I've been reading through some of my old stories, and just had to update this one. Kind of smutty, but nothing that bad;-) Please let me know what you think, hope y'all like *^_^* xoxoxo
Disclaimer: I do not own Law & Order and its characters.
60 Centre Street, Jury selection, 10:20am
Mike walked towards the jury before him, looking down at the small card he was holding in his hand containing the details of a juror number five. He approached the juror in question.
"Mr Greenburg, I understand you work for a paper recycling company," Mike noted.
"Yes that's right," the juror replied. "Assistant manager."
"Do you have any children?"
"Yes. I have one daughter," he replied. The man stared down at his lap solemnly, as if collecting his thoughts. His voice lowered, harbouring slight shame. "But she's not speaking to me, or my wife."
Mike nodded with sympathy. "I see," he replied. "Would you please state why that is, or why you think that is."
Mr Greenburg glanced up at Mike, his expression pained. "She married outside her church, and my wife and myself didn't approve," he explained. "She accused us of being bigoted and selfish. But you've got to understand, my wife and I are from very traditional families. Our daughter just refuses to accept that."
Mike continued with his questioning. "Has anyone in your family ever been arrested?" He asked.
"Yes," the juror replied. "My sister was once done in for shoplifting at a convenience store in Missouri, in 1986."
Mike paused for a moment. "Thank you," he replied. "I have finished my examining you, Mr Greenburg." He turned towards the judge. "The prosecution has no problem with this juror."
Mike moved on to the next juror. "Tennille Hamlin. Now Ms Hamlin, you're an occupational therapist at an AIDS hospice, correct?"
"Yes that's right."
"How long have you been working there?"
"Just on four years," the young woman replied.
Mike was suddenly distracted by the sound of giggling, which seemed to be coming from the back row. He glanced up to see two jurors, a man and a woman appeared to shave been sharing a private joke.
"No talking!" he directed tersely. "This is a serious court procedure."
The two jurors turned towards the front, straitening their posture in response to Mike's harsh tone.
He watched the two jurors for a moment, his expression almost glaring, before glancing back down at the juror he had been questioning.
"Ms Hamlin, you're from Chicago Illinois, isn't that right?"
"That's right," she replied proudly. "Born and raised."
"New census show there to be a high level of violence and crime existing in Chicago. Have you ever experienced this yourself?"
"I witnessed a mugging once," she answered with a shrug.
"Has anyone in your family, or anybody else close to you, ever experienced certain forms of violence or crime of any kind?" he pressed.
"My Grammy had her place burgled a few years ago," the juror replied.
Mike heard more giggling, and assumed it came from the same two jurors he had corrected earlier.
He glanced up to see them struggling to contain their laughter.
He frowned in annoyance. "Care to tell the rest of the jury what you find so funny?" he enquired curtly.
"N-no, Mr Cutter," the woman replied shakily.
Mike strode towards them. "No please, I'd like to hear it," he insisted, gesturing broadly with his hands. "With the possibility of incurring further interruptions."
The man and woman exchanged apprehensive glances, before breaking down in a fit of laughter.
Mike rolled his eyes in exasperation. He turned towards the judge for backup. "Your honour, are you going to allow this."
Judge Lloyd glanced over at the two jurors in question. "Let's hear it," she ordered.
Mike turned to face the two jurors. He watched as the man scrambled to hide something behind his back, this something appearing very much like a rolled up piece of paper.
"What's that?" he demanded.
"What's what?" The man responded.
"That paper you just hid behind your back?"
"Oh that. Nothing."
"Doesn't look like nothing," Mike retaliated, infuriated by the juror's deception.
Both jurors stared down at the floor with ignominy.
Mike put his hand out in front of the man. "Show me," he angered.
Both jurors looked at each other, there expressions panicked.
"Show me," Mike pressured, agitated by the jurors' failure to cooperate.
The man slowly pulled out the rolled piece of paper from behind his back, and handed it to Mike. It was then that Mike realised that there were several pieces of paper rolled up together in a scroll.
He opened the scroll to see what was printed on the pieces of paper. It was a calendar. A 1994 calendar. His jaw dropped slightly in horrified astonishment, his eyes fixed on the risqué images before him.
He glanced back up at the two jurors, mortified. "Where did you get this?" He demanded, and there was a hint of vulnerability in the stony prosecutor's eyes.
"We found it in the jury room," the woman said.
"Can I take a look, councillor?" Judge Lloyd requested.
Mike turned around to face her, feeling his cheeks heating with embarrassment. He approached the bench silently, and handed her the scrolled calendar, staring down at the floor, only hoping she wouldn't recognise the young man in the photos.
"Here you are, your honour," he said diplomatically, upholding a neutral manner, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Judge Lloyd placed her reading glasses on her nose, and glanced down at the papers. Her lips curled up in a mischievous smile, having once set her eyes on the underdressed man in the calendar photos.
She looked up at Mike with a crooked smirk, a knowing glint in her eye, before taking another flick through the lewd calendar.
Damn, he is lookin' fine! She thought wickedly to herself.
"I, ah, can see the problem here, Mr Cutter," she said, trying to sound sympathetic.
The judge ordered a meeting with Mike and the two jurors in her chambers.
Chambers of Hon. Judge Jeanette Lloyd
Judge Lloyd leaned over her desk, listening intently to Mike's explanation.
"My girlfriend at the time was a photographer, and she was desperate for someone to pose for a calendar she had been working on," Mike began to explain. "It was for a charity she worked for. Her boss dropped the assignment on her desk last minute, she had a deadline, and as you can imagine, not many men lined up to do something for nothing in that short period of time. The charity was for sufferers of ovarian cancer, her mother died from ovarian cancer, and I could see that this particular assignment was important to her. So I offered."
"Thank you, councillor," she replied.
She turned towards the two jurors. "Mr Pattison and Ms Garcia, you're excused from jury duty," she informed them. "And I don't want to see these pictures spread across the jury ever again. You understand?" Her tone was outraged.
"Yes your honour," they both said in unison.
The judge's clerk ushered them out of the room.
Judge Lloyd glanced back up at Mike.
"Ready to continue jury selection, Mr Cutter?" She asked with a peeved sigh.
He quickly looked to the side of the room, noticing Lloyd's young clerk, Bradley, lingering by the bookcase.
Bradley shot him a flirtatious wink, before turning back towards the bookcase, replacing a statute on the shelf.
Mike looked back at her. "Ready as I'll ever be," he replied half-heartedly. He reached over Judg Lloyd's desk to retrieve the calendar. He was planning on placing it inside his briefcase when he got back to the courtroom, so that nobody else would cast their eyes over it.
Judge Lloyd snatched it off her desk before Mike could even get his hands on it.
He glanced up at her with bewilderment, disturbed by her eagerness.
"I, um, ah... I feel that it is best that I keep this," she told him. "I will ensure to keep it safe from prying eyes. You don't want any of the other jurors to see it, or the press, to see it now do you?"
"No, I suppose not." Mike replied.
"Good. I will keep it in my desk," she informed him, opening the top drawer of her desk and dropped the calendar into it, taking one last peek at the cover of the calendar, before closing the drawer. She glanced back up at Mike, the expression in his eyes slightly wayward. "With the risk of sounding highly unprofessional, I must say Mr Cutter, you've got some great things going on for you there, mhmm, you know what I'm sayin'?"
/
Mike continued to make his way down Centre Street back to the DA's Office.
He couldn't see how his day could get any worse. Two jurors and a Supreme Court judge got a flash of his utensils, and on top of that, Judge Lloyd, who was well into her sixties, as well as her male clerk, had given him the come-on.
He knew that calendar would one day come back to haunt him.
The hotdog vendor outside the courthouse had run out of ketchup, and he had to make do with just a plain hotdog, which he later accidently dropped onto the ground after being bumped from behind.
There were dark, low-level, rain clouds gathering in the sky, threatening a heavy rainfall in the next five minutes.
And he didn't even bring his umbrella.
Yeah, my day can't get any worse than this, he thought to himself glumly, glancing up at the dark clouds above. A large spit of rain landed in his eye. I stand corrected.
He picked up his pace, hoping to miss the heavy shower that was on its way.
He suddenly stopped, distracted by a poster stuck to a street pole. He approached the pole to see what the poster was. It was him. Clad in nothing but a small leather thong, covered in soap suds, with a garden hose between his legs, along with a sponge in his hand. He had a debauched smile spread across his face, as he washed down a shining, midnight-blue, BMW.
He kept walking up the street.
Another poster caught his eye. This one was wrapped around a street lamp. This time he was wrapped in towel, dripping wet with a rugged expression as he stepped out of a shower, a waft of steam gathering around him.
It was then he noticed yet another poster glued to a park bench across the street. He crossed the busy road, darting in-between stationary cars, eager to see what this poster was. The picture in question showed Mike dressed in a red speedo, devil horns and tale, and holding a pitch fork, before a backdrop of Halloween pumpkins.
He kept walking, a fourth poster having caught his eye in the distance. This one was placed behind the windscreen wiper of a red Ford parked along the street. He studied the picture closely. This one was of him dressed in nothing but a white collar and blue tie, as he held a black leather briefcase in front of his privates, with a sort of courtroom theme taking place in the background.
He thought it strange that this calendar had appeared twice in the same day, and felt that the two instances were somehow connected. He also noticed that the posters in question were duplicate enlarged copies of the original calendar.
It was then that he considered that either a friend of his was playing a cruel prank, or that somebody who was not so friendly, was out to get him.
His thoughts had been broken by the loud rumble of thunder. He grabbed the poster from behind the windscreen wiper, and stuffed it into his briefcase. He planned on undertaking a full investigation into these two accounts once he got back to the office.
He continued to make his way up the street, his pace hurried, his fear of being caught in the rain ever growing.
A/N: I'm really thankful for the feedback and reviews from the previous chapter, and that's why I've decided to continue this story.
What do you think? Feel free to comment:-D