The Jury by Steve Martini Page A

blown kidneys and liver failure, have imparted their message. The final nail was pounded into that particular coffin by the state bar that now appoints guardians to take over the practice of anybody who comes to court glassy-eyed, with an odor of alcohol on his breath.
    So I walk the straight and narrow for my own sake as well as for Sarahs. You think about things when you're a single parent.
    "So when do you think they'll put him up?" says Harry. He's talking about Epperson on the stand.
    "Not yet. It's too early."
    We know almost nothing about him, so we have some ground to make up.
    "According to the bits and pieces," says Harry, "he's the closest thing Kalista Jordan had to a friend in the lab. Stood by her during her travails with Crone, at least according to the others. And, besides the killer, he was one of the last people to see her alive."
    This gets my attention. I look at him.
    "The argument that night in the faculty dining room, Jordan and Crone," he says.
    "Did Epperson weigh in?"
    "Not exactly, though according to one version he put himself between the two of them for a moment and tried to get her to leave. One thing's for sure," says Harry.
    "He's the closest thing to a witness as to what was said."
    "And he won't talk to us?"
    Harry shakes his head. Usual criminal process does not permit us to depose him, to take a statement under penalty of perjury outside of the courtroom.
    "What do we know about him?"
    "Not a lot. He doesn't seem to cultivate people at work. Except for Jordan, that is."
    "Was that platonic?" I ask him.
    Harry gives me a "Who knows?"
    "They coulda been hitting the sheets. But if so, neither of 'em kissed and talked. I couldn't get any of the other people at the lab to even speculate. When I asked, it was like I was spreading bad rumors.
    "Nobody seems to know him that well. An enigma," says Harry.
    "According to the lab techs, he was a big question mark at work. Didn't say much. Kept to himself." Harrys reading from notes now.
    "Did Crone hire him?"
    "That's not exactly clear," says Harry.
    "Some in the lab think that it may have been Jordan herself who brought him in."
    What is troubling here is that there are no statements to the cops
    as to what Epperson may have told them. At least nothing they've disclosed.
    Which means they debriefed him verbally and kept it to themselves. There is no doubt a reason for this.
    Harry has tried twice to talk to Epperson and twice has gotten the door slammed in his face.
    Harry looks through his notes, takes a sip of scotch.
    "Twenty-eight years old.
    He appears to have yanked real hard on his bootstraps to get out of Detroit.
    Went to inner-city schools, never got in any trouble. Seems to have been able to jump well," says Harry.
    I look at him, puzzled.
    "Full scholarship to Stanford to play basketball," says Harry.
    "According to the press reports, the kid was a high-school prodigy. Lew Alcindor on his way to becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."
    "Really?"
    "At seven foot six, it's either that or get a job changing bulbs on streetlamps.
    Unfortunately for him, the basketball thing didn't work out."
    "Why not?"
    Harry reading from his notes.
    "They call it cardiac arrhythmia. Real common, I guess, in the very tall. According to the stories, they're doing some studies on it, particularly African-Americans over six feet. Enlarged hearts," he says.
    "Epperson has a bum ticker. He couldn't fulfill the terms of the scholarship, so they cut him loose. But that wasn't the end of it. Seems the kid's pretty resilient and very bright. He didn't get the athletic thing, but they ended up awarding him an academic scholarship, and it wasn't for P.E. or communications," says Harry.
    "What?"
    "Math and science. Crushes every myth," says Harry.
    "Kid goes to an inner-city school where he's gotta dodge gunfights in the halls and find an outhouse cuz the urinals are all cracked, and he still gets straight As. He does it again at Stanford. Straight As for four years in the