FiFty Fifty

Chapter Twenty Nine

NINE
KATE
Kate made a note on her yellow legal pad in blue ink.
Dreyer is a shock jock. He'll use the violence in this crime to his advantage. He's playing on the jury's emotions. Use it.
She got to her feet and watched Judge Stone introduce her to the jury as counsel for Alexandra Avellino. The speech she had rehearsed had to go out the window. She'd cut it down while listening to Dreyer – there were other plays to be made, and she wanted to turn the tables on the prosecution.
Kate moved out from behind the desk, and walked in silence to the well of the court. This was the center of the courtroom. The equivalent of the pitcher's mound at Yankee Stadium. She laced her fingers together and let her arms fall. She faced the jury. And waited.
Then she turned to the judge and said, 'Your Honor, respectfully, I think the jury have seen enough of that image for now.'
Stone flicked his index finger to Dreyer, and one of his assistant prosecutors killed the projector, returning the screen to a blank canvas. The relief on some of the jurors' faces was welcome. Kate wanted to get up into position to address the jury quickly, and make sure it was her who gave them that relief from the nightmare on screen.
Dreyer wanted that image burned into each juror's retina, but he'd left it up there too long and Kate had swung it to her advantage. That was her play. Take everything Dreyer threw at her and either bat it out of the park or hit it straight at Eddie's client.
'Members of the jury, my name is Kate Brooks. I have the honor of representing Alexandra Avellino.'
Kate paused, and looked at Alexandra. The image had reduced her client to tears. Alexandra sat with her head up and tears lining her face. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. Kate said nothing for a time. She wanted the jury to see her client's grief. Drink it in, just as much as they had bathed in the prosecution's hellish photograph.
'You will hear a lot of evidence in this case which is circumstantial. My client was at home when her father was murdered. She called the police in a panic when she discovered the body, and hid in the bathroom fearful that her sister
 
would kill her too. All of these circumstances I don't have to prove. They're in black and white in the 911 phone call she made to the police. Before she made the call, she tried to save her father, having discovered him bloodied and torn apart, lying on his bed. Alexandra is not evil. She is a victim here.'
She paused, looked around the jury and saw some of them nodding. This was going better than she had expected. She had to finish it now, get out on a high.
'Alexandra has had an upbringing stained by the loss of loved ones. Losing her mother, and then her stepmother in tragic circumstances. Now that her father is gone, my client believes she no longer has family left. Her sister is no longer family. Her sister took everything from Alexandra. There is one killer in this room, ladies and gentlemen. And it's the person with a history of complex psychiatric conditions, with a documented history of using knives, of self-harm, of addiction and criminality. The killer is on trial. The killer is Sofia Avellino, and you have a duty to my client as a victim to acquit her, and send her sister somewhere she can never harm anyone else again.'
Kate paused again, and noted the smiles and the nods and the attention the jury had given her. It was all about rapport, and she was off to a great start.
She glanced at Bloch and saw her friend sitting with bold admiration on her face. Kate made her way back to her seat.
Bloch leaned over and said, 'You're amazing.'
Alexandra whispered, 'Thank you,' and gave Kate a tearful hug.
The jury watched every moment, and then turned toward Sofia, and Eddie
Flynn, with something like contempt in their eyes.