The Runaway Jury

When the lunch dishes were cleared and all the smokers had returned from the smoke room, it became apparent that they were now supposed to do what they'd been dreaming about for a month. They took their places around the table, and stared at the empty seat at the end, the one Herman had so proudly occupied.

"Guess we need a new foreman," Jerry said.

"And I think it should be Nicholas," Millie added quickly.

There really wasn't any doubt about who the new foreman would be. No one else wanted the job, and Nicholas seemed to know as much about the trial as the lawyers themselves. He was elected by acclamation.

He stood by Herman's old chair and summarized a list of suggestions from Judge Harkin. He said, "He wants us to carefully consider all the evidence, including the exhibits and documents, before we start voting." Nicholas turned to his left and stared at a table in a corner piled high with all those wonderful reports and studies they'd been collecting for the last four weeks.

"I'm not planning on staying here for three days," Lonnie said as they all looked at the table. "In fact, I'm ready to vote now."

"Not so fast," Nicholas said. "This is a complicated, very important case, and it would be wrong to rush things without thoughtful deliberation."

"I say we vote," Lonnie said.

"And I say we do what the Judge says. We can call him in for a chat, if necessary."

"We're not going to read all that stuff, are we?" asked Sylvia the Poodle. Reading was not one of her favorite pastimes.

"I have an idea," Nicholas said. "Why don't we each take a report, skim it, then summarize it for everyone else? We can then honestly tell Judge Harkin that we reviewed all the exhibits and documents."

"Do you really think he'll want to know?" asked Rikki Coleman.

"Probably so. Our verdict must be based on the evidence before us-the testimony we heard and the exhibits we've been given. We at least have to make an effort to follow his orders."

"I agree," said Millie. "We all want to go home, but our duty demands that we carefully consider what's before us."

With that, the other protests were snuffed out. Millie and Henry Vu lifted the bulky reports and placed them in the center of the table, where they were slowly taken by the jurors.

"Just skim through them," Nicholas said, coaxing them along like a flustered schoolteacher. He grabbed the thickest one, a study by Dr. Milton Fricke on the effects of cigarette smoke on the respiratory tract, and he read it as if he'd never seen such dynamic prose.

In the courtroom, a few of the curious hung around for a spell in hopes there might be a quick verdict. This often happened-get the jury back there, feed 'em lunch, let 'em vote, and you've got yourself a verdict. The jury had made up its mind before the first witness.

But not this one.

AT FORTY-ONE THOUSAND FEET and at five hundred miles per hour, the Lear made the trip from Biloxi to George Town, Grand Cayman, in ninety minutes. Marlee cleared customs with a new Canadian passport, one issued to Lane MacRoland, a pretty young lady from Toronto who was down for a week of pleasure, no business. As required by Caymanian law, she also possessed a return air ticket, which showed her booked on a Delta flight to Miami in six days. The Caymanians were delighted to have tourists, but had other thoughts about new citizens.

The passport was part of a perfect set of new papers she'd purchased from a noted forger in Montreal. Passport, driver's license, birth certificate, voter's registration card. Cost: three thousand dollars.

She took a cab into George Town and found her bank, the Royal Swiss Trust, in a stately old building a block from the seafront. She'd never been to Grand Cayman before, though it felt like a second home. She'd been studying the place for two months. Her financial affairs there had been carefully arranged by fax.

The tropical air was heavy and warm, but she hardly noticed. She wasn't there for the sun and beaches. It was three o'clock in George Town and New York. Two P.M. in Mississippi.

She was greeted by a receptionist and led to a small office where another form had to be completed, one that couldn't be faxed. Within minutes, a young man named Marcus introduced himself. They had spoken many times on the phone. He was slender, well groomed, well tailored, very European, with a slight accent to his perfect English.

The money had arrived, he informed her, and Marlee managed to take the news while suppressing any sign of a smile. It was difficult. The paperwork was in order. She followed him upstairs to his office. Marcus' title was vague, like a lot of bankers' titles in Grand Cayman, but he was a vice president of this or that, and he managed portfolios.

A secretary brought coffee and Marlee ordered a sandwich.

Pynex was at seventy-nine, up strongly all day in heavy trading, Marcus reported while pecking at his computer. Trellco was up three and a quarter to fifty-six. Smith Greer was up two to sixty-four and a half. ConPack was trading even at around thirty-three.

Working from notes which were virtually memorized, Marlee made her first trade by selling short fifty thousand shares of Pynex at seventy-nine. Hopefully, she would buy it back in the very near future at a much lower price. Short selling was a tricky maneuver normally used by only the most sophisticated investors. If the price of a stock was about to fall, trading rules allowed the stock to be sold first at the higher price, then purchased later at a lower one.

With ten million in cash, Marlee would be allowed to sell approximately twenty million dollars' worth of stocks.

Marcus confirmed the trade with a flurry of keypunching, and he excused himself for a second while he put on his headset. Her second trade was the short selling of Trellco-thirty thousand shares at fifty-six and a quarter. He confirmed it, and then came the flurry. She sold forty thousand shares of Smith Greer at sixty-four and a half; sixty thousand more of Pynex at seventy-nine and an eighth; thirty thousand more of Trellco at fifty-six and an eighth; fifty thousand of Smith Greer at sixty-four and three-eighths.

She paused and instructed Marcus to watch Pynex closely. She had just unloaded one hundred and ten thousand shares of its stock, and was very concerned about the immediate response on Wall Street. It stalled at seventy-nine, dropped to seventy-eight and three-quarters, then eased back to seventy-nine.

"I think it's safe now," said Marcus, who'd been watching the stock closely for two weeks. "Sell fifty thousand more," she said without hesitation. Marcus skipped one beat, then nodded at his monitor and completed the trade.

Pynex dipped to seventy-eight and a half, then down another quarter. She sipped her coffee and fiddled with her notes as Marcus watched and Wall Street reacted. She thought about Nicholas, and what he was doing right now, but she wasn't worried. In fact, she was remarkably calm at the moment.

Marcus removed his headset. "That's approximately twenty-two million dollars, Ms. MacRoland. I think we should stop. More sales will require approval from my superior."

"That's enough," she said.

"The market closes in fifteen minutes. You're welcome to wait in our client lounge."

"No thanks. I'll go to the hotel, maybe get some sun."

Marcus stood and buttoned his jacket. "One question. When do you anticipate movement on these stocks?"

"Tomorrow. Early."

"Significant movement?"

Marlee stood and held her notes. "Yes. If you want your other clients to think you're a genius, then short sell tobacco right now."

He sent for a company car, a small Mercedes, and Marlee was driven to a hotel on Seven Mile Beach, not far from downtown and the bank.

IF MARLEE'S PRESENT seemed under control, her past was rapidly catching up with her. An operative digging for Fitch at the University of Missouri found a collection of old admissions manuals in the main library. In 1986, a Dr. Evelyn Y. Brant was listed and briefly described as a professor of medieval studies, but she was absent from the 1987 handbook.

He immediately called an associate who was checking through tax rolls at the Boone County Courthouse. The associate went straight to the clerk's office and within minutes found the Wills and Estates register. Evelyn Y. Brant's will had been received for probate in April of 1987. A clerk helped him find the file.

It was pay dirt. Mrs. Brant had died on March 2, 1987, in Columbia, at the age of fifty-six. She left no husband and one child, Gabrielle, age twenty-one, who inherited everything under a will Dr. Brant signed three months before her death.

The file was an inch thick, and the agent scanned it with great speed. The inventory consisted of a house valued at $180,000 with a mortgage of half that, a car, an unimpressive list of furniture and furnishings, a certificate of deposit at a local bank in the amount of $32,000, and a stock and bond portfolio valued at $202,000. There were only two creditors' claims filed; evidently Dr. Brant had known death was imminent and obtained legal advice. With the approval of Gabrielle, the house was sold, the estate was reduced to cash, and after estate taxes, legal fees, and court costs, the sum of $191,500 was placed in a trust. Gabrielle was the only beneficiary.

The estate had been handled without the slightest hint of acrimony. The lawyer appeared to be prompt and quite competent. Thirteen months after Dr. Brant's death, the estate was closed.

He flipped through again, making notes. Two pages stuck together, and he delicately pulled them apart. The bottom one was a half sheet with an official stamp on it.

It was the death certificate. Dr. Evelyn Y. Brant had died of lung cancer.

He stepped into the hallway and called his supervisor.

BY THE TIME the call was placed to Fitch, they knew more. A careful reading of the file by another operative, this one a former FBI agent with a law degree, revealed a series of donations to such groups as the American Lung Association, the Coalition for a Smoke Free World, the Tobacco Task Force, the Clean Air Campaign, and a half-dozen other antismoking causes. One of the creditors' claims was a bill for almost twenty thousand dollars for her last hospital stay. Her husband, the late Dr. Peter Brant, was listed on an old insurance policy. A quick search of the register listed the opening of his estate in 1981. His file was located on the other side of the clerk's office. He died in June of 1981 at the age of fifty-two, leaving his beloved wife and cherished daughter, Gabrielle, then age fifteen. He died at home, according to his death certificate, which was signed by the same doctor who'd signed Evelyn Brant's. An oncologist.

Peter Brant had also succumbed to the ravages of lung cancer.

Swanson made the call, but only after being repeatedly assured that the facts were correct.

FITCH TOOK THE CALL in his office, alone, with the door locked, and he took it calmly because he was too shocked to react. He was seated at his desk with his jacket off, tie undone, shoes unlaced. He said little.

Both of Marlee's parents had died of lung cancer.

He actually scribbled this on a yellow pad, then drew a circle around it, with lines branching off, as if he could flow-chart this news, break it down, analyze it; somehow he could make it fit with her promise to deliver a verdict.

"Are you there, Rankin?" Swanson asked after a long silence.

"Yeah," Fitch said, then continued saying nothing for a while. The flow chart grew but went nowhere.

"Where's the girl?" Swanson asked. He was standing in the cold outside the county courthouse in Columbia with an impossibly small phone pressed to his jaw.

"Don't know. We'll have to find her." He said this with no conviction whatsoever, and Swanson knew the girl was gone.

Another long pause.

"What shall I do?" Swanson asked.

"Get back here, I guess," Fitch said, then abruptly hung up. The numbers on his digital clock were blurred, and Fitch closed his eyes. He massaged his pounding temples, pressed his goatee hard against his chin, contemplated an eruption with the desk flying against the wall and phones ripped from sockets, but thought the better of it. A cool head was needed.

Short of burning the courthouse or tossing grenades at the jury room, there was nothing he could do to stop the deliberations. They were in there, the last twelve, with deputies by the door. Perhaps if their work was slow, and if they had to retire for another night in sequestration, then perhaps Fitch could pull a rabbit from his hat and spark a mistrial.

A bomb threat was a possibility. The jurors would be evacuated, sequestered some more, led away to some hidden place so they could continue.

The flow chart fizzled and he made lists of possibilities-outrageous acts, all of which would be dangerous, illegal, and destined for failure.

The clock was ticking.

The chosen twelve-eleven disciples and their master.

He slowly rose to his feet and took the cheap ceramic lamp with both hands. It was a lamp Konrad had earlier wanted to remove because it sat on Fitch's desk, a place of great chaos and violence.

Konrad and Pang were loitering in the hallway, waiting for instructions. They knew something had gone terribly wrong. The lamp crashed with great force against the door. Fitch screamed. The plywood walls rattled. Another object hit and splintered; maybe it was a telephone. Fitch yelled something about "the money!" and then the desk landed loudly against a wall.

They backed away, petrified and not wanting to be near the door when it opened. Bam! Bam! Bam! It sounded like a jackhammer. Fitch was punching the plywood with his fists.

"Find the girl!" he screamed in anguish. Bam! Bam!

"Find the girl!"