The Jury Master Read Online Free PDF Page B

quietly, alone. Emily Scott’s mother had not been about to allow him that comfort.
    When he turned to leave the courtroom Patricia Hansen remained seated in the gallery, a newspaper clutched to her chest. When Sloane stepped through the swinging gate she stood and stepped into the aisle.
    “Mrs. Hansen—”
    She raised a hand. “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me how sorry you are for my loss.” She spoke barely above a whisper, more tired than confrontational. “You don’t know my loss. If you did, you would never have done what you just did.” She paused, but she was clearly not finished. “What Carl Sandal did? I can almost . . .” She swallowed tears, fighting not to let Sloane see the depth of her pain. “What he did I can almost understand. A sociopath. A crazed lunatic. Isn’t that what you called him? But what he did pales in comparison to what you did to my Emily in this courtroom . . . to our family, to the word ‘justice.’ You knew better, Mr. Sloane. You
know
better.”
    “I only did my job, Mrs. Hansen.”
    Patricia Hansen snatched the words like an actor given the perfect cue. “Your job?” She scoffed, looking around the courtroom with disdain before fixing him again with her steel-blue eyes. “You just keep telling yourself that, Mr. Sloane, and maybe, if you hear it often enough, someday you might actually start to believe that makes it all right.” She unfolded the newspaper and compared the man who stood before her with the photograph. “That is some gift you have, Mr. Sloane . . . what you did to those jurors. I don’t know how you did it, how you convinced them. They didn’t want to believe you. I saw it when they came back. They had their minds made up.” A tear rolled down her cheek; she disregarded it. “Well, consider this, Mr. Sloane. My Emily is dead, and my grandson will never have his mother. That is something you can’t change with your words.”
    She slapped the newspaper against his chest. With both hands holding trial bags, Sloane watched it fall to the ground, his photograph staring up at him from the tile floor.
    During Sloane’s run of victories, all on behalf of defendants in wrongful-death civil trials, what began as a simple premonition that the jurors would find for his client, sometimes against his own judgment, had become unmistakable knowledge. Sloane
knew
before he stood to give his closing argument that he had lost. He knew that the jury considered Abbott Security culpable. He knew they believed the guard was negligent. He knew they hated his client. He knew, as did all good trial lawyers, that you did not win cases in closing argument—a television gimmick for the dramatic. He knew that there should have been nothing he could say to change their minds.
    And yet he had.
    They had returned a verdict for Abbott Security in less than two hours. He had convinced them all, every single juror, of something even
he
did not believe. What was more troubling was that when he had stood to give his closing he had no idea what he would say to convince them, and yet he had said the very words they
needed
to hear to assuage their doubts and erase their concerns. Only they weren’t his words. It was his voice, but it was as if the words were being spoken through him by someone else.
    Not wanting to linger on that thought, he pushed open the car door into a strong wind that carried a distant, whistling howl and the briny smell of the ocean. As he stepped from the Jeep he felt a shock of pain in his right ankle. He’d rolled it during his descent down the mountain trail in the dark, and it had swollen and stiffened on the drive home. He retrieved his backpack, slung the strap over his shoulder, and limped toward the building. The familiar light in the first-floor apartment window farthest to the right glowed like a beacon welcoming a ship, but he did not see the top of Melda’s head. Melda rose at 4:30 every morning of the week, a disciplined habit from working in the