The judge interrupted her.
“I will strike that testimony,” the judge said. “Don’t waste my time any further counsel.”
Strike three,” Denny said. “Is that it? You gotta save me, Denise.”
“Counsel, do you have any other witnesses?” the judge asked, her desk totally clear. “If not, I’m ready to make a final ruling on dangerousness.”
Through the skylight, Denise heard an aircraft flying overhead. Was it a helicopter or a drone?
She closed her eyes and concentrated one more time. She felt a tap on her shoulder, Denny added his own spark to her energy.
“Fifth dimensional consciousness,” Denny said. “That means you can send it back through time.”
She felt Rita and Rayne helping out even if all they did was buy some time. She even felt someone or something else join in.
She kept her eyes closed for one more moment. Fifth dimensional consciousness. Why the hell not? She felt some kind of energy come from her and Denny and the others go somewhere into the universe… or maybe some… when.
Had it worked? Before she could check, the judge banged the gavel. “Counsel, please open your eyes in my courtroom!” the judge said.
Denise complied. The courtroom door swung open.
“Sorry I’m late, your honor,” a voice said. “Traffic was a bitch.”
Denise now remembered that was the line from that old film The Player—the line that was in every single story regarding her family.
Chapter 58
Hikaru was still in his bike clothes. Covered in sweat stains, he looked like he had finished a triathlon—running to Juarez, swimming the Rio and then biking to Lordsburg. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days and he smelled of the toxic lake water. He had a dirty black sweatshirt around his neck despite the heat. Still he was the most handsome man Denise had ever seen. He must have been the creepy guy in the hoodie she had passed earlier today.
He clutched his heart for a moment, but it was merely his phone in a breast pocket. He reached in and turned it off. He did have a tablet computer with him that he took up to the stand with him.
The judge stared at him. “So I can access my files,” he said. She shrugged as if she didn’t care.
Dew, Rayne and Rita actually clapped. “Team Turquoise,” they said in unison. The judge banged her gavel. “Order in the court. Ms. Song, do you have any more witnesses.
“We call Hikaru Yu to the stand,” Denise said.
“Let’s finish this,” the judge said. Outside, there was a rumbling on the stairs. Caliban went out, but the door did not shut behind him. “He’s here. Hikaru must have been here all along.”
Denise recognized the sheriff’s voice in the hallway. “He’s going to testify. Yeah, I thought he was in Brazil too.” Was he talking to Caliban, or someone else?
The sheriff listened for another moment; he must be on the phone. “We need to go to Plan B, pronto.”
As if on cue, the wet tarp above Hikaru was taken off. At least Hikaru wouldn’t get dripped on. Still, Denise felt uneasy. Hopefully, taking off the tarp wasn’t part of Plan B.
Hikaru was sworn in by the judge and then took the stand and looked up at the open skylight He then smiled at Denise, and then at Rita, Rayne and Dew. “Team Turquoise,” he mouthed back at them, clenching his fist in solidarity.
“Please state your name,” Denise asked.
“Hikaru Yu.”
“How did you get here so fast?” She hadn’t meant to ask this out loud.
“I’ve been here the whole time,” he said. “You subpoenaed me, remember?”
“But…”
Hikaru glanced toward the closed door, and above to the skylight. Apparently, he wanted the powers that be to think he was somewhere else. Could they bug a psychic’s phone?
Of course they could.
“How are you employed?”
“I work for a military contractor called Helmsman Associates. Well, I worked for them, my status right now is unclear.”
“Tell us about Helmsman.”
“Helmsman is a government contractor with contracts at various military bases and labs around the southwest. It was started by my father, Dr. Yu, when he was at Los Alamos. It was ultimately folded into a company called Cygnus Moon.”
“How do you know my client, Denny Song?”
“He was originally a military conscript, but he was assigned over to our direction at Syrinx Testing Station which is part of the White Sands Military Range.”
“Our direction?”
“Cygnus Moon corporation.”
“Was he still in the military when he worked for you?”
“No, he received a general discharge. However, he was told that if he worked with us at Syrinx, it would be upgraded to an honorable discharge.”
“And why was someone with a less than honorable discharge chosen for your program at Syrinx?”
“He was chosen for our team because he had special abilities. The rest is classified, and I am not at liberty to discuss that.”
His phone beeped again through the cycling jersey. “My phone is off, your honor, someone is overriding it,” he told the judge.
“You’ve been warned,” the judge said. “Please continue.”
Denise laid the foundation to establish Hikaru as an expert witness under Rule 702 with several questions about his qualifications.
“Your honor, we are submitting Mr. Yu as an expert witness.”
“Objection,” Jane Dark said. She was still looking at her phone as if it contained some information about Hikaru, but by the way she was scanning her phone, she couldn’t find what she was looking for.
Denise noticed that he had slipped a few copies of his resume onto the table and she gave them to the judge and to Jane Dark.
“If this man isn’t an expert, no one is,” the judge said.
“Can I turn on my tablet?” Hikaru asked. The judge nodded.
She opened her laptop, and with some quick technical help from Hikaru and his tablet from the stand, she now had the access to her PowerPoint. With some direction from Hikaru, she was even able to get her PowerPoint displayed on the courtroom’s big 72 inch Mondo Pad screen.
“Could you describe what this is?” Denise asked.
“It’s a PowerPoint presentation that I made to convey the information I’ve developed over the years in regard to Denny’s case, that I umm… transferred to you.”
“Objection, hearsay,” Jane Dark said.
“Your honor, we have relaxed rules of evidence. Since he created the interface it would not be hearsay and your honor, since he’s been qualified as an expert, he can rely on hearsay information. In any event, there are relaxed rules of evidence.”
It took a few moments of squabbling between the parties, but Hikaru was able to authenticate the PowerPoint presentation and the judge admitted it. She didn’t even have to go into the fact that she’d seen it before via the grail. To the judge and the others in the courtroom, this was just another PowerPoint on the big screen.
On the Mondo Pad, the squares of the board were labeled, and Denise had Hikaru go through each one and related the information contained within, square by square.
Hikaru was a bit nervous on the stand, but with each square, each answer, he grew more confident. She made it a point to skip the center square which was labelled “incomplete.”
“Without going into the classified aspects of these experiments, in your expert opinion under Rule 702 would these experiments affect my client’s mental well-being, his ability to form specific intent?”
Hikaru smiled. “They would indeed affect his mental health and his ability to form specific intent.”
“How so?”
“They could intensify pre-existing emotions such that he would have no ability to control h
is actions.”
“And let me clear this up, you didn’t actually perform these experiments personally?”
“I did not. I was aware of them, but they took me off the project. They said I had too much of a vested interest in the subject.”
“And what about the events on July 7 of this year?”
“Objection, lack of personal knowledge,” Jane Dark said.
Denise laughed as Jane Dark had fallen into her trap. “Do you have personal knowledge of the events of July 7?”
“I do. I was there.”
“He was? Why was he there?” Jane Dark asked.
The judge looked at Denise. “Counsel lay a foundation, please.
Denise was now going to ask questions that she did not know the answers to.
“Why were you there at the site?” she asked.
“I believe my superiors feared that something like this could occur, an incidence of violence. They wanted to have plausible deniability, to blame it on me.”
Now with the tarp gone, sunlight was shining directly on him through the skylight, and he wiped away some sweat off his forehead. The roofers had left but the aircraft sound increased and seemed to funnel through the skylight.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“We had information that someone was going to attempt to touch the grail. That person’s mere proximity to the grail would trigger the appearance of a drone, and I was there to monitor what happened next.”
“So the appearance of this drone was actually part of an experiment then?”
“It was. One of a series of experiments.”
“Did these experiments have something to do with the 24 Grails Contest?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” he said. He clutched his chest, right over his phone. He wiped his forehead again.
Rayne, Dew and Rita were all whispering amongst themselves how pained Hikaru looked. Caliban the bailiff had to quiet them. Caliban glanced out the door and motioned to the Sheriff as if asking for reinforcements.
The sheriff and a new deputy entered the courtroom, and now guarded the exit.
Had Hikaru just aged a decade while on the stand? His black hair was now streaked with gray. Even the judge was worried. “Are you OK, sir?” she asked.
He was gasping for breath now. “I’m sure,” he said.
“Ask him about the UFO!” Denny said.
Denise hesitated. “Perhaps if we move him out of the sun.” Denise now wished that the dripping tarp hadn’t been removed.
“I’m good,” he said. “This is where I need to be at this very moment.”
“So, what happened that night?”
“I arrived on the scene and was monitoring the situation from inside my vehicle. The officers knew I was there, and I let them do their jobs. Apparently, when I was inside the van, Denny Song came near the vicinity and this activated a drone.”
“Could you describe the drone?”
She had Hikaru use his own tablet to create a rough diagram on the Mondo Pad. It was something that looked like a globe with wings.
“It’s a UFO!” Denny said.
“Was the drone ummm… alien?” Denise asked.
“No, it was probably from Alamogordo. Holloman Air Force Base.”
The judge laughed in spite of herself.
“Actually, while it might have been physically created somewhere off site, it might have been located under the cylindrical water tank at the top of the hill near the ranch.”
“But the aliens were controlling it!” Denny yelled. “Ask him about that.”
“I’ll ask about it,” Denise said.
“Did the drone have any connection to anything that was extraterrestrial or alien?”
Hikaru now looked even more uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”
Denise heard that something in the sky above coming closer. Hikaru looked up and shivered.
The sheriff still guarding the exit, was now whispering into his phone. “Plan B, plan B.”
“What happened next?” Denise asked.
“I was actually in the van, there at the site, and I have to admit that I had dozed off.”
The sound from above seemed to abate for a moment. Denise worried that Hikaru was wimping out. He had clearly been agitated by the sounds coming from up above.
She looked at him and their eyes seemed to communicate with each other. “You’ve got this,” her eyes said to his.
He nodded. Did he just whisper I love you to her? “Even though I had dozed off, I did have a chance to look at our own audiovisual recordings of the incident.”
Denise turned to the judge. “May I publish them to court?”
“I haven’t had a chance to see them,” Jane Dark said.
“How long is it?” the judge asked.
“Ninety seconds,” Hikaru said.
“Just play it then,” the judge said, clearly in the mood to get this over with and not wait on either side.
Under Hikaru’s direction from the tablet, Denise played the tape on the Mondo Pad. The drone showed up as a mysterious light. Denny looked like a zombie and shot at the officers before the light went out and he collapsed. If anything, it made things worse.
“So what is causing the light above?”
“That’s the drone.”
“How would you describe my client’s appearance in the video?”
“He appears to lack control, like he’s a robot.” He pointed at the screen. “Let me blow up his face right there.”
Hikaru manipulated his tablet with a pinch, and the Mondo Pad did a close-up on Denny’s face right as he was picking up his gun to fire. Denny indeed looked like a robot.
“By lacking control, what do you mean?”
“He didn’t have the ability to form specific intent.”
“What do you think caused this behavior, this inability to form specific intent?”
“Perhaps there was a technical malfunction because of the drone’s interaction with the grail. The malfunction must have affected your client. Then again, perhaps the drone and the grail were supposed to make him act like this.”
“Act like what?”
“His emotions were amplified. My suspicion is that he was angry toward the sheriff and the drone interacting with the grail somehow intensified his anger.”
“How did it do so?”
“It’s a little unclear, but it might be electromagnetic radiation of an unknown frequency.”
The sounds audible from the skylight intensified. It sounded like the drones all right, that damn buzzing. Did this have something to do with the sheriff and his Plan B?
“So, in your expert opinion, when Denny attempted to shoot the officers, his actions could have been a result of these electromagnetic radiation waves from either the drone or the grail, or perhaps both?”
Denise realized that she had no idea what she was talking about in regards to “electromagnetic radiation waves,” but since she said it with such authority, no one noticed.
“It could,” Hikaru replied.
“Are you willing to say that we’ve established that by clear and convincing evidence?”
“Yes, by clear and convincing evidence, in my expert professional opinion and in my personal opinion. I’ve known Mr. Denny Song personally and he was never violent. In the video, he appears like a different person.”
“So, in your expert opinion, without the presence of the drone or the grail, Denny Song might not be dangerous?”
The whole courtroom grew dark except for a sunbeam spotlight shining on Hikaru. Denise desperately wished that the tarp was still up.
“Yes, it is my expert opinion that by clear and convincing evidence, Denny Song would not be dangerous.”
“Pass the witness.”
Denise looked around the court
room. The judge had her phone down and was actually paying attention. Jane Dark walked slowly the podium.
Jane Dark wasn’t intimidated by anyone. “You’ve been qualified as an expert, but your expertise is in astrophysics and not neuroscience.”
“Rocket science is not brain surgery,” Hikaru said with a smile, despite the sweat on his forehead. “But part of my work deals with how radiation from these drones affects the brain.”
“So, he still might be dangerous, correct?” Jane Dark said. “Something else could set him off?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“And you haven’t brought any of his military psychiatric records with you today, have you?”
“No, I have not. The records are missing. I have seen some, but I would not be permitted to share them with you.”
“How convenient,” Jane Dark said. “Other than this little video we’ve seen, the real records that would prove your conclusion can’t be introduced into evidence today, correct?”
The whole courthouse was shaking. “They’re already here!” Denny said. “Right above our heads.”
“Again,” Hikaru said. “I want to say in my expert and personal opinion, that Denny Song is NOT dangerous by clear and convincing evidence? What else do I have to prove?”
Everyone looked up. The deputies had their hands on their guns, ready for Denny to give them a reason to open fire. Was that Plan B?
Jane Dark clutched her belly protectively and moved toward the state’s table. “Pass the witness.” She moved to an empty chair at the far side of her table as far away from the skylight as possible.
“Calm down, Denny!” Denise said, then put her hand on his shoulder.
He was fighting something within himself, but her touch was working wonders. “Thanks,” he said, and nodded at her.
“What’s going on?” Denise asked.
“They’re coming back,” Denny said. “That’s their Plan B.”
“May the witness be excused?” the judge asked.
Denise looked at Hikaru, who winced in pain as he nodded at her. She needed to ask him a question that she did not know the answer to, but she would have to lay a foundation first.
The Shakespeare Incident Page 31
