The Hallows, page 20
“Self-taught. I think it’d ruin the fun to take a class.” She adjusted something in the engine block and said, “I heard you visited Roscoe today.”
“Yeah, and how’d you hear that already?”
“He called me.”
“What’d he say?”
“He asked why you had come to see him.”
“And what did you say?”
She pulled her hand out of the engine, and it was covered in grease. On a rack near the car was a bunch of towels, and she took one and tried to wipe the grease off. “I told him it was your case, and I was staying out of it. You know, he’s a really loved figure in this town. One of the mayor’s best friends.”
“He’s also lying to me.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m not sure of anything at this point, but yeah, I think he’s not telling the full truth about Anderson. Something happened the day he was injured, and they’re both lying about it, and I think it involved Patty.”
She tossed the towel back over the rack. “Well, just be careful. If it gets out you’re harassing him, whoever sits on that jury is not going to be happy with you.”
58
That night, I couldn’t sleep. One time I dozed off for a couple of hours and had a dream about Patty. She was lying in the ditch, but she was alive, trying to suck in breath through the dirt. A pool of mud was being created around her head from the blood pouring out of her. She stared at the moon as large clumps of soil were tossed on top of her.
I rose and went out for a walk. The night air felt like the heat from an oven: dry and searing. I went up to the gas station and grabbed a Diet Coke with ice. The attendant was asleep behind the counter, and I had to pretend to cough to get him to wake up.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
“Late-night party?”
“Nah, just barely got this job. Ain’t got used to workin’ nights yet. Can’t sleep durin’ the damn day.”
“You’ll get used to it. You’d be amazed what you can get used to, believe me.”
I left and wandered around the town. I came across a pasture that I remembered walking across to get to school with Gates. It had cows now and didn’t back then. I watched the few by the fence until one of them came up to me and stuck her nose through the fence. I rubbed her ear until she turned away and went back to munching on grass.
I finally managed to get another hour or two of sleep, and when I woke I had dark circles under my eyes. I showered and changed into a black pinstripe suit with a red pocket square that I had bought in Las Vegas. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the man who appeared in the newspapers, walking his client down a large hallway and out of a fancy courthouse, and I thought about something Gates had said when she saw me in one of the suits. She had lifted a hand and adjusted the lapel. “I think I liked you in cheap clothing.”
“Why?”
“These suits . . . they’re not really you. You’re a country lawyer now, Tatum.”
Going back into the bedroom, I tossed the suit onto the bed and changed into slacks and a blazer with a blue tie, and, sweet holy mother of crap, cowboy boots again.
The County Attorney’s Office was empty when I got there. I sat in the conference room and began going through the file. Then I went out onto the cement steps of the building and read the file as the sun came up. I shut my eyes and rehearsed every word of my opening and closing in my head several times. I opened my eyes just as Pritcher and his crew were walking into the building. He told them to go ahead without him and stood in front of me.
“You sure you want to embarrass yourself like this?” he said when we were alone. “This will be all over the gossip sites and the Miami Herald.”
“Helped in no small part by interviews with you about how I’ve lost my edge, no doubt.”
“Oh, no doubt.” He grinned. “That boy is going to walk.”
I rose and folded my arms, staring into his pupils. “Show me.”
59
Jia and Will were sitting behind me in the audience pews when the bailiffs brought out Anderson. Steven, who’d signed the plea deal earlier, would be brought in later to testify. Pritcher sat quietly at the defense table, unmoving. I didn’t even see him blink.
“That was quite the show you put on at the jail a few weeks ago,” I said, leaning over to him. “You had me sold.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said with a little grin.
“Even if it was a show, I would’ve expected you to crack his head open for talking to you like that.”
He turned and faced forward again as the judge came out and the bailiff announced her.
Judge Allred took out her notepad and paper and a couple of pens and checked that they worked before she said, “Any pretrial motions to consider before we bring out the panel?”
“None from the State.”
“None from the defense.”
I glanced at Pritcher. Really? I would’ve had a laundry list of nitpicking evidentiary issues to bring up to the judge, hoping to get a few little things tossed at the last minute.
“Then let’s bring out the panel.”
All the attorneys stood. A group of forty people was brought in. I didn’t recognize any of them, but a couple of them smiled at me out of courtesy. When they were seated, the judge said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now go through a process called voir dire. It is where we will be asking you questions about yourself in the hopes of making certain you can be impartial during this trial. I allow each attorney one hour to question you. Please be honest in your responses.”
I got to go first. I’d read the questionnaires they were required to fill out beforehand, and they didn’t have much useful information. Without my $600-an-hour jury consultants I had in Miami, jury selection was limited in what I could get out of them.
I had no doubt Pritcher had flown out a jury consultant to poll the local population on the guilt or innocence of Anderson Ficco long ago and had come up with a list of traits people who thought he was innocent had.
I smiled at them and said, “Thank you so much for being here. I know a courtroom on a sunny day is not the ideal place to be, but, hey, at least we got warm water from a cooler over there for you.”
Slight chuckle from the panel.
“This case involves details you’re not going to want to hear. I’ve been an attorney now for almost two decades, and frankly, it was hard for me to learn about them. It involves someone in the community, this community . . . our community. But I have no doubt that you’re going to be fair and impartial in this process, so I just have a few questions.”
I asked if their parents were churchgoers, if they voted Republican or Democrat, if they’d ever been arrested, what their favorite shows and movies were, and what levels of income they had. I tried to picture where they had grown up and what the homes must’ve been like for them. Were they jaded by a rough upbringing? Or were they generally optimistic about life and people? Did they value knowledge and academics, or did they view both with mistrust? I wanted to determine their personalities. To see who they would sympathize with more: a poor girl doing whatever she had to do to survive, or the son of a wealthy aristocrat who had everything handed to him.
When it was Pritcher’s turn, he rose smoothly and gallantly strode to the jury like he was a knight here to slay the monstrous dragon. He stood in front of them and put his hands behind his back, a body posture indicating openness and honesty. His head tilted slightly to the right, as did most of the potential jurors’, and he slouched just a little rather than puffing out his chest. It looked like he had worked extensively with body language experts, just like I had.
“I cannot thank you enough for being here today,” he said. “There are parts of the world where men sit in an office and stamp files as guilty or not guilty, and that’s as much of a trial that their citizens get. So all this,” he said with a wave of his hand around the courtroom, “is a miracle. This entire system is set up to make sure innocent people, people like Anderson, are not sent to prison unjustly. So thank you for being part of that system with us today.”
He then launched into his questions, which focused more on the types of books, movies, music, and art they enjoyed. He spent several minutes on where people liked to travel and their favorite cities in the world. Practically irrelevant, but it created a connection between him and the potential jurors. People loved talking about themselves, so Pritcher would stand in front of them, staring them in the eyes with full attention, and listen. Slowly, over the course of the hour, I could see that they began to trust him.
When he was done, we whittled the jury down to eight men and women and two alternates. Judge Allred said, “We will take a five-minute break to allow you to get a drink or use the facilities, and then we will begin with opening statements.”
When the jury was led out, Pritcher turned to me and said, “Not too late. He’ll take agg assault with probation.”
“Probation for rape and murder? I’m not some newbie law school grad, Russell.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But when that jury says not guilty, remember I offered.”
60
Jia, Will, and I convened in the hall. Gates had been in the courtroom and followed us out. She leaned against the wall with a grin on her face.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just nice to see you in a courtroom again.”
“Again?”
“I may have caught one of your trials on Court TV.” She checked her watch. “I have a meeting with the county council. I’ll see you this afternoon. Day ends at one.”
“What?”
“Judge Allred ends her days at one. I thought you knew.”
“She finishes her trial days at one in the afternoon? This trial will take triple the time.”
She shrugged. “It’s how it works. Let me know if you need anything from me.”
I watched her walk away, and Will said, “I think she likes you. She doesn’t like very many people, you know.”
“Appreciate the love advice, but let’s stay focused on the game. Where the hell is Howard?”
“He should be here. There’s a cafeteria on the top floor. The cops hang out there sometimes.”
“Go get him. I want him sitting next to me before Russell finds him and starts messing with his head.”
When Detective Howard joined me at the prosecution table, he was dressed in a shirt and tie and still had his badge clipped to his belt, but no gun.
“Where’s your gun?”
“In the car. I don’t bring it to court.”
“Go get it and put the holster on the right side toward the jury.”
“Why?”
“It gives you a sense of authority. Trust me on this.”
He folded his arms. “Nah. I’m good.”
I sighed and looked behind me. Hank Winchester sat in the back of the courtroom. He nodded once to me, and I nodded back. His face was empty of emotion, until he looked at Anderson. There was just a slight difference in his eyes and his brow furrowed.
On the prosecution table I had laid out several files and bags of evidence. Behind me, in the audience pews, sat Jia and Will.
One mistake prosecutors sometimes made was assigning too many prosecutors to a case, making the defense look like the underdog. O. J. Simpson had nine defense lawyers, an army. To get the jury on their side, the State should’ve had one prosecutor at their table, a newbie with no murder trials under his belt. The Art of Jury Trial as War, chapter 17: “Everyone thought the best attorneys were the old-timers with decades of experience, but the old-timers were weary, and juries could pick up on indifference.” New, young lawyers, sweating and fumbling with papers because their hands were shaking, their voices cracking with anxiety, were the type of attorneys juries threw their arms around and protected. If LA County had put one of them on the case, OJ would’ve been enjoying his workouts in the yard at San Quentin.
The judge came in just then, and we rose and then sat. I watched the jury as they walked in: they tried not to look at either party. Pritcher seemed indifferent, staring off into space. His two associates sat quietly with their hands folded on the table. Anderson stared at the tabletop, tapping a pencil against his palm underneath it.
“We will now begin with opening statements. Mr. Graham.”
“Thank you, Judge.”
I rose and approached the jury. “The first time I went to the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, I stopped on the steps in front of the courthouse. It was about five in the morning, and I was the first one there. A cold mist hung over the city, and the moon was fading as the sun came up. As I stood there, I looked up, and at the front of the court, I saw the words Equal Justice for All carved into the stone. And I stood there in . . . awe. For most of human history, the law was just a way for the rich to systematically exploit the poor, but here, in the United States, that was turned on its head. Equal justice for all. I got chills staring at it.
“And I thought of it when I got this case, the case of a young girl, Patty Winchester, who died in the worst way a human being could die.” I went to the table and pulled out a photo of Patty from the file, Hank’s photo of Patty hugging him and her brother. “On May tenth of this year, this young girl, Patty Winchester, a high school senior at River Falls High, went to a bar in Las Vegas with her friend Cecily. She sneaked out and went with her friend, thinking they’d have some drinks at a bar that didn’t check ID. And it’s there that she met the man that would end her life.” I pointed to Anderson. “Anderson Ficco.”
I moved toward the jury and put the photo on the banister in front of them. “Patty knew Anderson and his friend Steven from school, and they started drinking together that night. Anderson also got high on mescaline and marijuana, as his friend Steven will tell you. He’ll also tell you Anderson was out of his head. He was agitated and angry, harassing and groping the women in the bar. Cecily had a curfew and had to leave. Steven and Patty decided they were going to leave together, but Steven couldn’t just abandon his buddy in that condition, so they took Anderson with them. And it was a mistake that would cost Patty her life.
“While driving, Anderson told Steven to pull over. Steven thought he might need to vomit or urinate, but instead Anderson pulled out a hammer from a toolbox in the back seat of the car.” I hit my fist against my palm. “He smashed it into the back of Patty’s head, fracturing her skull. Steven was in shock. He didn’t know what to do other than take her to a hospital. But Anderson wasn’t about to allow that. So he took out a gun, this gun,” I said, as I went over to the table and held up the 9 millimeter in the evidence bag, “and stuck this gun into Steven’s face and told him to drive. Steven, fearful that he might get killed, obeyed. Anderson led him to a townhome he secretly kept in Glassdale. He forced Steven to carry Patty’s unconscious body into the townhome, and that’s where her nightmare really began.
“For two days, in a psychotic drug binge, Anderson Ficco tortured Patty Winchester. He raped her. He cut her with a knife. He burned her with cigarettes. He knocked out teeth, and at some point, he began breaking bones. But that wasn’t enough. He had to take her life, too.”
Just then the door to the courtroom opened. I looked over and saw Hank Winchester leaving.
“After two days, when the drugs began to wear off, he panicked. He didn’t know what to do, so he called his buddy Steven and told him that if he didn’t come over and help him, Anderson would have to clean up loose ends. So again, Steven ran over because he was frightened Anderson would kill him. And what he saw almost made him vomit.
“The town house has a basement, and Anderson took Steven there. Patty was barely clinging to life. Blood was everywhere. Anderson forced Steven to help him take Patty up to the Hallows campgrounds. Patty was still alive when she was thrown into a ditch like refuse. It’s at that point that Anderson killed her. But a gun and a knife would’ve been too quick. He wanted to enjoy it. So he crawled into the ditch and wrapped his hands around her throat. He crushed her windpipe as she screamed for help, and life left her body.
“One thing they didn’t count on was anybody else being up there in the Hallows.” I held up a finger. “But there was. A family, out camping. Their ten-year-old boy was looking for a toy he had lost when he heard screaming. He came closer to where the screaming was coming from and saw two men throwing dirt on a woman. And he saw one of the men, Anderson Ficco, climb into the ditch, and heard the screaming stop.
“The next morning, an elderly couple was out for a morning stroll when they noticed part of a leg sticking up out of the dirt. It was Patty’s body.” I pointed to Anderson. “Anderson Ficco tortured a young girl to death for fun. He didn’t rob her, he didn’t extort her family for money . . . he killed her because he thought it was fun.”
I looked back toward the courtroom doors to see if Hank had come back, but he hadn’t. I inhaled deeply and looked at the jurors.
“You’re going to hear some other things in this trial that are going to be unpleasant. Patty was not perfect. She grew up poor and grew poorer as time went on. Her mother left her father with two young kids, and although Patty did her best to stay on the straight and narrow, there simply was not enough money to go around, and she couldn’t sit there and watch her family lose their home or her father lose his mechanic shop. In an effort to help her single father, she sold the only thing she truly owned: her body. She worked as an escort. She sold herself for money to help her father and kid brother. But does that mean she’s less deserving of justice than anyone else?
“Equal justice for all . . . Mr. Pritcher may tell you that those words apply only to defendants, but what about Patty? Does she get justice? Does anyone cry for her? Anderson Ficco, as you all know, comes from a wealthy family with a high-priced lawyer and a huge future ahead of him.” I held the photo up higher to make sure all the jurors were looking at her. “Patty Winchester lived in a run-down mobile home. She was one of the voiceless in this country. She had no money, no power, no connections. Equal justice for all . . . does it apply to her? Does she get a voice?
