Victoria Cross: United Federation Attorney (Nick Walker, U.F. Marshal Book 9)

by John Bowers

  She dropped into a chair.

  “What’s up?”

  “When is the Frie case calendared?” Fraites asked.

  “Six weeks from now.”

  “How much time to you need to get ready?”

  “Six weeks.”

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “We may have a problem,” Fraites said. “Frie is clamoring for a speedy trial.”

  “He’s already getting one. He was only arrested Monday night. Six weeks is damn quick. Federation cases usually don’t get tried for months.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s a hole in the calendar and Frie’s lawyer wants to take it.”

  Victoria frowned.

  “When?”

  “A week from Monday.”

  She felt alarm rising in her chest, and didn’t try to keep it from her face.

  “I promised to second-chair Brian on the Groening case next week. That case will probably run three or four days. That doesn’t give me any time to run down the leads on Frie.”

  Now Anderson Gabel was frowning. He peered at her with dark eyes.

  “What leads?” he demanded. “The Frie case is open and shut, a slam dunk. That file I gave you the other day has everything you need to put that prick away.”

  Victoria stared back at him and took a deep breath. Her relationship with Gabel had always been amicable, but now she saw anger in his eyes. She was surprised, but not intimidated.

  “Well, excuse me, Andy, but I don’t work that way. This is a death penalty case and I’m going up against Hayes Crawford. You’ll pardon me if I do a little digging of my own.”

  Gabel shook his head in confusion.

  “What for? You’ve got probable cause, you’ve got motive, you’ve got opportunity. Frie threatened to murder Randal and, as soon as he got the chance, he made good on it. You’ve got the murder weapon, you’ve got fingerprints and ballistics evidence—I don’t see what else you need.”

  Victoria felt her cheeks flush slightly. She looked directly at Fraites.

  “Is this my case or not?”

  Fraites nodded. “It’s yours.”

  She looked at Gabel again.

  “Thank you.”

  “The problem, Vic, is that Crawford has requested an early trial date and we don’t have any reason to delay it. What Andy just said is true and the judge knows it. If we file for continuance, she’ll turn us down.”

  “‘She’? Which judge?”

  “Hildegaard van Wert.”

  “Shit! That bitch hates me.”

  “She hates everybody, but that’s not the point. I’m afraid Frie is going to get his expedited trial. I just want you to be ready.”

  “Why do you think van Wert hates you?” Gabel asked. “She gave you plenty of latitude in the Fong case.”

  “She hates lawyers, all of them. She just hates Wilson Fong more.”

  “I’ve never had a problem with her.”

  Victoria stared at him but didn’t reply.

  Fraites filled the void.

  “Can you be ready in ten days?”

  Victoria grimaced. “I guess I’ll have to.”

  “Sorry to do this to you, but I’m not going to contest the new trial date. It’s going to happen and there’s no advantage in fighting it.”

  “Understood.”

  *

  After she left Fraites’ office, Victoria stuck her head in Godney’s office.

  “Morning, Brian. What’s new?”

  Godney looked up from his desk with a bright grin.

  “The Downing women just arrived. They took the early mag-lev from Trimmer Springs.”

  “Good!”

  “Not only that, but Dillon is on his way in with the men on the church council. Five of them. They should be here by noon.”

  Victoria’s eyes expanded.

  “You’re kidding! He talked them into it?”

  “I think the subpoenas did the talking. He threatened them all with jail if they refused to comply.”

  Victoria nodded. “We have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  She told him about the expedited Frie trial.

  Godney shrugged.

  “Do what you gotta do. I can handle Groening.”

  “I know, but I promised to second-chair you.”

  “You know, if you could just help me with the witnesses today, then I think I can take it from there. This case is so full of snarls…”

  “Sure. I can do that. Thanks, Brian.”

  Chapter 9

  The conference room was located on the north side of the office and featured a wide window with a magnificent view of the river and spaceport beyond. As Victoria stepped inside, the Downing women were gazing in awe at the view.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the older woman said. “It’s like being on a mountaintop.”

  “Or an airplane,” the teenager said.

  Victoria set her materials down on the table and stared at the visitors with a mild sense of shock. Nick’s report had stated that they seemed to live in a different age, but hadn’t described their mode of dress. The two adults looked like they lived on 1890s Terra; both wore dull grey dresses with full, floor-length skirts and tight-fitting bodices. They also apparently wore corsets, as their waistlines were much too narrow for women their age; their hair was long, but piled up in a Victorian style that dated back to the Industrial Revolution.

  The girl, however, looked very different. Thick red hair cascaded down over her shoulders above a matching red dress that ended at her knees. She also wore high heels, but seemed a little wobbly on them. She was a pretty girl, a little on the plump side—not fat, certainly, but hardly an anorexic scarecrow such as one sometimes saw on the streets of Lucaston.

  Victoria smiled to cover her discomfiture.

  “Hello. My name is Victoria Cross. Thank you so much for coming in.”

  The women turned to face her, and for just a moment she thought she saw judgment in their eyes—except for the girl, who scanned her up and down and seemed to approve.

  The older woman, who might have been sixty, managed a smile and extended a gloved hand, which Victoria took.

  “My name is Drusilla Downing. This is my daughter-in-law, Dorcas. And that’s—”

  “Maggie!” The girl beamed at her with a big smile. “I’m happy to meet you.”

  Victoria shook hands with them all, then introduced Nancy and Godney.

  “Just so you understand what’s going on today, Mr. Godney is going to handle the case for the Federation, but I’m helping with the witness interviews.

  “Please, sit down.”

  Victoria pointed to the chairs along one side of the table.

  “Can we get you anything before we start? Coffee? Tea?”

  Drusilla answered for the group.

  “No, we’re all right. Thank you.”

  “Can I have a soda?” Maggie asked.

  “Maggie!” Her mother shot her a withering look.

  The girl scowled. “Mother!”

  “You don’t need the sugar!” Dorcas told her. “We talked about this!”

  Maggie started to reply, but Victoria cut her off.

  “You know what? Your mother is right. The sugar is bad for you, but I have something even better. Do you like strawberries?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nancy, will you bring Maggie a strawberry Kombucha? I think we have some in the break room.”

  “Right away.” Nancy smiled and left the room.

  Maggie’s eyes followed her.

  “She is really beautiful!” she said.

  Victoria nodded. “Yes, she is. And she’s only five or six years older than you are.”

  Maggie’s eyes turned wistful.

  “I’ve seen pictures in holo-zines, but I’ve never met a woman who looked like that.”

  “That isn’t true,” Dorcas said. “You’ve met Suzanne.”

  “Yeah, but she’s really old! She must be thirty.”r />
  “Suzanne?” Victoria looked blank.

  Drusilla answered.

  “Suzanne Norgaard. She’s Marshal Walker’s…girlfriend. Do you know Marshal Walker? I’m sure you do, since you both work in the legal profession.”

  “I haven’t talked to him in a long time,” Victoria replied. “I haven’t met Suzanne.”

  “I have to admit that I didn’t like her at first,” Drusilla said. “She’s a very beautiful woman and I didn’t approve of the way she flaunt—I mean, the way she dressed. But later I learned that she is a wonderful person, and I’m ashamed that I judged her.”

  Victoria nodded. No response seemed necessary.

  “She was shot a few weeks ago,” Drusilla added. “The poor thing!”

  Victoria frowned. “I hadn’t heard that. Is she all right?”

  “She almost died,” Maggie piped up.

  “She’s out of the hospital now,” Drusilla added. “It looks like she’s going to recover, but it was a close thing.”

  Victoria bit her lip. Poor Nick! He must have gone through hell.

  She realized that Maggie was staring at her.

  “You’re beautiful, too,” the girl said.

  Victoria’s eyebrows arched.

  “Thank you! You’re quite a looker yourself.”

  “Do you think so? Really?”

  “Absolutely. You have a fresh beauty, unspoiled.” Like a peasant girl.

  Maggie blushed with pleasure.

  “Thank you. I wish I could live in Lucaston. I would love to visit the shops here.”

  Victoria caught disapproval in the mother’s eyes and decided to steer the subject away; the last thing she needed right now was conflict among her witnesses.

  Drusilla interrupted her train of thought.

  “Before I forget it…I want to thank you.”

  “Oh? For what?”

  “We visited my grandson last night. He told us what you did for him. I’m not sure why you would do that, since what he did was so terrible.”

  “Mrs. Downing, I believe in justice, but I also believe in fairness. I don’t believe your grandson is a criminal. He did a terrible thing, yes, but I think it’s important to consider why he did it. I place the blame squarely on Antiochus Groening and his teachings. According to the law, Nicodemus has to be punished, but I’m convinced that nothing the law can do to him will come close to the punishment he’s already suffering in his head.”

  “Well…”

  The older woman seemed to choke up for a moment. She cleared her throat and continued.

  “…all I can say is thank you. It has been a stressful year for all of us, and your act of mercy is a welcome relief.”

  Victoria smiled.

  “You’re welcome. I was happy to do it, and thankfully, the judge agreed with me.”

  She turned to Godney.

  “Brian, would you like to take it from here?”

  Godney grinned and shook his head.

  “You had this case first, so why don’t you continue. I’ll jump in if I have questions.”

  “Fair enough.” Victoria turned to the witnesses. “We have a lot to cover. The trial begins on Monday, and you will probably be called in the afternoon.”

  “Do we all have to testify?” Drusilla asked.

  “Actually, the most important witness will be Maggie. She is the victim in this case, and her testimony is crucial. But you were also a victim, weren’t you? I understand you actually got hit by some rocks.”

  Drusilla nodded. She didn’t exactly look excited at the prospect of taking the witness stand, but seemed to accept it.

  “Yes. If Nicodemus hadn’t pulled out his gun, I don’t know what might have happened.”

  Nancy returned with a tall bottle of icy Kombucha, which she handed to Maggie with a paper napkin.

  “Be careful when you open that,” she told the girl “It’s very fizzy.”

  Maggie brightened and broke the seal, then took a tentative drink. Her eyes lit up with pleasure.

  “Wow! That’s really good! Thank you.”

  “It’s a probiotic,” Victoria told her. “Not only is it delicious, it’s also very healthy. Much better for you than sugar.”

  Maggie took another drink, a long swallow, and gasped with delight.

  “It burns on the way down! I love it!”

  Victoria gave her a moment, then got down to business.

  “Okay, shall we get started?”

  *

  The interview started a few minutes after nine and ran right up to the lunch hour. It was a complex tale the women told. Victoria had read the crime report and knew the case in summary, but the details were gripping.

  “How did this whole thing get started?” she asked.

  “It started with Marshal Walker,” Drusilla said. “But if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maggie was always an impetuous child,” Dorcas said. “She had far too much spirit to fit into our way of life. Even as a little girl, she was constantly breaking the rules. Most of the congregation wouldn’t let their children play with her, so we finally moved into town. It was the only way to keep the peace.”

  “I’m surprised your church elders would permit you to do that. Move into town, I mean. Didn’t that put you in the middle of unbelievers?”

  “Yes, but we weren’t the only ones. There were ten or twelve families from the congregation who lived there, so no one made too much of it.”

  “What kind of trouble did Maggie get into?”

  Victoria glanced at the girl, whose face had pinked. She stared at her Kombucha bottle with a morose expression.

  “She talked back. That was her biggest sin. When a teacher or an elder or anyone in authority told her to do something—or more often, to stop doing something—she wanted to know why. Usually it was nothing serious—she wasn’t an evil girl—but we lived under church authority, and talking back was forbidden. When they told her she was bad, she refused to accept it. She has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and she believed it was wrong to accept a judgment that wasn’t fair.

  “Her father was a great influence in her life. He knew how to handle her better than I did. When there was a problem, he could sit down and talk to her, explain things, and usually get her to understand that it was in her best interest—in all our best interests—to just play along. He would have her laughing and giggling and things would be okay again for a little while.

  “But then the war came and he was murd—I mean, he was killed.”

  “You lived in town during the war?”

  “Yes. It was awful! The people hated us. Other children picked on Maggie as if it was all her fault.”

  Victoria glanced at Maggie again. Her exuberance had vanished. Now she sat chewing her lip, tears on her cheeks, and stared out the window.

  Victoria cleared her throat.

  “Forgive me if I’m out of line, because this may not pertain to the matter at hand, but…are you sure that your husband was killed by the man in the bell tower?”

  Dorcas nodded.

  “Yes. Two of his friends came to tell us later. I didn’t know he was dead for several days, but as long as I live, I’ll never get that sound out of my head.”

  “The sound?”

  “That rifle! You could hear it all over town. There was lots of fighting going on, rifles and machine guns and shells and I don’t know what all, but then it would die down for a while—but that rifle never stopped. It had a different sound, a deeper sound. Every time it fired, you felt like somebody died, and from what I heard later, I guess someone did. We were hiding in the basement, Maggie and me, and after a while we just covered our ears and prayed that it would stop. But it never did. It fired all day, all afternoon, and most of the night. It was still firing the next morning.”

  Victoria listened intently. She had known the story for years, had read the after-action reports, had viewed news accounts and docum
entaries—but hearing Dorcas tell it made her scalp tingle. Everyone in the Federation probably knew the story of the sniper in the bell tower, how he had, almost single-handedly, stopped the rebel attack on Trimmer Springs. It was a heroic story, but a story told by the victors.

  Now, for the first time ever, she considered how it must have been for the other side. In her mind, she envisioned a terrified mother and her little girl cowering in the basement of their home, waiting for it to be over.

  She cleared her throat again.

  “Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry I interrupted you. You were telling me about Maggie’s father.”

  Dorcas took a deep breath.

  “After Ezekiel was killed, I couldn’t handle Maggie anymore. I didn’t have his gift with her, and she just resented me for trying to keep her in line. By the time Marshal Walker came to town, she was out of control.”

  Drusilla picked up the story again.

  “When he first came to town, we all hated him. The town had put up a statue to honor him for what he did that day, and when he showed up as a lawman, it was like pouring salt in an open wound.

  “Then, one day in town, we ran into him.”

  “What happened?”

  “I gave him a piece of my mind. He killed my two sons, Ezekiel and Luke Junior.”

  “Luke Junior was Nicodemus’s father?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I realize now that Marshal Walker was only doing his duty at the time. He was a Star Marine, and it was his job to kill his enemies. My sons had the same duty, to kill Star Marines, but neither of them was in battle very long, so I doubt if they ever killed anyone.

  “Anyway…” She waved a hand. “…I’m getting off track. When we met Marshal Walker face to face, Maggie got stars in her eyes. She knew he killed her father, and yet…”

  “I couldn’t help it, Grammaw!” Maggie burst out. “I never saw anyone like him before.”

  “What do you mean?” Victoria asked.

  “He was so—I don’t know how to say it, but—he was so manly! Not handsome, exactly, but masculine. He looked like a man who would protect his women, you know? Someone who would make you feel safe. None of the men I knew were like that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I just stared at him. Grammaw was chewing him out, telling him she wanted him to die, but I didn’t feel that way. As soon as Mom and Grammaw turned away, I told him I wanted to marry him.”