CHAPTER ONE
The mid-July heat in Courtroom Three was stifling. Spectators packed into the gallery had removed their jackets and loosened their collars, shirts and blouses sheer with sweat. Makeshift paper fans, folded from crime-prevention handout flyers, fluttered throughout the room. The AC in this wing of the Balboa County Courthouse was out. And because the criminal justice institutions of Neptune, California, thought Eli “Weevil” Navarro’s conviction was a foregone conclusion, they hadn’t seen fit to move the proceedings to a cooler part of the building. It figured to be a quick day’s work proving that an inked-up ése with a rap sheet dating back to grade school had returned to his old ways.
Generally a safe call around here, thought Veronica Mars, sitting near the back of the courtroom next to her father. Neptune’s finest seldom collar anyone who can afford a long trial. If you’re poor or nonwhite, our wheels of justice run fast, but not necessarily true.
She opened the collar of her shirt and gave it a few quick tugs, trying to accomplish what the dead AC couldn’t. But say this for us: When we railroad ’em, we do it in classic Hollywood style. Sweltering courtroom…fluttering paper fans…court reporter blotting her cleavage. All we lack are the bailiffs in Colonel Sanders suits and the gallery full of saturnine black folks in overalls.
“In the past week, you’ve heard the evidence against my client fall apart piece by piece.” Cliff McCormack stood in front of the courtroom, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. He was fiftyish, six-three, and angular, dressed in a gray suit and a Jungle Jewels green tie that was one part razzle-dazzle and two parts JC Penney clearance rack. His voice was deep and whiskey-dry as he addressed the jury.
“The so-called witness who claimed to have sold the gun to Mr. Navarro rescinded his statement in the weeks after the incident. The recording of the roadside-assistance call Celeste Kane made to the Beacon Corporation just before the incident also contradicts much of her story—including her claim that Mr. Navarro threatened her verbally.”
Is it me or did someone put extra sambal in Cliff McCormack’s pad thai? The old warhorse is bringing it hard for Weevil. Veronica had known the public defender for most of her life; he and her father were old friends. He had a sardonic, often self-deprecating manner—he referred to himself as the Kmart of the legal system—but Veronica knew better. Cliff worked hard to try to get his clients a fair shake. It was quixotic work in a town like Neptune, with justice for sale to the highest bidder, but he was one of the good guys. “The prosecution has gone out of its way to paint a picture of a hardened criminal returning to his old ways. But what are we to make of the five years between his last conviction and the events that took place the night of January twenty-fifth? Five years in which Eli Navarro has proven himself a responsible and law-abiding citizen, time and time again. You’ve heard from dozens of character witnesses—friends, coworkers, clergy—who say my client is a hard worker, a loving father and husband—in all respects a model of reform.”
Hmm…laying it on a bit thick there, Cliffy, Veronica thought. Sure, until six, seven months ago, Weevil Navarro had seemed like a changed man—a far cry, at least, from the high school crime kingpin Veronica had known a decade earlier. Back then, Weevil was the alpha head cracker of the local bike gang. His photo was a staple in BUST*ed!, the local police mug shot tabloid. But when she’d seen him at their high school reunion less than a year earlier, it seemed he’d finally settled down. He was happily married, a doting father, a small business owner.
That had all changed when he’d tried to help Celeste Kane after her car had broken down in one of the more “colorful” parts of town. Weevil had woken up in the hospital with a hole in his shoulder and a stack of criminal charges on his head, including attempted theft, attempted assault, and brandishing a deadly weapon. Celeste claimed he’d threatened her. According to the cops, he’d been clutching a stolen Glock in his hand when they’d arrived on the scene. According to Weevil, he hadn’t touched a gun in years.
Since then, his once-successful auto repair shop had folded. None of Neptune’s wealthy wanted their Bentleys and McLarens being cased by a guy who’d allegedly pulled a gun on one of their own. He’d been putting in a few hours at his uncle’s body shop, but he was barely scraping by. Small wonder, then, that he’d backslid into some of his old habits with his old crew of biker reprobates. Weevil took care not to tell her more than he thought she, a detective and the daughter of a former sheriff, needed to know. But his newfound discretion made it, if anything, even clearer that he was extralegally supplementing his income.
“In the end,” Cliff said, “the prosecution’s case is a house of cards, collapsing from the weight of unanswered questions and flatly bizarre assumptions. Remember, the alleged attack took place just sixteen minutes after he’d taken his babysitter home.” He paused to let this fact sink in.
From her seat, all Veronica could see of Weevil was the back of his head. It was close-shaven, shiny with sweat. The fading Gothic letters of a tattoo were just visible, creeping up his neck right above his collar. Behind him, Navarro siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles crowded into the gallery, tense and silent. She recognized Chardo, the cousin who’d once let Weevil take the rap for his own credit card fraud. Apparently that was water under the bridge now.
A few chairs down from Chardo, Weevil’s wife, Jade, sat with her shoulders rigid, her gaze fixed on the jury box. The pretty, doe-eyed woman looked more haggard every time Veronica saw her—dark semicircles under her eyes, collarbone showing through her top with alarming sharpness. Between the garage’s closure, the medical bills, the criminal charges, and Weevil getting back with his boon companions in the PCH gang, Jade was under a lot of falling dominoes. And now the last one was teetering and ready to fall one way or the other.
“According to Ms. Ortiz, Mr. Navarro was sober, lucid, and cheerful when he dropped her off. So are we supposed to believe he spent the evening of his ten-year high school reunion scheming to slip in a quick assault and robbery before picking up diapers and going home to his wife and child? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would a successful small businessman with a family to support risk everything to carjack one of Neptune’s best-known citizens? Why would a man who has worked tirelessly to escape a life of crime and poverty just wake up one day and decide to throw it all away?”
Cliff was, indisputably, killing it. Yet Veronica knew these weren’t the questions he really wanted to ask. While preparing Weevil’s defense he’d had Keith look into the accusations of planted evidence against the Sheriff’s Department that had popped up in the past few years. Keith had found dozens of people who claimed to be victims. They were all predictably easy targets—the poor with priors, most of whom pleaded out in order not to suffer long trials and trumped-up charges. They’d planned to use the claims of falsified evidence to show a pattern of corruption and help clear Weevil’s name, but all that testimony had been thrown out before the trial. Judge Oglesbee had deemed it “irrelevant.”
Veronica had seen Cliff take some hard knocks over the years, but that one was egregiously painful. Cliff paced a few steps away from the jury, then turned again to face them. One of Veronica’s law professors at Columbia used to swear he could call any verdict based solely on the jurors’ expressions during closing arguments. Based on the twelve blank faces she could make out in the jury box, she had to conclude respectfully, Professor, that that was a steaming load.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you deliberate, we ask you to consider: Has the prosecution answered any of these questions? Have they accounted for the holes in the evidence, the flaws in the timeline, the lack of credible motivation? If they haven’t, Eli Navarro should go free. Thank you very much.”
Murmurs rolled through the courtroom. The judge pounded his gavel in two brisk strokes.
“We’ll now adjourn for deliberations. Bailiff, please show the jury to the chamber.”
Veronica and Keith exchanged glances. All around them, chairs scraped the ground, people clambered to their feet.
All they could do now was wait.