Guilt by Association (51 page)

At exactly nine o’clock, Robert Willmont appeared, dressed in a neat dark suit, a crisp white shirt, and a conservative tie.
Accompanying him were his wife in tailored taupe, his mother in lavender lace, a slight man with thinning red hair, freckles,
and glasses, and a middle-aged woman with gray hair wearing a black dress that was far too warm for the season.

The senator took great care to seat his aged mother in the first row of chairs behind the bulletproof window and give his wife a kiss on the cheek before he joined Hal Sutton at the defense table. The block of jurors took it all in. Tess smiled to herself. The show was on.

At ten minutes past nine, the bailiff stepped to the front of the courtroom and began his speech.

“All rise,” he intoned.

There was a general scraping of chairs and rustling of clothing as everyone stood.

“Department 21 of the Superior Court of the City of San Francisco is now in session. Case number 458-026,
The People of the State of California
versus
Robert Drayton Willmont.
The Honorable Oliver Wendell Washington presiding.”

With that, the door to the left of the bench opened and the former Los Angeles prosecutor, former San Francisco attorney,
former Stanford law professor emerged. Swathed in his robes, the judge looked half again his already considerable size. His intelligent brown eyes revealed a mixture of resignation and discomfort, and his usually shiny black face had a definite gray tinge to it.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” Washington mumbled after clearing his throat. “Are the People ready, Miss Escalante?”

“The People are ready, Your Honor,” Tess said.

“Is the Defense ready, Mr. Sutton?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Washington nodded to the bailiff. “You may call the first name.”

The bailiff rotated a small black cylinder several times before reaching in and pulling out a slip of paper.

“Agnes McFaddan.”

A tiny woman in her seventies scrambled out of her seat and made her way to the jury box. Tess found the name on the list—unmarried,
librarian, registered Democrat.

The ADA stood up, took a deep breath to quell the butterflies that always took flight inside her stomach during the first stages of a trial, and approached the woman.

“Good morning, Miss McFaddan,” she said with a pleasant smile. “How do you feel about being here today?”

The woman considered for a moment. “About the same as I felt all the other times.”

“How was that?”

“Proud to do my duty, sad to have to sit in judgment on a fellow human being.”

“And how many juries have you served on?”

“Four in my lifetime.”

“Do you remember what those cases were about?”

“Of course I do. It’s not something you can forget so easily.”

“Tell us about them,” Tess invited.

“Let’s see, one had to do with a young man accused of robbing a liquor store. There were three eyewitnesses—we had to convict him. Another was about a drunk driver who killed a little boy. I’m afraid we had to convict him, too. The third was about a man who was supposed to have plotted to kill his wife, but the prosecution didn’t convince us he had done any such thing.
And the fourth was about a woman who shot her ex-husband when he broke into her house. We acquitted her.”

“What do you think this trial is about?”

“I
know
what it’s about,” Agnes McFaddan declared. “It’s been in all the newspapers and on every television channel for weeks now,
hasn’t it? Why, CNN devotes half an hour to it every single evening, it’s that important. This trial is about rape.”

“And how do you feel about rape, Miss McFaddan?”

“I think it’s a crime,” the prospective juror replied. “And I rank it right up there next to murder and kidnapping.”

“And how do you feel about the defendant?”

A big smile broke out across Agnes McFaddan’s face. “I think he’s a fine man, and a fine senator. I’m sure he’ll make a fine President.”

“I don’t think there are many here today who would disagree with you on that,” Tess conceded. “But the question is, would you be able to put aside your high regard for him as a politician and vote to convict him of the crime of rape if the evidence presented was overwhelming?”

There was another pause as the elderly woman pondered her response. Then she looked straight into the ADA’s eyes. “It would make me sad,” she said, and sighed, “but I guess I’d have to, now wouldn’t I?”

“Thank you, Miss McFaddan,” Tess said with a flash of white teeth. “I have nothing more.”

She turned to sit down and was delighted to find Lamar sprawled in the chair next to hers. On the table in front of her
was a folded piece of paper with the word “aye” scrawled across it.

The bald, stocky man in the creaky wing-tip shoes was named Andrew Cardigan. He was one of an emerging breed of analysts whose advice on jury selection was being taken very seriously by defendants able to afford the high price tag.

He sat to the left of Robert Willmont, with his own stack of profiles in front of him, and continually passed notes across the senator to Hal Sutton and his assistants. In addition, two of Cardigan’s associates were stationed in the spectator section of the small courtroom, monitoring the responses of the jury pool and keeping constant, muffled radio contact with Cardigan by means of transmitters on their lapels and tiny receivers in their ears.

“How long have you lived in San Francisco, Mrs. De-Maio?” Hal Sutton asked a twenty-three-year-old newlywed.

“All my life,” the young woman replied. “The only move I ever made was when I got married. Then I went from my father’s house in the Sunset District to me and my husband’s place on Potrero Hill.”

“Do you know much about this case?”

She shrugged. “Only what’s been on the news.”

“Have you formed an opinion, as a result of what you’ve seen on the news, about the guilt or innocence of my client?”

“No.”

Andrew Cardigan slipped an urgent note down the table to Sutton’s black assistant, who glanced at it and then audibly cleared his throat. Sutton turned around and took the note, read it, stared for a moment at Cardigan, then turned back to the young woman.

“Let me rephrase. Have you formed an opinion, based on anything at all, about the guilt or innocence of my client?”

“Look,” she replied. “Two years ago, my baby sister was raped on her way home from school. He came up to her as nice as you please, telling her she reminded him of his own little girl, and then he dragged her into Sigmund Stern Grove and raped her.
She was eleven years old, for God’s sake. So,
as far as I’m concerned, if a woman says a man raped her, he raped her.”

“Did you vote in the primary on Tuesday, Mr. Hiltz?” Tess asked a gangly garage mechanic in his thirties.

“Sure did,” the man replied.

“Mind telling us who you voted for?”

“Sure don’t. Voted for the senator over there and proud of it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not like them other shysters that make big promises just so’s they can get themselves elected and then conveniently forget them the very next day. He may be rich, but he knows how to speak for the workin’ slobs like me.”

“And what do you think of the crime the defendant is charged with having committed?”

“Crime? What crime?” Hiltz asked. “I don’t see as it’s a crime to give a dame what she’s askin’ for.”

“Are you a feminist, Miss Chu?” Sutton inquired of a pretty young dental hygienist.

“If you’re asking me whether I believe that men and women are equal, yes, I da. Even though my family comes from a country that doesn’t yet comprehend that, my father always treated my mother with great respect.”

“Do you think adultery is a crime?”

Elaine Chu thought for a moment. “A moral crime, yes, but I wouldn’t know about it being a legal one.”

“Would you be more likely to convict a man of rape if you knew he had committed adultery?”

“I wouldn’t convict a man of rape,” the dental hygienist replied, “unless I was convinced he had raped.”

“Do you believe that a woman has the right to say no to a man, Mr. Barstow?” Tess asked a forty-two-year-old computer software salesman wearing a polka-dot tie.

“Yes and no,” he replied. “If she says it right up front, yes, absolutely, and a man ought to respect that. But if she leads
him on, teasing him and getting him all excited and everything, and then up and thumbs her nose at him, well, I’m not so sure that’s right, either.”

“Would you be able to listen to the evidence presented with an open mind?”

“I think so.”

“And do you think, after hearing all the evidence, you would be able to render an impartial verdict in this case?”

“Yes, I would,” Brian Barstow said.

“For a while there, I didn’t think you were going to make it,” Tess said to her investigator over hamburgers in the Flower Market Cafe shortly after noon.

“I may be on to something,” Lamar told her.

She stopped in mid-bite.

“Something usable?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “Got some more digging to do.”

“I can go it alone if you need the time,” she offered.

He shrugged. “I have a meet set up but it’s not until later. I’ll stick.”

“How are we doing?” Robert asked his team at the end of the day.

“I think we’re doing great,” Cardigan said. “Those people love you. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the DA didn’t ask for a change of venue.”

“Tess Escalante is smart,” Sutton replied. “She wants everyone to believe that her case is so strong she can beat us right here in the senator’s backyard.”

“Is it?” Robert asked.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Sutton said. “If we can’t find some kind of motive in this, her case is going to come across as pretty damn convincing.”

Robert turned to Mary Catherine.

The administrative assistant sighed. “I’m sorry. The detective agency I hired is top drawer all the way, strictly ex-FBI.
They’ve got over a hundred people out there digging, but so far they haven’t turned up a thing.”

“Why don’t you tell them they don’t get paid if they don’t get results?” Robert snapped in frustration.

“What
do
we know about her?” Randy asked.

Mary Catherine opened a pitifully thin folder. “She’s fifty years old. She was born and raised in Great Neck, Long Island,
New York. Her father’s a retired dentist, her mother’s a housewife. The parents moved to Florida seven years ago. There’s one sister who lives in Boston, the husband is an attorney, they have two children.”

“Anything there?” Robert asked.

“No. He’s an estate planner, no particular political affiliation.”

“Go on.”

“She went to college, didn’t graduate. On the fringe of the counterculture back in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Hung with a group of anti-war, popular-cause types. Held a series of nondescript jobs. Managed a posh Manhattan art gallery for a while.
Married an architect in 1981, a widower with three children. Received some national recognition for a series of photographic essays on America.”

“What about her partner?”

Mary Catherine shook her head. “The photographer is her sister-in-law. Nothing there.”

“Why didn’t she graduate from college?” Randy asked.

The administrative assistant flipped through the pages. “Let’s see. I remember there was something about an accident. Yes,
here it is. During her junior year, she was involved in some kind of accident and pretty badly injured. The hospital records are no longer available, lost or something, they said, but people who were there around that time seemed to remember it was an automobile accident. She spent several months in the hospital and then, apparently, she had a couple of years recuperating at home. Just decided not to go back to school after that, I guess.”

“No political ties?”

“None.”

“No mob connections?”

“None.”

“What about her history with men?”

“Other than an old college boyfriend in Maine who told our detective to go to hell—and her husband, of course—the agency hasn’t been able to find a single solitary man who can so much as lay claim to having kissed her.”

“Where does that leave us?” Robert asked.

“With Snow White incarnate,” Randy said. “But only if you believe in fairy tales.”

“Keep digging,” Robert instructed.

Jury selection took the better part of two weeks. In the end, the prosecution and the defense were able to agree on five men and seven women, Agnes McFaddan, Elaine Chu, and Brian Barstow among them, and two female alternates, who would decide the fate of Robert Drayton Willmont. Both sides congratulated themselves. Both sides predicted success.

H
ow are you holding up?” Tess asked, a matter of hours after the jury was sworn in, the day before the trial was to begin.
The ADA had arrived at the Doniger home in St. Francis Wood to find a swarm of reporters had taken up residence on the front lawn.

“I’ve been working on the new book as much as I can,” Karen replied, shutting the door quickly against the barrage of rude questions that followed Tess inside. “It keeps my mind off things. I don’t go out very much and I try not to watch television.”

It was barely a month before the convention, and Mariah Dobbs was making the most of every opportunity to portray Robert Willmont as a pilloried savior—although, granted, a savior with a slightly tarnished halo.

Each day, after court, the senator would stop on the steps of the Hall of Justice to tell the media how deeply sorry he was to have broken his marriage vows and, in so doing, allowed some vague and nameless villain to take advantage of his momentary weakness. Always by his side were his wife and his son and his mother.

“My boy is innocent of this vicious allegation,” Amanda Drayton Willmont would declare whenever anyone inquired.
She was eighty-four now and palsied, but her voice was still strong and clear. “If you ask me, this is all the work of people who are afraid of their fat pocketbooks if my Bobby is elected President.”

“I know the enormous stress my husband has been under,” Elizabeth Willmont said on a national morning talk show, looking lovely in pink. “I know how difficult it can be for someone to resist temptation when he’s pushed himself past the point of exhaustion.
I’ve forgiven his transgression, and I hope the country can, too.”