“YOUR Honor, may I approach the bench?” said Mona.
The judge gave her an irate look as if to say, If you must.
Mona walked over to him. Morrison Scott ambled behind.
“Your Honor, out of professional courtesy, I did not object to Mr. Scott’s opening statement. However, I feel obliged to go on the record to say that it was all argument, not statement, and therefore entirely inappropriate. The ‘feng shui of courtrooms?’ I mean, come on.”
“Your Honor, I respectfully disagree,” said Scott. “I was being persuasive, not argumentative.”
“Oh, please,” said Mona. “None of what he said was founded on evidence. He went directly after my case. He was extremely loose with the facts, and that’s putting it nicely. It was blatant argument.” Mona was speaking quickly, furious. Scott smiled a large, slow smile that only infuriated her more. He turned to Judge Ross.
“Your Honor, I believe I mentioned in my opening statement that I have discerned among young people today a disconcerting tendency to try to win arguments with sound and fury rather than with reason—”
Mona wasn’t going to put up with any more of this crap. “Your Honor, the court should immediately declare a mistrial and—”
“Hold on, Ms. Jimenez,” said Ross.
“Your Honor, this is a gross—”
“Goddamn it, one more word from you and I will hold you in contempt. Do you understand? Now listen to me: I think you’re confused about who’s in charge of this trial.”
Mona had been a summa cum laude student. She had either topped or come near the top of her year at junior high school, high school, college, and law school. She was educated. She got Scott’s sound and fury reference. She had, more than once, told men who had condescended to her that she did not get confused. But standing there in front of the bench in Paradise courthouse, Mona actually did feel confused. Her own opening statement had been textbook; it had been entirely founded on fact, brief, and to the point. She had given the jury a preview of the evidence they were going to see. For Mona, a good opening statement was like the jacket blurb on a novel; it provided the jury a succinct feel for the story they’re going to hear, without spoiling it. Hers had been the kind of opening that was held up as a benchmark in law schools. Morrison Scott, on the other hand, had inveigled the members of the jury not with facts but with imputations and inferences. He had meandered. Any other judge would have called Scott out on it, but there had been not a peep from Ross. The judge’s bias was so obvious, it sent questions tumbling through Mona’s mind. Was Judge Ross not aware of how obvious his bias was? Was he aware, but simply didn’t care? It was clear to her that Ross was not even going to pretend. She had naïvely convinced herself that, given how much media attention the case had attracted, Ross would’ve thrown a blanket over his despotic disposition and feigned impartiality for the press gallery at least. But no. If anything, he had doubled down. He was proudly partisan.
He was also visibly angry. He swiveled in his chair, and Mona could see the skin around the diamond-shaped birthmark on his neck flushing red. His wasn’t a generalized hatred, either. It wasn’t intransitive. It had an object.
Her.
That was the part that confused her the most. Judge Ross, she sensed beyond any doubt, hated her personally, and she had no idea why. He hated her. She could feel it in her gut, his hatred, the inevitability of it, the way the bell in a church tower knows, once it’s been swung, that it can’t avoid the clapper. There’s an impact, and then an echo, to feeling hated. She’d felt it first in high school, with a boy whose feelings she hadn’t reciprocated. She’d felt it many times since. Always from men.
Mona collected her thoughts, focused on what the judge was saying. “Ms. Jimenez, you are overruled. I am more than satisfied with Mr. Scott’s opening statement. Now you listen to me, and you listen carefully. You are in my court, Ms. Jimenez, and you will follow my rules. I will not have you calling sidebar conferences every time you have some trivial grievance. In fact, I don’t want to see you up here at my bench again. You hear me? Now get back down there and do your goddamned job.”
His lip quivered as he spoke. Even Morrison Scott seemed taken aback by the violence of Ross’s words.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Mona.
The court started hearing witnesses after lunch. Mona’s first witness was Jared Davies—the younger of the two prison guards who had found Carmen, and by her reckoning the weak link. The guards had done nothing right when they had found Carmen. Nothing that might’ve saved her life. Mona wanted that fact to resonate with the jury. Still, she knew she’d have to find the right balance between aggressive and sympathetic; Jared had been born and raised in Paradise, and he probably knew some of the people in the jury. She knew they wouldn’t take kindly to one of their own getting thrown under the bus. Especially if they thought of her as some kind of urban radical.
She began by getting Jared to walk the jury through events the day Carmen had died.
“You started your shift on the twenty-second of April at four in the afternoon. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And it was a fourteen-hour shift?”
“Yes.”
“Do you normally do the night shift?”
“It’s a rotation. Sometimes we do nights, sometimes days.”
“Thank you, sir. But according to your deposition, you actually requested to be rostered with your uncle, Jim Davies, on the night of April 22. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you and your uncle request to work that night?”
“You work nights, you get night-shift pay. I needed the extra money.”
“Prior to the night of April 22, had you ever requested to be rostered on with your uncle?”
“No.”
“And have you ever since?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“Objection! Asked and answered, Your Honor.”
“Objection sustained.”
“Mr. Davies, why did you request to be rostered with your uncle that night?”
Jared Davies looked uncomfortable. “Jim’s a good talker. Fourteen hours is a long time. It’s good to have someone to converse with.”
“Mr. Davies, was there any matter in particular that you wished to discuss with your uncle on the evening of April 22?”
“Objection! Irrelevant.”
“Sustained.”
“Do you see much of your uncle outside of work, Mr. Davies?”
Scott leaped up with surprising speed for a man of his girth. “Objection! Your Honor, this question is immaterial to the matter under consideration here.”
“Objection sustained. Cut to the chase, Ms. Jimenez.”
Mona turned back to Jared. She glanced at the jury. She was pleased to see a few puzzled faces. Even if they did know the Davies family, she had planted a seed of an idea. She shifted tack.
“Mr. Davies, is it true that your position as prison guard at Paradise Detention Center is your first job?”
“Objection. Inflammatory and irrelevant.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Davies, you stated in your deposition that prior to beginning at Paradise Detention Center, you were looking for work. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“You stated that you applied for the job after your uncle informed you that the BSCA was recruiting. Is that correct?”
“Yes. Uncle Jim told me.”
“You said in your deposition that you underwent training for your job. You said that your training did not include any first-aid training. Is that correct?”
“Yes. No.”
“Mr. Davies?”
“I mean, we were told in a medical-type situation to call the infirmary. They said we had to wait for the nurse or doctor to come.”
“So you were not trained in any first-response actions?”
“No.”
“You weren’t told to check if the person was breathing?”
“No. They told us not to touch the prisoners.”
“Even in a medical emergency?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Mr. Davies. Mr. Davies, you said that on the evening of April 22, you and your uncle began by doing a head count. Is that right?”
“Yes. We do five head counts a day.”
“And this was the fourth one for that day, April 22, is that right?”
“It was the first one we did, but yes, it was the fourth count of the day. The inmates were coming in from the yard for dinner.”
“And when you did the head count, you found you were one short?”
“Yes.”
“And that was when you went out into the yard?”
“Yes.”
“And you saw Ms. Vega lying on this bench?”
“Yes.”
Mona put up a plan of the yard on the projector. The bench in question had a circle around it. It was the farthest away from the doors that led into the canteen.
“Was the bench visible from the doors to the canteen where you did the head count?”
“No. On account of the tent in the yard.”
“You mean the tent that was erected to accommodate the extra migrants? That tent blocked your view of the bench where Ms. Vega was?”
“Yes.”
“So you had to walk around the tent?”
“Yes.”
“You stated in your deposition that you believed she might be sleeping. Is that right?”
“Yes. Sometimes they sleep out there. They don’t sleep so well in the cells, sometimes.”
“I’m sure. What happened next, Mr. Davies?”
“We went over to the inmate. Jim spoke to her.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Get up.’”
“Did Ms. Vega respond?”
“No. Then we noticed that she didn’t look right.”
“In your deposition, you said her head looked like it was twisted too far. Like it would not be comfortable to lie like that. Do you still remember it that way?”
“Objection!” said Scott. “Leading the witness.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Davies, at what point did you realize that Ms. Vega was unconscious?”
“When she didn’t respond to Jim.”
“Mr. Davies, did either you or your uncle check whether Carmen needed help?”
“Objection! Inflammatory.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Davies, do you know what you’re supposed to do if someone has been bitten by a snake?”
He scratched his head. “Suck out the venom and spit it out?”
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
After Mona sat down, Scott stood. If he’d been wearing suspenders, he would’ve hooked his thumbs under them.
“Mr. Davies, your family’s been in Paradise a long time, hasn’t it? Your great-grandpa came out before the Second World War?”
“That’s right.”
“How would you describe the atmosphere in Paradise before the detention center opened?”
Mona got up and stamped a crutch on the floor. “Objection! Your Honor, this is opinion, not evidence.”
“Overruled. Sit down.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Scott with a look of forbearance. “Mr. Davies?”
“Well, we were all pretty worried, on account of the water drying up.”
“And you yourself, you were considering leaving town, is that correct?”
“I heard they needed people in the orchards outside Bakersfield.”
“Even though your family’s been here for almost a hundred years, you felt obliged to leave?”
“When there’s no water, there’s no work. At least, it used to be that way.”
“Mr. Davies, when the Border Security Corporation of America announced it was opening a 500-bed detention center that would employ fifty people, how would you characterize the reaction of people in Paradise?”
“Relief.”
“Would it be fair to characterize it as a lifeline, Mr. Davies?”
Mona hauled herself up on her crutches. “Objection. Leading the witness.”
“Overruled.”
“A lifeline is a good way of telling it,” said Jared Davies.
“Thank you, Mr. Davies. Now Mr. Davies, I want to bring your attention to your work at Paradise Detention Center.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Davies, apart from the defense, I believe you are the only person in this courtroom who knew the deceased. I think I’m right in saying that. Do you recognize her in this photo?”
On the projector, Scott put up the photo that Mona had showed during her opening statement, the one that Maria Elena had given her.
What’s he doing? thought Mona.
“Sure, I recognize her, but that’s an old photo. She didn’t look like that by the time I knew her.”
“How does she look to you in this photo, Mr. Davies?”
“Innocent.”
“And when you knew her?”
“More grown-up, I guess.”
“Like this?” said Scott. He put up another photo. It was the photo from Carmen’s Facebook page—the one showing her on a beach, in a bikini, her breasts pushed out, her arm around a much-older man, a smile on her face.
“Yeah, like that,” said Jared.
Mona saw the looks of disapproval on the faces of the jurors. Especially the women.
“Objection! Your Honor, this is an outrage—”
“Overruled! Sit down, Ms. Jimenez.”
Scott carried on. “Mr. Davies, you said under oath that when you found Ms. Vega on the bench, you believed she had nodded off. You believed she was under the influence of drugs. Is that right?”
“That’s what me and Jim thought first, yes.”
“Mr. Davies, can you tell me why you thought that?”
“Well, some of the inmates take drugs.”
“Do you mean to say that they can get drugs inside the detention center?”
“That’s right.”
“Goodness. And how do they do that, Mr. Davies?”
“Well, we try to stop it, obviously. But sometimes their family members or friends visit and smuggle things in for them. And sometimes the women offer things in return for drugs.”
“What things, Mr. Davies?”
“Favors.”
“You mean, the women offer sexual favors? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I guess so, yes.”
Scott pointed at the photo of Carmen on the projector. “Mr. Davies, to your knowledge, did Ms. Vega ever do such a thing?”
“Well, not to me personally, obviously. But I heard rumors. She was pretty messed up sometimes.”
“Objection! Hearsay.”
The judge could hardly overrule her. Jared Davies had actually used the word rumors.
And yet he did. Mona couldn’t believe it.
“Overruled.”
Joaquin wrote in big letters on her yellow legal pad: WTF? What is going on?
Mona wrote, Welcome to Paradise.
Morrison Scott continued, “Messed up?”
“Acting crazy, like she had taken a bad trip. I remember one morning in the canteen, she said snakes were crawling over her in her sleep. She went crazy over it. Dropped her tray.”
“I see. And did you report this?”
“No.”
“Why not, Mr. Davies?”
“I felt bad for her, on account of the scars she had. I didn’t want her to get in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“For taking drugs. And for, you know, the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“That other thing you said. Offering favors.”
“Soliciting?”
“Soliciting. That’s it.”
Mona processed what she was witnessing. She was looking at three men annihilating the reputation of a young woman who had already been literally annihilated. The attorney asking the leading questions, the witness playing along, the judge turning a blind eye. The trinity of male privilege: the stern patriarch, the condescending uncle, the entitled young buck. The three of them trampling all over the reputation of a dead woman, with no one to defend her but Mona.
“Objection,” she said.
“Again, Ms. Jimenez? On what grounds?” said the judge.
Mona shrugged. What did it matter? He would overrule her no matter what. This trial was a farce.
“Speculation. Is the witness saying he knows Ms. Vega was soliciting? Is he saying he knows she was taking drugs?”
“He’s your witness, Counsel,” said the judge slowly. “Overruled.”