Without a Doubt - [61]

Vinson agreed that keeping the experiment under wraps would be difficult. But the jurors, he said, were required to sign an oath of confidentiality.

“And what do we do if they violate this agreement?” I asked him.

Well, there was really nothing anyone could do, he conceded. But no one in his experience had ever breached an agreement of this kind. To assure secrecy, he proposed doing it out of state-specifically, in Phoenix, Arizona. No one would follow us there, he assured me. People weren’t as hot on this case outside Los Angeles.

So, on August 18, Bill and I met at the airport to catch a flight to Phoenix. When the idea of this trip first came up, Vinson had talked about flying us out on a private jet. He never came through with that. Instead, we were booked on a commercial flight. This should have been our first tip-off to the troubles afoot.

Bill and I hid out in the terminal bar, the only dark, quiet corner that would afford us some privacy while we waited for our flight. Immersed in reviewing our notes, we lost track of the time. Bill looked at his watch and yelped, “We’d better hustle.” We gathered our bags and sprinted to the metal detectors that separated us from the jetway. Just as I was about to send my purse through the metal detector, it hit me:

“Shit, I’ve got my gun in there.”

I’d forgotten to get clearance to carry it on board. Bill and I looked at each other, neither of us quite knowing what to do.

“Keep it for me,” I begged the security guard at the station. “I’ll get it on my way back.”

“No can do,” she told me. “You’ve got to fill out the paperwork.”

One look at her face told me she would not be moved.

“Go without me!” I shouted to Bill. Then I raced back to the ticket counter to find someone who could help me. One agent, a sweet and sympathetic woman, agreed to hold the gun for me. I thanked her breathlessly and was headed for the metal detector when I saw Bill walking toward me, forlorn, his suit bag over one shoulder.

“Stand down, partner,” he said. “We missed our flight.”

Man, did I feel stupid.

The airline gave us its conference room, where we spent a little time going over prospective presentations. Then we napped. The pace of this thing was sapping both of us.

When at last they called our flight, we were making our way wearily to the gate when I heard someone call my name.

“Do you ever read the National Enquirer?” the disembodied voice asked. I was about to say, “Are you crazy?” when I saw a guy with cameras slung around his neck. The tabloids! Somebody had dropped a dime on us. Bill and I turned and ran all the way to the gate.

“It’s over,” I told him. “News’ll be all over the place in about five minutes. They couldn’t have sent us on a private plane?”

“Stupid,” Bill muttered. “Just plain stupid.”

When we landed in Phoenix, I spotted the burly bearlike form of Frank Sundstedt, who’d arrived in Phoenix early and was now waiting for us at the gate. We told him about the reporters.

“How about a disguise?” he asked, only partly in jest.

“Hell,” I told him, “I’ll wear dreadlocks if you think it will help.”

On the way to the hotel, we nipped into a drugstore and I picked out a pair of clunky reading glasses. I looked at myself in the little round mirrors clipped to the top of the rack. Great! Pistol-packing nerd. I kept my head down as we entered the hotel where Vinson had booked our rooms. Frank went to check on our reservations. They’d been booked under our real names. Swell. Reporters had been calling the hotel asking about us. Once again, we’d been made.

That was it. There would be no mock jury. The only thing we could do was to turn around and go home.

God damn this case, I thought. I’d missed a night at home for this? I would have loved to be singing lullabies right now. You wouldn’t catch me humming Brahms. It would probably be something more like “Angel Baby.”

Bill, Frank, and I met Vinson for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel.

“It’s over, Don,” I said. “Call it off. The press is all over us.”

“No, no, no,” he protested. Vinson, I suspected, could see his claim to glory as guru to the Simpson prosecutors slipping through his fingers. He argued. He cajoled. He begged us to reconsider. I cast a glance Frank’s way. I could see that he, too, was hoping to salvage something from this debacle. After all, seventeen recruits were due to arrive tomorrow morning at a conference room in the hotel. I suggested a compromise.

“Why don’t you just go in and ask them what they think of the case so far? Ask them what they think of the witnesses, the evidence. Maybe even what they think about the lawyers. But no mock trial. No ballots. No verdicts.”

Vinson entertained this proposal. I could see that Frank and Bill were warming to it. Finally, we all agreed that Don would chair a discussion by a panel that had now been officially downgraded from “jury” to “focus group.” Bill, Frank, and I would watch on a TV monitor in an adjoining room.

I crawled back to my room that night, already feeling the strain of battle fatigue. I looked at the clock. Four A.M. I’d get only about four hours of sleep before I had to be up and going again. I turned out the light and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.