The Brass Verdict

could still use your help.”
    I started cutting my first piece of steak. I decided he could wait for me to eat, like I had waited for him.
    Dan Tana’s was considered by many to serve the best steak in the city. Count me as one of the many. I was not disappointed. I took my time, savoring the first bite, then put my fork down.
    “What kind of help?”
    “We draw out the killer.”
    “Great. How dangerous will it be?”
    “Depends on a lot of things. But I’m not going to lie to you. It could get dangerous. I need you to shake some things up, make whoever’s out there think there’s a loose end, that you might be dangerous to them. Then we see what happens.”
    “But you’ll be there. I’ll be covered.”
    “Every step of the way.”
    “How do we shake things up?”
    “I was thinking a newspaper story. I assume you’ve been getting calls from the reporters. We pick one and give them the story, an exclusive, and we plant something in there that gets the killer thinking.”
    I thought about this and remembered what Lorna had warned about playing fair with the media.
    “There’s a guy at the
Times,
” I said. “I kind of made a deal with him to get him off my back. I told him that when I was ready to talk, I would talk to him.”
    “That’s a perfect setup. We’ll use him.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “So, are you in?”
    I picked up my fork and knife and remained silent while I cut into the steak again. Blood ran onto the plate. I thought about my daughter getting to the point of asking me the same questions her mother asked and that I could never answer.
It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys
. It wasn’t as simple as that but knowing this didn’t take away the sting or the look I remembered seeing in her eyes.
    I put the knife and fork down without taking a bite. I suddenly was no longer hungry.
    “Yeah,” I said. “I’m in.”

PART THREE. To Speak the Truth

Thirty-four
    Everybody lies.
    Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Clients lie. Even jurors lie.
    There is a school of belief in criminal law that says every trial is won or lost in the choosing of the jury. I’ve never been ready to go all the way to that level but I do know that there is probably no phase in a murder trial more important than the selection of the twelve citizens who will decide your client’s fate. It is also the most complex and fleeting part of the trial, reliant on the whims of fate and luck and being able to ask the right question of the right person at the right time.
    And yet we begin each trial with it.
    Jury selection in the case of
California v. Elliot
began on schedule in Judge James P. Stanton’s courtroom at ten a.m. Thursday. The courtroom was packed, half filled with the venire – the eighty potential jurors called randomly from the jury pool on the fifth floor of the CCB – and half filled with media, courthouse professionals, well-wishers and just plain gawkers who had been able to squeeze in.
    I sat at the defense table alone with my client – fulfilling his wish for a legal team of just one. Spread in front of me was an open but empty manila file, a Post-it pad and three different markers, red, blue and black. Back at the office, I had prepared the file by using a ruler to draw a grid across it. There were twelve blocks, each the size of a Post-it. Each block was for one of the twelve jurors who would be chosen to sit in judgment of Walter Elliot. Some lawyers use computers to track potential jurors. They even have software that can take information revealed during the selection process, filter it through a sociopolitical pattern-recognition program and spit out instant recommendations on whether to keep or reject a juror. I had been using the old-school grid system since I had been a baby lawyer in the Public Defender’s Office. It had always worked well for me and I wasn’t changing now. I didn’t want to use a computer’s instincts when it came to picking a jury. I wanted to use my own. A computer can’t hear how someone gives an answer. It can’t see someone’s eyes when they lie.
    The way it works is that the judge has a computer-generated list from which he calls the first twelve citizens from the venire, and they take seats in the jury box. At that point each is a member of the jury. But they get to keep their seats only if they survive voir dire – the questioning of their background and views and understanding of the law. There is a process. The judge asks them a series