Above the Law (48 page)

“Sorry, Your Honor,” the old man said. “I can get off the track sometimes.”

That was utter crap; he’s as sharp as they come, even at his advanced age.

“Well, get back on the track and stay on it,” Judge McBee warned him.

“I’ll do my best.”

We were off to a rousing start.

John Q. turned back to the jury. “I don’t have that much to say to you, because my opponent here has already made my case for me. He’s already told you there were no eyewitnesses to the killing. He’s already told you the bullet that killed Juarez was never matched to my client’s gun. What more do you want? A witness who
won’t
tell you that my client, a highly regarded professional in his field,
wasn’t
on the moon the night of the killing? Okay, I’ll tell you that. Sterling Jerome was not on the moon the night of the killing. He was here in Muir County, where all of you live, conducting a raid on a drug facility. He was trying to arrest a man who was universally recognized as one of the biggest drug kingpins in the world.”

He turned and looked at Jerome, who was less rigid than he’d been when I was talking about him. Jerome even managed to smile—a small, rueful smile—for the jury’s benefit.

“And he did. He apprehended Reynaldo Juarez, a man on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ten most-wanted list. At great peril to himself and the men under his command. It was a great accomplishment.”

A beat. Then he went on, striding from one side of the jury box to the other, his thumbs pulling at his suspenders.

“The prosecution’s going to tell you that Mr. Jerome didn’t play by the rules when he went in after Reynaldo Juarez. Well, in one sense, he’ll be right, Mr. Garrison there. The raid wasn’t conducted strictly by the book. And you know what? That’s a crying shame. Boo hoo hoo. Mr. Jerome, a seasoned veteran of the drug wars,
had
to improvise when events changed. He
had
to make some quick decisions, out there in the middle of the night, in a lonely, godforsaken, hostile place, about whether or not he should try to arrest one of the most notorious criminals in the world, or let him go because of some technicalities. Not legal technicalities, mind you. Sterling Jerome didn’t break any laws when he authorized the raid on Reynaldo Juarez’s fortress. He bent some departmental rules, that’s all. And for doing that, ladies and gentlemen, the attorney general of the United States praised him.”

John Q. was going good now. I was enjoying his act. He still wasn’t saying anything that would make a difference, but he was fun to watch.

“Mr. Jerome was praised because he carried out his assignment successfully. He apprehended Reynaldo Juarez. Mission accomplished. He brought him in alive. That was his mission. To capture this desperado, and bring him in alive. That’s what he did.”

John Q. moved away from the jury, crossing the room to stand behind his client at the defense table. Putting his hands on Jerome’s shoulders like a father’s on a son’s, he looked at the jurors. “That’s what he did. This capable soldier in the war against drugs. He captured his quarry, and he arrested him.”

He waited for the moment to reach its potential, for the jurors to look at him and at Jerome. Then he walked back to the rostrum again.

“Mission accomplished. Mission wonderfully accomplished. A terrible human being—I use the word in its scientific sense, not in any humanistic way, Reynaldo Juarez was an animal, not a human being, a predator who preyed on the weak and helpless in our society—a bad, bad man was arrested. Mission accomplished. A job well done. The attorney general of the United States, waiting up all night to hear what happened, is overjoyed. Sterling Jerome, a dedicated public servant, did his job. He did it right.”

Another look back at Jerome, a look almost of longing, of endearment.

“This man,” John Q. said, his voice almost quivering with emotion now, “this man is a hero, not a villain. There has been a crime committed here, yes—the crime is that he’s even sitting here in the dock. We should be carrying him down the street on our shoulders, singing his praises, not arresting him and locking him up and bringing these ugly, lousy charges against him. He did his job, ladies and gentlemen. He arrested a dangerous criminal.”

The old warhorse was rolling, I had to give him that. A virtuoso performance.

“Then some unforeseeable horror happened after Reynaldo Juarez was arrested. He escaped. How he escaped, or who helped him escape, no one knows. The prosecution wants to pin that on Mr. Jerome—but they have absolutely no evidence, none at all. There were dozens of people there that night. It was a chaotic situation. Anyone there could have done it. Or more likely, no one did. Juarez was a hardened criminal. He had been in tough spots before. He would have foreseen his being arrested someday, and would have thought of how to deal with those consequences, including figuring out how to escape. That’s a much more likely explanation. Not some concoction the prosecution had to dream up to fit the facts, after the fact.

“Brave men risked their lives to capture a group of hardened criminals. Some of them died doing their jobs—hard, thankless, dangerous jobs. We should praise them, not bury them for that. And we should never, ever, bring innocent men to trial to satisfy the needs of politicians who have to lay blame. Isn’t it enough that those brave men had to die, shot down by armed desperados? Isn’t it enough that for months now, an innocent man, a man whose entire life has been dedicated to wiping out the scourge of drugs, has had to sit in a jail cell, isolated from his family and friends, his career shattered? I think it is. I think that enough is enough, my friends. I think it’s time to let Mr. Jerome go free and resume his exemplary life, a life dedicated to making my life, and your life, and the lives of everyone in this room, in this county, in this country, a safer place to live.”

John Q. was in the homestretch now. One last hurrah.

“Sterling Jerome should never have been indicted. He should never have suffered the pain of imprisonment. He should never have had his good name smeared in the mud. What he should have, and what you should give him, is his freedom back. His freedom, and his dignity. We—all of us—owe him nothing less.”

John Q.’s oration rang the bell. If an impartial observer had judged who was going to win by the opening-day performances, John Q. would have skunked me, an A or A to my solid B+. But today was going to be his pinnacle. Despite the emotion, the appeals to a higher justice, it would be downhill for him, from here on in. Juries will swallow a certain amount of bullshit, especially at the beginning of a trial, when they’ve only seen the frame and not the picture, but evidence will out, unless the jury is absolutely partial to one side, and antagonistic to the other side’s lawyers, which wouldn’t be the case here, either.

After congratulating me on my presentation and my self-restraint (I had strong grounds for objecting several times during John Q.’s opening, but didn’t, that would all be forgotten), Riva went home.

I walked from the courtroom to my office. Tomorrow I would start calling witnesses.

It was a warm and dry late afternoon, a harbinger of a hot, late summer. The sun was low, unfiltered, a furnace door at the far end of the two-lane highway that serves as Blue River’s main street. The objects in its path—buildings, cars, lampposts, pedestrians—were casting long, sharply etched shadows. There’s an old-fashionedness to this town, like out of an old western movie,
High Noon
or
My Darling Clementine.

I guess I thought of those movies because the first witness I was going to call. Sheriff Miller, reminded me of Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda. Strong, quiet types, nothing of the bully about them. I see Miller that way, a throwback to a simpler, more humane time, although I know that’s more nostalgia than reality. And Tom Miller doesn’t live in the past, not with his fancy house and all the modern computer equipment.

I spent an hour with Miller, going over my questions, his answers to them, what I thought John Q. would throw at him. He was ready, he knew the drill—he’d done this innumerable times. And this was personal to him, he really wanted to nail it.

After he left, I reread, for the umpteenth time, parts of the case that were pertinent to the next few days. The butterflies were gone now. From here on in, it would be preparation, facts, and experience.

The building was empty. Everyone had gone for the day. I called Riva to let her know I’d be home soon. Then, as I was putting my papers into my briefcase, about to lock up and walk out, Nora stuck her head in the door.

“Got a minute, Luke?” she asked tentatively.

“I was just leaving, Nora,” I closed my case, snapped it shut.

“I was hoping…”

She stood in the doorway, half in, half out.

“Was there something specific?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk to her. I certainly didn’t want to be alone with her, with no one else around.

“I wanted to congratulate you on your opening. You did well.”

“Thanks.”

“Well stated. Well structured. Not too long.”

“It did the job. Today was John Q.’s day. He’s got the good silver tongue.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “People around here are meat-and-potatoes kind of folks. They’re not impressed with glitz.”

“That’s usually the way it is.” I put on my coat, straightened the pens and papers on my desk. Read the signals, Nora, it’s time to go.

She wasn’t ready to leave. She had come over here for a reason. “I wish we could…talk to each other, Luke. Confer. Like colleagues.”

“We can’t.”

“Because you’re an independent prosecutor? That’s not etched in stone.”

“That’s not the reason. You know the reason.”

She looked down at her feet. “I’ve put that behind me.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“But you still can’t…”

“Share strategy with you?”

“Yes.”

“I told you my attitude about that when I signed on, Nora. If I’m going to be truly independent, it has to be this way. Particularly now. I can’t be alone with you, Nora. I’m uncomfortable right now.”

She looked forlorn.

“I’m sorry, Nora, but that’s the way it is. You may have put what you did behind you, but you can’t erase it.” I sized her up. “And I don’t think you have put it behind you.”

She stared back at me. “You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make a play for you. I can control myself.”

I shook my head. “Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I don’t know, I don’t want to find out. There’s a history, and that’s what I have to go by. The easiest way to make sure nothing happens is to stay out of harm’s way.”

She thought about that for a moment—then she took two steps into the office and closed the door behind her.

I picked my briefcase up. “Open the door, Nora.”

She stood her ground, her back up against the door. “All I want is to be part of the case, Luke. I want to know what’s going on. What your strategy is. How you think it’s going. It’s my case,” she said, her voice rising, “I brought you in, damn it! You have no right to shut me out.”

“Open the goddamn door. Now.”

She wasn’t budging. “Does your wife know about us?”

Jesus, she wasn’t actually saying this.

“There’s nothing for her to know.”

“Maybe we should let her be the judge of that.”

I took one deep breath, to compose myself. Don’t back down on this now, I steeled myself, she’ll run you over if you do.

“Okay, Nora. Here’s how it’s going to go.” My voice was calm, low, clear. “You’re going to walk out of this office right now, and you’re never going to walk in it again unless you’re invited. You want to lay some cockamamie lie on my wife, go do it. I can’t stop you. I’ll tell her you’re lying, and she’ll believe me. But if you get in my face one more time about any of this crap, I am going to call Bill Fishell and have him read you the riot act.”

I stopped.

“It’s up to you, Nora. Either you leave this office, right now, and stop bothering me for the remainder of this trial, or I’m picking up the phone and calling Sacramento.”

She stood frozen in place for a moment—then she turned, threw open the door, and walked out.

I stood behind my desk, listening to her high heels echoing fainter and fainter on the tile floor. Then I heard the front door opening and closing.

I was shaking, my palms were wet, my heart was pounding a mile a minute, all the classic, hackneyed symptoms of distress. Except these were real. My mouth felt metallic, they were so real to my taste.

It took me a few minutes to calm down sufficiently so that I was on an even enough keel that I could feel okay to drive home and be with my family in a secure, unfreaking normality. Leaving the office, locking the door behind me, I walked outside. It was twilight time, about eight o’clock, the sun laying a final coat of blazing colors on the western foothills.

Nora’s come unhinged, I was thinking. All the stress of her life had caught up to her. Riva would never believe Nora, thank God, if Nora was crazy enough to tell her about our episode in the hot tub together and try to portray me as a willing participant. She knew Nora was lonely, and although she hadn’t said it to me, I assumed she felt that Nora was engaging in fantasies about me.

It was delusional, and it was sad. She wasn’t a bad woman, just a desperately lonely one. I don’t know if lonely women make good lovers, like the song says; I don’t ever want to find out. But I knew now, clearly, that they can be dangerous.

Sheriff Miller was everything a prosecutor could hope for in a witness. He told his story clearly, firmly, decisively. And everything he said was a damning indictment against Sterling Jerome.

Q (me): “In operations such as this one, the outside agency, in this case the Drug Enforcement Administration, consults and works closely with the local agency, in this case your department. Is that true?”

A (Miller): “Yes, that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

Q: “Is that how it happened in the raid on the drug compound?”

A: “No.”

Q: “What was different in this instance?”

A: “I wasn’t consulted. At all.”

Q: “When did you find out that this raid was going to take place?”