the transmitters?” she asked.

Ahmed held them out in his unwavering right hand. She took them, taking care not to touch his skin. She placed them in her briefcase.

“These are magnetic, just attach them to any metal surface,” he explained, his voice barely audible. “They operate off shortwave radio technology and send a coded signal to a receiver.”

He turned to look directly at her. She froze, then inhaled evenly. “I don’t actually believe these are necessary,” Ahmed said. “Do you really think that we couldn’t have done this ourselves if we wanted to?”

Though Ahmed looked straight at her, straight through her, she kept her eyes pinned on the front of the courtroom. “I will attach them to the three main telephones,” she said through clenched teeth. “Carson sweeps for bugs at the same time every day. I’ll attach them after those sweeps and take them off at night.”

She was ready to bolt. This man, inches away, penetrating her with his eyes and sickening her with his putrid breath, was almost more than she could take. She had accomplished her purpose for this meeting. Why wait?

“How do you plan to take out Shelhorse?” he asked.

“It is enough that you know it will be done. I’ll contact you with our next meeting time and place. If you try to follow me or in any way contact me, we’re through.”

With that parting instruction she stood, glanced down at him—stared at him—as she hovered there for a moment, then walked quickly from the courtroom. She rushed past the metal detector and out the doors, anxious to fill her lungs with some fresh air. She glanced around, consumed by the suspicious looks of dozens of strangers, each a potential accomplice to Ahmed. She resisted the urge to run or scream or dart into some crowd and slip into some back alley.

What good would it do? They knew who she was now. The game was on. Her only hope was to stay one step ahead.

* * *

Later that day, Brad gathered his team in the main conference room, which Nikki had appropriately dubbed “the war room.” It looked like Sherman had ransacked the place on his March to the Sea, leaving behind papers, deposition transcripts, folder files, empty cups, paper plates, and dirty napkins.

In the vortex of the mess, Nikki sat in one chair with her legs up on another, papers spread across her lap, the table, and the floor around her. Nikki’s three Diet Coke cans, all partially full of flat soda, probably from yesterday, sat together on a paper sign that Bella had taped to the wall a week prior: “Your mother doesn’t work here, so please clean up your own mess.” Nikki had redeemed the stained sign from the floor, where it eventually fell, and now used it as a large coaster.

Leslie walked into the war room and cleaned off a portion of the table, stacking the clutter in a neat out-of-the-way pile. Next to her, Nikki spread out a stack of what looked like surveys. The corner of one drifted across an invisible boundary line. Leslie lifted an eyebrow, and without looking at Nikki, she pushed the page out of her way.

The clutter of the conference room was exacerbated on this evening, one week prior to trial, by large sheets of poster paper taped to the walls with the names of the first fifty jurors from the jury list scrawled across the top. As this was a civil case, the jury would ultimately consist of seven jurors, plus alternates. In Brad’s experience, it could take up to fifty prospective jurors in a high-profile case like this one just to find the seven who would be qualified to serve. Brad stood next to a sheet titled “Model Juror Profile” and facilitated a discussion on desirable juror characteristics.

“Male or female?” he asked.

“Definitely female,” Leslie said, making a neat notation on the legal pad in front of her. “Women will appreciate what it means to lose a husband and raise kids alone.”

“I agree,” Nikki said. “Plus they’re smarter.”

Bella grunted her approval, making it unanimous among the female team members. The Rock, of course, had not been invited to the meeting.

“White, African American, Hispanic, or Asian American?” Brad asked, rattling off the predominate ethnic groups he expected to see on the panel.

“Definitely black,” Bella decided. She constantly had trouble remembering that Brad preferred she use the term
African American
. “They’ll have a natural distrust of the police and authority figures. They’ll hate Ahmed. Besides, look at the good rulings we’ve already gotten from Judge Johnson.”

“Hispanics have attitude too,” Nikki claimed. “We just need jurors with attitude.”

Leslie furrowed her brow and stopped writing. “Can we even ask this question? Isn’t discrimination while choosing jurors prohibited by the
Batson
case?”

“Technically, yes,” Brad said. “But we’re not discriminating here against minority groups, we’re actually expressing a preference for them as jurors. Kind of like our own little affirmative action program.”

Leslie frowned. “That’s weak, Brad Carson, and you know it.”

“Ex-cuuuse us,” Nikki said. “Where did that attitude come from?”

Leslie ignored the question, and Brad decided he’d better move on. The chemistry among the women was fragile at best.

“All right, let’s move off that point,” Brad suggested. “How old is our model juror?”

“Young.” It was Nikki again. “The old geezers will trust the police and not want to rock the boat.”

Nobody else spoke. Brad took that as consent. He wrote it down.

“Religion?”

“Thought you would never ask—,” Nikki began.

“Wait. We can’t ask that either, can we?” Leslie’s furrowed brow was back, this time combined with a disapproving twist of the head.

“Under
Batson
, we probably can’t use our preemptory strikes on the basis of religion,” Brad conceded. “But in this case, because it’s so uniquely religious in nature, maybe we can get the judge to strike some jurors for cause based on their religion.”

“Whatever,” Nikki said, dismissing the legal niceties with a flip of her hand. “We’ve got to have fired-up, hard-core Christians on this jury. No Muslims. No atheists. No lukewarm fence sitters. We’ve got to have real Bible-thumpers. Hellfire-and-brimstone types.”

They pooled opinions and justified their hunches for an hour. When they were done, Brad stood back and admired the profile of his dream juror: a young African American or Hispanic single mother with strong evangelical Christian beliefs, lower-income bracket preferred, and someone with at least one attempt at suing for personal injuries in the past.
Fat chance,
he thought.

Next they would rate the individual jurors on a scale of one to ten so the process would have at least the appearance of scientific exactitude. They all agreed that Brad would have the ability to change the ratings once they started questioning the jurors in court, but this would at least give him a starting point.

They came to a stalemate on the first juror, a single mother of two. Leslie gave her a five, Bella a two, Brad a seven, and Nikki a ten. Brad did the simple math, assigned juror number one a six, and then moved on to the second of the fifty jurors. It was getting late.

But Nikki was shaking her head. “Trust me on this one guys, she’s a ten. If you get a chance, you’ve got to have her on your jury.”

“C’mon Nikki,” Brad groaned. “You had your vote. We’ll be here all night if we all lobby for our favorite ones.”

“Brad, I know what I’m talking about. Trust me.”

“It’s not a matter of trust,” Leslie broke in. “It’s a matter of fairness. We each get one vote, and then Brad can make whatever adjustments he wants at trial. We don’t really have much to go on anyway. We don’t even know what her race or religion is.”

“What if I told you she faithfully attends an independent church named Grace Chapel and goes on at least one volunteer mission trip every year? What if I told you she seriously believes that everyone needs to hear about Jesus Christ? What if I could guarantee you she is a diehard supporter of all mission causes?”

“I’d change my score,” Leslie admitted. “But how could you possibly know all that stuff?”

The looks on the faces of the others confirmed that they were all thinking the same thing. Brad was chewing on his glasses and raised an eyebrow at Nikki.

“Well?” he asked.

“Let’s just say I have inside information on thirty-six of these fifty jurors,” Nikki said, almost in a whisper. Brad started to say something, but Nikki lifted her hand to silence him. “I know the rules, Brad. No direct contact with prospective jurors. Don’t ask how I got this information, but it’s all legit. For most of these jurors, I can tell you more about their religious beliefs than their own mothers know.”

Brad stared at Nikki in silence, searching her face for clues. They stood on thin ethical ice. He wanted this information—no, he needed this information. Desperately. But at what price?

“Are you sure you didn’t contact any jurors?”

“No way.”

“You sure it’s all legal?”

“You bet.”

He studied her for another moment, and she still didn’t flinch.

“All right, then I change my vote to a ten,” Brad said.

“Me too,” Bella said.

“I’m staying with a five,” Leslie said. “I don’t trust any source that is unknown and cannot be tested.”

Nikki rolled her eyes.

“Juror one gets a nine,” Brad announced, crossing through the old score on the poster sheet.

And so it went, juror by juror, Nikki providing her mysterious insights and the group arriving at a judgment. At a quarter till one, the exhausted crew considered juror number fifty. They had abandoned extended discussion long before.

“You got any inside information on this one?” Brad asked.

“Yep,” Nikki said. “I give him an eight.”

“Me too, then,” Brad said.

“Count me in,” Bella said.

“Four,” Leslie said.

“Juror fifty gets a seven,” Brad said. “And I’m going home.”

* * *

The tired crew all filed out to the parking lot and dragged their weary bodies into their cars to head home. Nikki hadn’t been driving five minutes when the phone rang.