The Jury Read Free

floor.
    chapter one
    I notice one of the jurors, a middle-aged guy, taking his time, carefully studying one of the photographs of the victim. The message from prosecutors is clear--Kalista Jordan was an African American beauty, a woman with a lifetime of opportunities ahead of her. But she was not just some pretty face. She was a professional woman with a Ph.D. in an exotic field of modern science.
    In the photo, she is smiling with two girlfriends on a sunny beach. Jordan is wearing a two-piece bathing suit, a sky blue sarong wrapped low over curving hips, dipping into a V beneath her navel where it is tucked. A sculpted bronze thigh escapes through a slit in the sarong on the right side. Someone out of the photograph, a shadow on the sand, is taking the picture.
    It is in stark contrast to the medical examiner's postmortem shots. As these make their way through the jury box, they leave a wake of increasingly nauseated expressions like a contagion spreading through the panel. Several of the jurors cast their gazes alternately between the photographs and my client, as if trying to put him in the picture.
    In the autopsy photos Jordan's face is swollen almost beyond
    recognition. The dark purple of asphyxiation is trapped beneath the skin by the thin nylon ligature that is still buried in the flesh around her neck. What is left of the body, only the torso and head, is bloated after nearly a week in salt water. The arms and legs are gone. We could argue sharks, but the medical examiners report is clear on that point; the victim was surgically dismembered, the legs and arms severed cleanly at the joints, "with apparent skill and medical precision." The prosecutor took pains to dwell on the word medical.
    We have argued for two days in chambers over these photographs, which should be admitted and which excluded. For the most part, the state got what it wanted--images of enough violence to support their theory that this was a crime of rage.
    Harry Hinds and I are relative newcomers to the legal scene in San Diego, though the firm of Madriani & Hinds has made a name for itself in a short period. We still hold forth in Capital City on occasion, Harry and I traveling north for a trial or a hearing. Two younger associates hold down the fort at that end while Harry and I dig to carve out a presence here. The change in scenery was occasioned by a number of factors, not the least of which was the passing of Nikki, my wife, who died four years ago of cancer.
    It was that experience, a long brush with illness, fearing the worst and living in its grip, that caused me to take this case, for my client is a man of science who offered help to another. It is how I got drawn into this thing.
    Dr. David Crone is beefy, broad from the shoulders down, built like a retired NFL linebacker past his prime. He is a big man, only an inch or so shorter than I, and fit. At fifty-six, he does not look his age. In shirtsleeves he shows more hair on his arms and chest than the average chimpanzee. Around a pool some might ask who opened the gate and let in the gorilla. The only place devoid of hair is the tonsure at the top of his head where he is beginning to bald. His brows are heavy, and seem to be perpetually migrating to the center of his head as he studies the direction and nuance of the state's arguments. He
    makes copious notes at counsel table, as if this entire affair were an academic exercise on which he will be tested for a grade at the end. The softest aspect of his face is the two disarming brown eyes, deep set as they are under brows that keep moving like ledges of rock in a quake.
    Evan Tannery is a career prosecutor, twenty years with the D.A."s office, and no man's fool. His case is made up of bits and pieces, any one of which might be dismissed as mere coincidence. But taken together, they add up to trouble for Crone.
    Kalista Jordan had filed a sexual harassment claim against our client. From all appearances this had nothing to do with sex