The Runaway Jury

"Thank you. Now, Mrs. Hulic, I want to ask you just a few questions."

The courtroom was still and silent as the lawyers held their pens and ignored their sacred legal pads and waited for a great secret to be revealed. After four years of pretrial warfare, they knew virtually everything that every witness would say beforehand. The prospect of unrehearsed statements coming from the witness stand was fascinating.

Surely she was about to reveal some heinous sin committed by the other side. She looked up pitifully at the Judge. Someone had smelled her breath and squealed on her.

"Did you go to Miami over the weekend?"

"Yes sir," she answered slowly.

"With your husband?"

"Yes." Cal had left the courtroom before lunch. He had deals to attend to.

"And what was the purpose of this visit?"

"To shop."

"Did anything unusual happen while you were there?"

She took a deep breath and looked at the eager lawyers packed around the long tables. Then she turned to Judge Harkin and said, "Yes sir."

"Please tell us what happened."

Her eyes watered, and the poor woman was about to lose control. Judge Harkin seized the moment, and said, "It’s okay, Mrs. Hulic. You’ve done nothing wrong. Just tell us what happened."

She bit her lip and clenched her teeth. "We got in Friday night, to the hotel, and after we’d been there for two maybe three hours the phone rang, and it was some woman who told us that these men from the tobacco companies were following us. She said they had followed us from Biloxi, and they knew our flight numbers and everything. Said they’d follow us all weekend, might even try to bug our phones."

Rohr and his squad breathed in relief. One or two shot nasty looks at the other table, where Cable et al. were frozen.

"Did you see anybody following you?"

"Well, frankly, I never left the room. It upset me so. My husband Cal ventured out a few times, and he did see this one guy, some Cuban-looking man with a camera on the beach, then he saw the same guy on Sunday as we were checking out." It suddenly hit Stella that this was her exit, her one moment to appear so overcome she just couldn’t continue. With little effort, the tears began to flow.

"Anything else, Mrs. Hulic?"

"No," she said, sobbing. "It’s just awful. I can’t keep . . ." and the words were lost in anguish.

His Honor looked at the lawyers. "I’m going to excuse Mrs. Hulic, and replace her with alternate number one." A small wail went up from Stella, and with the poor woman in such misery it was impossible to argue that she should be kept. Sequestration was looming, and there was no way she could keep pace.

"You may return to the jury room, get your things, and go home. Thank you for your service, and I’m sorry this has happened."

"I’m so sorry," she managed to whisper, then rose from the witness chair and left the courtroom. Her departure was a blow for the defense. She’d been rated highly during selection, and after two weeks of nonstop observation the jury experts on both sides were of the near-unanimous opinion that she was not sympathetic to the plaintiff. She had smoked for twenty-four years, without once trying to stop.

Her replacement was a wild card, feared by both sides but especially by the defense.

"Bring in juror number two, Nicholas Easter," Harkin said to Willis, who was standing with the door open. As Easter was being called for, Gloria Lane and an assistant rolled a large TV/VCR to the center of the courtroom. The lawyers began chewing their pens, especially the defense.

Durwood Cable pretended to be preoccupied with other matters on the table, but the only question on his mind was, What has Fitch done now? Before the trial, Fitch directed everything; the composition of the defense team, the selection of expert witnesses, the hiring of jury consultants, the actual investigation of all prospective jurors. He handled the delicate communications with the client, Pynex, and he watched the plaintiff’s lawyers like a hawk. But most of what Fitch did after the trial began was quite secretive. Cable didn’t want to know. He took the high road and tried the case. Let Fitch play in the gutter and try to win it.

Easter sat in the witness chair and crossed his legs. If he was scared or nervous, he didn’t show it. The Judge asked him about the mysterious man who’d been following him, and Easter gave specific times and places where he’d seen the man. And he explained in perfect detail what happened last Wednesday when he glanced across the courtroom and saw the same man sitting out there, on the third row.

He then described the security measures he’d taken in his apartment, and he took the videotape from Judge Harkin. He inserted it in the VCR, and the lawyers sat on the edge of their seats. He ran the tape, all nine and a half minutes of it, and when it stopped he sat again in the witness chair and confirmed the identity of the intruder-it was the same man who’d been following him, the same guy who’d shown up in court last Wednesday.

Fitch couldn’t see the damned monitor through his hidden camera because bigfoot McAdoo or some other klutz had kicked the briefcase under the table. But Fitch heard every word Easter said, and he could close his eyes and see precisely what was happening in the courtroom. A severe headache was forming at the base of his skull. He gulped aspirin and washed it down with mineral water. He’d love to ask Easter a simple question: For one concerned enough about security to install hidden cameras, why didn’t you install an alarm system on your door? But the question occurred to no one but himself.

His Honor said, "I can also verify that the man in the video was in this courtroom last Wednesday." But the man in the video was now long gone. Doyle was safely tucked away in Chicago when the courtroom saw him enter the apartment and slink around as if he’d never get caught.

"You may return to the jury room, Mr. Easter."

AN HOUR PASSED as the lawyers made their rather feeble and unprepared arguments for and against sequestration. Once things warmed up, allegations of wrongdoing began to fly back and forth, with the defense catching the most flak. Both sides knew things they couldn’t prove and thus couldn’t say, so the accusations were left somewhat broad.

The jurors got a full report from Nicholas, an embellished account of everything that happened both in court and in the video. In his haste, Judge Harkin had failed to prohibit Nicholas from discussing the matter with his colleagues. It was an omission Nicholas had immediately caught, and he couldn’t wait to structure the story to suit himself. He also took the liberty of explaining Stella’s rapid departure. She’d left them in tears.

Fitch narrowly averted two minor strokes as he stomped around his office, rubbing his neck and his temples and tugging at his goatee and demanding impossible answers from Konrad, Swanson, and Pang. In addition to those three, he had young Holly, and Joe Boy, a local private eye with incredibly soft feet, and Dante, a black ex-cop from D.C., and Dubaz, another Coast boy with a lengthy record. And he had four people in the office with Konrad, another dozen he could summon to Biloxi within three hours, and loads of lawyers and jury consultants. Fitch had lots of people, and they cost lots of money, but he damned sure didn’t send anyone to Miami over the weekend to watch Stella and Cal shop.

A Cuban? With a camera? Fitch actually threw a phonebook against a wall as he repeated this.

"What if it’s the girl?" asked Pang, raising his head slowly after lowering it to miss the phonebook.

"What girl?"

"Marlee. Hulic said the phone call came from a girl." Pang’s composure was a sharp contrast to his boss’s explosiveness. Fitch froze in mid-step, then sat for a moment in his chair. He took another aspirin and drank more mineral water, and finally said, "I think you’re right."