Illegal Alien

"Step two is voir dire — that’s where the lawyers get to question the prospective jurors one-on-one. Now, we can end the consulting process there, but I suggest we go all the way. Once the jury is impaneled, we should set up a shadow jury — a group of people who are as closely matched as possible demographically to our real jury. We then monitor them throughout the trial; that way we can tell which arguments are working, which ones aren’t, and how they’re leaning day by day."

"A shadow jury," repeated Frank. "What does that cost?"

"We usually pay the shadow jurors seventy dollars apiece each day — which is ten times what the real jurors are making." A pause. "Now, the most important thing is to get someone on the panel who will serve as our virtual defendant — someone who will identify strongly with the defendant, taking on the role of Hask and presenting his viewpoint during deliberations. Of course, finding someone to do that is going to be rather tricky in this case…"

The squad room was bustling with activity — a blood-splattered black man being booked at one desk; two hookers, one white, one Asian, being booked at another; and three black gang members, maybe fourteen or fifteen, waiting to be processed. Dale looked at them, and shook his head.

They looked back at him, at his three-thousand-dollar suit, at his gold cuff links and the chain for his gold pocket watch. "Oreo," said one to his homey as Dale walked by. Dale bristled, but didn’t turn around. He continued along until he came to the door he was looking for. An engraved sign on the door said "J. Perez." Taped below it were a picture of a bail of hay and a picture of an old white man holding a plush-toy Cat in the Hat. "Hay"

"Seuss" — Perez’s first name.

Oreo my ass, thought Dale. Just call me Uncle Rebus.

He knocked on the door. Perez barked out something, and Dale entered.

"Counselor," said Perez, not rising. "Haven’t seen you for a while."

"Lieutenant." The stiff, formal word carried years of history behind it.

Perez jerked a thumb in the direction of the squad room. "I didn’t think any of those lowlifes could afford you."

"My client is Hask."

Perez nodded. "So I’d heard. What’s he paying you in? Gold-pressed latinum?"

"What?"

"Nothing." Perez paused. "You missed out on being part of Simpson’s Dream Team, so now you’ve replaced the trial of the century with the trial of the Centauri." The detective chuckled at his own wit. "It’s too bad, counselor. You had a pretty good wi

’What makes you think I’m not going to win this time?"

"Are you kidding? Your buddy Mr. Spock offed one of TV’s most popular personalities. This is Simpson in reverse: a celebrity stiff and a no-name defendant."

"Hask is famous as hell."

"Hask is going to hell."

Rice sighed. "Are you even looking for other suspects?"

"Certainly. But there are not many possibilities. There were only twenty-five people, including the seven Tosoks, who had access to the USC residence that night. But of the humans, the biggest question remains motive. Who would kill Calhoun? And who would kill him in that ma

"As you doubtless know, it could be someone wanting to frame the Tosoks — to incite ill will toward them. And if that’s the case, it could be a conspiracy involving two or more people — meaning the fact that someone has someone else as an alibi isn’t worth anything."

"A conspiracy!"

"Why not? I should think you’d be glad that somebody is proposing a conspiracy outside of the LAPD."

Perez fixed Dale with a withering stare. "An eminent group of scientists hardly seems likely to frame an alien for murder."

Dale had gotten tired of waiting to be offered a seat. He took one — a metal-framed job, uncomfortably small for him; it groaned in protest under his weight. "Don’t be so sure. Academic jealousy is the greenest of all.

These gentlemen fight for ever-declining grant dollars and toil in obscurity, while some fellow from Pigeon Forge, Te

"Which is precisely what they’ve been trying to do, apparently," said Perez.

"No, counselor, we’ve got our — we’ve got our creature. It had to be a Tosok."

Dale’s turn to fix a withering stare. "I would have thought, Lieutenant Perez, that you would have felt the sting of that kind of thinking enough in your own life not to apply it here. It has to be a Tosok. It must be a Latino.

It was some black guy — and, hey, that guy over there is black, so it must be him."

"Don’t accuse me of that, counselor. Don’t you dare accuse me of that."

"Why not? ‘It has to be a Tosok.’ There are seven Tosoks on Earth. And unless you can prove that it’s Hask in particular — Hask, and nobody else — my client is going to walk."

"Well, of course it’s Hask."

"You can’t prove that."

Perez smiled. "Just watch me."

*12*

Frank and Dale were meeting over breakfast in the restaurant at the University Hilton Hotel, just on the other side of Figueroa Street from the main USC campus. Frank was eating shredded wheat with skim milk, a half grapefruit, and black coffee. Dale was eating bacon, two fried eggs, and what seemed to be half a loaf’s worth of toast with orange marmalade, all washed down with a pot of coffee with cream and sugar.

"Everybody on the planet is clamoring to interview your client," said Frank.

Dale nodded, and gulped more coffee. "I know."

"Do we let them?"

Dale stopped eating long enough to consider this. "I’m not sure. We don’t care one whit about the public as a whole. The only people we’re interested in are the twelve who will end up on the jury. The question is, do we do better if the potential jurors know Hask or not? We’re probably not going to put Hask on the stand, after all, and—"

"We’re not?"

"Frank, you never put your defendant on the stand, unless you can’t avoid it. So, yes, an interview could be our one chance to let the people who might end up on the jury get to know and like Hask. On the other hand, this is a bizarre crime, and if they decide he’s just some weird alien, they may figure he probably did it."

"So, what do we do?"

Dale wiped his face with the napkin and signaled for the waitress to Dring more coffee. "Let him do one interview — one of the biggies. Barbara Walters, maybe. Or Diane Sawyer. Somebody like that."

"What if it goes badly?" Frank asked. "Can you ask for a change of venue for the trial?"

"To where? The far side of the moon? There’s no getting away from the media coverage this trial is going to get."

Barbara Walters was wearing her usual solicitous frown. "My guest today is Hask," she said, "one of the seven alien visitors to Earth. Hask, how are you?"

Dale, who was seated with the alien captain, Kelkad, just outside of camera view, had asked Hask not to wear his sunglasses, even though the camera lights were bothering him. Now, though, watching him squint at Walters, he thought perhaps he’d made a mistake. "I have seen better days," said Hask. Walters nodded sympathetically. "I’m sure you have.

You’re free on two-million-dollars bail. What is your assessment of the American legal system?"

’’You have a huge number of people in jail."

Walters seemed taken aback. "Ah, yes. I guess we do."

"I am told your country has set a record. You have a greater percentage of your population in jail than any other country — even those countries that are referred to as police states."