Dr. Ian West

Acoustics are important. In a room filled with twelve jurors, one judge, numerous courtroom staff, and a transfixed audience, acoustics are very important. The way someone’s voice projects—clear, audible—can make the difference between the defense having to ask the witness to speak up. Repeat themselves. And that witness having time to think and revise their statement.

In a split-second, the witness on the stand blinks and shakes her head lightly. An action delivered so quickly you might miss it, but I see the inferred no before she clears her throat and says, “Yes. I’m sure. I was with Quentin Shaver, that man sitting right there—” she points to the man at the defense table “—at the club that night.”

I release a sigh. Never mind the head shake, she cleared her throat. A telling clue that the person is about to lie.

I straighten my tie, giving the knot a firm tug. The prosecutor at the table nods once. He got the message.

“Thank you. I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor.” Porter Lovell—God’s gift to criminals everywhere—smiles curtly at me before she takes a seat at the defense table with her client.

She should be smiling. Porter has a lot to be happy about right now. If this trial continues to go her way, she’ll get Shaver acquitted for murder. A man that was found guilty in the court of public opinion the moment his arrest hit the Internet waves. Beating a murder wrap isn’t impossible, but it’s damn near for a known criminal once the public chews on it until it’s a gnarled, mutilated corpse of a case.

Not to sound insensitive; that’s not in relation to the poor deceased woman, who is, in fact, a mutilated corpse.

“Your witness, counselor,” Judge Mathers instructs the prosecution.

My client, Assistant District Attorney Eddie Wagner, rises from his chair. With a quick adjustment of his suit, he buttons his jacket and approaches the witness stand. His slicked-back, blond hair gleams in the courtroom lights like the gem he is.

“Here we go,” I whisper. Though I’ve been known to have rambling conversations with myself, I’m actually talking to my assistant. A behavioral analyst I hired when I went rogue with my own trial consultant agency.

“Eddie’s got a challenge.” Mia’s pixie voice comes through my earpiece.

I lift my eyebrows in silent agreement. We started out with ten jurors in our favor—hand-selected through a series of questions during voir dire, the jury selection process. It wasn’t difficult to establish that many due to Shaver’s infamous—notorious—media presence.

He’s a well-known drug lord.

Ironically enough, Shaver’s never been convicted of a drug crime. Or any crime, for that matter. Because Shaver is also very smart, and because he hires the very best accountants and business people. Drugs are a lucrative smokescreen for his more insidious hobby. Drugs keep the DEA and feds busy looking one way, while he maneuvers the other. Like a magician performing a card trick.

But where are the bodies?

Don’t look up his sleeve.

The unfortunate truth is, as long as Shaver pays off the right people, keeping mouths fed and the powerful in power, no one can touch him. Evidence goes missing. Witnesses suddenly disappear.

The prosecution is using the murder charge to make up for the failings of the narcotics unit, going for the maximum sentence: life in prison without parole.

If they can make it stick.

And Porter—the sly minx that she is—has been able to turn four of our jurors in favor of reasonable doubt. We’ll get to that later, right now we’re focusing on the fact that this time, Shaver made a mistake. He might have been too bold, too cocky. He left a body, with evidence intact on her person. It’s so sloppy, I have to wonder if he started using from his own supply.

I sit forward, elbows to knees, as Eddie questions the woman on the witness stand. Jessica Rendell is the defense’s star witness. As Shaver’s alibi, she places him at a nightclub the evening the victim—Devin Tillman—was murdered in a motel room.

“Ms. Rendell, how often do you frequent The Haze Bar?”

Rendell pushes back in the chair. As is the case with most people testifying in the witness box, they feel apprehensive and on defense when the opposition starts the redirect. They physically distance themselves.

“I’m there just about every weekend,” she answers.

Her use of qualifiers gives Eddie an opening to tear her statement apart.

Eddie leans an elbow against the witness stand. He takes her through the events of that Sunday night, as stated by herself and the defendant, lulling her into a rhythm, before he asks, “Are you a magician, Ms. Rendell?”

Defenses lowered, she actually smiles. “Uh, no.”

Eddie returns the smile, his megawatt lawyer beam on full display. I love this part.

“Are you sure,” he eggs on, “because otherwise, I can’t seem to figure out how a person can be in two places at once.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Lovell interjects. “Does Mr. Wagner have a question? He’s harassing the witness.”

“Settle down, counselor. Sustained.” Judge Mathers looks at Eddie. “Well, is there a question you’d like to ask this witness?”

“Sorry, Your Honor. Yes, there is.” Eddie goes to the prosecution table and gathers a file. As he walks slowly, deliberately toward the witness stand, he flips through the pages within. “Ms. Rendell, at approximately eleven forty-five on the night in question, your phone’s GPS logged you at a residence in Bristol Heights.”

She scratches her arm, eyes darting around the room. A clear sign that the mention of the trap house—drug house—where she gets her fix is making her fiend. That’s how she came to be a witness for Shaver, of course. A paid witness. Promised an endless supply of her drug of choice.

I glance at Porter. On cue, she stands. “Objection. Not in evidence, Your Honor. Where did Mr. Wagner obtain this information?”

Exasperated, the judge looks toward Eddie, eyebrows raised.

Eddie clears his throat. “I was just made aware of this discovery myself, Your Honor. This morning. But it proves the alibi Ms. Rendell is providing for Mr. Shaver is false, and therefore—”

“You’ll provide the defense with this discovery,” Judge Mathers interrupts, “and give the defense until the afternoon to conduct their own investigation.”

Porter Lovell is not happy. “Your Honor, that’s not much time to investigate—”

“Will tomorrow morning be sufficient for the defense?” the judge asks, an edge in his tone. Though he has to remain unbiased, even he’s having a difficult time not looking at Shaver with disdain.

From my viewpoint, Porter doesn’t appear pleased, her lips pursed into that tight little frown of hers. But she knows better than to argue with Mathers. “Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

The judge adjourns the trial for the day, and the courtroom rises to stand.

Eddie looks at me expectantly. His question clear: Do we have him?

I give a half-nod, half-shrug that confuses the ADA. “Thanks” he mouths.

Knowing what someone wants to do is different than knowing what they’ll actually do. In the case of a jury, once they’re behind closed doors to deliberate, I’m just as anxious as a defendant in the hot seat.

It’s exhilarating.

The secret phone that Rendell had under her ex-husband’s account can help Eddie’s case, since I’m 99% sure that Shaver and his crew didn’t know about it. Rendell wants her lifetime fix more than she cares about the jeopardy she’s put her life in by lying to Shaver.

And that’s the kind of alliance you get with addicts. The only way Shaver was going to be brought down was if he made a mistake. Well, in my professional opinion, he just made a big one by putting his fate in Rendell’s hands.

Now, to get the DNA thrown out.

Thrown out, you say? I know. Usually, DNA in a murder case means a slam-dunk. It’s the nail in the coffin. The indisputable fact. And because of this, criminals have found ways to use DNA to their advantage, rather than against them.

In this case, Shaver’s semen was presented on Rendell’s skirt. She claims they were intimately together at The Haze Club, so therefore he couldn’t have been with Tillman, murdering and mutilating her at a motel.

Juries love DNA. They used to not know what the hell it was. Now they believe in it like it’s gospel. The trick is in convincing them that DNA can be inconclusive. That depending on who does the testing, it can be contaminated, planted. After years of training people to trust in the science, we’re now trying to undo just that.

It’s a tricky catch twenty-two, since we’re also asking them to believe the DNA found at the crime scene.

Which is damn difficult, being that motel rooms are a nest of DNA from hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Porter’s prospect to get our DNA discovery thrown out bodes much more in her favor.

And then there’s the little annoying fact of motive. To prove Shaver committed this heinous murder, we have to prove intent. It’s not enough to disprove his alibi, or even corroborate he was with Tillman. That’s all arguable without a clear motive.

And for Shaver, a man I’ve had the pure displeasure of analyzing throughout this trial, I can attest he’s a natural born psychopath with antisocial personality disorder—which means the only motive he needs is the desire in his black little heart.

Making him the hardest to pin a motive on.

As Eddie packs his briefcase, I look at the jury. How are they taking Rendell’s testimony? Do they believe it? Do they trust her?

Trial science isn’t an exact science. It’s social science. A healthy scoop of psychology with a dash of sociology. Mix and bake, and the end result is a cake with as little bias in the jury pool as possible.

It’s fucking harder than you think.

As a society, every last one of us harbors bias against something.

But that’s where I come in to even the playing field. Reading facial cues—microexpressions—and discerning their biases in order to develop a jury of twelve individuals that will give my clients the fairest trial possible.

It’s also helpful to do a little tech digging and accessing the jurors’ social media accounts, to find out how often they’re online. What they like. What they comment on. There’s a wealth of knowledge on social media. And we use it.

I get to know each juror personably, intimately. We become lovers during a trial.

Well, that’s taking it a bit far. We’re more like besties. I learn what makes them tick, their tells, and how to apply that during a trial. If you want to convince someone—twelve someones—that a murder happened a certain way, you have to build a narrative they’ll believe. One that weaves a conceivable story they’re able to follow.

Our golden rule: Keep it simple stupid.

That’s how we erase any doubt. What the defense is hinging their acquittal on.

If you believe the narrative, if you think you’re smarter than the man trying to dupe the system, then bam. We got you.

Everyone believes they’re smarter than the average person.

All the prosecution has to do is lead the jury to the fountain of knowledge. Let them drink the Kool-Aid. Or whatever mixed, fucked-up metaphor you want to apply here. The point is, we might be tenacious in how we get a conviction, but it’s for the greater good.

At least, that’s how I’m able to sleep peacefully at night.

That, and a wave simulator machine that mimics the ocean.

It’s very soothing.

After the judge releases the jury, I take mental snapshots of each one as they file out. The game is tied six to six.

As I ease out of the pew, Porter turns my way and winks.

Sly minx. “Game on,” I whisper.

“What’s that?” Mia asks in my ear.

“Nothing.” I straighten my tie and adjust the mic transmitter.

“Eddie handled the cross well,” Mia says.

“Agreed,” I say, nodding to a gray-haired woman who is giving me the stink-eye because it appears I’m talking to myself. I head out of the courtroom. “Now all I need from you is the good news.”

Mia’s chiming laugh tickles my ear. “What about the bad news? You don’t want that first?”

I blow out a heavy breath. “Please be fucking with me. There is no bad news, right?”

Eddie meets me in the corridor across from the bathrooms. “Mia?”

I nod. “Great job in there.”

“Thanks, boss.”

Technically, he’s my boss. But ever since he first walked into my six-floor office, a beaten down, newly appointed ADA, and I told him exactly how it was going to be (my way or the…you get it), and we won our first case, he accepted the hierarchy. The pecking order, if you will.

It’s semantics, anyway.

I press my finger to my earpiece so I can hear Mia more clearly. “What did you say?”

“I said, I got some information on juror number two. Her husband was injured on site today and was rushed to the ER. She might be pulled.”

“Dammit.” I say this a little too loudly, and the same woman from inside the courtroom passes by with a raised, gray eyebrow.

“Sorry, ma’am.” I give her my panty-melting smile.

She shakes her head and keeps going, clutching her cardigan closed tightly at the neck.

Eh, I’m an acquired taste.

“She’s one of ours,” I say, not as loudly this time. “I know she is. I can read it in her eyes every time she looks at Shaver. She wants to nail his dick to the floor.”

Eddie matches my pace once we’re outside. We head down the courthouse steps. “Drinks?” he asks.

“Not tonight. I got a thing.”

He nods knowingly. “Ah, that thing. See you in the morning, then.” He crosses the street toward his BMW. You might think that’s a little flashy for an ADA, and you’d be right. Eddie’s family is affluent; he doesn’t have to work in government. So the fact that he trudges through the underbelly of the justice system every day, fighting the good fight, speaks to his character, and why I like him.

Also, he’s the one lawyer in the DA’s office that can afford my retainer.

He throws his briefcase in the backseat and leaves me at the steps, wondering why I didn’t just go with him. I could use a drink before…

“I’m disconnecting now, Mia. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

A weighty beat. Then: “Say hi to Melanie for me, Dr. West.”

Thankfully, the line clicks dead before she can hear the raw noise that works its way free. Like shoving a hot poker down my throat. The burning ache is always there, amplified every time someone says her name.