Free Unlucky in Law by Perri O'Shaughnessy

chilled, and that means the jury is, too. Jaime was known for concise but touching opening statements, a characteristic for which he had won praise back when they both attended the Monterey College of Law. She remembered that the defense's opening statement was nonexistent at the moment. Fretting about that, she lost track of the next few sentences.
    “We will prove,” Jaime was saying, “that between one and three A.M. on Friday night, April eleventh of this year, someone came to the door of Ms. Zhukovsky's home. She let this person in, and together, they went into her kitchen. She was drinking a nightcap, a small glass containing brandy.
    “We will show that the visitor attempted to grab Ms. Zhukovsky, and that she fought back—fought for her life, and managed to throw the glass at the attacker, cutting him. We will show that her bravery wasn't enough. She was strangled. Dr. Susan Misumi, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on this unfortunate young woman, will tell you exactly how that occurred. It wasn't instantaneous. Christina had perhaps two full minutes to know she was dying and to suffer the awful helplessness of being the victim of murder.”
    Nina heard a sort of group exhalation behind her. Jaime Sandoval would never achieve the heroic stature of a Klaus Pohlmann, but he knew how to move the courtroom to care by invoking the spirit of a dying woman.
    “We will show you that the killer had prepared and planned his actions. He stuffed Ms. Zhukovsky's strangled body inside several plastic trash bags and wrapped them with laundry cord. He hid the body, and laid his disposal plans.”
    Stefan hadn't gone to the grave site and discovered Christina's body until the following night. Since nobody knew where her body had been kept, since they had found no evidence of Christina's body in Stefan's car, Jaime was obscuring. Nina made a note to herself to emphasize the lack of proof that Stefan had hidden Christina's body for a full day.
    “The next night, Saturday, he transported her body to Cementerio El Encinal, Monterey's municipal cemetery.” Jaime came closer, almost to the bar behind which the jury sat, and raised his voice.
    “Where better to dispose of a body? No one would look in a grave,” he said. “He hoped she would disappear into the old dust of others who had the dignity of proper burial, maybe never missed. Maybe missed but never found.” He hesitated, to allow the jurors to consider how wrenching that would be. “His footprints were found at the scene. He dug up the grave of her own father, Constantin Zhukovsky, a man who had died more than twenty years before, and he placed her body in that open hole he had dug, and then he covered her up and stamped”—Jaime stamped his foot on the floor—“the earth down.” He lowered his voice again, so low the jurors in back leaned forward to hear. “He used his boots to spread the gravel around, to hide the body he had dumped. There was no grace, no decorum in her burial, no family there to grieve her properly, and no attempt made to restore peace to the grave he had just desecrated. He finished his dirty work.”
    Klaus leaped to his feet, vigorous as a boy of twelve. “Objection!” he shouted.
    Jaime, startled out of the spell he was casting, jerked his head around.
    “I object! He is arguing his case, making poetical leaps instead of telling the jury what facts he intends to prove! Ridiculous—”
    “Counsel, come forward to the bench,” Salas said. Nina began to rise but Klaus waved her back. Jauntily, he stepped up to the side of Salas's dais, where Jaime already stood. They put their heads together and Salas hissed for a full minute. As the judge wound down, both Klaus and Jaime bobbed their heads like marionettes.
    Klaus returned and sat down.
    “What'd he say?” she whispered.
    “He said if I interrupt again in an attempt to force a mistrial he would jail me,” Klaus whispered back, and offered her the small smile. “But I was