they think the verdict should be. Don't put your name or anything. It's secret.'
'Roger.' Ralph nodded. He began ripping off sheets from the legal pad and sending them skidding around the table to each juror.
'Ain't we gonna talk about it first?' Nick asked, just to stall them. He didn't know how to vote. He looked around the table for help, but his wife wasn't on the jury. His stomach burned like hell. 'Ain't we gonna discuss? Just for a little?'
Gussella shook her head firmly. 'No, we're voting first, we already agreed. Why waste more time? Maybe we'll all agree on the verdict. Here's your paper.' She reached across the table and handed him a sheet of paper. 'Vote.'
Nick took the paper obediently, and the other jurors grabbed sharpened pencils from a plastic tray on the table. Nobody skimmed the exhibits stacked in the middle of the table, tagged and labeled. Nobody gaped at the autopsy photos or puzzled over the DNA evidence. The jurors' heads were bent for only ten minutes and they handed their papers in as eagerly as kids on the last day of school. Christopher opened each sheet with care, smoothed it out on the walnut veneer table, and wrote the juror's vote on the blackboard behind him. There was complete silence as each chalk hash mark screeched on the board. It was as if Steere's fate were their own.
Christopher opened the last piece of folded-up legal paper and his face betrayed none of the happiness he felt inside. 'Another vote for innocent,' he announced, making the final hash mark. He stood away from the blackboard and read it aloud. 'It's nine to two to find Steere innocent. Only one person abstained.'
'Thank you, Jesus,' Gussella said, beaming. She had a gold filling on one of her top teeth, and it was the first time she'd smiled broadly enough to let it show. 'Carolina, here I come.'
'How do you like that?' Ralph said, grinning, and his voice sounded like he liked it just fine.
'Who abstained?' Megan asked, annoyed. All they needed was a holdout. She was losing clients as she spoke. She scanned the faces around the table. So many old people with nothing to do. That was the problem. And the race thing. It was obvious who the two votes to convict had been, Kenny and Lucky Seven.
Mrs. Wahlbaum clucked in disapproval. 'Now, Megan, we can't pick on whoever abstained. It's a secret ballot. Everybody has the right to follow his own beliefs and conscience. Even if it does keep us here longer.'
Nick Tullio looked down at his thumb, embedded between the wool pleats of his handmade pants. He didn't know what he stained, but he guessed he was the only one who wrote I DON'T KNOW YET on his yellow paper. Nick was relieved Christopher had figured out a way to have a secret ballot.
'Abstaining is against the rules,' Ralph complained. 'The judge didn't say people could abstain.'
'Rules?' Kenny jumped in. 'Ain't no rules. The man don't know, the man don't know.' His glare had gotten angrier since the votes were counted. Kenny figured he and Lucky Seven were the only two who voted guilty. Isaiah musta pussied out and wrote I DON'T KNOW YET. Kenny would have to talk to Isaiah when they were in the TV lounge tonight, alone. They had to stand together. 'The man's allowed to take time. Make up his own mind. Goddamn don't have to rush this thing.'
'That's true,' Mrs. Wahlbaum said. 'They still haven't sent in those exhibits about the fingerprints.'
'What exhibits?' Ralph said, but Christopher shook his head. He didn't remember what exhibits they were talking about and it didn't much matter. It wouldn't be long before he delivered on his tacit promise to Marta. Christopher's chest swelled with satisfaction. And hope.
5
By four o'clock a foot of snow had accumulated on the sidewalks of Philadelphia and the brand-new law offices of Rosato & Associates were empty. The secretaries had gone home early and only two associates remained, waiting for the jury to come back in
'We blew it,' said one of the young lawyers, Mary DiNunzio. She slumped over the conference table and buried her face in a hard pillow of correspondence. Her navy blue suit was wrinkled, her dirty-blond hair was genuinely dirty, and her compact body was worn to the bone. 'We blew it and there's no going back. There's nothing we can do about it.'
'The trial? No way. We won, easy.' Judy Carrier was spinning in the swivel chair on the other side of the conference table. A native Californian, Judy was tall and strong, with a face shaped like a dinner plate and features that registered more honest than plain. A wedge of light hair flipped up like a paper parasol as she spun in her chair. 'I bet they come back before dinner tomorrow, assuming the court doesn't close because of the snow.'
'No. I mean our life, we blew our life. We had it made at Stalling and Webb, but no. We wanted to be on our own. Now we work for a psychopathic bitch. In an avalanche.' Mary closed her eyes, dry with fatigue. She could feel her contacts fusing to her corneas. Tonight they'd peel off like Band-Aids.
'Hey, we gave it a try,' Judy said, going round and round in her chair. The walls of the conference room were eggshell white and the room smelled like latex paint. The front wall was entirely of glass and faced the hallway. A sculling print by Thomas Eakins hung on the far wall and three more in the series leaned against the wall, yet to be mounted. The Rosato offices were unfinished, but Judy didn't mind. She liked working for a new law firm. It felt like a fresh start. 'Nothing wrong with trying, Mare.'
'I'm not blaming you,' Mary said, though Judy knew that already. They'd been through fire together and not everything needed saying.
Judy's chair slowed to a stop facing the large window dotted with snowflakes. 'Look at that!' she exclaimed, bounding to the window. The downtown office buildings, The Gallery, and the United States Courthouse looked like they'd been dumped with confectioner's sugar. 'Isn't it beautiful?'
Mary blinked sleepily on the correspondence pillow. 'They say it'll go to four feet. What a mess.'
'It's so white!'
'Last year I couldn't get out of my house. They didn't plow the side streets.'
'The flakes are so big. They look like Wheaties!'
'They'll close the courthouse and the jury will never come back. The trial will never end and I'll kill myself. They won't find my body for days and the ground will be too cold to bury me.'
