“Then your witnesses are mistaken,” Rick said calmly. “Why would I want to break into your apartment? That wouldn’t be very smart.”
“Nobody claimed you were very smart,” Jess told him.
Rick Ferguson clutched at his chest. “Ouch! You sure know how to hurt a guy, Jess.” He winked. “Maybe some day, I can return the favor.”
“Rick,” Don said before Jess could respond, “have you ever met a man named Adam Stohn?”
Jess’s head snapped toward her ex-husband.
“What’s that name again?” Rick Ferguson was asking.
“Adam Stohn,” Don repeated.
Jess turned her attention back to Rick Ferguson, reluctantly waiting for his reply.
“Is he one of your supposed witnesses?” Rick Ferguson asked, then shook his head. “I’m afraid the name doesn’t ring a bell.” He smiled. “But then, you know how I am with names.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” Jess said impatiently. “You’re saying you know absolutely nothing about Connie DeVuono’s murder? Is that what you’re telling us?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“You’ve just been playing games with us,” Jess said angrily.
“I’ve just been telling you the truth.”
“In that case,” Jess told him, “consider yourself under arrest for the murder of Connie De Vuono.” She turned and strode briskly from the room.
Don was right behind her. “Jess, wait a minute, for Christ’s sake. Think about what you’re doing.” The officers in the outer area looked discreetly away.
“There’s nothing to think about.”
“You don’t have a case, Jess.”
“Stop telling me I don’t have a case. I have motive. I have opportunity. I have the murder weapon. What more do I need?”
“Some fingerprints on the murder weapon would be nice. Some hard DNA evidence linking Connie DeVuono to my client, which I know you don’t have. A few witnesses who might have seen my client and the victim together around the time she disappeared, which you also don’t have. A bridge between the dead body and Rick Ferguson, Jess, something to connect the two.”
“I’ll connect them.”
“I wish you luck.”
“I’ll see you in court.”
J
ess was arguing with her trial supervisor right up to the moment of Rick Ferguson’s preliminary hearing the following Friday.
“I still think it was a mistake not to take this before the grand jury,” Jess told Tom Olinsky as she walked beside him through the mistletoe-laden corridors, paying scant attention to the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations that covered the walls.
“And I told you that we don’t have a strong enough case to take before the grand jury.”
Tom Olinsky walked very quickly for such a big man, Jess thought, having to take very long strides just to keep up.
“Your ex-husband has already hit us with a motion
in limine.”
“Damn him,” Jess muttered, still smarting over Don’s move to limit the state’s introduction of evidence.
“He’s just doing his job, Jess.”
“And I’m trying to do mine.”
They pushed their way through a reception area that was all but overwhelmed by a huge, tinsel-draped popcorn-swaddled Christmas tree, into the exterior hall, heading toward the elevators.
“A grand jury would have rubber-stamped the indictment,” Jess continued. “We’d have a trial date set by now.” Jess also wouldn’t have had to face her ex-husband in court so early, she admitted to herself, since the defense wasn’t present at grand jury proceedings and no cross-examination of witnesses was allowed. The prosecutor simply presented its case to the twenty-three members of the grand jury and asked them to find a “true bill” that held the defendant over for trial.
When a case was shaky, and everyone but Jess seemed to agree this case was shaky, the prosecutor’s office usually went the route of a preliminary hearing. That way, the onus was on the judge, and not the state’s attorney, to decide whether there was sufficient evidence to hold a person over for trial. It was a very political decision, Jess recognized, a way to get the case out of the system. The state’s attorney’s office didn’t like to prosecute a case when there was a good chance the state might lose. A preliminary hearing let the prosecutor’s office off the hook by forcing the judge to decide whether or not there was probable cause to hold a person over for trial. The whole procedure could take as little as twenty minutes.
Jess was reminded of Don’s long-standing advice to think of the criminal justice system as a game: In a preliminary hearing the state put forth its evidence in as general terms as possible, careful to reveal the least amount of evidence in
hand, just enough to produce a finding of probable cause; the defense, meanwhile, tried to uncover as much information about the prosecution’s case as possible.
If the prosecutor’s office was successful, an arraignment would follow three weeks after the preliminary hearing, wherein the accused would appear before the chief judge for the criminal division of the circuit court of Cook County to hear the charges read aloud. According to the unwritten rules of the game, this right was usually waived by the defense counsel, and the accused then entered a plea of either guilty or not guilty.
The accused
always
pleaded not guilty, Jess acknowledged, following Tom Olinsky into the elevator, suppressing a smile as the three people who were already inside took a giant collective step back to give him room.
The chief judge then used a computer to randomly assign which judge would try the case. A court date was selected and the case now became one of approximately three hundred cases on a judge’s call. Murder cases generally took anywhere from a few months to a year to hit court, and this was where the game started to get really interesting.
The state could no longer be coy with its evidence. It was obliged to reveal the full extent of its case against the defendant. This was done through a series of “discoveries.” Any evidence that would be helpful to the accused, all police reports, experts’ statements, documents, photos, names and addresses of witnesses, prior convictions, and so on, would have to be handed over to the defense. The defense, in turn, was obligated to disclose its own list of witnesses, along with whatever medical and scientific reports it
planned to introduce into evidence, and to reveal its main strategy of defense, be it alibi, consent, self-defense, or varying degrees of insanity.
If the defendant was denied bail, the state had 120 days to bring him to trial, if this was the defendant’s wish. It always was. If the accused was out on bond, the state had 160 days to bring him to trial, if the defendant so demanded. He almost never did.
Even if the accused wanted to go to trial right away, the lawyer would need time to review all the state’s evidence. Still, part of the poker game on the part of the defense was to keep the demand for trial running. That tended to unnerve the state, occasionally forcing the prosecutor’s office to trial before it was ready. Justice delayed, after all, was justice denied.
If after 160 days the prosecution still wasn’t ready, the defense could bring a speedy trial discharge motion before the judge and have the case thrown out of court. This was the worst thing that could happen to an assistant state’s attorney, Jess knew, stepping off the elevator at the ground floor ahead of Tom Olinsky, although he quickly passed her as they marched through the corridor that connected the Administration Building to the courthouse.
But all that was later, Jess reminded herself, her heels clicking along the granite floor. First she had to make it through the preliminary hearing.
The preliminary hearing was being held in one of the smaller, more modern courtrooms on the second floor. “Let’s take the stairs,” Tom Olinsky suggested, walking between the tall, brown, Doric-style pillars, past the bank of ten elevators, to the stairwell. For a man of his girth, he
was amazingly spry, Jess thought, fearing she would be exhausted before she even set foot in the courtroom.
Jess smelled the food emanating from the various lunchrooms on the first floor as they made their way up the stairs, and she wondered if Don and Rick Ferguson were having coffee in the room reserved for defendants and their lawyers, the room that the state’s attorney’s office not so affectionately referred to as the gang-bangers’ lounge.
She hadn’t seen Don all week, hadn’t even spoken to him since he’d filed his motion
in limine
. She knew, as even Adam had reminded her, that her ex-husband was only doing his job, but it made her furious anyway. Did he have to be so damn
good
at his job?
As for Adam, she hadn’t seen him all week either, although she’d spoken to him every night over the phone. He was in Springfield, visiting his parents for the first time in almost three years. He’d be back in Chicago on Sunday. Meanwhile, he called every night at ten o’clock to wish her a good night’s sleep. And to tell her he loved her.
Jess hadn’t yet spoken of her feelings. She wasn’t sure quite what they were. Certainly she was attracted to him; certainly she liked him enormously; certainly she understood the pain he’d been through. Did she love him? She didn’t know. She was afraid to let herself go enough to find out.
Go with it, she heard distant voices murmur. Go with it. Go with it.
Maybe after the preliminary hearing was over. Maybe after she’d succeeded in getting Rick Ferguson bound over for trial, she could let go of the nagging doubts about Adam that Don had planted in her brain, concentrate
on letting whatever was developing between them progress naturally.
Trust your instincts, the voices purred. Trust your instincts.
“After you,” Tom Olinsky said, pulling open the door and allowing Jess to step inside first. An odd time for chivalry, Jess thought, looking around the circular, windowless courtroom.
The courtrooms on the second, third, and fourth floors reminded Jess of small spaceships. Once inside the outer doors, one found oneself in a sparse, predominantly gray, glass-enclosed space, where spectators waited in a semicircular area on the other side of the glass from the actual proceedings. The judge’s bench was directly opposite the outer doors, the jury box either to the judge’s left or right, depending on the courtroom. In this courtroom, the jury box, which would remain empty during the preliminary hearing, was to the judge’s left and Jess’s right.
After four o’clock in the afternoon, these courts handled nothing but drug cases. They were always busy.
The various clerks were likewise busy at their stations as Jess and her trial supervisor stepped up to the prosecutor’s table where Neil Strayhorn was already settled in. Jess deposited her briefcase on the floor, perusing the room to see whether any of her witnesses had arrived.
“No one’s here,” Neil told her.
“You checked with the police to make sure they got their notification of trial?” Tom Olinsky asked, sitting down beside Neil, his wide hips spilling over the sides of the wooden chair.
“At seven forty-five this morning,” Jess answered, wondering why he was asking her such basic questions. Obviously
she had checked with the police to make sure they’d be here. She’d also called the crime lab to go over the analysis of the physical evidence in the case, and conferred with Hilary Waugh about the questions she’d be asking her on the stand. Connie’s mother, Mrs. Gambala, would also be testifying, along with one of Connie’s co-workers and Connie’s closest friend. They would corroborate the state’s contention that Connie was deathly afraid of Rick Ferguson because of threats he’d made against her life if she proceeded with the assault charges against him, thereby providing the state with the motive for the murder.
“Tom, you don’t have to stay,” Jess told her trial supervisor. “Neil and I will be fine.”
“I want to see how this one goes down,” he said, leaning back into the chair, his weight lifting its front legs off the floor.
Jess smiled, realizing she was grateful for his show of support. He’d given her a hard time all week, fretted openly that he thought the state’s case too circumstantial, but in the end, he’d gone along with her intense desire to proceed.
“I have a feeling this one’s looking for you,” Tom said as the door to the courtroom opened and an older woman, dressed all in black, tentatively poked her head inside.
“Mrs. Gambala,” Jess said warmly, approaching the woman and taking hold of both her hands. “Thank you for coming.”
“We put that monster away?” Mrs. Gambala said, her statement curling into a question.
“We’ll put that monster away,” Jess assured her. “You remember my associate, Neil Strayhorn. And this is Tom Olinsky, my trial supervisor. Tom, this is Connie’s mother, Mrs. Gambala.”
“Hello, Mrs. Gambala,” he said, slowly rising to his feet. “Hopefully, we’ll have you out of here pretty quickly.”
“You see that justice is done,” Mrs. Gambala said in return.
“You’ll have to wait outside until you’re called as a witness,” Jess explained, leading her back into the hallway. “You can sit here.” Jess pointed to a bench along the wall. The older woman remained on her feet. “You understand what I’m going to ask you on the stand? You’re comfortable with the questions I’m going to ask?”
Mrs. Gambala nodded. “I tell the truth. Connie, she was terrified of that man. He threatened to kill her.”
“Good. Now, don’t worry. If you don’t understand a question, or you don’t understand anything that’s going on, anything the defense attorney asks you, just say so. Take all the time you need.”
“We put that monster away,” Mrs. Gambala said again, walking toward the window at the end of the corridor, staring out at the cold gray day.
The other witnesses arrived soon after. Jess spoke briefly with the police and the forensics expert, thanked Connie’s friend and her co-worker for being so prompt. She guided them toward the bench and told them they would be called shortly. Then she returned to the courtroom.
The spectator section was filling up, mostly lawyers and their clients awaiting their turn before the judge. Don and Rick Ferguson had yet to arrive. Was it possible that Don was planning some last-minute pyrotechnics?
The court clerk loudly cleared his throat before calling the court to order and introducing Judge Caroline McMahon. Caroline McMahon was a woman in her early forties, whose
round face belied her angular frame. She had short dark hair and a pale complexion that blushed deep red whenever she lost her patience, a not infrequent occurrence.