He didn’t have a clock in his office.
Boom! the voice on the videotape had said. You’re next.
Ben jumped out of his chair and bolted into the lobby. “Everybody out. Now!”
Christina dropped a stack of papers. “What the—”
“No questions. Come on!” Ben turned her around manually and pushed her toward the door. “You, too, Jones. Out!”
Jones was staring at his computer screen. “Just give me five seconds to save.”
“No. Now!” Ben hauled him up by the lapel and herded both of them through the door. Arm in arm they raced across the street.
And not a second too soon. They were barely halfway across the street when the explosion burst through the office windows and ripped across downtown Tulsa. There was a sudden flash of white-hot light followed by a gust of hurricane-force winds so strong it slammed the three of them into the white brick building on the opposite side of the street. The sound was ear-shattering—painful and intense. The ground shook, knocking them to their knees. Wood and metal splinters flew through the air. Glass shattered, not just in Ben’s office but in every storefront up and down the street.
Ben turned his head and peered through the dense black cloud of smoke. An intense fire burned brightly in the hollowed shell of his office. The now-visible foundations began to creak, then crumble. Bent, molten steel dripped to the ground, bringing everything attached with it. A few aftershocks followed, of lesser, but still earsplitting, intensity. Then the walls collapsed; bricks tumbled inward into the inferno.
And then, finally, it was over. The explosive tumult was followed by a silence; an eerie, suspended silence. Only the crackling of the flames remained.
“Are you all right?” Ben whispered.
Christina nodded. Her face was red and bruised from being scraped against the brick building. Her forehead was bleeding in two places. But she was alive.
“Jones?”
He tried to smile. “I’ll live. But what the hell happened?”
Ben didn’t have an answer for him. All he could do was struggle to his feet and stare at the billowing cloud of smoke and fire that thirty seconds ago had been his office.
Boom! The message had said.
You’re next.
Three
The Family Trademark
Chapter 33
JUDGE HART’S BAILIFF REACHED into the hopper and withdrew the first name. “Elizabeth MacPherson.”
A young woman, probably in her mid-thirties, in the third row of the gallery, put down her paperback novel and walked to the jury box. As directed, she took the first seat on the far end of the back row.
“Harrison James Denton.” This one was more attentive, more eager, more wide-eyed. He jumped to his feet and hurried to the jury box, long hair flying behind him, an anxious grin on his face.
“He knows,” Harold Sacks whispered into Ben’s ear. Ben nodded his agreement.
And so the trial finally began. After all the legal wrangling was over, after all the motions were ruled upon and the countless heated arguments in chambers were done, it finally came down to this: the selection of the twelve persons (fourteen counting alternates) who would decide Wallace Barrett’s fate. Whether he lived or died; whether he became a free man or spent the rest of his life in prison.
The weekend had been an unmitigated nightmare for Ben, beginning with the destruction of his office and going downhill from there. Christina had some minor cuts and abrasions, and the docs had removed some glass slivers from Jones, but they were all alive and functioning. The worst part was the psychic aftershock; no one came away from a near-miss violent death like that without feeling some trauma.
The explosion had obliterated his office and done serious damage to the pawnshop and the diner on either side. According to the preliminary reports from the Tulsa Metro Bomb Squad, the explosion was triggered by a device that was probably in that package Ben had received in the mail but had never opened—thank God. The principal ingredients in the bomb were two common chemical liquids that could be found in virtually every kitchen or laundry room in Tulsa. Separate, they were harmless. But the bomb allowed one to trickle into the other, a slow-burn mixture that would eventually and inevitably result in a terrific explosion. Mike had taken a personal interest in the case and had assured Ben the police would investigate to the best of their abilities, but the simple truth was, they had no significant clues. No one had the slightest idea who had planted the bomb. And given the enormity of the pretrial press attention given the Barrett case, the bomber could be almost anyone.
Ben would have liked to have indulged in an extended recuperative period, maybe a few weeks on a Mexican beach, but he didn’t have time. He had a case going to trial. He couldn’t count on Judge Hart giving him an extension, especially not with the eyes of the world upon her and Bullock breathing down her neck and already accusing her of being biased in Ben’s favor. No, he had to be ready.
Fortunately, for once in his life, Ben was representing a client who actually had some money. They had set up shop in a suite in the Adam’s Mark Hotel near the courthouse. Of course, this expense would eat away at Ben’s fee, but under the circumstances, he had little choice.
There was one lucky break—Christina had taken most of the trial exhibits and notebooks to Kinko’s for copying, so they weren’t destroyed in the explosion. But all of Ben’s notes were. As well as all their office equipment. And all the information Jones had stored on his computer. They didn’t even have a working typewriter. Christina, resourceful as ever, had managed to rent the most critical equipment and had it delivered to the hotel suite. But Ben didn’t have tenant’s insurance and his landlord wasn’t sure his policy covered terrorist acts. So all of this simply magnified their ever-increasing expenses.
The worst part of the weekend, though, possibly even worse than the explosion, was dealing with Harold Sacks. Sacks was the jury consultant Barrett had insisted they hire. He was a short man from Boston—overbearing, overconfident, and apparently accustomed to having every word he said treated as if it had been handed down from Mount Sinai.
“The way I see it,” Sacks had said just after he’d swiped Ben’s last slice of toast from his room service breakfast, “we need black jurors. As many as possible. Make all twelve black if you can.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” Ben informed him. “We’re in Tulsa County. You’ll be lucky if we get two. Three, tops.”
“Well,” Sacks said, smiling the odious little smile Ben had come to detest, “that depends on how many white jurors you get dismissed, doesn’t it?”
“Judge Hart isn’t an idiot. She’s not going to dismiss anyone for cause unless there are bona fide reasons. And I’ll probably get six preemptories. Like I said, two, maybe three black jurors, tops.”
“Hmm.” Sacks tapped his forehead and engaged in thought processes Ben suspected were more reminiscent of Machiavelli than Clarence Darrow. “Maybe we can do something about that.”
“What’s this obsession with black jurors, anyway? Are you saying black jurors will be more sympathetic just because the defendant is black?”
“In a word, yes.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Look at these polls I’ve taken.” Sacks had spent the previous week polling, at the cost of a mere thirty thousand dollars of Barrett’s money. “African Americans who were polled showed significantly higher propensities for believing that Barrett either is or might be innocent. This shouldn’t come as any great surprise. Need I remind you of the O. J. Simpson experience?”