Page 207 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

occurring to another juror. Evidently she did not know which one, or
there would have been only one murder. Once the trial was over, she
decided to eliminate the competition and blame it on the Simulians.
Graduate students can be as ruthless as gangsters, and she had just
been taught very carefully by the prosecution how these executions
were performed. You should note, Duncan, that a courtroom is a
classroom for crime as much as any prison.”
I tried to reconstruct Beryl Creighton mentally. Yes, a very intense
young woman.
“Beryl had a good idea, based on their professional experience,
which of her fellow jurors were capable of producing a book
concerning their experience on the case. Panel members on a long
case usually discuss their personal lives sufficiently over the weeks of
the trial to know quite a bit about each other. She decided it was
Wanda, and killed her. Nine days later she received a nasty surprise:
she was wrong. The other would-be author, based on similar
assumptions and deductions, realized the murder had been
committed not by a Simulian but by another juror seeking to
eliminate a rival, and immediately developed the same competitive
passion. That second person again had to make an educated guess as
to the identity of the first; the result was the death of Rea Rainger.
That was also proven an error five days later by the third killing, Beryl
Creighton’s desperate attempt to save herself as well as her plan for
riches and fame. It may be presumed that she was the one who killed
Mitchell Bowan because his dead weight was too much for a woman
of her size to move from where it fell; I would surmise that she could
barely roll him over.”
This horrible dance of death began to take shape in my
imagination.
“I think I get it, Lieutenant. The second killer, through fortune or
inference, finally hit on Beryl as the one who had started the cycle
and eliminated her. That ended it. Nevertheless, how could the killer
be certain the other author had been found?”
“The signs of robbery, Duncan. They weren’t distractions. They
were searches for book outlines and computer files. I have no doubt
that we will find something here of that nature belonging to Ms.
Creighton.”

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