The Runaway Jury Read Online Free Page B

large wooden doors leading to the courtroom. One small group was clustered in a corner, and was comprised of young men in dark suits, all of whom looked remarkably similar. They were well groomed, with oily short hair, and most either wore horn-rimmed glasses or had suspenders showing from under their tailored jackets. They were Wall Street financial analysts, specialists in tobacco stocks, sent South to follow the early developments of
Wood v
.
Pynex
.
    Another group, larger and growing by the minute, hung loosely together in the center of the atrium. Each member awkwardly held a piece of paper, a jury summons. Few knew one another, but the paperslabeled them and conversation came easy. A nervous chatter rose quietly outside the courtroom. The dark suits from the first group became still and watched the potential jurors.
    The third group wore frowns and uniforms and guarded the doors. No fewer than seven deputies were assigned to keep things secure on opening day. Two fiddled with the metal detector in front of the door. Two more busied themselves with paperwork behind a makeshift desk. They were expecting a full house. The other three sipped coffee from paper cups and watched the crowd grow.
    The guards opened the courtroom doors at exactly eight-thirty, checked the summons of each juror, admitted them one by one through the metal detector, and told the rest of the spectators they would have to wait awhile. Same for the analysts and same for the reporters.
    With a neat ring of folding chairs in the aisles around the padded benches, the courtroom could seat about three hundred people. Beyond the bar, another thirty or so would soon crowd around the counsel tables. The Circuit Clerk, popularly elected by the people, checked each summons, smiled, and even hugged a few of the jurors she knew, and in a much experienced way herded them into the pews. Her name was Gloria Lane, Circuit Clerk for Harrison County for the past eleven years. She wouldn’t dare miss this opportunity to point and direct, to put faces with names, to shake hands, to politic, to enjoy a brief moment in the spotlight of her most notorious trial yet. She was assisted by three younger women from her office, and by nine the jurors were all properly seated by number and were busy filling out another round of questionnaires.
    Only two were missing. Ernest Duly was rumored to have moved to Florida, where he supposedly died, and there was not a clue to the whereabouts of Mrs. Telia Gail Ridehouser, who registered to vote in 1959 but hadn’t visited the polls since Carter beat Ford. Gloria Lane declared the two to be nonexistent. To her left, rows one through twelve held 144 prospective jurors, and to her right, rows thirteen through sixteen held the remaining 50. Gloria consulted with an armed deputy, and pursuant to Judge Harkin’s written edict, forty spectators were admitted and seated in the rear of the courtroom.
    The questionnaires were finished quickly, gathered by the assistant clerks, and by ten the first of many lawyers began easing into the courtroom. They came not through the front door, but from somewhere in the back, behind the bench, where two doors led to a maze of small rooms and offices. Without exception they wore dark suits and intelligent frowns, and they all attempted the impossible feat of gawking at the jurors while trying to appear uninterested. Each tried vainly to seem preoccupied with weightier matters as files were examined and whispered conferences took place. They trickled in and took their places around the tables. To the right was the plaintiff’s table. The defense was next to it. Chairs were packed tightly into every possible inch between the tables and the wooden rail which separated them from the spectators.
    Row number seventeen was empty, again Harkin’s orders, and in eighteen the boys from Wall Street sat stiffly and studied the backs of the jurors. Behind them were some reporters, then a row of local lawyers and other