On Wednesday, 2nd November, at three thirty in the afternoon, the Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Dr David Alain Marquette with four counts of first-degree murder. The thirteen men and eight women who comprised the jury had deliberated a little under twenty minutes. Although the concurrence of only twelve was needed to indict, Martin Yars reported to Rickthat he had it on good authority the vote was unanimous. By law, the substance of Grand Jury deliberations – including the actual vote – was supposed to be kept secret.
Marquette’s arraignment was the following morning at nine before Judge Farley and the courthouse was definitely jumping. On three, Judge Flowers was trying a thirteen-year-old aspiring serial killer for slitting the throat of his best buddy in their middle-school bathroom. On five, Judge Macias was sentencing a nineteen-year-old to life in prison for the shotgun murder of a drug dealer and his hard-nosed mother. At eleven o’clockin 6–10, Judge Houchens would be hearing a motion to suppress the statements of a father accused of molesting his five-year-old twin daughters and giving them gonorrhea while on a church camping trip. Arson in 2–6 before Judge Johnson. Home invasion in 2–10, cocaine trafficking, 5–7. Picka courtroom – any courtroom – and you’d be sure to be horrified. But as Julia hurried across the street, dodging raindrops and puddles the size of small lakes along the way, she knew it was State vs. Marquette that was drawing the crowd. There was a pile-up of local news trucks in front of the courthouse, their monstrous satellite antennas towering forty, fifty feet into the downpour.
It was funny, she thought, as she ran past them in her now-ruined new suede heels, you never knew what would make a headline. Like a sleeper-of-the-year at the box office, or a best-selling novel from an unknown writer, you just could never predict what would strike the public’s nerve and what wouldn’t. Some cases made a lot of noise in the beginning, but faded to barely a mention in the local section as the case made its way through the process and interest inexplicably petered out. Others never hit the paper at all. The aberrant exceptions – the Lyle and Erik Menendezes, Scott Petersons, O. J. Simpsons, Michael Jacksons, Bill Bantlings – those were the defendants who grasped and held the ultra-elusive national attention. Those were the big-name cases that made and ruined careers and fixated an entire country of workaholics in front of their TVs in the middle of busy afternoons just to watch a verdict be delivered.
Fortunately, that kind of intense media scrutiny wasn’t the case here. At least, not yet. But while David Marquette might not be making the headline desk over at Good Morning America or CNN, there was no denying he’d attracted and kept the fickle attention of the local desensitized press here in Miami. And that was intimidating enough for Julia. She spotted the jumble of cameras and the familiar faces she usually watched report the eleven o’clocknews as soon as she stepped off the escalator, all gathered in front of the grand mahogany doors of 4–10. Corrections had set up shop with another search table, metal detector and an extra set of plastic stanchions. A decent crowd of curious onlookers lingered to watch what was not going on, thickening the already-congested morning hallway.
She took a deep breath as butterflies began to flutter furiously about in the pit of her stomach. She’d never been a newsmonger, or had a lifelong desire to ‘be on TV’, but seeing the cameras and knowing that they were here on her case made her more than just a little anxious. It was a few minutes to nine, and Rickwas either inside already, or, as was more likely the case, still across the street sipping coffee in his office and flipping through the paper. He hated sitting around any courtroom waiting for court to start, so Julia knew she was probably the first to be making an appearance for Team State. She worried about doing or saying the wrong thing in front of all the cameras and familiar-faced reporters who were sure to ask for her thoughts and comments.
She needn’t have worried. She walked right past everyone and into the courtroom without anybody even asking her for the time of day. Inside, a jabbering, excited crowd of correction officers, attorneys, cops, defendants and witnesses filled the courtroom. Most were there for cases other than State vs. Marquette, but Julia suspected the tripod-mounted cameras in both corners of the room had definitely added to both the crowd and the excitement. Farley had no problem with the limelight and being in it every night on the evening news. In fact, he was probably backstage right now, chomping at the bit to come out and ruin someone’s day in front of a TV audience.
She looked over at the jury box as she made her way up the aisle and into the gallery, but the in-custody defendants had not yet been brought over and the box was empty. She settled into a seat against the wall on the State’s side. Karyn was chatting with an ECU prosecutor by the podium, and Julia flashed her a smile, but all she got backwas a cool, indifferent nod. It was hard not to take it personally; things had definitely been strained between them since the First Appearance. Thankfully, the strange, potentially contagious aloofness that Rickhad warned her to watch out for had not spread to anyone else in the office yet. Of course, it was only the arraignment, and her involvement on the case certainly hadn’t been announced to the world.
She glanced over at the still-empty jury box. Although she’d seen his face in photos and on the First Appearance tape, in just a few moments she would finally get to see Dr David Marquette in person. She’d never been as curious, as excited, as angry, or as scared to meet one of her defendants before. A million strange emotions charged the adrenaline that pulsed through her veins.
Julia had seen killers before – chained and shackled and only steps away in a jury box or behind a defense table. In Miami courtrooms, they were not that uncommon a sight. But even though she’d met more than her fair share of bad people on this earth, she still needed to lookwhenever a murderer was brought into the room or stepped up to the podium as the prosecutor called out priors. Look and see the person who’d taken someone else’s lifeblood with the pull of a trigger or the quickjab of a knife. Look and see if there was anyone there, if there was anything left that was human in his eyes. She always expected those defendants – the murderers – to lookremarkably different somehow, to sound different, to bear a sign or a disfiguring stain or a mark– something, anything that one could immediately recognize as that of a killer. Of one who was capable of committing murder. But more often than not, it was frightening how completely normal a killer could look …
Outside in the hallway, the press must’ve pounced on prey. Everyone turned to lookas the doors swung open and Dr Alain Marquette and his wife both hurried in, closely tailed by Mel Levenson and Stan Grossbach. Insistent reporters, held back at the door by Corrections, continued to shout out questions that were not being answered. Dr Marquette kept his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders as he ushered her to the front row of seats. But even with her head hung low, it was hard to hide the yellowing bruises under her puffy, red-rimmed eyes and the white bandage across her nose – long-lasting souvenirs, presumably, from her fall outside Ryder. Julia watched them for a long moment. Nina Marquette was a large, statuesque woman, elegantly styled, with strong features and squared shoulders. Julia suspected she dominated a room on most occasions. But not today. Today she looked frightened and overwhelmed, small for her size. She looked like a woman who had been crying for days, maybe even weeks, on end.
How did it feel to be the parents of a killer? How did it feel to have created a human being so reviled, so loathed – a person who would grow up to murder his own children in cold blood? She wondered if the Marquettes felt any sense of responsibility for the sins of their son. Were there warning signs that they chose to ignore over the years? Was there anything that they could have done that might have made a difference? She supposed it must be doubly hard for them – they’d violently lost their daughter-in-law and grandchildren. They had them to mourn, too, although she knew that friends and family closest to Jennifer had discouraged their presence at the funerals. Now they stood to lose their son – not to a prison cell where they could maybe visit once a week, but to a needle that would stop his heart and kill him, too. And they would not be allowed to mourn him when he passed, either. They were just supposed to watch quietly with the rest of the witnesses when the warden pulled the blackcurtain back and the crowd outside the prison gates began to cheer.
The door to the jury room suddenly opened, pulling her out of her troubling thoughts. A human chain of defendants shuffled into the courtroom, chains rattling and mouths running as Corrections barked instructions. Fresh from the farm across the street, most looked mean and tough and larger than life somehow – no matter the physical stature – with their tattoos and piercings and gangsta attitudes. All except one. Towing the back of the line, and separated from the others by a few chain lengths, was a slight man in physical comparison, wearing a red jumpsuit, looking down, his face hidden from view. An electric murmur ran through the spectators as they asked each other, ‘Is that him? Is that the doctor?’
Without any warning, the door to the judge’s hall opened and Jefferson, the bailiff, stepped out. Before he could even open his mouth, the courtroom rose to its feet as a sour-faced Judge Farley rushed from behind him to the bench.
‘All rise! No beepers, no cellphones! No children, no talking! Court is now in session,’ Jefferson hesitantly shouted. ‘The Honorable Judge Leonard Farley presiding. Be seated and be quiet!’ Jefferson was relatively new to his job. He looked back at the judge for a nod of approval, but Farley was giving out none of that today.
The courtroom quickly settled into quiet as the judge stirred his coffee and surveyed his kingdom, seemingly oblivious to the cameras and the crowd presence. Even the defendants in the box shut up, as the judge’s reputation for not taking shit stretched across the street and upstate, as well. Julia saw John Latarrino and Steve Brill slip in the back of the courtroom and move to a spot up against the wall, next to Dayanara, who’d popped in for support and to get a lookat ‘the sonofabitch’ herself. Lat smiled and gave a short wave. She smiled back. Allies, finally.
‘Alright,’ Farley began after a moment, studying the long line of attorneys that already snaked behind the podiums. ‘It looks like we’ve got a full house today. Let’s get this party started. Who’s first, Ivonne?’