The Match (Wilde, #2)(11)

Paul Hickory was on his feet. “Objection, your honor—”

“Ms. Crimstein,” the judge half-heartedly admonished.

Hester waved away an apology and stood.

“The reason I say Mr. Hickory is being overwrought and completely irrelevant, ladies and gentlemen, is…” Then Hester stopped herself: “First, let me say good afternoon to you all.” This was a small part of Hester’s closing technique. She would give them a little tease, make them wonder where she was going, let them bathe in that for a moment. “Jury duty is solemn and important work, and we on the defense team thank you for being here, for participating, for being diligent and open-minded about a man being so obviously railroaded. Lord knows this isn’t my first case”—Hester smiled, checking to see who smiled back, noting the three that did, including Marti Vandevoort—“but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a jury that has adjudicated a case so seriously and intelligently.”

This was nonsense, of course. All juries looked pretty much the same. They were bored at the same time. They were riveted at the same time. Her jury expert, Samantha Reiter, sitting three rows behind her, believed that this jury was more malleable than most, but Hester’s defense was also more insane than most. The evidence, as Paul Hickory had laid out, was indeed overwhelming. She was starting the race miles behind the prosecution. She got that.

“Wait, where was I?” Hester asked.

This was a small reminder that Hester was not a young woman. She wasn’t above playing your favorite aunt or grandmother when she could. Sharp, fair, strict, a little forgetful, lovable. Most of the jury members knew Hester from her cable news show Crimstein on Crime. The prosecution always tried to select jury members who didn’t know who she was, but even if the juror claimed that they didn’t watch the show—not many did on a regular basis—almost all had seen her as a television analyst at some point or another. If a potential juror said that they didn’t know who Hester was, they were often lying, which made Hester want them because, for some reason, that meant they wanted to be on her jury and would probably be on her side. Over the years, the prosecution had picked up on that and so they stopped asking.

“Oh, that’s right. I was characterizing Mr. Hickory’s closing as ‘overwrought yet completely irrelevant.’ You probably want to know why.”

Her voice was soft. She always tried to start the closing that way to get the jury to lean in a little. It also gave her voice space to grow, space for her narrative to build.

“Mr. Hickory kept blabbing on about what we already knew, didn’t he? In terms of evidence, that is. We don’t dispute that the gun belonged to my client or any of that other stuff, so why waste our time with that?”

She gave a heartfelt shrug but didn’t wait for Hickory to try to answer.

“But everything else Mr. Hickory claimed…well, I won’t call them bald-faced lies because that would be rude. But the prosecutor’s office is a political one, and like the worst politicians—don’t we have too many of those nowadays?—Mr. Hickory slanted the story so that you only heard his biased and distorted narrative. Boy, I’m sick of that, aren’t you? I’m sick of that with politicians. I’m sick of that with the media. I’m sick of that on social media, not that I’m on social media, but my grandson Matthew is and sometimes he shows me what’s there, and I tell you, it’s Crazyville, am I right? Stay away.”

Brief laughter.

This was all a bit of rapport/showmanship on her part. Everyone dislikes politicians and the media in the same way they dislike attorneys, so this made Hester both self-deprecating and relatable. It was, however, an interesting dichotomy. If you ask someone what they think of lawyers, they will trash them. If you ask them what they think of their lawyer, they will speak glowingly.

“As you already know, most of what Mr. Hickory said doesn’t add up. That’s because life isn’t, as much as Mr. Hickory wants it to be, black and white. We all know this, don’t we? It is part of the human condition. We all think that we are uniquely complex, that no one can read our thoughts, but that we can read theirs. Are there black-and-whites in the world? Sure. We will get back to that in a moment. But mostly—and we all know this—life is lived in the grays.”

Without turning to the screen, Hester hit the remote and a slide appeared on the television screen the defense had brought in. Her television was intentionally bigger than the prosecution’s—seventy-two inches while Hickory’s was a mere fifty. Subliminally, it told the jury that she had nothing to hide.

“For some reason, Mr. Hickory chose not to show you this.”

The jury’s eyes were naturally drawn to the image behind her. Hester didn’t turn and look. She wanted to show them that she knew what it was; instead she watched their faces.

“I hate to state the obvious, but this is a closeup of a hand. More specifically, the right hand of Mr. Lars Corbett.”

The image was blurry. That was part technology—it was an extreme closeup—and part intentional. If it had worked in her favor to improve the lighting or pixels, she would have done so. A trial is two competing stories. It didn’t serve her interest to do anything but blow it up in this way, quality be damned.

“Do you see what’s clutched in his hand?”

Some of the jury squinted.