Guilt by Association (50 page)

Tess eyed the woman thoughtfully. One of the things that made the ADA so very good at her job was her talent for objective evaluation. Despite her strongest-held beliefs, she was able to interpret every piece of evidence, every scrap of testimony,
every glance, every nuance with unbiased clarity.

“He did it, didn’t he?” she breathed, feeling her heart sink to the bottom of her stomach.

“Yes, Miss Escalante,” the woman said clearly. “He did it.”

“Then Azi is right. It doesn’t matter how important he is. No one is above the law and he
can
be held accountable.”

“Perhaps you believe that,” the alleged victim agreed. “But I watched enough of the Willie Smith trial to know better.”

“I see.” Tess nodded with understanding. “And you’re afraid I might turn out to be as inept as you apparently feel Moira Lasch was?

“It was clear, even to the experts, that the defense didn’t win that case,” the woman said. “For whatever reason, the prosecution gave it away. Now, I have nothing against you, Miss Escalante. I don’t even know you. But I have children I care a great deal about and a husband whose work depends on public acceptance, and I’ve even enjoyed a bit of success in my own right. I can’t afford to have happen to me what happened to Patricia Bowman. I don’t think I’m as strong as she is. And even if you believe in me one hundred percent, you aren’t going to be representing
me
in the courtroom, you’ll be representing the people. If you lose, what does it really matter to the people? But I’m branded a liar, an adulteress, or worse, for the rest of my life.”

The ADA sighed. “All right,” she said, “I’ll grant you the system isn’t perfect, but it does work.”

“I don’t doubt the system works,” countered the alleged victim. “I doubt that justice is always served.”

“For most people it is.”

“Perhaps. But Robert Willmont isn’t most people.”

“Mike Tyson was convicted.”

“Yes,” the woman conceded. “But I think he may have been convicted more because he was black than because he was guilty.”

“I’m good at my job, Mrs. Doniger,” Tess said. “Very good. I do my homework. I don’t make many mistakes. I don’t go into court unless I’m convinced I can win. It’s true that you can never totally predict which way a jury will jump, but my conviction rate happens to be a pretty decent seventy-three percent.”

The alleged victim looked over at the RTC counselor.

“I’ve known Tess for five years,” Azi said. “And even though, technically, she won’t be representing you, I don’t think you could be in better hands.”

“More importantly, Mrs. Doniger,” the ADA added, “if you don’t agree to testify, if we have to drop the charges and let him walk, it’s as good as saying that what he did to you is okay. Do you really believe that what he did to you is okay?”

There were tears in the blue-gray eyes as the alleged victim studied her hands, considering the truth of those words and agonizing over her decision. It seemed like a lifetime before she looked up at Tess.

“My name is Karen,” she said.

The accelerated pace dictated by the defense resulted in Tess’s having to lay off every other case in order to prepare for this one. Now, on the eve of the preliminary hearing, she was going through everything one more time, looking for flaws, loopholes,
contradictions, anything that might cause a failure to secure an indictment.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Lamar drawled from the doorway. “Piling on the overtime.”

“Just a formality,” she assured him. “We’ve got more than enough for probable cause. What about your end?”

Lamar flopped into the chair across from her. “You know, every time I take on one of these investigations, I see it as a giant jigsaw puzzle. And I know that, as soon as I put all the pieces together, the picture will come clear. It’s what keeps me interested in the process. Only, in this puzzle, there’s a piece missing.”

“What do you mean?”

The big man scratched his right ear. “I don’t rightly know, it’s just this feeling in my gut that I’m missing something somewhere.”

Tess had learned to trust her investigator’s gut. “Like what?” she pressed.

“Like this whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me,” he sighed. “Because I believe Karen Doniger. I would stake my reputation on the fact that she’s telling the truth, that what happened to her happened exactly the way she says it did.”

“So?”

“So my gut says that Willmont just may be telling the truth, too.”

“Well, they can’t both be telling the truth.”

“That’s the point,” Lamar agreed, “isn’t it?”

“You know,” Tess mused, “there are some men who really don’t understand the word ‘
no,’
or, more precisely, they don’t believe it can apply to them. For whatever reasons, they think of themselves as above rejection,
which frequently makes them incapable of accepting it. It’s possible that Robert Willmont is one of those men.”

“Maybe,” Lamar said, but he wasn’t convinced.

“Look, the way Hal Sutton is rushing us, you haven’t had enough time to do your usual thorough investigation. We’ll get our indictment tomorrow, and then I’ll make sure you have enough time to pursue your elusive missing piece.”

“You like Karen Doniger, don’t you?” he asked.

Tess nodded. “Yes,” she answered. “I do like her. A lot. There’s something terribly vulnerable about her, and yet very brave.
There’s a lot of pain there and you can almost see inside her as she struggles to deal with it.”

“Yes, I sensed that about her,” Lamar agreed.

“She’s such a private person, too, and I know this public invasion is going to be as dreadful an experience for her as the assault was, whatever the outcome.”

“That’s the part I hate the most.”

Tess smiled. “I do believe you like her a bit yourself.”

“She’s a real lady,” Lamar declared. “And the truth is, you don’t get to meet too many ladies in my line of work. It’s just that…”

“I know,” Tess finished for him. “There’s a piece missing.”

1992

There is no such thing as justice—

in or out of court.

—
Clarence Darrow

T
he Honorable Oliver Wendell Washington was suffering from an acute case of gastritis. In fact, he had been suffering from just such attacks every single day since he learned that he would preside over the trial of
The People v. Robert Drayton Willmont.

“Why me?” he groaned to his wife as he made his second dash of the morning to the bathroom.

“Because you’re a judge, I expect,” Thelma Washington reminded him through the bathroom door. “And someone obviously thought you were the right judge for the job.”

“I wish I was a janitor,” moaned the former Stanford University law professor.

“You do not,” she chuckled. “You’re just as pleasured as pie to be a judge.”

“No, my
mama
is pleasured as pie,” he corrected her. “It was her dream. She had it in her head from the day I was born that I was going to be a judge. That’s why she named me Oliver Wendell—so I’d never forget.”

“And you’ve done your mama proud.”

“You don’t understand,” he grumbled. “I’m up for reelection in November. If I make one mistake in this trial, lean too
far in either direction, I can kiss Mama’s dream good-bye forever and probably send her to an early grave.”

“Early?” Thelma scoffed. “She’s eighty-eight, if she’s a day.”

“Maybe if I just lie down for a minute or two.”

“If you do,” Thelma declared, “you’re going to be late to court—and
that’d
be a mistake.”

“If I called in sick right now, before jury selection starts, they’d find someone to replace me.”

Thelma wagged her head. “I declare, I think I’d see a yellow streak running down your back—if your skin wasn’t so black.”

“But it’s the truth,” he insisted. “Look at me. I can’t get more than ten feet from the john.”

“Oliver Wendell,” his wife admonished in a voice that brooked no nonsense, “now you stop all that whining and be about your business. You’re a fair and impartial judge and everyone in this town knows it. That’s why you were given this case. And you’re going to do fine. But, just in case, I’ll pack the Kaopectate in with your lunch.”

Department 21 of the Superior Court, Criminal Division, was referred to by those who worked at Justice as the Glass Courtroom.
Positioned at the end of the inner third-floor corridor, it resembled the other courtrooms in modest size and unimpressive style, with its center aisle, its gallery of uncomfortable flip-down spectator seats, its yellow wood paneling and Naugahyde chairs right out of the 1950s, and its California bear anchored beside the Stars and Stripes. And like all the courtrooms in the row, it was windowless. The one significant difference, and hence its sobriquet, was the ominous bulletproof partition—two thick panes of tempered glass bonded to fine wire mesh—that separated the spectators from the proceedings.

“Isn’t that a bit overdramatic?” Lamar observed when Tess told him where to meet her.

“I guess no one wants to take any chances on some weirdo with a water gun slipping through,” she said with a shrug.

But now, as the ADA threaded her way through the milling throng in front of Department 21, Lamar was nowhere to be seen. It was Thursday, June 4, two days after Robert Willmont had won the California primary with a resounding eighty-two percent of the vote. All things being equal, the race for the nomination was over.

“Hey, Tess,” a reporter yelled. “What do you think your chances are of convicting the next President of the United States?”

“About the same as any other citizen,” she replied with a professional smile.

“How can you do this awful thing to such a fine man?” a woman in a faded housedress cried.

The ADA didn’t bother to respond to that. She showed her badge to the armed guards at the door and slipped inside the Glass Courtroom.

It was twenty minutes to nine. The left side of the gallery was already filled with members of the media and other interested parties. In less than half an hour, the seats on the right side would be taken by prospective jurors and the process of selecting the twelve, plus two alternates, who would decide this case, would begin.

Tess was wearing what she described as her jury suit—a classic gray gabardine with a gently fitted jacket and a slim skirt that was just short enough to attract the men but not short enough to distract the women, and expensive enough to establish the credentials, but not the extravagance, of a confident professional.

She laid her briefcase on top of the table to the right of the center aisle, closest to the jury box—which wasn’t really a box but two rows of chairs, the second row raised one step above the first—and began to pull out the various files and folders she would need, arranging them neatly in front of her.

The past month had been busy, to say the least. Not counting the preliminary hearing, the ADA had been in and out of court half a dozen times on motions, during which the judge had denied a motion to dismiss, upheld a motion to expedite, denied a motion to exclude, upheld a motion to disclose, and
denied the application of Court TV to produce what would surely have become a summer spectacular.

All in all, Tess felt she had come out even. She settled down in her chair and opened one of the files. In it were the names of two hundred registered voters who had been summoned for jury duty during this calendar quarter and would be available for this trial, and it was this list of names that had occupied her overworked staff for the better part of two weeks. Finding out who they were and what they did and how they lived and what they thought was as crucial to a verdict as building the case.

As the jury-selection process began, the ADA would be searching for the right combination of men and women who would best be able to judge the testimony and weigh the evidence, and every scrap she could learn about each of them would help her in making that determination. While one or two staunch conservatives wouldn’t hurt her cause, and a Bible-thumper, a couple of radical feminists, and a senior citizen might help, the best she could hope to get were twelve open minds.

There were three specific things Tess looked for when she questioned a prospective juror—eye contact, straight answers, and the ability to listen. Karen was right about there being people who would refuse to believe that a woman could be raped, no matter what, and Tess was always on the alert to spot them.

Next to her own judgment, the ADA most trusted Lamar’s. The beefy cowboy would slouch in the chair next to hers, with his arms crossed over his belly and his leather-tooled boots sticking out from under the table, and pretend to doze. But each time she returned to her seat, a piece of paper would be waiting with either an “aye” or a “nay” scrawled on it.

Tess glanced at her watch and then over her shoulder. Lamar usually beat her into court—it was not like him to be late. In the five years they had worked together, she had come to rely on him, much like a security net, to catch her should she fall.
An anxious frown crossed her face.

Hal Sutton chose that moment to enter the courtroom,
flanked by a striking brunette in a Chanel suit, a good-looking African-American who reminded Tess of the guy on
LA. Law,
and a stocky man with a shiny head and brand-new wing tips that creaked with every step. Covering all the bases, she thought,
the frown becoming a wry smile.

In addition to being a formidable trial attorney, Hal Sutton was a smooth, attractive, impeccably dressed man who belied approaching retirement by keeping himself in excellent physical condition. He was referred to, around Justice, as the Silver Fox. Male jurors envied him, female jurors fantasized about him. Robert Willmont couldn’t have made a better choice.

Sutton gave Tess a cordial nod as he and the others arranged themselves around the defense table to the left. Sitting by herself,
Tess felt a little like David going up against Goliath, and she looked around again for the giant who was supposed to be on
her
side.

A few minutes later, the first group of some forty potential jurors filed into the courtroom. Tess heard them shuffling into their seats but she didn’t turn around. It was a superstition of hers—not to speculate about them as a whole, but one at a time.