Seated, Judge Kassel cast a wary eye on the crowd.
"Let me remind all of you," she announced firmly, "that I want no demonstrations of any kind throughout the proceeding. Consider this a zero tolerance policy. Anyone who violates it will be escorted out immediately and will not return. I hope I am being very clear about that."
The courtroom was absolutely silent. Then Judge Kassel smiled, and she was radiant. "I'm glad we understand each other."
She motioned to the bailiff.
The jury was brought in and took their places uncomfortably, staring anxiously at the sea of faces in the courtroom. Judge Kassel welcomed them, adopting a more friendly tone to keep the jury at ease. They would spend the next several days separated from friends and family in the downtown Holiday Inn, and Stride could see in their faces that they were anxious for the trial to begin and end.
The judge gave the jury a minute to settle down and led the courtroom through the usual preliminaries.
Then she invited Dan Erickson to give his opening statement.
Dan took his time. He made eye contact with each juror.
He held up an enlarged school photograph of Rachel, a cryptic smile on her face. He looked at it, then held it delicately in his hands, facing the jury. He allowed her image to sink into all of their minds.
"This is Rachel Deese," he told them. "She's beautiful. A pretty seventeen-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her. Unfortunately, a month after this photo was taken, Rachel disappeared. The evidence that was found in the subsequent weeks leads us to an unhappy conclusion. This beautiful girl was murdered."
Dan stared at his feet, shaking his head sadly.
"I wish I could make it easy for you. I wish someone had been there on that Friday night in October, other than Rachel and the man who killed her, to sit here in the witness stand and tell you how it all came about. But I think you know that most murders don't happen in public. Murder is an ugly, private business."
He turned and stared at Graeme Stoner, allowing the jury to follow his eyes. Then he continued.
"But if murderers keep their own secrets, how do we convict them? Often, as in this case, we use what is called circumstantial evidence. These are facts that, when taken together, lead you to an inescapable conclusion about a defendant's actions and his guilt. Let me give you an example. A man is found stabbed to death in his home. No one saw the crime. No one saw who killed him. There is no direct evidence at all. Nonetheless, we discover another man's fingerprints on the murder weapon. We discover that this man had a grudge against the victim. We discover that this man had no alibi for the night of the murder. We find traces of blood matching the victim's on his shoes. This is all circumstantial evidence that tells us the truth about the crime."
Dan waited, absorbing the looks on their faces, making sure they understood.
"And in this trial, you will see overwhelming circumstantial evidence about the murder of Rachel Deese. You will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the man at the defendant's table, Graeme Stoner, killed this beautiful girl and disposed of her body.
"Who is this man?" Erickson demanded, jabbing a bony finger at Stoner. "In this trial, we'll pull aside the mask that this man puts on for the world. We'll show you someone very different. Someone who keeps a naked photo of his stepdaughter on his computer. Someone who fantasizes about sex with teenage girls. Someone with a dark secret about his relationship with Rachel. He was having a sexual affair with her."
He paused, letting the jury reflect on this conclusion. He let them stare at Graeme and wonder what was behind his impassive expression. It didn't matter that Graeme was wearing a business suit, as he would for any workday at the bank. Dan wanted the jury to see his clothes as a facade for a dirty mind.
"And what of Rachel?" Dan asked. "I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know where Rachel's body is. There's only one person who does, and he's sitting over there at the defense table. You may wonder why we know a murder has been committed, if we can't show you a body. You'll hear the defense try to tell you that, because we have no body, it's possible for you to believe that Rachel is still alive."
Dan shook his head.
"Is it possible? Well, I suppose it's possible that Elvis is still alive. But you're not here to determine what's possible. You're here to determine the facts beyond a reasonable doubt. So remember this. When you see the physical evidence we have gathered, you'll realize that the only reasonable conclusion you can draw is that Rachel was murdered, and her body hidden somewhere in the vast wilderness of northern Minnesota. Sadly, no one may ever find her. It's a terrible, tragic reality. But not knowing where her murderer disposed of her body doesn't change the truth. Rachel is dead. You will be convinced of that.
"We're going to retrace her steps for you. We'll show you videotape of this girl driving home on a Friday night. She's safe. She's smiling. She's just made a date with a boy for the next night. And yet this same girl is never seen again. Instead, we find a fragment of a shirt she was wearing-a shirt she had purchased only a few days earlier-stained with her blood, in a wooded area a few miles north of town. We find a bracelet she treasured lying on the ground. That's the last we know of Rachel."
Erickson shot a withering look at Graeme Stoner, then turned sharply back to the jury. "And what connects these two scenes? The girl in the car, alive and happy, and the bloody scrap of clothing found miles away? Well, Rachel was heading home that night, where Graeme Stoner was alone. Rachel's mother was out of town. And in the driveway of the house was Graeme Stoner's van, locked up tight. In that van, you'll find the evidence that links the scenes together. More of Rachel's blood. Rachel's bloody fingerprint on the blade of a knife. More fibers from the turtleneck she was wearing. And Graeme Stoner's fingerprints on the same knife.
"That's what I'm going to show you in this trial. Facts. Evidence. Blood and fibers that don't lie. My job is to lay out those facts for you, to show you what we found.
"Now, the defense has a different job in this case," Erickson told the jury. "They need you to overlook the facts, or to find wildly improbable explanations for them. Mr. Gale there, he's a showman, kind of like one of those magicians you see in Las Vegas. Magicians are talented people. They can dazzle an audience and pretend to levitate a beautiful girl right before your eyes. In fact, a good magician can be so convincing, you might even be tempted to believe that the girl really is hovering above the stage. But you know and I know it's nothing but a trick. An illusion."
He locked eyes with each juror, his face turning serious.
"Don't be fooled. Don't be tricked into giving up your common sense. Mr. Gale's going to try his magic out on you, but I want you to look at the physical evidence of this case. And you will see that the evidence leads you to one explanation only-that on that terrible night when Rachel disappeared, Graeme Stoner's obsessive relationship with his stepdaughter finally crossed the line into violence and murder. We may never know exactly what happened between them, or why. But an incestuous relationship is so ripe with evil that it can literally explode at any time. No one may have been there that night to see how the violence came about. But it happened. That's what the evidence will show you. It happened."
Archibald Gale stood up, taking off his glasses and depositing them carefully on the defense table. He looked down at Graeme Stoner, smiled, then turned his attention to the jurors. Gale wandered closer, patting all of his pockets, as if looking for something.