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Yeah, Judge, it is.
Sometimesallit is.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I say: “I’m so sorry, Your Honor. I was so impressed by opposing counsel’s performance that I couldn’t contain myself. Even you have to admit that was some great story he just told to the men and women who will eventually acquit Rob Jacobsonbecauseof the facts of this case.”
I walk over to the jury box now and lean over, elbows resting on the partition. I’m directly in front of an older guy who reminds me of David Letterman after Dave grew the mountain-man beard. I smile. He smiles.
“But as skilled a prosecutor as Mr. Ahearn is, he is something much more than that,” I say. “He is a fabulist, one who wants you to believe that suddenly a lack of motive doesn’t matter. But it does, ladies and gentlemen. Italwaysdoes, despite all those facts Mr. Ahearn was bragging about the same way he frequently brags about his conviction rate.”
“Your Honor,” Ahearn says.
I hold up a hand, turn to him, and wink.
“Low-hanging fruit.”
Then I’m moving again.
“That fatal flaw for Mr. Ahearn, you should pardon the expression, happens to be why this one isn’t going into his win column.”
Now it’s my voice that’s rising, as I am feeling the jazzed adrenaline that always starts to rise when I’m the one taking control of the room.
“There. Is. No. Motive. Here.”
Back to the jury box, walking slowly in front of them. Smiling again.
“Now, it’s abundantly clear that somebody went to an awful lot of trouble to make the police and Mr. Ahearn believe that Rob Jacobson, with no personal history of violence, murdered Mitch and Kathy and Laurel Gates.”
I don’t mention that most violent crimes are actually committed by first offenders, because that doesn’t help Mrs. Smith’s daughter Jane at all.
“Somebody brutally murdered three innocent people,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean you have to send an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life.”
I spend some time explaining away the trace evidence, and how easy it would have been to have planted it—somebody could have done it, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been easy—and then I throw some shade on the idea that on a night heavy with marine layer the black Mercedes that was spotted leaving the Gateses’ rental house even belonged to Rob Jacobson, the car driving in an area, I point out, where black Mercedes seem to be spawning like rabbits.
Time to wrap it up.
“Mr. Ahearn and I actually agree on something,” I say. “And so, I am certain, do all of you. This truly is a monstrous crime. But so, too, ladies and gentlemen,wouldbe the crime of convicting an innocent man.”
I sit back down.
No applause for me when I finish.
But I’m thinking that maybe there should be.
Eleven
KEVIN AHEARN HAS JUSTfinished questioning his first witness, the first cop on the scene the night of the murders, when Judge Jackson Prentice III announces that court is being adjourned for the day.
Rob Jacobson is on his way back to his cell when Claire Jacobson asks if she can have a word. “This won’t take long.”
Not if I have anything to say about it.
That’s what I’m thinking as I show her into the same attorney room where I’d met with her husband the day before.
“If you’re looking for legal advice, I’m kind of booked up at the moment,” I tell her.
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
Claire Jacobson has made it clear that even after he—or they—fired his first two attorneys, no legal dream team she could have imagined ever would have included me.
