Justice by InSilva
Disclaimer: Rusty and Danny – so not mine.
Chapter Two: Selection
Rusty looked at his reflection and sighed. He'd argued the pros and cons of disguise with Danny for most of the previous evening. Nothing too much, no prosthetics, no wigs. Something to hide behind, though. He'd silently and not-so-silently begged Danny for help deciding on the something. He hated to admit it but jury service was seriously freaking him out.
In the end, he'd dyed his hair mousy brown and found a pair of glasses with thick, black plastic frames and plain lenses. People would see the glasses. Their eyes would slide over the hair. They wouldn't see him. Danny had gone through his wardrobe and selected an anonymous suit that Rusty could not remember owning complete with plain shirt and tie. It had taken him some time to find. Rusty had pulled a face but Danny had insisted. The mirror showed him respectability, decency, propriety. Not Rusty Ryan: Robert Charles Ryan, he thought. Law-abiding, upright citizen. He grimaced. So far away from himself as he could get.
"Ready?" Danny was leaning up against the door frame, hands in his pockets, sympathy losing the battle against the amusement sparkling in his face.
You're so enjoying this.
Can you blame me?
The courthouse was not full but there was a steady stream of people moving through it. Rusty took a deep breath as he walked through the door, feeling Danny lean in slightly to his shoulder as he did so. A touch of comfort. A touch of support.
The court official looked up and smiled a practised smile of welcome.
"Robert Ryan. I've been called up for jury service."
"Of course, Mr Ryan. Here is some further information for you regarding your duties and the procedures including how you can make your claim for financial compensation. If you'd like to make your way to the jury assembly room on the second floor…"
"Thank you," Rusty said, collecting the paperwork.
"Can I help you?" she asked Danny.
"Oh, I'm just here…"
"No friends allowed in the assembly room, I'm afraid, though you can, of course, sit in on the proceedings once court begins."
Danny and Rusty exchanged glances.
"I'll hang around here then," Danny volunteered.
"Yeah."
It won't be forever.
It'll be hell.
Oh, yes. It will.
Thanks.
The assembly room contained a vending machine for confectionery and another for drinks and several people – thirty odd - at various points along the impatience/resigned-to-their-fate spectrum. Rusty headed for the corner with the machines and reached in his pocket for change. A hot chocolate in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, he sat down on a chair by the wall and studied the room. A complete mix of sex and race and age.
A couple of girls in their late teens were sitting by the window and giggling to themselves. One was a brunette with an Alice band and the other was a blonde with impossible corkscrew ringlets who immediately became Alice and Curls. They had a "best friends forever" aura which was impressive considering they had undoubtedly only met that morning. They threw covert glances in his direction and giggled some more. Rusty studied the froth on the top of his drink.
Next to the girls, sat an elderly lady sucking a sweet and engrossed in a sizeable novel. Rusty squinted at the cover which from its illustration promised breath-taking romance and, judging by the wide-eyed look on the elderly lady's face, a goodly quantity of raw sex.
A group of men were talking vociferously in Spanish with much gesturing and head-shaking. They were speaking too quickly and with too much slang for Rusty to be completely certain but he thought the subject under discussion was the state of the Lakers.
Two middle-aged men in suits were side by side, studying the financial pages of their broadsheets and tutting to themselves. It amused Rusty that they were not synchronised. It was almost like a conversation.
A pair of old-timers had set up a chessboard between them and Rusty watched as they played. They could have been anywhere or nowhere, locked into their own little world. Rusty smiled to himself. He knew that feeling.
As he finished his drink, the door opened and an official appeared with a clipboard.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," he said brightly. "If I can have…" he rattled off several names, none of which were Rusty's.
Those called stood up and left and after a while, a few came back to the pool of jurors. After a while they all came back. This was the pattern for most of the day and Rusty's name was not called once. Some of the Lakers fans were currently missing. So was one of the suits, so was one of the old-timers. Trials were happening. Juries were being formed. Just without him.
As he sat munching his way through the sandwich lunch provided, he decided it was some sort of divine intervention. Unless Danny had somehow got to the clipboard...which… He considered it a strong possibility and it remained top of his list right up until late afternoon when the clipboard appeared at the door and he heard his name being read out.
Shit.
Together with Alice and Curls, Novel Lady, The Suit and others, Rusty followed the official down the stairs and into one of the courts. They were lined up and asked to swear that they would truthfully answer all questions asked about their eligibility as jurors. And since Rusty doubted anyone was going to ask him whether or not he himself should be in the dock, he took the oath with good grace.
He was one of the twelve called into the jury box and took his seat, spying Danny sitting near the front of the court. Rusty's heart rate slowed a fraction. Danny was here. And he was right; they'd get through this together.
The judge – in his sixties and still with a good head of hair - smiled at the twelve of them in an avuncular fashion.
"I'm Judge Everton Fuller and this is my court. You've been selected as potential jurors in a criminal case, the State versus Gino Passinetti. This is a murder case and if found guilty, the defendant will face life imprisonment with recommendation for parole in twenty years. The defendant is accused of murdering a man called Marcello Tiberi."
Italian names. The hairs on the back of Rusty's neck were already standing up.
"If anyone here thinks they may have a connection to this case, they should make that clear now."
A lie or two hovered on Rusty's lips. Possibly he had gone to school with Marcello's sister or perhaps Gino's uncle had crashed his car into his a couple of months ago.
Two things stayed the words. One was the unexpected effect the oath had on him. He who could lie to everyone and anyone with one exception; he who made his living from lies; he who found his truth in the stories he inhabited; he discovered he could not be perfectly sure of delivering the lie faultlessly. Maybe it was the judge smiling down at him. Maybe it was the courtroom. Damn it, he knew there was a reason he didn't like the place.
The second thing was even more surprising: the dead eyes of the defendant sitting at the table in front of him. Rusty looked at him – really looked at him - reading him from top to toe. And then his mouth closed even more firmly and the words died away.
The opportunity to challenge the jurors came but the defence lawyer shook her head. No challenges; everyone accepted. Rusty sat back in his seat a little shocked at himself and the outcome. He looked at Danny and he could just about make out the frown of disbelief. Yes, he had some explaining to do.
For his part, Danny had spent much of the day ducking between the two courts only to find Rusty was not present. He'd got quite caught up in a breaking and entering case before reminding himself guiltily why he was there in the first place.
Like Rusty, he'd almost given up on the day and was ready to celebrate Rusty's close call when he'd sat and watched Rusty walk in. His heart had sunk when he'd heard the nature of the case and the names involved: quite possibly gang or even Mob-related. He waited for Rusty to talk himself out of jurorship. He saw the story forming on Rusty's face and the words rising to Rusty's lips and could have convinced himself he'd heard Rusty speaking the lie. When he realised the latter part had not actually happened, he sat back in his seat, amazed.
It was then that he saw the man in the front row and to the left of him, sitting behind the defendant. Late twenties possibly early thirties, brown hair down to his shoulders, dressed in the kind of suit Rusty would normally favour. He was studying the jury with intent. Intrigued, Danny changed the angle he was sat at so that he could see the man's face in profile. He was handsome in a hard kind of way. Danny watched the man's eyes move slowly over the jurors. He could read the gaze as it settled on each. Dismissed, unimportant, easily handled, no trouble…then the gaze stopped: it read 'interested'.
Danny closed his eyes and opened them again. The stare was still there. Knowing without looking, Danny looked anyway. Sure enough, the man was focused on Rusty. Danny hesitated. Maybe there was some sort of physical thing going on: Rusty could manage to inspire that without trying. Then he shook his head. Trust your instincts, he told himself, this isn't attraction, this is something else.