The Other Shoe (37 page)

Giselle thought that as soon as she brought her occasional tremors and her heartburn under control, she might begin to brim with confidence this morning, and what a lovely fall morning it had been. She'd had a brisk walk before dawn and told herself how she must try this case in a confident mood, and to that end she was already permitting herself some pleasure in the victory she so fiercely intended, and even with the foofaraw of the judge coming into court, even with the rising and being bidden to sit again, even the sight of the judge's faceted skull and his preening, soaring self-regard—none of it slowed her heart rate or polluted her resolve. Judge Samara made an address containing the words “grave,” and “gravity,” and
“graveman,”
and, though she despised him no less for it, Giselle Meany was exalted when he intoned the lyrical old legalisms. “The state,” the judge finally said, “can commence with its voir dire.”

Hoot Meyer's bearing was that of the quickest chicken at the cockfight, but he had taught himself a passably friendly manner, and, adopting this, he stood and introduced himself to the jury pool as the county attorney. He mentioned the judge's name again and the length of the man's storied career, and then to take full possession of the room, and out of a standard courtesy, he introduced Giselle Meany and her client. He referred to Henry Brusett as the defendant, another customary designation, but one that in this case did not come handily into his mouth.

Hoot Meyers would never in his life look upon or think upon Henry Brusett without seeing the big-eyed boy forever running the perimeter of Mrs. Callahan's playground, a faint and hopeful smile for his schoolmates, the kid who could not quite make himself join in. Henry was as timid as ever, and ravaged, and draped in some kind of fat man's clown suit they'd got him to wear, but here he was, against all odds and as luck would have it the only citizen in the county to whom Meyers owed any specific loyalty. Meyers had signed onto many mortgages in his time but was rarely otherwise burdened. He had conducted himself with a bright zeal about owing no favors, and the last thing he had expected so late in an essentially honorable career was to find himself caught out this way, indebted, compromised. He was so far from knowing what he was about that on the thinnest of evidence he'd charged a man—a man whom he knew to be gentle—for murder, and the defendant stood accused primarily by his silence, a silence Meyers himself had recommended and upon which he continued to rely.

Hoot Meyers had long wished to let more light and air into his being—instead of this bramble of subtleties.

“We have to ask you some questions,” he threatened, “because we have to make sure we seat twelve fair-minded people in that jury box. Completely fair-minded. So I'll need to ask you some things, and some of them may get a little personal—information that usually wouldn't be any of my business.” Meyers knew at this moment that the fix was in, he found himself doing it—there was no poorer trial craft than to scare your jury with the first words from your mouth. With questions blunt and numerous, he'd have many chances to make them uneasy about him even before he'd even started to argue his weedy little case, and with startling and disappointing ease, the winning tricks and instincts could be reversed; he'd been naive to worry that he couldn't botch a prosecution as necessary. Nervous jurors. They sat very erect
on the benches, their chins traveled up, their chins traveled down, all with equal misgiving.

“So, to start—do any of you know Mr. Brusett here, or know about him? I only want a show of hands.”

Jurors fourteen and forty-four raised their hands, Muriel Crown and Brick McQuiston.

“And how is it you happen to know him, Ms. Crown?”

“You know how. Same way I know you. Same way I know about everybody.” For many years now she had worked the counter during supper shift at Auntie Belle's Family Diner. She wore an amethyst choker, cut the widest wedges of pie, and tenderly called every male she served “mister.”

“I know,” said Meyers, “but why don't you go ahead and let everybody else in on it, too.”

“Well, I mean, I didn't know him
that
good. I'm a waitress. He was a customer, or used to be. Not lately. It's been a while back since he came in.”

“Anything about that, what you do know of him, that would prevent you from looking at the evidence impartially?”

Ms. Crown, accustomed to coo at distracted diners, had little experience of having her opinions, her wisdom sought this way, and it was something exhilarating. “He was a quiet guy,” she considered. “Real quiet. And he never left me less than fifteen percent. That's all I could say for sure.”

“He's not charged with being cheap.” Meyers, with his desire to fail, was liberated from all but the most formal courtesies; surely he'd get his jury chosen by noon. It was good to finally be on his feet, working. “Is there anything you know about Mr. Brusett that would prevent you from looking at the evidence and hearing this testimony impartially? Can you be fair? Fair to both sides? That's all we need to know.”

Ms. Crown desired very much to do her duty. “I think I'd be real fair. Only thing I got is my common sense, but I've got that. Might as well try and put it to good use for once.”

Meyers only looked at Mr. McQuiston, a man of middle age with a dewlap and slight, oddly square shoulders, and McQuiston volunteered all in a rush that he was a millwright, or had been until recently, and that he knew Henry Brusett from “around,” and that as far as he was concerned, the whole damned thing was a scam. Meyers cut him off before he could explain his theory, and asked that he be excused for cause. The jury pool was reduced to sixty-one.

For an hour then he was at them, probing every sinkhole of their memories for traces of unacknowledged bias, unmentioned debility, and in the name of thoroughness, Meyers was at them until he was very sure he saw their faces calcify in resentment. Some admitted to prior acquaintance with certain officers of the court, some of them also admitted to having strong feelings on account of it. Some admitted to intolerance for the law itself, an abiding mistrust. A felon was excused from duty, a nursing mother, a gentleman with a bad back, a gentleman with bad hearing. There were the usual clever ones who thought to cite some arcane or invented prejudice to get themselves released back to their own business. “ . . . and she was my little cousin, and they never caught the guy, so now, I think it would be just about impossible for me to let somebody off on a deal like this. I just wouldn't risk it. Somebody getting away.”

When at last Meyers sat down, there were forty-eight jurors left in the pool, and Judge Samara mercifully called the trial's first recess, after which Giselle Meany went to work on them, and where it had been restless before, the jury pool nearly revolted under her new line of questioning which was couched, as near as anyone could tell, in algebraic terms. “Now as we examine . . . you are Mr. . . . Hellbron? Well, Mr. Hellbron, have you ever stopped to think why it is that innocence
must come before guilt in our system of justice? And, more than that, do you think that guilt can ever be any kind of absolute?”

“Have I? Probably . . . what was that again?”

Even Ms. Meany knew that she wasn't going over well, and that she'd not be learning anything more about them nor teaching them anything more of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and so she soon let them alone, and then there was the ceremony of passing the jury pool for cause by which it was agreed that those left had not exhibited or admitted any unacceptable taint. Then there was a longer rite, a more secretive and medieval shuffling of notes from attorneys through the bailiff to the judge, and back again, and a dozen more jurors were excused, two by two, on peremptory challenges, excused on lawyer's whims or for no reason at all, most often to their great relief, but finally twelve had been selected, and an alternate, and when they'd taken their places in the jury box and had their half hour of Judge Samara's preliminary jury instructions, every one of them regretted to be among the chosen.

Henry Brusett, five weeks without the pills, was finding it nearly impossible to sit so long in one posture, in a hardback chair, and he was mortified to be the wretch who was putting everyone to so much bother, and the routine they so elaborately followed for his protection was often inscrutable, always tedious to him, and so he concentrated on holding himself together as some semblance of a man. When at one o'clock the judge finally called for a forty-five minute lunch, Henry was returned to the barracks cell, and there he passed the time writhing, stretching, breathing deep. His mind was very clear—no consolation. Nat told him he looked sharp, that a fresh shave really went a long way toward sprucing him up. The bars were painted that baby blue, as they had always been.

Giselle Meany sat in her idling Subaru with the world news from the BBC and a tuna fish sandwich that was not half as much as she
found she wanted to eat, and she told herself in various ways that things were going well for the defense. That was a jury, she thought, with a strain of sweet rationality running through it. Simplicity, she reminded herself, was the soul of elegance, and elegance a function of truth. She must somehow keep things simple.

The county attorney, who could not afford to let other crises stack up while he was at trial, took some calls. There was a conflict of police authority in Elisis with a tribal cop, a city cop, and a sheriff's deputy who had somehow convinced one another that a certain Canadian had immunity to fistfight on Main Street. No one could see where they had clear jurisdiction to interfere. There was a conference call. “If he hurts somebody,” Meyers told them, “arrest him. What do you think, it's an international incident? If he's outta hand, run him in. How many different ways can you guys dream up to not do your damn job? Same goes for a Mexican or a Mongolian or Hmong, or whathaveyou. When they're here, they're under our law.”

There was also a dog bite in the western end.

“You do not mess with somebody's Achilles tendon,” the victim was saying. “Doc says the vicious bitch could've crippled me. Then what, huh? And these people, these Billingsleys, they seem to have her throw a new litter every six months or so, and now it's got to where it's just about intolerable around here anymore.” Perhaps. Meyers sucked on oat and molasses pellets originally rolled as horse feed; he made only such sounds as he needed to make into the phone.

At last he allowed himself five quiet minutes of green tea in a translucent cup, and he calculated that his old friend Henry Brusett, his very old conscience, should not be more than two days from freedom, or from as much of it as any man with a past can enjoy. The day's central chore was done for Meyers—he'd got the right jury for his purpose.

There were at least two of them in the box, he thought, who could be counted on to vote down almost any proposition the county
attorney might care to advance. Mrs. Larson, for all Meyers's probing, had never mentioned how he'd kept her son on probation for five years, and how poor Jimmy had been in constant trouble with so much official intrusion into his life. Meyers remembered seeing her at nearly all the boy's hearings. The woman would surely loathe him for prosecuting her boy—he knew a mother's heart, a certain kind of mother, and she'd avenge herself the moment God showed her how. There was also Connor Shrenk, now juror number six, who had just a year earlier lost a right-of-way and with it some business in a dispute with the county commissioners. This trouble had a face for Shrenk, and that face was Meyers's. “No,” he'd said when asked, “no, I mean, I do know you from before, from another thing, but that wouldn't have anything to do with this. Would it? It really couldn't have, could it?”

One of these two, or at least someone of the twelve, must certainly see that he had no case. That was the saving thing, the particularly odd thing about it: He had no case. Hoot Meyers came into court just thirty seconds before Judge Samara gaveled them into session, and the county attorney began the afternoon by waiving his opening statement.

“Ms. Meany? Do you wish to waive also?”

“I . . . no.” She was not in rhythm. It was the county attorney's style to punch and punch, and it was unprecedented for him to forgo the first punch. Giselle's own opening was scripted, but she'd written it to refute what she'd expected Meyers to say. It would sound ridiculous now that he'd said nothing. She made her way before the jury, suddenly ponderous, an old-time, orotund orator, buying that extra moment to improvise. “This,” she ultimately said, “is the part of the trial, ladies and gentlemen, where both sides summarize the evidence as they see it.” Why did her voice always quake? A mangled face and stage fright, what was she doing in a public line of work? “Either way, on either side, as you'll see, there's not much evidence to talk about in this case. The evidence the state will show you in support of
this very, very serious charge is a stained pair of dungarees. And that is all. And . . . I believe they're called ‘dungarees.' But, that's it. That's all, and I am very confident that in my closing statement I'll be able to talk to you again, and marvel with you at how anyone would ever be so . . . carried away, so carried away that they'd ask you to make such a terrible assumption based on about a scintilla of evidence.” She saw their eyes glazing. Keep far, she told herself, far from the conceptual, and she sat down.

Hoot Meyers called young Deputy Lovell as his first witness, and from the moment he took his oath, Lovell was unable to tear his vigilant eyes from that part of the gallery containing the press corps. He'd worn his body armor for the occasion, a very brown tie, and his hair and scalp glistened with gel. Meyers had coached him on his performance to the extent of telling him to keep his answers short and direct, but Lovell had some trouble with this as he came to the juicier parts of his testimony.