The Crimson Trial

by Freya Atwood

  When I arrived at the courthouse I saw the gaggle of reporters from the day before. The rain had washed some of them away but there were enough for the purpose I had in mind. I was going in through the front entrance and I was going to speak to them, give them some meat. I wore a dark raincoat over a dark trouser suit that had been in the drying cupboard when the house was broken into. Tommy had trashed all of the clothes he had found in the closet but missed that. I carried an umbrella against the rain.

  I strode up the ramp to stand at the top of the courthouse steps and turned to face them.

  “I’d like to make a statement. I’m not going to answer any questions. Yesterday, while I was in court defending an innocent man, someone broke into my house. They did it not to steal but to abuse and terrorize myself and my son.” I spoke clearly and firmly, looking from lens to lens. I hoped that I was staring straight into the eyes of Tommy DeLuca, speaking to him directly. “They failed. We are not afraid. We refuse to live in fear of a sad, pathetic little man who lacks the courage to face me directly and voice whatever grievance he has. Now, I don’t care in the least what stories have been given to you about my past. I grew up in an impoverished neighborhood of Los Angeles. I struggled to survive. And I have made a success of my life. Now, I intend to prove that Hunter Watson is innocent of murder.”

  I ignored the barrage of questions that began as soon as I stopped speaking and turned to enter the courtroom. A police officer held the door open for me. I stopped and turned back to the assembled reporters and gave them a frosty smile.

  “I’m done sneaking out the back way. Tonight I will be leaving this courthouse by the front door.”

  Let them make of that what they like. And let Tommy DeLuca burn in hell. I strode into the courthouse with my head held high. I knew that Hunter had been delivered to the holding cells located in an annex behind the courthouse. I wanted to speak to Hunter, reassure him about how the trial was going. I was escorted across a bare concrete yard and through a metal gate, then through a security door manned by a police officer. Finally, I was led along a spartan corridor that smelled of disinfectant and carried harsh echoes of every sound made within.

  The cells were little better than kennels, smaller than a standard prison cell with a tiny window high up on one wall and a barred door. Out of date by half a century and probably in violation of several UN human rights charters. Hunter sat, in his suit, on the edge of a concrete ledge with a thin foam mattress on top.

  “How you doing, Hunter?” I asked.

  He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and watering. His lips were moving and his fingers were scratching at each other.

  “Been better. This is about the longest I’ve gone with nothing.”

  “Didn’t the prison doctor give you something?”

  “Yeah, but it only scratches the surface.”

  I noticed that he was trembling. I couldn’t imagine the hell he had gone through during the trial, forced to endure it cold turkey.

  “Is this longer than you had gone without on the night Khan died?”

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know. Think so. Don’t even know what day it is. How long has this trial been going on for?”

  “This is the third day.” I said gently.

  “Fuck. Feels like a month. I don’t think I can make it. I’m gonna blow up. Sitting there being quiet, I just feel like I’m gonna rip my skin off, man!” Hunter wailed, he was rocking back and forth.

  I realized how poorly the suit fit him. The collar seemed to gape around his scrawny neck. He lifted a hand to run across his head. It was trembling so violently that he couldn’t do it.

  “It’ll be over soon. But it’s going to be hell for you. Today, I aim to call all of my witnesses. But if Halden decides to cross examine, well, there’s no guarantee how long it will take. But, I am going to call you. And…well, it’s going to be hard what I’m going to ask you to do. But the way you feel right now? Couldn’t work out better for your defense.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What are the jury gonna see but a junkie when they see me like this?”

  I took his hand. It was cold and clammy. I squeezed it in both of mine, reducing the trembling to a minimum.

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 36

  “The prosecution calls Professor Jeffrey Monteith.” Halden’s voice was clear and confident.

  Monteith was head of the ballistics department of the Everwood Police Department Crime Lab. She won’t be expecting cross examination of this witness. What would be the point? He was a balding man with a fringe of brown hair around his smooth pate. His face was round and he wore glasses. His voice was high and nasal. He looked comfortable in the witness box, crossing his legs and smoothing a wrinkle from his pants as Halden approached.

  Halden labored over Monteith’s qualifications and years of professional experience. She wanted his expertise hammered home to the jury. An aide clicked a remote and on the screen a plan of the room in which Dr. Khan had been shot appeared.

  “Professor Monteith. Could you show us where the killer was standing when he fired the shot that killed Dr. Adil Khan, please?” Halden asked.

  “Certainly.” Monteith got up and from the inside pocket of his jacket, he took out a pointer which he extended to its full length and approached the screen.

  “So, some basic orientation. Here is the door leading out onto Duke Street. Here is the door leading to the store front which itself opens onto Vale, around the corner from Duke. Now, the body was found here.”

  Monteith tapped a spot on the diagram. “He was shot in the back and the body was face down. The angle of the shot therefore was as follows.” He turned to Halden’s table. “If you please.”

  Another click of the remote. A red line appeared which Monteith traced with the pointer. “Therefore the killer must have been standing here. When the victim entered the room through this door, the killer tracked him with the gun and fired when he reached this point, hitting him in the back.”

  He retracted the pointer and stood, waiting for questions. Halden obliged. “Professor Monteith. Based on those facts, is it possible that a person entering from the Duke Street door could have reached the point in the room from where the gun was fired?”

  “Yes, certainly. It is a short distance from the Duke Street door to that point. Four meters, almost exactly.”

  “I would like you to hypothesize for the court. Based on your professional experience and knowledge of this case.”

  “Certainly.”

  “If a killer, entering through the Duke Street door wished to conceal himself in that room in order to ambush Dr. Khan, where would be the optimum place to stand? In your professional opinion.”

  “Hmmm. Interesting question. Right where he actually stood. You’ll note that it is to the right of this internal door but out of the line of sight of the door leading out to the street. A person stepping through that internal door would reach out for the light switch with their left hand. It would be natural to turn, at least partially, in that direction. And the corner of the room from which the shot was fired would be out of their line of sight. If the shot had come from the left side of the room, the killer risked being seen the instant the light came on. I would say they chose the perfect place to stand in order to shoot someone in the back who was coming into the room from that internal door.”

  “Now, would you say that the killer would need some knowledge of the room’s layout in order to find that spot?”

  “Well, yes. Assuming the light was off when they entered the room. It would be dark and, with no windows, it would be completely dark. There would be some light from the street coming in through the door to Duke Street but that wouldn’t illuminate much.”

  “I would like to call the jury’s attention to the fact that Hunter Watson fled through this room after assaulting Dr. Adil Khan. He would have had an opportunity to see the layout. One final question, Professor Monteith. According to our witness there was a very short time
between Hunter Watson entering the building and the light going on and shots being fired. No more than a minute or two. Would that be long enough for someone to take up a position in the spot from where the shot was fired, do you think?”

  “Certainly. It’s only four meters after all. He could walk straight in off the street and be in position within seconds.”

  “And we know he had minutes, not seconds, to get into position. Long enough to set himself into position and be ready for Dr. Khan to switch on the light and illuminate himself as a target.” Halden was addressing the jury now. “Thank you, Professor Monteith. No further questions, your honor.”

  She returned to her seat and I stood. Monteith put the pointer back into his pocket and retook his own seat. Nic had a remote of her own. She clicked and the image on the screen changed. It was the same room but with the crates and boxes from the room mapped on the diagram.

  “The presentation we have just witnessed is fairly clear. I don’t think anyone will dispute that it would be entirely plausible for the killer to enter from the street, cross a distance of four meters and be in position when Adil Khan came through the internal door. But, the diagram is not the room.”

  Another click. A photograph came onto the screen of a stack of boxes.

  “This is a crime scene photograph taken of the room. You can see that, contrary to the diagram, it is not an empty box. It is quite full.”

  Another picture appeared. More boxes but taken from a different angle.

  “Note that this picture shows the door out to Duke street. Over to the right of the picture as we look at it is where the killer must have waited. Note how many boxes lie between the door and the spot from which the shot must have been fired. Look at it from a different angle.”

  Click. An angle in which the door to Duke street was just visible to the left of the shot. The camera was pointing along the wall to the far corner.

  “In this shot, note the position of the door. We are looking directly at the spot in which Professor Monteith says the killer waited. Professor, would you agree with that?”

  Monteith studied the picture for a moment, leaning forward in his seat. “Yes. I would agree.”

  “Note the boxes, not stacked neatly against the wall. Not even all of the same size. Here is the diagram of the room that you have just been looking at but with the position of those boxes overlaid.”

  The diagram returned with the boxes marked in blue. “Now look at the route the killer must have taken to reach that spot from the street door leading to Duke Street.”

  A snaking red line was drawn onto the diagram by Nic. It wove in between boxes in a convoluted route that involved switch backs and twists.

  “And remember this was supposedly done in the dark and, supposedly, by a man suffering withdrawal symptoms that include loss of motor control and coordination. You all saw the condition my client was in at the beginning of this trial. You saw him sweating and shaking. Saw him faint. On the night in question, his withdrawal was more acute based on the amount of time he had been without his fix.”

  “Objection! We have only the accused’s word for how long he had been without his fix, as the defense puts it.” Halden interceded.

  “Your honor. We have the eyewitness accounts of Dr. Khan’s colleagues of the events earlier in the afternoon.” I maintained. “I apologize for lapsing into the vernacular, but had Mr. Watson scored after that event, he would not have been walking the streets later that night. He would be incapable of it due to the effects of the drugs.”

  “Overruled. This is logical.” Greene ruled.

  “To return to the matter of navigating a path through this maze of boxes and crates to the spot from where the shot was fired, there is a way for a killer to quickly and quietly get into that position. But the killer would not be coming from the Duke Street door. They would be coming from the internal door. The same door that Adil Khan came through before he was shot.”

  The diagram returned and a straight red line was marked running from the internal door to the spot now marked with an X. It was a very short line.

  “This would indicate that the killer was already in the building.” I finished.

  Chapter 37

  Halden requested an adjournment after Professor Monteith was dismissed. She claimed her final witness had been unavoidably delayed. He was a serving police officer and the delay was a matter of duty. I protested, requesting that if the witness could not attend when scheduled, then his evidence should not be heard. I tried to use Hunter’s rapidly deteriorating condition as grounds for proceeding with my own witnesses. Delay would worsen his condition and jeopardize his ability to speak for himself on the stand.

  Halden won. Green granted an adjournment of twenty four hours to allow the police officer to attend. Hunter took the news with a worrying lack of emotion. He sat on the concrete shelf, waiting to be transported back to the Stone for another day. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he shook. It gave me an idea but now was not the time. After leaving Hunter, I found Nic waiting at the door to the atrium. I could hear the reporters on the other side waiting for their news.

  “Let’s use this time to our advantage.” I told her. “I think Halden may be trying to push Hunter over the edge. Anyone can see how strung out he is.”

  “There’s any number of possible avenues we can go down, given a little more time. What do you want to work on?”

  “The phone records from the cell phone found in Hunter’s possession when he was attacked. And the girlfriend. Track her down.”

  Nic nodded decisively. “You sure you want to wade out through that bunch? Wouldn’t it be easier to sneak out the back way?”

  “I’m done running from them.”

  I pushed through the doors and stormed ahead, clearing a path through the microphones and cameras, not answering any of the shouted questions and keeping my head high.

  I decided to head home rather than going to the office. I had calls to make and wanted to rehearse all the possible cross examination scenarios for the prosecution witness coming up. As I drove, I called Bryan. He answered, which was a surprise.

  “Hey Bryan. My trial was adjourned for the day, I’m heading home. Do you want to grab some lunch?”

  “Uh, yeah. OK. McDonalds across the street from campus?”

  “Sure thing. A burger would be great right now. Give me fifteen minutes to get over there.”

  “Ok, see you then.”

  He hung up and I frowned as I took a left turn and began making my way across town to the college. I hadn’t expected him to agree to spending some time with me. Previously, he would only agree if he had run out of money and I was paying. He is between jobs right now. Maybe that’s it? I still felt disquiet. I tried to forget it, tried to focus on the fact that I was going to be able to spend some rare time with him. I kept coming back to his behavior around the break-in.

  He was standing outside the restaurant as I pulled into the parking lot. He opened the passenger door and slung his backpack into the back of the car. It hit the seat with a heavy thump.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I exclaimed as he got into the car.

  He had a black eye and a swelling on the left side of his face. The left side of his mouth was cut as well.

  “I got mugged today. That’s why I don’t have the money to buy myself lunch.” He muttered.

  “Mugged? By whom? Where?”

  “I didn’t catch the guy’s name, Mom. It was over on Dean Street…”

  “Dean Street? What on earth were you doing over there?” I interrupted.

  Dean Street was notorious as one of the most dangerous parts of town. A stretch of abandoned lots, shady businesses and a haven for junkies and vagrants.

  “I need some car parts, OK? There’s a body shop out there that’s cheaper than the big stores.”

  “Yeah, because they’re probably fencing stolen goods. I can’t believe you would do something that stupid.”

  “OK. Don’t actually ask
me how I am or anything.” He retorted sullenly.

  I sighed, slapping the steering wheel. “Obviously, I’m concerned. It’s just a shock, that’s all. It’s not like you made a habit of getting into fights when you were younger. I’m not used to seeing you like this.”

  “Happens to everyone.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does. I hope you reported it?”

  “No point. I didn’t get a good look at the guy. It was all over too fast.” Bryan replied glibly.

  “What did he take?”

  “Just the cash in my wallet.”