The Disappearance (37 page)

A buzz goes up in the courtroom. Ewing’s mouth sets in a hard line. “In my chambers, gentlemen.” He gets up and marches off the bench. Logan, following, sidles by Luke. “What are you trying to pull?” he hisses. “This is the worst kind of showboating.”

Luke wiggles the folder that he’s holding. “Let’s see,” he replies. “Let’s let the judge decide. In case you’ve forgotten, Ray, you’re not the judge.” A pause for effect. “And you sure as hell ain’t the jury, either.”

Judge Ewing looks up from the pages he’s just read. “When did you physically take possession of this?” he asks Luke.

“Three days ago, Your Honor.”

“When did you find out about it?”

“Earlier that same day.”

Ewing looks at Logan. “Why wasn’t this turned over to the defense at the proper time?” he demands. “Why are we having these eleventh hour shenanigans? Good God, this isn’t the eleventh hour,” he fumes, “we’re technically in trial.”

“I didn’t know about this, Your Honor,” Logan says, red-faced. “This is the first I’ve heard or known of this document’s existence.” Luke has given him a copy, which he read while the judge read his.

Ewing regards Luke’s successor with a baleful eye. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s the truth, I swear it. I don’t like being surprised any more than you do,” Logan says.

Ewing drums his fingers on his desk. “I’m going to have to sleep on this,” he says after some time thinking about it, which both lawyers sweat out. “And the linkage between the shooting of you, Mr. Garrison, and this trial. I’ll render my decision in the morning.”

Until then, everything’s in limbo.

Back in the courtroom, barely 10:30
A.M.
The trial’s adjourned for the day. The confused members of the jury pool, who were expecting to be on hold all day long, are released until tomorrow morning.

Luke sits at the defense table with his client. The deputy sheriff who will accompany Allison back to the jail hovers impatiently nearby. “We fired our first shot across their bow,” Luke tells Allison, “and the first juror hasn’t been impanelled yet.”

“That’s good, I take it?” Allison asks optimistically. As for anyone caught in the jaws of the system, especially for those who “don’t belong,” for whom it’s an unending maze of fear, confusion, and misguided hope, every small “victory” magnifies in importance.

“Yeah,” Luke reassures him. “We’re on the attack now, and they’re on the defensive. Hopefully, that’s how it’s going to go the entire trial.” He scoops his papers into his briefcase. “See you
mañana.
Keep the faith.”

Sheriff Williams and Ray Logan meet in Logan’s office. Logan’s beyond being upset; he’s enraged. And he’s worried, because things are happening that he should know about and doesn’t. Williams may be the senior member of this law-enforcement team by longevity, but Ray Logan is the prosecutor who has to conduct the trial and get a conviction in the highest-profile trial in the county in a decade. And right out of the box he discovers there might be an obstruction of justice emanating from the sheriff’s office.

“I feel like an asshole,” he bitches. “How come Luke Garrison knows about this phone call to the police dispatcher and I don’t?”

“It didn’t seem important,” Williams answers. It was a mistake on his department’s part, a bad mistake. They had all been so damned excited to have a bona fide suspect in the Emma Lancaster kidnap-murder that specific details were disregarded. “It still doesn’t,” he maintains.

“It was important enough for Ewing to send everyone home so he could study it,” Logan counters hotly. “And that’s only half the point, Sheriff.” He occasionally uses Williams’s first name, Bob, but only when they’re comfortable together, which is definitely not the case now. “I have to know everything, and I have to know it up front. It’s like the way you handled the parents. You virtually granted them immunity before my office even spoke to them. Now we can’t pursue any of the shit that’s built up around Doug Lancaster, like
where the fuck was he
, for example.”

Williams nods. He hates conflict, especially with his own people. Logan and he are partners, joined at the hip; the success or failure of this trail will reflect on both of them, for good or ill. But he also knows that in the long run the small stuff is forgotten. Jurors look at the big picture, the key evidence. The rest is shoe polish.

“No superior court judge in the country would rule against the police on something like this,” he Dutch-uncles Logan. “They’d be run out of town on a rail.”

Logan forces himself to take a deep breath and calm down. “That’s not the point, any one or two specific details. I can’t be operating in the dark. What Luke brought up, that’s not going to derail us—I hope. But somewhere down the line, he could find something critical that we’ve overlooked.” He steeples his fingers, thinking. “I’m going to have one of my assistants go over every inch of this, all your procedures, everything. Let’s make sure we haven’t overlooked anything else.”

“That’s fine by me,” Williams agrees. “I don’t want to blow this conviction on a technicality.”

Logan says, “Good.” A moment’s thought, then he goes on. “What’s happening with Garrison’s shooting? Anything? Any leads?”

Williams shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s frustrating.”

Logan’s tight-lipped. “It looks like we’re stonewalling. Punishing him.”

“No.” Williams is adamant. “I want to know who it was, more than anyone.” He pauses. “You know, Luke’s on the other side now, but he and I made a lot of cases together. The man’s a standup guy. I don’t like the idea of some vigilante madman out there trying to take him out.”

“No more surprises, okay?” Logan stands, concluding the meeting.

“All we can do is our best,” the sheriff says.

The call comes to the house at 10:30 that night. “I hope I’m not waking you up,” Judge Ewing says to Luke, “but I assumed you’d want to know as soon as I made my decision. It’s a three-way call. Ray Logan’s on the other line, listening.”

“I haven’t been to bed this early since grade school,” Luke tells the judge. “And I do want to hear, of course.”

“I’m denying your motion.”

The receiver feels hot in his hand. He was expecting this; he couldn’t get his hopes up so high as to think Ewing would, in essence, throw the case out. But still, it’s an empty feeling in his gut.

He finds his voice. “Well, thanks for calling so promptly, Judge.”

“It was a close call,” Ewing says, both defending his decision and assuaging Luke’s feelings. “But it isn’t conclusive. In a situation like this, there has to be no doubt. You understand.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll announce it tomorrow morning, before we begin jury selection,” Ewing says. “You can file an exception, of course.”

“I’ll think about that.” The guy’s almost telling him out loud to protest. Let a higher court reverse, if they see fit. He must have spent some troubled time figuring out how to play this, Luke thinks. He wonders what Logan’s thinking, listening to this.

He didn’t expect to win. Outside of that, this is as good as he can get. Not a victory, but a notch on the wall.

“I’ll see you in the courtroom tomorrow,” Ewing says, signing off. There’s a momentary silence. “Good luck, Luke.” The phone goes dead.

“That was Judge Ewing,” Luke tells Riva, who’s been listening to his end of the conversation. “He turned us down.”

She’s in her nightgown. Her hair is up, her face is clean of makeup. She looks young, innocent, he thinks, gazing at her as she’s curled up on the couch. She looks beautiful. She isn’t showing yet, but she will, soon. He’s looking forward to it. “You should be going to sleep,” he says. “You need your rest.”

“I’m fine.” She smiles. “You’re going to take care of me now?”

“Of course. I’m the father of our child.”
Our child.
The words have a magical ring to them. “Do you think we should …” The magnitude of it hits him all at once.

“We should what?” she asks.

“You know.” He can’t say it. He never thought he’d ever say it again, or even think it.

“What?” She’s smiling at him, her face screwed up in a question.

He feels like a prime doofus. “Get married,” he stammers.

Her jaw drops. “Get married? Are you serious?” She sits up.

He comes over, sits next to her. “Well, I don’t know. Isn’t that what people do when they get pregnant?”

She stares at him. “What for?”

“So the kid won’t be a bastard. So …” He’s at a loss.

“Nobody cares about that,” she says. “What do you think, my father’s going to lay a shotgun upside your noggin?”

“I’ve never even met your father. We’ve never even talked about him.”

“And we never will.” Her smile has faded.

“You’ve never mentioned your parents. I don’t even know if they’re alive,” he says.

“My mother died when I was young,” she informs him. “My father might as well have. I haven’t seen him in years, since I was old enough to get away.”

He looks at her. “You’ve never talked about any brothers or sisters, either.”

“I don’t have any. My life started at seventeen, Luke,” she says with finality, closing the subject. “Before that, that was another life.”

“Okay.” Maybe later. He isn’t going to push it now. He reaches his arm out. She nestles against his body. “I’m your family. Me and Bubba here,” he says, patting her stomach. It’s just beginning to protrude—now that he knows, he can feel the difference.

“If that’s what you want.” She seems shy suddenly.

“It’s what I want, Riva.” He pulls her closer. “It’s going to make all this so much better.”

Eight in the morning. The courtroom is empty except for the principals. The court clerk hands copies of Judge Ewing’s decision to the prosecution and defense tables. Luke already went over to the jail at six to deliver the news.

“Don’t be down about this,” he told his client. “The judge had no choice. We got what I wanted.”

“What was that?”

“Their attention.”

“In the motion under section 1538.5, the court denies defendant’s motion,” Ewing says in a flat voice. “However,” he continues, turning his look to Logan’s table, a look of
I don’t like being fucked with
: “I am strongly admonishing the prosecution regarding the withholding of evidence. Any more such incidents and the court will hold you in contempt. Do I make myself clear?”

Ray Logan gets up, the color in his face rising. “Yes, Your Honor. This was not intentional, I assure you. We have no intention of—”

Ewing swings his gavel hard, silencing Logan. “Intentional or not, I don’t care,” he says sternly. He’s giving Luke everything he can short of a victory. “Don’t do it.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Logan stands in place like a chagrined schoolboy.

Ewing turns to the clerk. “Bring in the first group.”

The jury selection process is excruciatingly slow. Glaciers move faster. Because of technicalities and legal objections from both sides, more than half the candidates have to be privately examined in Judge Ewing’s chambers, and that slows things down even more.

More than anything, what makes selection go so slowly is that this is a capital crime, which means the death penalty is an option. And that means that the jury has to be death-penalty qualified. Every potential juror has to be asked, in specific detail, about his or her attitudes about capital punishment, for or against. Any jury candidate who stipulates that he can’t vote to send anyone, regardless of the circumstances of a crime, to his or her death, is automatically excluded from the jury pool.

When Luke was on the other side, he loved picking these juries, because anyone who’s willing to approve of a death sentence is more likely to convict; it’s human nature, and the statistics bear it out. A defense lawyer already has one strike against him going in on a death-penalty case, Luke always figured.

Now he’s that defense lawyer. So he has to fight like hell to find jurors who can convict, but aren’t knee-jerk about it. A tough proposition. By the end of the first week, only five jurors have been accepted, while one hundred nine were rejected. Luke’s had to use only four of his twenty peremptory challenges; the prosecution’s used six. So many people have been disqualified for cause by Judge Ewing that the process starts to become a joke in the corridors outside—the trial that will never take place because of the jury that will never be impaneled.

Friday is the court’s dark day. On Thursday afternoon, during the midafternoon recess, Ewing, clearly frustrated by the lack of progress, meets with the lawyers in his chambers. “We’re moving too slowly,” he says, showing his irritation. “It’s partly my doing, although you guys are taking way too much time with some of these jurors. Come Monday, I’m going to start moving things through faster, so if there are any potential jurors still on the current list that you really think you don’t want, save your objections for them. I don’t want to bring in another two hundred prospective jurors—there aren’t any. The jury’s going to come from this group, and I won’t keep trying to get jurors that both sides think are perfect.”

True to his word, Judge Ewing is brisk to the point of curtness on Monday morning. Five more jurors are selected Monday, and two on Tuesday makes twelve. Ewing wants at least four alternates, to be extra careful, although the most jurors he’s ever lost on a panel are three. This isn’t going to be an O. J. deal, with jurors dropping like flies for any trivial reason. This train is going to run on time.

Three alternates come on board Wednesday, and by the time Ewing recesses at the end of the day on Thursday two more are set. Twelve jurors, five alternates. More than enough.

It’s a multiethnic jury, six men, six women. Seven anglos, three Latinos, one black, one Chinese-American. Luke isn’t crazy about this jury. If he were prosecuting this case instead of defending it, he’d be happy with the group—but there are a few members he thinks he can work. It’ll be interesting to see how they react when they discover the myriad sexual transgressions the family members were involved in. If they can stomach those and still see the forest for the trees, which is that a girl was kidnapped and then murdered, forget her sexual history, then he and his client are in trouble.