Lu has dressed with particular care today as this will be the potential jury’s first impression of her. A suit, tailored as all her clothes must be, in a flattering shade of loden green. Luckily, it is unseasonably cool for early April. By tomorrow, if the forecast holds, she will be in a blouse and a pencil skirt, which means she will have to forgo her beloved boots for regular heels.
Fred calls a middle-aged man for voir dire. Plaid shirt, horn-rims, short salt-and-pepper hair. During the boilerplate, he raised his hand on two questions-the one about law enforcement and the one about mental illness. Interrogated by the judge, he reveals that he has a son in the military and he’s an MP.
“Do you think you can be a fair and impartial juror in this trial?” the judge asks.
“No,” the man says like a shot. Probably lying, but if he doesn’t want to be here, Lu doesn’t want him. She hates using one of her strikes on him, but it’s probably worth it. She wants women on this jury. Preferably middle-aged women who can imagine themselves alone and vulnerable, being beaten to death for the simple fact of arriving home after a movie.
After voir dire, they start seating the potential jury, moving people in and out of the seats in the box, alternating their strikes. It’s going pretty smoothly. How long has it been since Fred tried a case? Lu can’t even remember. She thought he would be more puffed up and cock-of-the-walk, but he’s keeping it low-key.
Rudy Drysdale is restless, shifting in his chair, sometimes making little grunts. Is he trying to create the impression of a man more unstable than he is? Lu thinks his brief exposure to his beloved outdoors might have riled him up this morning. He is clean-shaven and his suit, while cheap looking, is new, not the greenish one she remembers from the grand jury hearing. Another expense for Ma and Pa Drysdale. What would it be like to be Rudy’s parents, to be responsible for a manchild who never found his place in the world? She can’t imagine it. Rudy is almost AJ’s age, yet he seems trapped in late adolescence. Petulant, moody, incapable of taking any responsibility for his actions. He wanted a place to sleep and a woman ended up dead.
He had a place to sleep, she thinks. But maybe he didn’t feel comfortable masturbating under his parents’ roof. Could it be that simple? This forever teenager needed a place where he could experience relief. Not his childhood home and definitely not in a shelter.
By lunchtime, they are so close-eight jurors have been seated, several returned to the jury room to see if they are called for another trial. Lu wishes they could keep going, but the meal break is sacred. Sure enough, all momentum is lost an hour later when they reconvene. Everyone is logy, irritable. Especially Judge Sampson, who is generally friendly to prosecutors. Even Lu, who has eaten sensibly-some roast chicken, a banana-feels her energy flagging. And her boots hurt even while sitting. It is almost 4 P.M. by the time they have a full jury-four women, eight men, with two women as alternates. Overall, Lu is pleased. But two of the women are African American, which gives Lu some concern. They might have sons who have had run-ins with cops, even if they didn’t raise their hands when asked if they had any ingrained biases about law enforcement. Sadly, the odds for young black men having bad experiences with cops are almost 100 percent. Luckily, the case against Rudy is more about science than police work-fingerprints at the scene, the DNA. That helps a little, Lu thinks, glancing at her watch. No time for even opening arguments today. The judge gives the jury its instructions-don’t talk to anyone about the case, and that includes social media; don’t research the case; be back at the courthouse by 8:30 tomorrow, ready to go. The trial is expected to last only two to three days. Lu hopes she can wrap it up before the weekend. Juries are very prosecutor friendly on Friday afternoons, in her experience.
“Everybody rise,” the clerk says.
Later, Lu will describe what happens as a whoosh, more a sensation of noise than movement, then almost blinding pain as she hits the floor on her left side. She then hears gasps and screams, but all she knows is that her left arm hurts like a son of a bitch, as does her head, which is now being pounded on the floor-by Rudy Drysdale. It’s as if he flew from where he was standing, not quite ten feet away. He bangs her head once, twice, three times, then stands and races for the door, marshals in pursuit. Lu, dizzy and disoriented, struggles to sit up, and it seems, in her blurred vision, that Drysdale is surrounded by a halo of light, shimmering, almost suspended before the closed courtroom doors, so close to freedom. Yet the bailiff, who is old and rotund, has no problem grabbing him and throwing him to the ground, where he is quickly cuffed.
“Motion for a mistrial,” Fred screams at the judge. “Motion for a mistrial, Your Honor.”
His timing is a little disconcerting-he could at least pretend to care about Lu, who is feeling her head, her wrist, shocked that there’s no blood, nothing actually broken. But, hell, if Fred didn’t ask for a mistrial, she might. She doesn’t want to try a case in front of a jury that has just seen her flung to the floor like a rag doll, even if it does establish Rudy’s predilection for violence. Maybe this guy is mentally ill. What the hell was he trying to do? Fred’s been saying all along that Rudy’s desperate to get to trial as soon as possible, in hopes that he might be released. Yet he’s just delayed his own case by days, possibly weeks. And if the attack is reported in the press-luckily, there are no reporters here; the local reporter went home when it was clear there would be no opening statements-Fred might even demand a change of venue. With shaky fingertips, Lu traces the goose egg rising above her left ear. Rudy really could have killed her if he wanted. Had he come at Mary McNally this way? Did he intend to hurt Lu more seriously? No, he was focused on escape.
She hears a woman crying, saying his name over and over. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. For some reason, Lu thinks of Cary Grant and almost starts to laugh. Is inappropriate laughter a symptom of concussion? Someone-the judge?-crouches down next to her and tells her not to move, to wait for paramedics. She shakes her head impatiently, then realizes it really hurts to shake her head.
“Lu,” a familiar voice says. “Lu. Can you hear me?”
Shit, her father is here. He must have sneaked in toward the end or she would have seen him before now.
“Lu,” he says. “Lu.” Mrs. Drysdale says Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. Lu senses that her father wants to hold her but is restraining himself, in part because he’s not a very huggy guy, but also because he doesn’t want to undermine her authority.
“How do you feel, child?” She should be angry at that word, child, but it makes her happy.
“I’m fine. It probably looked worse than it was. It was the first blow-when he jumped me and knocked me down-that really hurt. After that, it was more like he was trying to shake me and my head kept hitting the floor because he didn’t have a good hold on my shoulders.”
Having said it, she realizes it’s true. The impact of his body hitting hers, knocking her to the ground-that hurt like hell. But his hands on her throat, her shoulders-well, she’s known rougher, for sure.
Saying that to her father right now would probably not be all that comforting.