A Deadly Judgment by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain

Author:Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain [Fletcher, Jessica & Bain, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780451187710
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1995-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I called Malcolm on the limo’s cell phone on the way back to Boston and was surprised to find him in his office.

“Why aren’t you in court?” I asked.

“Judge Wilson canceled today’s session. Says he has to spend the day deciding whether to revoke Billy’s bail. You heard?”

“About Ms. Montrone? Juror Number Seven? Yes. Georgia called. How horrible. Georgia said she was run over.”

“That’s right, Jessica. Hit-and-run, right in front of her house.”

“When did it happen?” I asked.

“Last night. About midnight. Where are you now?”

“In the car heading back from the Cape.”

“Sorry your day off was ruined.”

“It really wasn’t a day off, Malcolm. I hooked up with the police chief, McPartland. He took me to Cynthia Warren’s house. I was about to go in when—”

“Why did you go there?”

“Simple curiosity. That’s all. I should be at your office in an hour. Will you be there?”

“Yes.”

I heard the click of the phone being lowered into its cradle. Malcolm was obviously upset, and who could blame him? His client might end up having his bail revoked, and we’d lost one of our handpicked jurors. Of course, one of the six alternates would replace Juror Number Seven, and we’d passed favorably on them, too. But you never knew. I’d learned from Jill Farkas that once a trial gets underway, jurors tend to bond into a somewhat cohesive unit, making it easier to reach a unanimous decision. Injecting a new person into the mix could be, according to our high-priced jury consultant, disruptive, no matter who that new person was.

I mentally went over the profiles of the six alternates. If I had the choice to make of who to replace Juror Number Seven, it would have been Thomas McEnroe, our pottery maker. But that choice wasn’t mine to make, nor anyone else’s on either side. Judge Wilson would pick a number out of a hat, so to speak, and the alternate juror bearing that number would replace Juror Number Seven.

When I reached Malcolm’s office, everyone was there except Rachel Cohen, who’d taken advantage of the unexpected day off to catch up on things at home. Malcolm had ordered in enough Italian food to feed us and everyone else in the building. It covered the conference table; the aroma of garlic competed with the sour smell of Malcolm’s cigars, which were piling up in a foot-wide ashtray.

I passed on the food. The last thing on my mind was lasagna and spaghetti with white clam sauce.

In contrast to the festive food on the conference table, the mood was distinctly somber. Everyone, including Linda, the receptionist, was busy reading documents of one sort or another. Jill Farkas sat hunched over her laptop computer in a comer of the large office. I’d no sooner arrived and greeted everyone when she picked up a sheet of paper that had inched out of the ink-jet printer, scrutinized it for a moment, and handed it to Malcolm. He frowned as he read it, then passed it to me.

It was a printout of a computer analysis she’d run on the twelve jurors, including Juror Number Seven.

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