“No. Not at all. The prosecutor can exercise discretion. I never want to prosecute an innocent man. I just didn’t believe you.”
“I guess that was my misfortune, wasn’t it? The great Jack Hogan didn’t believe me.” Bart Thompson stared at Jack silently for several long seconds. Jack glanced across the room at the other parents. It was mind-boggling that not one of them had noticed the heated conversation. Where were the busybodies and gossips when you needed them?
“Well, I’ve made up my mind,” Thompson said, his voice low, barely above a whisper. “Shooting’s too quick. I’m gonna gut her with the knife. I won’t be needing this.”
Bart Thompson withdrew a large revolver from his pocket and placed it on the bleachers between them. It was already cocked. Thompson stood up and smiled wickedly at Jack.
“The knife is a switchblade, in case you’re interested. I figure to open up her belly first.”
Grinning, the convicted murderer instantly broke into a run, heading directly toward Amber, his right hand snaking back inside his jacket pocket. It was all happening so fast. With horror, Jack realized he had only seconds to save his daughter.
He grabbed the gun and rose quickly to his feet. Instinctively, he assumed the stance he had practiced so often at the firing range. He knew he had to shoot fast, before Thompson got any closer to the gymnasts and put the girls in the line of fire. He brought up the gun and trained it on Thompson.
The earsplitting explosion produced an instant ringing in Jack’s ears. He fired just one shot. He was oblivious to everything but the sight of Bart Thompson running toward his daughter. The instant Jack fired the gun, Thompson staggered and pitched forward onto the mat, crumpling like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Jack heard screaming, probably the voices of the gymnasts. He heard yelling, probably the adults. He heard oaths being shouted at Bart Thompson, probably coming out of his own mouth.
Carefully pointing the gun at Thompson, almost daring him to make another move, Jack advanced toward him slowly. Thompson lay facedown on the light gray mat, his right hand thrust into his jacket pocket. He was still breathing.
Pointing the gun at Thompson with his right hand, Jack used his left to pull Thompson’s hand from his pocket. The hand was empty. Jack slipped his own hand into the pocket. No knife. Jack patted the other pockets, finding nothing.
“Roll me over, Hogan,” Bart Thompson rasped. “I want to see your face.”
Jack took a moment to glance around the gym. The girls huddled on the floor between the balance beam and the vaulting horse. Tears streaked frightened faces. Parents crouched on and around the bleachers on the other side of the room, all eyeing Jack warily. Leesa Beecher, the instructor, was frantically talking on a cell phone, undoubtedly answering the questions of a 911 operator.
Jack reached down, grabbed the shoulder of the Cardinals jacket, and rolled Bart Thompson over. A growing pool of red blood already a yard wide covered the mat underneath the body.
Bart Thompson was smiling. It was the first time his grin had seemed genuine all evening.
“You recognize the gun, Counselor?”
Jack glanced at the gun in his hand, puzzled. It was a Smith & Wesson revolver, just like his own. Wait a minute. Surely it wasn’t.
“Yeah, it’s yours,” Thompson said. “I stole it this morning. Don’t worry, I didn’t mess up your house. No fingerprints, no DNA, no signs of forced entry. No one will be able to tell I was ever there.”
The gray eyes were flashing with triumph.
“That’s right, Mr. Prosecutor. You just shot an unarmed man with your own gun in front of more than thirty witnesses, including your own daughter. And you shot him in the back as he was running away from you. In the back, Jack!”
The eyes began to grow dull, life ebbing away, but the dying man was still smiling.
“Good luck in court, Counselor. You’re going to need it.”
CUSTOM SETS
BY JOSEPH WALLACE
Martin County Courthouse, Shoals, Indiana. February
It was like a dance, Zhenya thought.
A strange, slow dance, full of rites and rituals she was just beginning to understand. Women and men in white shirts and dark suits, sitting behind long tables, reading from books, shuffling papers, popping up to talk, talk, talk to the grim-faced man sitting behind a desk up above the rest, and to the twelve silent, staring people trapped behind wooden railings on the side.
A performance where everyone else knew what would come next, as if the actors and the audience were all sharing a language, a vernacular that escaped only her.
A performance with a life at stake. Two lives.
Zhenya knew where she was, of course. She wasn’t stupid. She’d traveled for two days, taking bus after bus, to a town, a state, a region she’d never even heard of before she found it on a map. To be here, in this big, pale stone building that looked like something built back home half a century ago to house a hundred families. She’d come all this way, to this uncomfortable wooden pew, just to watch the dance.
She’d watched a hundred similar performances on television before she’d come. There was a whole channel that showed nothing but them. But that was different—there were always words running across the screen, always people to explain what was going on, what all the endless talking meant.
But here she was on her own. Every once in a while, two of the men would step up to the big desk, to the judge. Then it would be his turn to drone on and on, sometimes speaking quietly, other times loudly enough for everyone to hear. She’d worked hard to learn English at school and since she’d been on her own, but his accent and the speed of his words made it hard for Zhenya to understand him.
So instead she just watched his face. It was round, pouchy, with flesh that sagged beneath the cheekbones and chin. But the judge’s eyes were bright, and she could tell that he was following everything that was being said, even if she wasn’t able to.
Good.
He had a strange nose. It started straight, but then bent sideways, as if it had been broken once and fixed badly. Perhaps he’d been a fighter. Or perhaps his father had hit him.
Zhenya reached up and touched the bump on the bridge of her own nose. She knew about broken noses. And about how hard you had to be hit for yours to break.
Most were strangers to her, of course, the people in this courtroom. All but one: the broad-shouldered man with the dark, wiry hair who sat at the table four rows in front of Zhenya, his back to her, facing the judge and the jury.
This man Zhenya knew too well, even though she’d never seen him before.
Yngblood. That’s what he’d called himself. And now he must have felt the force of Zhenya’s gaze, because he shifted in his chair, reached up to scratch his neck, and then finally twisted his head around to look at the small crowd in the pews. But before his eyes found her, his lawyer, a man in a suit that seemed too large for him, touched his arm and brought his attention back to the judge.
Zhenya’s heart pounded.
Something must have happened, some decision made, because suddenly there were people moving around, a young woman carrying a big piece of cardboard to the front of the courtroom. The people in the jury box all leaned forward.
Speaking loudly, one of the lawyers lifted up a sheet of paper that covered the piece of cardboard, revealing the image, blown up to poster size, of a tall, slender girl with an oval face, luminous dark eyes, and black hair that fell thick to her shoulders.
The girl was wearing very short shorts and a bikini top. She was leaning forward and smiling at the camera.
She was, perhaps, thirteen.
People stirred and made noises. The judge barked at them. Yngblood stared down at his lap, the back of his neck turning pink.
Now one of the lawyers was talking about the girl in the picture. Zhenya heard words like “graceful” and “childlike” and “innocent.” All around the courtroom, people were nodding their heads.
Zhenya la
ughed, a sharp, sudden sound that made people stare at her. Biting her lip to keep the laughter inside, she shook her head in apology, then reached up and ran her hand through her short blond hair.
Childlike. Innocent.
He had no idea what he was talking about, this lawyer.
Arkhangelsk, Russia
In 1989, just a year before Zhenya was born, treasure hunters found a great trove on the banks of the Dvina River in Arkhangelsk. People said it had been buried nearly a thousand years earlier.
Most of the objects were silver coins. They had been brought from all over Europe, at a time when Arkhangelsk was a great port city. People traveled there to live, to seek their fortunes, or just to stop briefly on their passage through the great northern continent. Even the Vikings had come, once.
But now it was just a gray city, with faceless apartment blocks left over from the Communists, and garbage on the streets, and no place for a girl to escape to, unless she wanted to throw herself in the river.
Zhenya rarely even left her room. She was not permitted to, except to attend school, to study math and science and English. At school she was known as a quiet, pretty girl, with fair skin and long legs and big dark eyes and an expressionless face that never revealed anything about her soul.
Not that she believed in souls. All she believed in was surviving till the next day, and doing what her father and his brother, Mikhail, told her to do. She’d learned long ago that she had no choice but to listen and obey.
When they told her to stay away from strangers, to stay silent among acquaintances, she did. And so, at ages ten, twelve, Zhenya had no friends, no one she could trust, no one to talk to. She didn’t know anybody.
But thousands of people around the world knew her.
United States District Court, Philadelphia. April
This was the one who’d called himself BMOC.
He was a high-school teacher, it turned out, and girls’ soccer and softball coach, though of course he’d lost those jobs months ago.
From what she could see from the back of the crowded courtroom, he didn’t look much like an athlete. Soft and white, like the kind of bread you’d find on the grocery shelves here in America. If you pushed a finger into him, she thought, the dent you’d make would stay there.
Maybe he’d played sports as a child, in school, before he got so soft, and that was what made him an expert. Or maybe they couldn’t pay much, the school, and he’d been the best they could get.
And maybe he’d taken the work so he could be close to the girls.
Zhenya had been sitting there all afternoon, waiting. Now it was time. One of the lawyers, a young man in a dark suit that reminded her of a knife blade, let his nasal, piercing voice get louder. Then, as happened every time, he pulled out the pictures. One, of Zhenya in a short sundress, lying back, bare legs spread, panties showing, was poster-sized, for all to see. But the others were smaller, private, for the eyes of the lawyers and the jury alone.
Protecting the audience from the shock. Still, the people around Zhenya shifted and murmured, a low, uncomfortable sound.
Innocents.
One by one, the members of the jury looked at the pictures, then raised their heads to stare at BMOC.
The girls’ coach put his head in his hands and began to cry.
____
THEY BEAT HER, of course, her father and Mikhail.
But they were careful about it. They’d punch her in the stomach, and then photograph her in lingerie that hid the marks. Or avoid showing her arms if they were bruised. But when they slipped, when they hit her in the face, they covered up the bruises with makeup. One kind when the marks were purple, another for when they had faded to yellow.
But they knew they couldn’t go too far. And that, Zhenya knew, was the only thing that kept her alive.
Mikhail, he was the one who lost control. She could see it in his eyes, the way the whites would shine all around the black irises, the way his pupils would become as small as pinheads, the way his thick cheeks would flush and his mouth would hang open as he drew his fist back for the next blow.
He would have killed her, Mikhail, if her father hadn’t been there to stop him. To pull him off, to shout at him and send him away to calm down.
Her father was more careful, because he understood that they’d have nothing if she died. That she was the reason they could buy a Lada, drink more expensive vodka, go out to restaurants while she hunted up a couple of eggs or a hunk of bread in the apartment.
But even so, her father never pretended that he felt anything else toward her, and he always let her know how easily he could withdraw his protection.
“You try to run off,” he said to her, “and I will find you. I know everyone, and you know no one.”
She said nothing.
“I will leave you alone with him. And then we will float your body down the river with the logs.”
He brought his face close to hers. “Do you believe me?”
Of course she did. So she behaved herself, and waited.
And began to dream of an alternative future.
United States Courthouse, Fort Worth. May
These ones were mean. You could tell it by looking at them, even from a distance. They sent out waves of anger as they sat side by side in the echoing room, with their thick arms and red faces and stains under their arms. Looking at each other all the time, shaking their heads, as if they couldn’t believe the way they were being treated.
Brothers, like enough to be twins.
Interceptor and ScrewU. They’d always seemed to be the first to comment when a new set of photos went up, and what they always said was coarse, lewd, cruel.
Zhenya noticed that no one came to the courtroom to support them. No wives, no parents, no friends sitting in the first row to offer words of comfort and encouraging looks. Just the two of them, with their smirks and their sweat, and an audience of curious strangers.
And Zhenya, of course, sitting in the back with her hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.
____
IT HAD BEGUN when she was ten.
Her father had come into her room carrying two big bags. One was full of new clothes. At first Zhenya had been thrilled—she couldn’t remember the last time he’d bought her something—but as she dug eagerly through the bag, she could feel the smile freeze on her face.
“What are these?” she’d asked, pulling out something that looked like it was made from strings. “They are for me?”
“Put them on,” he had said. “Those ones.”
At first, she hadn’t even been able to tell which end went where, but eventually she’d figured it out. While she dressed, he rummaged around in the second bag and came out with a camera.
Even then Zhenya hadn’t been stupid. She’d understood.
In her new clothes, she’d looked down at her skinny body, then up at her father. At the camera’s single eye.
“Who will see me?” she’d asked.
“Get on the bed” was all the answer he’d given her.
Pima County Justice Court, Tucson, Arizona. September
It was fall, but the sun was blazing in the sky, and the breeze that rattled the shaggy palm trees did little to cool the baking air. Zhenya and some of the others sought out scraps of shade and waited to be allowed to go back into the courtroom.
“Why are you here?”
Zhenya froze for a moment. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her legs tensed, and without hesitation her eyes sought out the nearest corner, the closest spot where she could run, get lost in the crowd, disappear from view.
Then she regained control of herself and turned to look at the woman who’d asked the question.
They were standing beneath the courthouse’s green dome, which reminded Zhenya of the mosques back in Arkhangelsk. Inside, the judge, a woman with a face like a hawk’s, had gotten angry over something and everyone had been shooed outside so the lawyers could argue. Now they all stood here on
the sun-baked plaza, sweating.
“Excuse me?” Zhenya asked.
The woman was old, at least fifty, with a too-tight tanned face and hair that had been bleached blond. But her expression was friendly. “I come to watch the show,” she said. “It’s something different every week. Better than television or the movies.”
Zhenya waited for a moment. Then, nodding, she said, “Yes, better than the movies.”
The woman grinned and held out her hand. “I’m Bonnie, by the way. Bonnie Wright.”
“Jane,” Zhenya said, shaking the hand. It was hard and dry. “My name is Jane.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jane. Where’re you from?”
“New York.”
Bonnie’s eyes widened a little, but she didn’t ask for any more details. “So, what do you think of this guy?” she said. “What’s his name again?”
Zhenya nearly made a mistake. “Warlock,” she almost said. “He calls himself Warlock.” But then she realized that this hadn’t been mentioned in the courtroom, that no one knew what he called himself when he wrote those horrible messages, when he described what he would do to her and what she would look like by the time he was done. No one knew, except her.
“I’m not sure,” she said finally. “I don’t remember his real name.”
That was a mistake too, which caused Bonnie to give her a curious look. Even after all this time, it was hard for Zhenya to guess exactly what English words to use. You could get yourself in trouble so easily and barely be able to figure out why.
But it also protected her, this hesitation, this difficulty in putting sentences together. No one here, no one in America, was ever suspicious of her—they always gave her the benefit of the doubt. She could have used a vile word, and she had learned quite a few, and people would still have thought she didn’t mean it.
“This man,” she said. “Do you believe he is guilty?”
Bonnie shrugged and frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “He seems like a nice guy. Not at all what I expected.”
Someone called out from the front door of the courthouse, and they turned to go back inside. “And you,” Bonnie asked. “What do you think?”
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests Page 33
