The Jury (8 page)

Increasingly their concern was for the other two children. Though I got the sense that Frank never really accepted this, I could tell that in Doris's mind Penny was already gone. She loved the child, but she was losing her and there was nothing she could do. She saw Penny dying by the inch! Frank and Doris hoped that Penny could be admitted to the study. No matter how slim, it was her only chance. If she didn't make it, at least she was of the same genetic strain as the other two Boyd children. Anything the researchers learned might be used to help them--that is, if they tested positive for the disease.

Crone had a zillion arguments why he shouldn't do it at all, a boatload of downsides, not the least of which was the fact that it might un track the studies that were soon to start and were already funded. It would require a major infusion of new research money. I stopped arguing. There was nothing I could say. In my own mind, I was headed for the door. I started making small talk, changing the subject, when he looked at me, smiled and said: "You give up too easily."

I was dumbfounded.

"Have you ever written a grant proposal?" he asked.

I said no.

"Actually, it would take an amendment. Would you like to learn?"

I smiled, almost laughed out loud, and for six weeks through the fall and early winter we spent evenings and weekends hunched over a computer in my office, typing. I was useless. Crone did it all. Dictated the language, showed me the pitfalls, and finally sent the bundle to the gods of funding in the university administration. In the end it was all for naught, but not for want of trying.

Harry and I have had our problems with Crone, but for me it always comes back to the same issue: How do you question a man who has done this? Put his body on the blocks for a child he didn't even know. It may be stupid, but it is the reason I cannot believe he killed Kalista Jordan.

Our efforts went up in smoke. Competing applications for grant money on other research dried up the funds that might have been available for the children's portion of the Huntington's study. A few weeks later, Crone was arrested for Jordan's murder and the rest is history.

"Never thought I'd be pulling for a man accused of murder," says Doris. Then she thinks of what she's just said to the man who is defending him.

"No offense. Its just that I've never been involved with anyone arrested before.

How long could this last?"

"It could go on for weeks, perhaps months. And if he's convicted ..."

"You don't think that'll happen?"

"I don't think he did it, but I can't predict what a jury will do."

"Maybe he could talk to somebody at the university? Get them to take another look at the funding request?" she says.

"Unfortunately, he lost whatever pull he had within the university when they arrested him."

"Oh." Her expression sags in a way that tells me she has been harboring this hope for a few days.

"He's been placed on unpaid leave pending the outcome of his trial."

Fortunately, Crone is financially independent, able to pay my fees without strain. I am told he has family wealth, eastern roots. His great grandfather was one of the railroad barons of the mid-Atlantic states. All I know is that my bill, computed on an hourly basis, is paid every month without question by an accounting firm in the Big Apple, and the checks don't bounce.

"Maybe if he was out on bail the university would see it differently?" she says.

I explain to her that the court has already denied bail. And even if they did let him out pending trial, the university would never reinstate him as project director. Not while the case is pending. Crone is charged with killing a fellow employee of the university. This has implications. A possible lawsuit for damages.

"Oh."

I can't get into the details, but the fact that Kalista Jordan filed a sexual-harassment claim before she was killed places the employer on thin ice.

Their lawyers are already conjuring thoughts of civil liability, wrongful death with the university as a party on grounds that they permitted a hostile work environment.

This leaves only one thought in Doris's mind: that I must win the case, and do it quickly.

I'm not even sure this will change the landscape. "You should steel yourself to the possibility that none of this may help," I tell her.

"The funds are probably gone. The study may be too far along for them to change it at this stage."

"I don't want to think about that." Doris is in denial.

"We may not be able to get her in, and even if we do, effective gene therapies may be a long way off."

"I know. But I can't think about that."

"There's something else," I tell her.

"The possibility that even if Dr. Crone is acquitted, the university may not reinstate him."

This is something she hasn't considered.

"Why not? Why wouldn't they?" Her eyes are now large and round with indignation.

Crone is the only person in a position to help her child, and I am now telling her that even this may be an illusion.

"Embarrassment. Public humiliation. The university may want to stay clear of the scandal even if the jury is not convinced that Crone killed the woman. It's a fact that reasonable doubt is not the same

thing as a social seal of approval. Crone is going to be carrying a lot of baggage when this is over, no matter what happens."

"So what do we do?" she says.

"We may have invested too much hope," I tell her.

"What else can I do?" Parent hanging from a frayed thread.

I have no answer.

chapter five he was wrong," says Crone.

"Who?" Harry is sitting at the table, the one bolted to the floor of the small conference room near Judge Coats's courtroom.

Crone is busy readying himself for court, running a comb through long wisps of thinning dark hair so that he doesn't look like the mad professor. He peers into a stainless-steel mirror on the wall to make sure his tie is straight, this despite the fact that the ends are uneven. He is not what you would call a natty dresser. Even with these final acts of preening there is a certain professorial slouch in his stance and a slept-in appearance to his clothing. He doesn't wear a suit. Instead, he opts for the less formal appearance of a corduroy sport coat over a plaid shirt, and gray Dockers, none of which he has allowed to be pressed. It is as if seamless trousers and wrinkled cloth were a badge of academic honor, a message to the world, and the jury, that he flies by some other convention. A generation ago this might have been a problem. Today half the jury pool shows up in T-shirts and jeans and has to be scanned for weapons before they are admitted to the jury commissioner's waiting area.

"The coroner, Max Schwimmer," says Crone.

"If he's going to testify under oath, then he should get it right. And it's not ten percent."

"What are you talking about?" says Harry.

"The percentage of left-handed people in the population. It's more like fifteen, not ten."

"I'll be sure and make a note," says Harry. He gives me a look out of the corner of one eye as if to say, That's gonna save us. Harry has not warmed to Crone.

There is something in the air between them, like ozone following lightning.

Neither of them will bend to make the first gesture toward the other in order to dispel this miasma of ill will.

Crone is into the little things, meticulous about details, and religious when it comes to numbers. In Crone's eye, mathematics governs the universe. To get an equation wrong is a mortal sin.

He is a man always in charge, brimming with confidence. Except for the orange jumper, on the days we don't go to court you would swear he was running the jail. He strides the dayroom jostling and bumping shoulders with career cons whose sole concern with science is whether some street vendor stepped on their crack too many times to get high. David Crone shrinks for no one, and he seems to mingle with everyone as if there is something to be learned from each new experience in life.

I have seen him in animated conversations with droopy-eyed losers, men whose arms were covered with tattooed messages punctuated by needle tracks. Crone always seems to leave them smiling. As strange as it might seem, he has found a home here. There is no family to miss, since he's never been married.

They call him the professor.

"Professor's buffin' himself up again."

Crone does a session with the weight machine every morning and is beginning to look fit, having lost that stodgy pudginess with which he started the trial.

Jail has provided him with an element of discipline that his life lacked, and Crone, efficient in every aspect, has made the most of it.

He plays cards, mostly blackjack, with other prisoners in the dayroom each evening. I have interrupted some of these games to meet with him. They play for cigarettes, the con's currency, even though Crone doesn't smoke. They have cheated on him, resorted to elaborate signals and even used shills on the tiers above the tables to read and telegraph his hand. Still they cannot figure out how he keeps winning, the man with the gray-celled supercomputer between his ears. They could shuffle in four more decks and it might slow his counting of the cards to light speed.

This morning Aaron Tash has accompanied Harry and me to the courthouse to talk to Crone. Tash has been trying to see him for days, but I have left strict instructions that the two are not to talk except in my presence. Tash works with Crone at the university, his number two on the genetics project until Crone was placed on leave following his arrest.

Why he continues to report to Crone, who is suspended from his job, I am not sure, but I'm not anxious to have them talking through glass at the county jail on a phone that is monitored by deputies. The possibility of Crone saying something that could be construed as incriminating is too great, particularly if the issue of Kalista Jordan's employment came up.

Tash is in his mid-forties, tall, six-four, even with his knees bent and his back hunched a little, which appears to be his normal posture. He is a wiry, sinuous man, with a graying fringe of hair surrounding a bald dome. He is the antithesis of Crone: a man whose personality, if he has one, is cool and reserved to the point of being glacial.

He appears entirely committed to Crone and his cause. Still, he is a university employee and, I assume, anxious to retain favor with the powers that be. For all I know, he could be eying Crone's job. There is no telling what he might be induced to do if the regents sensed they could be on the hook financially for Jordan's death. After all, they were on notice of her complaint for harassment.

Tash is carrying a thin leather briefcase under one arm. Whatever its contents, it took the guard less than three seconds to check and clear it on entering the jail.

This morning they don't take us into the small consultation chamber with its inch-thick acrylic partition, but into a larger meeting room with a stainless-steel table bolted to the floor and plastic garden chairs. The smaller room isn't large enough for the three of us.

Crone is not there, but I can see him through the windows down below in the dayroom, talking to some inmate, the guard waiting for them. The other man, some behemoth, has just come off the weight machine, covered with sweat and looking like some Nordic bad dream, cheekbones from a horror flick, a blond ponytail, with tattoos on both arms from the pits to the wrists. It could be worse; at least he is laughing with my client. I begin to wonder if Crone has been carrying out fiendish experiments here--Dr. Vikingstein, I presume.

He breaks it up, and followed by the guard, Crone climbs the stairs. A couple of seconds later they unlock the door for him to enter from the jail side.

As soon as he sees us all there, Crone is filled with bonhomie.

"Aaron, I see you've met Mr. Madriani, and Harry Hinds. Harry's an interesting man. Personally, I think he has a way with words."

"Oh, really. In what way?" asks Tash.

"I think Harry should be writing lyrics for music."

This gets a snarl from my partner.

"Oh, you've written songs?"

"No."

"Oh." Tash looks sorry that he asked.

Crone is looking back into the mirror at the other end of the room. I can see him laughing in the glass.

"You have to watch what you say in here, Aaron. I am told they can read lips."

He nods toward the mirror.

"How's everything at the center?"

"People are pulling for you," says Tash.

"They know you didn't do it."

"Gee. Maybe they should all talk to Harry."

Crone is misjudging Harry badly. The man has a boiling point in the vicinity of liquid oxygen and can be just as explosive.

"I'm glad for the support. It means a lot to me. Please tell them that." Perhaps Crone has a place to return to after all.

"I will."

"But you didn't come all this way to tell me that?"

"No. You need to see these numbers," says Tash. He gestures with a finger, tapping the briefcase under his arm.

Crone holds out a hand.

Tash pulls a letter-sized folder from the briefcase, and from this he draws a single sheet of paper. It appears to be the entire contents of the briefcase. He hands the page to Crone, and the two men study it, Tash looking over his shoulder. Little musings under their breath, nothing said outright as they pore over the page.

Why Crone was doing this, volunteering his time on a project from which he has been suspended without pay, no one could say. But I suspect it is a labor of love, and the fact that he is the ultimate optimist. In his mind at least, he is going back.

Crone traces the page with one finger, his eyes following. He is two-thirds of the way down when he backtracks to the middle.

"Here's the problem." He looks at Tash.

"You see it?"

Tash shakes his head, and Crone smiles, still master of the universe.

"Give me your pencil," says Crone.

Tash reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and comes out with a mechanical pencil.

Crone takes it and presses the button on the end twice with his thumb to get some fresh lead. He places the sheet of paper against the wall and starts to write. From this distance it looks like he is scrawling numbers, computing in his head faster than his hand can commit the figures to paper. He scratches over some of the printed numbers, formulas from what I can make out, then writes in the margin, making large scrawled arrows pointing back to the printed text.