The Justice Game (20 page)

    The media was not.

    Cameramen walked backward with their cameras just a couple of feet from Kelly’s face. Reporters fired questions at will.

    “Ms. Starling, how do you feel about the court’s ruling?”

    “I feel great.”

    “What evidence do you have that MD Firearms knew about the sales?”

    Kelly smiled. “Lots.”

    “Is it true that the investigative report about Larry Jamison was flawed?”

    “What’s that got to do with anything?” Kelly shot back, before she could remind herself to keep her mouth shut.

    “Could the defense raise that as contributory negligence?”

    Kelly picked up the pace. “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.”

    Kelly fielded a few more questions on the fly, until she and Blake outdistanced the reporters. When she parted company with Blake at her car, about a half mile from the courthouse, there were tears in his eyes.

    “I’m glad I found you,” he said.

    Kelly gave him a quick hug and imagined what a wonderful husband he must have been to Rachel. The man was sensitive and not afraid to show it. And though she hated herself for being so obsessively analytical about it, he would make a strong witness.

    “We’ve got a long way to go,” she warned.

    She spent most of the ride to D.C. thinking about Blake and Rachel, even pulling a picture of Rachel from her briefcase to remind herself of the woman’s innocent charm. The rest of the time, she was on the phone with the firm’s public-relations director. There would be four local television stations waiting for her in a firm conference room when she returned. The partners were proud of her. They thought a press conference would be a good way to capitalize on the free publicity.

    Kelly sighed, but what choice did she have? She would prefer to try her case in the courtroom, but Melissa Davids would probably be all over television that night, spouting off about this money grab by Rachel Crawford’s family.

    It couldn’t hurt to even the playing field a little.

On the way to the airport, Case McAllister didn’t seem to be at all bothered by the hearing. He had tossed his suit coat in the back and slouched down in the passenger seat, relaxed and talkative. “We knew going in that we were going to lose,” he reminded Jason. “I’ve got some friends in the Virginia legislature. They’ve got ways of getting the word to Judge Garrison. We may still win this thing on a Motion to Strike at trial.”

    Jason wasn’t so sure. He would prepare for the case as if it were going to the jury. Judge Garrison’s ruling had not left a lot of wiggle room for a Motion to Strike.

    For most of the trip, Case talked about everything except the lawsuit. When they pulled up to the curb at the airport, he reminded Jason not to talk with the press. “Melissa likes to handle the publicity aspects herself,” Case said.

    
No kidding,
Jason thought.

    “You just focus on trial prep,” Case said.

    After he dropped Case off, Jason spent a few minutes analyzing the day’s events. Case seemed supremely confident, almost as if he had an inside line on Judge Garrison. But if he did, why would Garrison have ruled against MD Firearms today? Could it be that Davids and McAllister actually wanted to lose this hearing, realizing that the free publicity for their company would be worth millions?

    The thought that his own client might be pushing this case toward trial troubled Jason. Maybe it was just the product of his cynical and imaginative mind. Or maybe Case had been through so much controversy in his day that this was just a blip on the radar screen. Either way, Jason still felt it odd that the same ruling that had sent his own stomach into a relentless churn had not seemed to impact Case at all.

    But then he thought about the moment that Kelly had first pulled out the
Farley
ruling. Case had seemed understandably frustrated. And surprised. So maybe he just got over things quickly.

    When Jason reached the interstate, instead of heading north toward Richmond, he took the second entrance ramp, heading south and eventually east to Virginia Beach. There were certain things he couldn’t control. The judge, for example. Maybe his client as well.

    But Jason had a job to do, and he needed to focus on that. He had to assume this case would ultimately go to trial.

    Today had given him a chance to analyze Kelly Starling, and he had been impressed. She was businesslike and well prepared, but she also had a quick smile, lively brown eyes, and a short, layered haircut that gave her an all-American image. She could do Wonder Bread commercials. Plus, she seemed to be a true extrovert, not a private person like Jason who just played the part of a trial lawyer.

    But he could count on at least one weakness. She was from Burgess and Wicker, a traditional big firm that taught traditional big-firm trial prep. She would focus on pretrial depositions, file truckloads of legal motions, and try to bury Jason in a mountain of paperwork. She would view the trial as a battle of evidence, hers versus his, a procedural competition with the verdict as the prize.

    But Jason had been trained differently. At Justice Inc., under Andrew Lassiter’s watchful eye, Jason had discovered that the courtroom was not about
debate
; it was about
drama.
The trial was a play, the jury the audience, the lawyers the actors. What mattered most to Jason was not this piece of evidence or that piece of evidence. What mattered to him was the audience. What did they value? What motivated them? How could he touch on the issues they cared about most? It was Cicero, not big-firm training, that formed the basis for Jason’s playbook:
Touch the heart, move the mind.

    That was the key to advocacy.

    But there were practical concerns as well. He had overlooked a critical case in his prep for today’s hearing because he wasn’t part of the local legal culture. That was why smart companies usually hired local legends for their trials as opposed to nationally known out-of-town lawyers. Every courthouse had its own culture. Every city and county had its unique jury pool with a unique set of values, fears, and hot buttons to push.

    Let Kelly Starling focus on evidence and legal motions, Jason decided. He would work hard on those aspects of the case too, but his real focus would be elsewhere. He would become part of the Virginia Beach culture. Tonight he would spend time hanging out in Virginia Beach. Tomorrow he would look for a temporary place to stay for the next few months, just like Robert Sherwood had suggested.

    In six months or so, unless Case McAllister took care of things behind the scenes, Jason would play a starring role in the case of
Crawford v. MD Firearms.

    It was time to start getting into character.

Jason secured a room at an oceanfront hotel, then drove up Laskin Road, looking for a place to eat. He had been on edge at lunch and hadn’t had much appetite. Now he was famished.

    About half a mile from the oceanfront, next to an abandoned movie theater, Jason found just the place. He pulled into a burger joint with a purple roof and a sign that promised thick shakes. The Purple Cow. If he wanted to find an authentic slice of Virginia Beach life, this looked like a promising place.

    The interior featured purple booths, an old jukebox playing “Help Me, Rhonda,” a soda bar, a giant gum ball machine, children’s crayon drawings of purple cows pasted to one wall, and a colorful assortment of life-size figures covering the others, including a picture of Bill Clinton dressed up like Elvis and singing next to an image of Marilyn Monroe. The place was about half full, not a bad crowd for a weeknight in the winter, and the hostess said Jason could sit anywhere he wanted. Jason picked a booth in the back corner and studied the menu.

    Jason guessed his waitress was a local high school or college student. Her name badge said
Kim,
and she tried to talk Jason into ordering a purple milk shake, pointing out a family at the next table where the kids sported purple teeth and tongues.

    “You can’t come to the Purple Cow and not order a purple milk shake.”

    “I’ll stick with vanilla.”

    For the main course, Kim recommended lasagna, and Jason obliged. A few minutes later she brought the vanilla shake, and Jason knew immediately that he had found the right spot. The shake was otherworldly good, a throwback to the days of real ice cream and real milk, thick enough that you couldn’t coax it through a straw. Kim served it in two glasses—the tall aluminum glass it was mixed in and a tall thin glass to drink from.
This
was the way shakes were supposed to be served.

    A thought hit Jason just before the food arrived. It was crazy, and way outside his comfort zone, but his competitive instincts edged out his shyness. Kelly Starling would probably be spouting off on television tonight on one channel, while Melissa Davids would be making her case on another. But Jason had an opportunity to find out how real Virginia Beach jurors might think. He got Kim’s attention, and she came smiling to the table.

    “Do you have any regulars in here?” Jason asked. “I need to bounce something off some folks who live in Virginia Beach. Get their opinion on something.”

    Kim scrunched her forehead, looking confused.

    “I’m a lawyer,” Jason said, lowering his voice. “I’m from out of town, and I’ve got a case I need to try in a few months. I wanted to get a quick opinion from the types of people who might sit on my jury.… I’ll even pay for their dinner.”

    Kim asked a few questions about the case, and Jason kept it general. Still, she heard enough to pique her curiosity. “Could I listen too?” she asked.

    “As long as you don’t get in trouble with your boss.”

    “That won’t be a problem,” Kim said. She nodded toward a corner booth. “The guy facing us is a youth pastor named Wayne from a local church. He comes in here about once a week. That couple with him—I can’t remember their names—but they’re in the church too.”

    “Think they’ll do this?” Jason asked.

    “A free meal? Wayne? Uh… yeah.”

    After an awkward introduction, Jason began explaining the facts of the Crawford case. He spoke with as much detachment as he could muster; he didn’t even let on whether he represented the plaintiff or the defendant. About three minutes into his presentation, he was forced to start over again when the couple who owned the restaurant joined the discussion, asking lots of probing questions.

    He took mental notes as the little group argued about the right verdict. The men tended to sympathize with MD Firearms, but the woman who was part owner of the restaurant proved to be very persuasive. “I’ll never forget seeing that shooting on television,” she said. “I just think this manufacturer has a duty not to use dealers who are making illegal sales.”

    Her husband shook his head. “I don’t see that. The manufacturer didn’t shoot that woman.”

    “But let’s say we hire an employee who we know has violent tendencies. And then he gets mad one day and gets in a fight with a customer. You don’t think we’d be responsible?”

    The question brought a reflective pause. “I see your point,” her husband said.

    And so did the others. Once the pendulum started swinging, it didn’t stop until it had arrived at $2.5 million.

    It wasn’t a scientific poll or even a representative focus group. But it served as an effective wake-up call.

    “Who do you represent?” Kim asked.

    “The company you just nailed for $2.5 million.”

    When he returned to his booth, Kim asked Jason if he wanted his lasagna reheated.

    “Why don’t you put it in a box,” he said. “I think I lost my appetite.”

Jason spent the weekend looking for a temporary office and a place to live for the next few months. He was hoping for something affordable near the beach.

    The weather took a nasty turn on Saturday, with steady rain and biting winds from the northeast making for a deserted boardwalk. Still, Jason could imagine this place in the summer—teeming with tourists, surfers, and beach cruisers. He learned that the oceanfront economy relied on summer labor from nearly six thousand international college students who were in the country on temporary four-month visas. He also learned that most of them were women.

    Moving to the beach permanently was not out of the question.

    Each day, he approached his hunt for an apartment and office with the same level of discipline he would bring to bear on a major case. He scoured newspapers and the Internet for possible locations, mapped them out over morning coffee, and drove by later in the day. That way, he could eliminate prospects from his list without talking to somebody on the phone or, worse yet, being subject to an interminable sales pitch. He would go inside only if the place had real promise.

    Each night for dinner, he returned to the Purple Cow, where his waiter or waitress would put him in touch with another table of locals looking for a free meal. On Monday night, the locals delivered the first defense verdict, and the owner of the restaurant was so excited for Jason that she comped the family’s meal on the spot.

    “It’s all part of the dining experience,” the owner said. “Good burgers, purple shakes, a crazy defense lawyer. What could be more American?”

    On Tuesday morning, Jason closed two deals. A one-year office lease on Laskin Road and a month-to-month residential lease for a “cottage”—the Virginia Beach term for a small detached residence located on the same property as the main house. This particular cottage was a small apartment located over a boathouse on a waterfront estate in the Bay Colony area. The house and cottage shared a backyard that looked out over a body of water called Linkhorn Bay and were located less than a mile from the ocean.

    A spry widow named Evelyn Walker lived alone in the main house, except in the summers, when she rented rooms to a number of international students. She was looking for someone to help keep an eye on things, especially during the off-season when the college students weren’t around.