12

Chapter Eleven

While the rest of us had been at court, I'd had a first-year associate from the firm pick up Katherine and her grandfather, and take them to get my witness prepared for the day. She had her hair done, then dealt with a makeup artist fussing over her for a couple hours to get that 'doesn't look like she's wearing any makeup' look (which I have never managed to pull off myself), all before being delivered to the courthouse. She looked the perfect picture of a sweet young thing from the Midwest, all smiles and naivete and trustworthiness.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god—"

… assuming, of course, that she didn't hyperventilate, pass out, and ruin all that hard work before we could even make it into the courtroom.

"Katherine," I said, sitting down next to her at the table in the conference room, and putting a hand on the tiny garbage pail she had in her lap. "Just take a few deep breaths. You've been rehearsing this for weeks. You'll be fine."

We still had forty-five minutes, and I was not going to pass up the chance to fit a bit more prep in. That said, this wasn't exactly the prep I wanted, but I wasn't about to be a choosing beggar.

It did necessitate pulling Katherine into an adjoining conference room, though. This state of anxiety would not be helped by having to share a room with John when his fate was the cause of her anxiousness in the first place.

"B-but what if I screw up?" she asked, her grip on the trash pail still white-knuckled. "What if I make a mistake, and ruin everything?"

"Then you make a mistake," I said, speaking with the same tone I'd use for forgetting something at the grocery store.

Predictably, Katherine looked away from the garbage pail, expression suitably poleaxed.

"People make mistakes in the courtroom all the time," I told her as I reached into my briefcase for a printed copy of our testimony plan and an egg timer. "And regardless of whose mistake it was, it's the attorney's job to fix it, plan around it, etcetera. Think about it this way," I said as I put the stapled packet in front of her. "If someone in a play forgets their lines, what do the other actors do?"

"They… uh, they try to feed them the line? Or get that line in the next one?" Katherine's answer was more of a question than a statement, but it did serve the purpose of distracting her long enough for me to get the garbage pail away from her and back onto the floor.

"And that's part of my job," I explained. "If you lose your place, or you forget something, don't worry. I will ask another question to remind you what you forgot, and you can just pick it up from there."

"But won't that hurt things?" she asked. Even as she asked this, though, I could see the tension leaking out from her shoulders.

"Not really," I answered. "We have people forget what to say on the stand all the time. It's just part of the day to day. But if you're still concerned," I tapped on the packet in front of her, "we can go over it one more time?"

"Please?" Katherine asked. I smiled back at her, made my way around to the other side of the table, and quizzed her.

This last bit of practice only focused on the hardest part of Katherine's testimony, the part she was worried about: the big pivot. It was the point at which she turned from a character witness to a material one, and it hinged on being able to sell the jury on this being a natural progression of her testimony. The specific answer that led to it was one we'd played with again and again, revised, changed, scrapped, rewrote, and practiced.

We sat there practicing for half an hour, and only took note of the time again when the egg timer went off. We had fifteen minutes to get into the courtroom now, and it was as good a time as any to stop.

"Feeling a little better now?" I asked, taking the packet from Katherine before sliding it and the egg timer back into my briefcase.

"Y-yeah," Katherine said, standing up from her chair. "Alright. Uh, ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

"One last thing," I said, hand still in my briefcase. My fingers closed around a glasses case, and I retrieved a pair of slim, rimless glasses, which I handed over to my witness. "Put those on for me?"

"Uh, okay?" Katherine opened up the glasses and slid them on, her confusion magnified by the clear lenses. "H-how do I look?"

"Perfect," I said with a smile. "It's a good look on you."

And, assuming Judge Andrews didn't somehow limbo his way under and around binding (if new) precedent, it meant that the same mental bias that made glasses help St. John would work in Katherine's favor here.

"Now, let's get going," I said, looking up at my witness. "Don't want to keep the jury waiting."

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?" The bailiff asked Katherine, who had just been seated on the witness stand. Her hand sat atop a bible, which she looked at as though it was about to bite her.

A bit of a shame that the court didn't have a Torah handy instead.

"I do," she answered. The bailiff nodded at this and withdrew, taking the bible with him.

"Permission to enter the well, your Honor?" I asked Judge Andrews.

"Permission granted," he said.

With that, I walked around defense counsel's table, and entered the well of the court, whereupon I walked to my right so that I stood at the very far left of the jury box.

"Good afternoon Katherine," I said with a smile. "Could you introduce yourself to the court for us?"

"S-sure," she said, voice ever so slightly hesitant. "Um, my name is Katherine Pryde. My friends call me, uh, well. I've heard Kathy, Katie, Kat, Kitty, and probably a few more that I don't remember?"

"And where are you from, Katherine?"

"I'm from Deerfield," she said. "It's a town a bit north from Chicago."

"That's quite a ways from Manhattan," I said, pacing two steps closer to the witness stand. "What brought you out to New York City?"

"Well, uh," Katherine started, fiddling with her fingers a little bit. "So summer after seventh grade, I went to this summer program for performing arts here in the city, and was doing this one for music. And the program had all these computers that let them do some cool stuff with music, and nobody else wanted anything to do with it!"

She giggled a little at that, and a quick glance out of the corner of my eye showed me that a few of the jurors were smiling at her. Good, that's what I wanted to see.

"We had one computer at my school in Deerfield, and I barely got five minutes to use that thing the whole year. So I started playing around on it, and then in, like, the third week of the program, the music and theater sections worked together to put on a one-act musical."

"And how did that go?" I asked.

"Objection," Lou Young said. "This is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Laying foundation has a limit, your Honor."

"The witness is explaining how she knows the defendant," Judge Andrews said, cutting me off before I could say anything. "I don't care how long the story is, I want it on my record. Overruled."

"Thank you, your Honor," I said. "Sorry about that, Katherine. Back to my question: how did the one-act musical go?"

"Well if I'm being honest, it kinda sucked," Katherine replied, prompting a few chuckles from the audience. "I'm sorry, it's just—look, there are actors who are good in plays, and actors who are good in musicals, and I don't care how good of an actor you are, if you can't sing, then nothing I do will make you sound good!"

"What do you mean by making them sound good?" I asked as a follow-up question, tilting my head ever so slightly to the side, as though I was confused.

"Well, I was running the audio booth for the play," Katherine said. "So I controlled the volume of the microphones and the music, how the sound came through, who was louder and quieter. And uh… well, long story short? The teacher who ran the program pulled me aside the next day and told me he'd put me forward for a scholarship to the high school if I wanted it."

"And what did you do about this offer?"

"I talked with my parents about it when I got back to Deerfield," Katherine replied. "We looked everything over, and decided that it was probably a better school than Deerfield High, or any of the ones in Chicago. And I mean, I'm living with my granddad, so it's not like I'm all alone out here."

"And how did this lead to you meeting St. John?" I asked, again stepping just that tiny bit closer to the witness stand."

"So we… uh, quick question?" Katherine asked, looking up to Judge Andrews. "Um, he told us all to call him John because none of us were pronouncing it right?" A few laughs resounded through the courtroom, and Katherine's blush was easily visible through the makeup. "Can I do that, or do I have to say his full name?"

"Let the record reflect that unless stated otherwise, any mentions of 'John' by the witness is in reference to the defendant, Mr. Allerdyce," Judge Andrews said, before he looked down at Katherine from the bench. "Continue, miss Pryde."

"Okay, so uh, the question was how John and I met, right?" Katherine asked.

"That is correct," I replied, nodding as I did. While a simple nod would have been preferable, that would have simply led to Judge Andrews telling the stenographer to record my nod on the record.

"Well, after about two weeks of high school, the theater department called all of us there on performing arts scholarships for a meet and greet in the theater, and to let us vote on what the first show would be," Katherine replied, tapping her fingers on the witness stand. "And I'm one of the last one to get there, cause I still wasn't used to having to get past so many people in the halls. When I get there, there's four actors, three actresses, and then there's John, and he just looks like he wants to be anywhere else, which I thought was pretty weird.

"But I saw where he was looking, and it was one of the three teachers who run the theater department, and he's just sitting up on the stage, smoking a cigarette." Katherine chuckled. "Or uh, I guess he was trying to, because it kept going out every time he tried to smoke it. Which I guess was John putting it out, but at the time we all just thought he'd ruined his cigarette somehow.

"But anyway, I sit down next to John, we all introduce ourselves, and then came deciding what the first production we'd put on was. And uh, we ended up deciding on Fiddler on the Roof," she said.

"My favorite," I added with a small smile. "Whose idea was it?"

"It was John's," Katherine revealed. "He got everyone on board with two words: fog machine."

"I can see why that went over well," I said, again stepping closer to the witness stand as I did. "So that's how you two met. When did you become friends?"

"Well, pretty quick after that," Katherine replied. "John was there for lighting design and I was there for sound design, so the two of us ended up working together a lot. I'm pretty sure we were hanging out together outside of class and theater stuff, what, a month later? Tops?"

"I see," I said, and strode forward until I was just in front of the witness stand, signaling to the jury behind me that something was coming. "And how did you learn that St. John is a mutant?" I asked.

Almost instantly, the tension in the courthouse ratcheted up a few notches. The usual small murmuring you hear from the gallery fell to a dead quiet, aside from the occasional creak of the benches as people leaned forward.

"Well, that's a bit of a crazy story," Katherine said, fidgeting a little with her hands. "But uh, does… anybody here know about theater lights? Like, at all?"

Over at my table, St. John raised his hand. Somewhere in the very far back of the courtroom, that same absurdly tall and broad man, who had been coming in every single day of the case (and who never took off his trilby hat), also raised his hand. I, for the obvious reason that I'd rehearsed this whole thing with Katherine nine times now, raised my own.

Somehow, in a city where Broadway existed, these were the only raised hands in the entire courtroom.

Amazing.

"Objection, your Honor," Lou Young said, standing. "It is not the witness's place to ask informational questions."

"Given what she asked," Judge Andrews began, leaning over from the bench, "I'm pretty sure the specifics require that we all know some particular information, and the young lady wanted to make sure we knew about it." He nodded down at Katherine. "Miss Pryde, please continue. I'm intrigued."

Yes! Hurdle one, passed!

Lou Young was correct: the witness asking anything other than a rhetorical question was not something that should be happening. Rhetorical questions got a pass because the answer was implied within the question, so they may as well have been a yes or no by another name.

"So, uh, theater lights are really, really big, right?" She held up her hands in pantomime, and sketched out in the air an object about two and a half feet tall, and a full foot in diameter. "And they also get really hot. Then there's these small lights, uh, we call them Fresnels, I think it's after the name of whoever came up with them?" Katherine shrugged. "Anyway, those lights, we're told that we should never put our hands on the glass, cause if we do, well we leave some of the oils on our hands behind when we touch stuff, and that will catch on fire when the lights are on for a while."

Katherine put her hands down on the bench in front of the witness stand, as if in demonstration, and I could hear a few of the jurors behind me raising their hands up or wiping at the spots around them.

"And well, uh… that happened," Katherine continued. "Someone must've touched one of the Fresnels on the lens, so when we started up the lights to check everything, it seemed fine at first, but then three minutes later we started smelling smoke."

"Why did nobody pull the fire alarm?" I asked, putting voice to the question on everyone's minds.

"Well, some of the seniors who work backstage? They liked to go up into the lighting catwalks for a smoke, so we thought it was one of them," Katherine explained. "Well, until the Fresnel lit on fire."

"What happened next?" I asked.

"Everyone kinda panicked," Katherine said. "I remember I was up in the light and sound booth, freaking out, tugging on John's arm cause it was just the two of us up there." She laughed, ever so slightly, but it was there. "He just slid open the window at the front of the booth, reached out a hand, and the fire flew off of the light and into his hand. Then he just closed his fist, and the fire was gone."

"How many people were there?" I asked.

"About twelve of us," Katherine said. "Everyone met up down on stage afterwards, and all of us swore we wouldn't tell anyone. We told the drama teachers the light burned out on its own, but that we cut the power before it could set itself on fire."

"And why did you promise not to tell anybody?" I asked, stepping a tad closer to Katherine.

"Cause we know how people think about mutants," she answered. "I've seen them come up on the news, and my grandpa just talks about how the last time he heard people talking about people like that was a few months before he wound up on a train to Auschwitz."

There. Right there, murmurs and whispers filled the courtroom. Obviously I couldn't turn and look at the jury, but I could hear the way three of the jurors' dangly earrings chimed as they moved their heads back and forth. This was exactly the reaction I'd been hoping for, because it relied very heavily on one thing: shame.

Our history textbooks painted us as the Big Damn Heroes in World War II. We were on the side of righteousness, the side of the angels, who no evil could stain. And here they were, having grown up hearing how they were the heroes… and the generation below their own compared them to the 'baddies'.

It wasn't exactly a scarlet letter, but it would have to do.

"So what happened after you all learned St. John is a mutant?" I asked.

"He stopped hiding his powers if we knew them," Katherine said. "He doesn't like smoking, and would always walk away whenever someone had a cigarette near him. But now, he just takes the fire out of the cigarette, and, " Katherine snapped her fingers, "whisks it away. Oh, and his powers make lighting design for sets so much easier!"

"How so?" I asked, leaning in as if interested. Sure enough, if the creaking of chairs was any indication, several jurors leaned in as well.

"Okay, so when the theater department gets started on building a set, the stagecraft folks?" Katherine looked up with a manic grin, and just as we'd practiced, it faltered a little. "Uh, right. So, stagecraft, it's uh, the people who build the set and props and stuff. And do backstage work for the shows."

I made a silent 'aah' of understanding, and Katherine took the signal to continue.

"Okay, so when they're building a set?" That excited energy was back, and Katherine scooted to the front of the chair on the witness stand so she could be just that little bit closer to everyone. "Well, the stagecraft folks build a little model of the set, complete with paper cutouts for the actors. And John's part of the lighting design crew, so they'd all gather around that little diorama, pull out some lighters, get some aluminum foil and wire and stuff? They made little cones of foil to focus it, and John gets some small bits of fire from the lighters, and they can test lighting before they actually start hanging!"

Katherine calmed down a little once she finished saying that, and blushed a bit.

"Sorry, it's just… a little cool, really."

"It's perfectly fine," I told her with a smile of my own. "So, how else does St. John use his powers, that you know of?"

"Um… I mean, aside from putting out cigarettes and lighting mockups?" Katherine shrugged. "I really can't think of any. Like, I've been with him in chemistry class with twenty bunsen burners going, and he doesn't even use his powers there to speed things up for us. Not even the time I wanted him to! That one lab with the magnesium took so long we spent all of lunch in the chem lab!" Katherine crossed her arms and turned to send a light glare towards St. John at the defense table. "You could've gotten us out of there faster, John! But no, we had to miss lunch right before PE! They made us do a timed mile on an empty stomach, John!"

Perfect.

"Katherine. In your opinion, is St. John the kind of person who would use his powers to attack another person?" I asked.

This question was crucial. This was me opening the door to character evidence, which meant there was a very real chance I would be facing a rebuttal witness from the prosecution on Monday. St. John had given me a list of how many people knew about his powers, and I knew all of them were on his side.

But there was always the chance that somebody else knew, and right now I was taking that chance.

"Objection!" Lou Young rose to his feet. "Counsel is leading the witness."

"Your Honor," I started, "I am merely asking the witness to testify as to her opinion on my client's character."

"And there are ways to ask that without leading the girl by the nose!" Lou continued, raising his voice.

"While those ways do exist," Judge Andrews said, "I do believe that 'the girl', as the DA put it, is looking a little lost."

Lou and I both turned to look at Katherine, who, sure enough, had a rather confused expression on her face. Which was, again, exactly as practiced – I'd told her to try and look as baffled, befuddled, or otherwise bewildered as she could whenever objections started flying. Legalese was a complex enough subset of the English language that it was rather believable, and with a bit of luck it would endear her to the judge.

Sure enough, that was exactly what had happened.

"Your objection is valid, DA Young, but in the interests of not losing our witness, I'm going to overrule it," Judge Andrews said. "The witness may answer the question as asked."

"Um…" Katherine looked up at the judge with a frown. "W-what was the question?"

The court stenographer read back my question.

"He's… really not that kind of person, no," Katherine answered. "Like, I know some people at school who I wouldn't even trust with a stick, but John's the type who just… you feel safe around him, you know? And like, when he came to school with stitches and a black eye, none of us could believe it, cause like, he's not the one who gets into fights!"

Perfect. There was the segue, maybe not in the exact words we'd planned. Regardless, it would work. I took a few steps towards defense counsel's table, acting against all popular wisdom by leading my witness's attention away from the jury. Matt heard the signal and pulled two copies of our prepared brief from where they rested at the very front of his trial binder.

"Katherine, when you say St. John came to school with 'stitches and a black eye', as you put it, when did this happen?" I asked.

"Objection!" Lou Young rose to his feet. "Your Honor, the defense called this witness to offer character testimony regarding the accused, which can only take the form of reputational or opinion evidence!"

"Your Honor, this question lays foundation for further testimony, the nature of which will become clear after my next two questions," I said. I could have produced the brief now, but that wouldn't have had the same effect on the jury. I needed one more key objection from Lou Young, one last bit of unwitting help from him in building my narrative.

"Your Honor—"

"Overruled," Judge Andrews said, leaning forward on the bench. "I want to see where this is going. Continue, counselor."

"Thank you, your Honor," I said, doing my level best to not crack a smile. "Once again: Katherine, when did St. John come to school with stitches and a black eye?"

"It was, uh, the last week of classes I think?" She held up her hands and started counting off fingers, looking up as though trying to remember something as she did. "Okay, last day of classes was Friday the twelfth, so… May eleventh? Yeah, the eleventh. And he'd missed the Tuesday and Wednesday too."

"And how much did St. John tell you of what happened to give him his injuries?" I asked.

"Objection!" Young yelled, rising to his feet with a stomp. "Your Honor, this is the clearest example of hearsay I've ever heard!"

"A moment of the court's indulgence, your Honor," I said in response, and walked back towards my table. Matt, sharp as ever, held out the two packets I'd signaled him to have ready for me. I took them from him, and went across the aisle to the prosecutor's table. "Let the record reflect that I am handing a copy of a document to opposing counsel," I said, then walked back into the well. "Permission to approach the bench, your Honor?"

"Granted. Both of you, up here for a sidebar," Judge Andrews said as he took the pocket brief from my hands, putting on his reading glasses with his other hand. "Ms. Schaefer, what am I looking at here?"

"Controlling precedent on this matter," I said, even as Lou Young stood up from counsel's table and joined as at the bench. "The decision in Richards v. Doom earlier this year, on May 28."

If I hadn't been so busy, then maybe I would have noticed this case when the decision was handed down, as opposed to learning about it when Sam Lieberman let me set fifteen first- and second-year associates on finding me some way to get St. John's side of the story onto the record. Fifty-five pro bono hours per attorney, and a second round of associates later, we finally had our answer—and we only thought to look at such a recent decision because one associate liked to read all of his newspapers for the week all at once on Friday afternoons.

Reed Richards v. Victor Werner von Doom, 962 A.D. 987 (1st Dep't 1989). Wherein the judge ruled that the description of an event where metahuman powers were used, spoken by the person who used those powers, was admissible as an exception to the rule against hearsay.

The particulars of the case were, in my opinion, utterly hilarious. For reasons that I was not aware of, Victor von Doom was the godfather to the Richards' daughter Valeria, and part of the agreement under which he was named godfather allowed for him to take temporary custody of Valeria several times a year. Mister Fantastic, for reasons that I could only begin to fathom, ranted and raved about past attempts to have this custody agreement and von Doom's status as godfather revoked, including multiple incidents in which he had used his powers to perform, if I was to be generous, stalking. All of this, he said in front of his daughter Valeria.

Valeria, in a display that proved her to be the most precocious two-year-old since the Richards' first child, repeated the entirety of Reed's rant back to Dr. Doom, verbatim. And then, at von Doom's prompting, she did it again, only this time she was on video.

Victor von Doom filed a restraining order against Reed Richards, and von Doom's attorneys submitted the video as evidence. At trial level, the judge ruled that due to the description of times in which he had used his superpowers, something which only Reed would be reasonably qualified to comment on, his rant (as repeated by Valeria and videotaped by Doom) was admissible as part of an existing exception to the rule against hearsay. Specifically, they slid in under the "statement by party opponent" exception.

Now, normally the "party opponent" bit would mean that this didn't apply to my case. However, the judge that wrote the opinion was a canny fellow.

"As you can see, your Honor, the opinion states that so long as the testimony contains information regarding the actual use of metahuman powers, and those statements came from the user, they may be offered regardless of whether the offeror is actually an adverse party," I said, making sure to speak clearly so the stenographer could hear.

"This is ridiculous," Lou Young said with a huff. "The party opponent exception clearly states—"

"That's enough Lou," Judge Andrews said, raising a hand. He took off his reading glasses and slid the pocket brief to the side. "Ms. Schaefer, I want to make this absolutely clear: I am in grave disagreement with the opinion in the brief you've presented. I believe it twists the party opponent exception into knots, all based on a case that wouldn't have required doing so in the first place, and stands as nothing less than judicial activism. But regardless of my opinion on the matter, if nothing else is sacred in a court of law, then stare decisis is. Your witness can offer the defendant's statements to her as testimony, but only those statements discussing the instances in which he used his mutant powers. Am I clear?"

"Your Honor," I started, "it would be highly prejudicial for the jury to not hear the context surrounding the instances of—"

"I do not care about the context," Judge Andrews cut me off with a small wave of his hand.. "All that you are allowed to solicit is a secondhand account of the defendant describing the exact instant in which he used his powers. Even a stray 'and', 'or', or 'but' beyond that will be stricken. Now I ask again: Am I clear?"

"Crystal," I replied frostily, and stalked back towards the witness stand, turning this over in my head. The decision in Richards v. Doom was meant to allow testimony regarding the entire event, as opposed to isolating the moments in which a meta used their power. This was specifically because you couldn't expect a jury to understand why the person used their powers that way without the context behind it.

Cabining the ruling like this was meant to be outside of Judge Andrews' purview, and just one more thing to bring up on appeal. He had to have known this, though, which left two options: one, he just wanted a 'tough on mutant crime' verdict ahead of campaign season; two, he was making a stand against judicial activism an ironic part of his reelection platform.

Regardless of which of these it was, though? If I'd had any doubts that he didn't care if this case was overturned on appeal, then they were gone. I was absolutely sure of it now.

There were many questions I'd wanted to ask Katherine. What did John tell you about how he ended up in that Alleyway? Who did John say started things?

I needed to press against the boundaries here.

"Katherine," I started. "What did John say happened in that alleyway that made him use his powers?"

"Objection," Lou Young said, standing immediately. "Per your Honor's ruling, counsel for the defense is only allowed to ask questions about the actual use of the defendant's mutant powers, not the events leading up to it."

"Your Honor—"

"Save it, Ms. Schaefer," Judge Andrews said, his voice harsh. "You heard my ruling during sidebar, and immediately tried to get around it. The question is stricken from the record, and the jury shall disregard. Try to sidestep my ruling again, and you will find yourself in contempt of court."

Shit.

I chewed at the inside of my cheek to stop from saying something I would regret, and fumed internally at this. Without the context, I would have to get short, sweet, and pithy. Just the absolute basics of the situation.

Fact one: pictures of the alleyway showed an almost straight line, where St. John restrained the fire from ever going past him. Fact two: none of the four thugs had any burn wounds. And fact three: the elements of the crime required that St. John had to actually attack them with a deadly weapon – in this case, his powers.

"My apologies about that, Katherine," I told her, trying my best to offer her a genial smile, despite the frustration I was feeling. "Given what Judge Andrews said, let me revise the last question I asked you: how much did John tell you about how he used his powers in that alleyway? Just how he used them," I clarified. "Not the why, just the how."

"John told me everything that happened," Katherine said, her voice hesitant as she flicked her gaze back up to the judge in the middle of what she was saying. Mercifully, Judge Andrews was silent on this, but he stared straight at her with laserlike focus.

"Okay then," I said, positioning myself at the front of the jury box. "How did St. John use his powers to protect himself in that alleyway?"

"John said he grabbed the fire out of the cigarette one of the thugs had in his mouth," Katherine said, making a slight grasping motion just in front of her mouth. "He told me he took that and just, made this big ol' wall of fire on either side of him and back behind him." She gestured with her arms in a semicircle above her. "Like a porcupine, almost. Just, well, burny instead of pointy. Or uh, maybe like, you know how cats puff up when they get scared? Kind of like that, but… uh, yeah. Burny."

Fact one: the fire was next to and behind St. John. On the record.

"And what about on the offense?" I asked her. My final question. "How did St. John use his powers against his four attackers?"

"I just said he made himself big and burny," Katherine said, frowning. "But um, other than that?" She shook her head. "John told me he just held the fire around himself until they all turned and ran, and that's it. No fireballs, no flamethrowers, nada. He just puffed up and put it out once he was alone again."

"No fireballs, no flamethrowers," I repeated, glancing sideways at the jury for just a moment before returning my gaze to my witness, and offering her a smile. "Thank you very much for agreeing to testify today, Katherine."

And then, I turned and headed towards counsel's table.

"Your witness," I told Lou, just before I sat down.

Lou Young made a big show of loudly sighing as he stood, taking the time to push his chair in and button up his jacket with excruciating slowness. I recognized buying time when I saw it – he was either thinking over his options, or just putting on a show to make me think he was.

And to be frank, I wasn't sure which of those two possibilities this was, so if it was the latter, it was working.

"Permission to enter the well, your Honor?" Lou asked.

"Permission granted," Judge Andrews said, and Lou immediately took position smack dab in the center of the well. A bit of an odd choice, in my opinion; if it were me, I would have positioned myself so the jury looked towards defense counsel's table, but couldn't see past me to see St. John.

"Ms. Pryde," Lou began. "You were not actually in the alleyway that day, were you?"

"Well gee, what gave you that idea?" Katherine said as she leaned back in the witness's chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I will need a yes or no answer, Miss Pryde," Lou Young said, never losing that greasy not-smile from his face.

"Then no, I wasn't," Katherine said, frowning.

"And your only knowledge of what happened there is the days-old account of somebody who had recently received medical attention for a head wound," the DA added, to which I frowned.

"And?" Katherine asked back. "I trust him."

"Regardless of whether you trust him, you'd agree that you have no way of knowing whether or not the defendant's account of what happened in the alleyway is accurate, correct?" Lou asked.

"Oh, just like you didn't know if your thug was lying to your face?" Katherine asked, all smiles all of a sudden. I had to clench my jaw hard to not smile at that one.

"Your Honor," Lou Young said to the judge, who leaned over from the bench to stare at Katherine.

"Ms. Pryde," Judge Andrews said, "while you have been given some leeway so far due to your age, I do not tolerate sass in my courtroom, young lady. Now, the District Attorney has asked you a simple yes-or-no question, and I expect you to answer him with either a yes or a no. Do you understand me, Ms. Pryde?"

The smile on Katherine's face faded when the judge began speaking to her, and the color faded further from her expression the longer Judge Andrews spoke. At the end, all that Katherine could do was nod, her skin ashen and shoulders ever-so-slightly shaking.

"Objection," I said, rising to my feet. "Badgering the witness."

"Overruled," Judge Andrews said. "Now, Ms. Pryde. Do you have any way of knowing whether or not what the defendant told you of the events in the alleyway are accurate, or not?"

"N-no," she said, unable to meet Judge Andrews' gaze. I wanted to say something, object, give Katherine a little breathing room here… but there was nothing I could say or do at this time.

"Then for all we know, you could have been repeating lies, correct?" Lou Young asked as a follow-up, stalking closer to the witness stand as he did.

"Objection!" I yelled out, still standing from my last one. "I think the DA can put two and two together and understand that his most recent question has been asked and answered already, your Honor."

"Your Honor, there is a difference between—"

"Sustained," Judge Andrews interrupted. "Ask a different question, District Attorney."

"Well, in that case," Lou Young said, turning away from Katherine. "Nothing further for this witness."

The DA strutted back to his table, pulled out his chair, and sat down, all the while looking like the cat that got the canary.

I stood from my chair.

"Nothing further for this witness, your Honor," I said. "The defense rests."

"Very well," Judge Andrews said. "Ms. Pryde, you are excused. Bailiff?"

The bailiff came up and helped Katherine down from the witness stand before escorting her back into the gallery. The courtroom was abuzz with murmurs, and a brief glance at the jury showed many a disappointed frown directed at the District Attorney.

"What are you hearing?" I asked Matt.

"He lost two jurors," Matt murmured back. "One commented about being glad her daughter wasn't forced to deal with Young. Another juror muttered something about the DA forgetting who was on trial."

Okay. That would be the parents, then. There were five parents on the jury, and three of them were going to be iffy. Well, only one of them now, hopefully.

"As both sides have concluded with their respective cases-in-chief," Judge Andrews began, "then unless there are any further matters to attend to, we shall proceed to closing arguments."

"Your Honor," Lou Young said, standing from his seat. "As the defense has opened the door to character evidence with Miss Pryde's testimony, the prosecution requests that we adjourn until Monday afternoon to allow a chance to prepare and call a rebuttal witness."

"If you can find a rebuttal witness," Judge Andrews said, "then I will expect to see a fax to my chambers when I arrive at 8am Monday morning. In the event that you do not find one, court shall resume at 9am this coming Monday with closing arguments. Should you manage to find one, the defense shall be notified as soon as I am, and we will meet in my chambers to determine when they shall be heard."

Translation: just like I did, Judge Andrews knew that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of Lou finding a rebuttal witness. This was nothing more than a play for time to draft his closing arguments.

And what was worse, I couldn't realistically object to this one. I had introduced character evidence first; therefore, he was allowed to offer his own.

That said, the fact that he wasn't immediately calling the witness or providing their name was proof enough that such a witness didn't exist.

"Court is adjourned."

Judge Andrews brought the gavel down, and the timer in my head started counting down.

"What now?" St. John asked, having to raise his voice a little to be heard over the movement in the gallery.

"Now, I get ready to knock the jury's socks off with my closing argument," I said with a smile that I didn't really feel. "Matthew, on the other hand, needs to get ready for a long, boring weekend of being my sounding board."

"It's bearable with a bucket of popcorn," he said. "So long as you ignore the pacing."

I offered only a disdainful sniff in response.

"And me?" St. John asked again. "What do I do?"

"You pray," I told St. John frankly, turning to look him in the eye. "You pray for your god to make those jurors ignore the DA's agenda of fearmongering and scare tactics. You pray that they listen to reason. You pray, and hope, because once the jurors go into deliberations, that's all we can do, so you'd best get started now. And Matthew should pray too," I added. "The more voices, the better."

"What about you?" St. John asked, fright and confusion warring in his eyes. "You're gonna be praying too, right?"

I shook my head.

"I'm Jewish," I said, fingering the small Star of David pendant around my neck, the only jewelry I wore on a daily basis. "If you've read the Old Testament, the Torah, you'll know that elohim is a wrathful sort. And I think that right now, we could all do with a little bit of mercy."

"Amen," Matt said, hands clasped around the handle of his cane. "Amen."

Sure enough, Monday came, and there was no rebuttal witness in sight. Of course there wasn't. The rebuttal witness never existed in the first place, and all of us knew that.

But what that request gave me was the opportunity to prepare both my closing argument and a pair of contingency plans. Just in case the jury collectively decided to shove their heads up each other's asses.

We seated ourselves in the courtroom early, the gallery filling up around us with the droning hum of a dozen hushed conversations. The media had set itself up in the gallery and along the left wall of the courtroom, reporters and cameramen ready and waiting to capture closing arguments in what was sure to be a landmark case. I could also see one man at the corner of the press area with what looked to be a Latverian flag patch on his sleeve – it would seem citing That One Case attracted some attention. Time would tell if that was good or bad, to be sure, but it wasn't important right now.

If there was one thing I could say for Judge Andrews, it was that he ran his courtroom in a timely manner. The moment the clock struck nine, I heard the curtain behind the bench part, and the bailiff stood.

"All rise," he intoned, and the lot of us took to our feet in accordance with his will. "Presiding, the Honorable Philip Andrews."

Judge Andrews took his seat, scanned the gallery, and lingered for a moment on the press. A frown crossed his face, just as it had all the other days he saw them, as he used no words to let the media know just what he thought of their collective presence within his courtroom.

"You may be seated," he said, and everybody took their seats. "District Attorney Young, you requested the opportunity to call a rebuttal witness in response to defense counsel's use of character evidence. Do you have a witness to call at this time?"

"We do not, your Honor," Lou Young said, his voice seeming apologetic, but I knew an act when I see one. "The prosecution apologizes for delaying the proceedings of this court."

The heavy wooden door at the back of the courtroom creaked loudly as it opened, and from what I was hearing, the person opening it was trying to just barely make an opening large enough to squeeze through before slipping in. I could only frown; that was poor etiquette at the best of times, and downright insulting at the worst.

Sure enough, Judge Andrews flicked his eyes towards whoever was probably slipping inside, but looked back to DA Young a moment later.

"Very well," the judge said.

Interestingly, he then proceeded to make a big show of shuffling some papers on his desk, flipping a legal pad and pulling a pen out of the holder on the left side of the bench. The door creaked closed as he did this, and I wagered he was just waiting so he didn't have to try and talk over the door.

"At this time, would the prosecution like to—Officer!" Judge Andrews yelled, slamming his palm on the bench suddenly. "Officer!"

The gavel soon joined it, and everybody in the courtroom looked directly to the front.

"Drop it!" Judge Andrews ordered. A moment passed, and he spoke again. "Put it out! Now!"

A loud stomp echoed through the courtroom, followed by the sound of rubber squeaking on the wooden floor. A tap on my shoulder turned my attention towards Matt, who had a hand over the side of his face closest to the judge and was mouthing a word at me.

'Cigarette'.

Oh, no.

"Bailiff!" Judge Andrews roared, slamming his gavel down hard enough I thought it would crack. "Bring that man to me!"

The bailiff stalked forth from the well of the court and strode with purpose to the back of the gallery. Mere moments later, he was frogmarching a young police officer, early twenties at best, up to the front of the courtroom. The bailiff brought him past the bar of the court, and he stood in the well, his hands shaking, and what little of his face I could see was pale and tense.

"State your name, Officer," Judge Andrews commanded.

"M-Malcolm Reynolds, s-sir," the young man said.

"Mister Reynolds," Judge Andrews started, putting particular emphasis on his choice of title. "Do you know how to read?"

"S-sir?" Reynolds said.

"There was a sign," the judge said, "on the door to the courtroom. It read: 'no smoking within the courtroom'. And if you had a working pair of eyes, a functioning brain, or even bothered to listen to the court sergeant for fifteen seconds, then you would know why that is."

The bailiff walked towards the bench and handed Judge Andrews an object, which he held up between two fingers for all to see.

"You brought a lit cigarette," he said, holding the now-extinguished article, "into the only courtroom in the entire country where that was tantamount to handing the accused a loaded gun. You endangered the lives of every single person in this courtroom because you didn't use the most basic level of care a man in your profession must exercise."

Judge Andrews leaned down over the bench, staring at the officer like the man was a turd on the bottom of his boot.

"I hereby find you in contempt of court. Another officer will escort you to turn in your badge and gun. You won't be keeping this job with a criminal charge on your record."

The judge gestured to the back of the courtroom, and one of the officers posted along the wall came forward to take the now-former officer Reynolds away to his fate. The man was dead silent as the officer escorted him away, dragging his feet like a man to the gallows.

When the heavy oaken door slammed shut behind the officer and his contemptible charge, naught but silence reigned in the courtroom.

That was, until I stood, my heels clicking on the courtroom floor.

"Your Honor," I said, doing my best to control my voice. "The defense moves for an immediate mistrial."

"Denied," Judge Andrews said, not even missing a beat.

I blinked. He… denied it? He denied the clearest example of a mistrial that ever should have existed?

"Your Honor—"

"What I told you in Chambers last week still applies, Counsel," Judge Andrews said. "There was no mistrial then, and there shall be no mistrial today."

I looked towards the jury, most of whom sat there with expressions of disgust, shock, and anger on their faces. Two seemed somehow unfazed, one sat with a scowl, and the man I desperately hoped was not the jury foreman had this oddly satisfied expression.

Some directed these looks towards the back of the courtroom, where the now-former officer had been escorted out, but much of it was pointed squarely at the source of the possible danger.

And in their minds, that threat sat at my table.

"But your Honor—"

"That is enough, Ms. Schaefer," Judge Andrews said. "I have already found one person in contempt of court. I have no trouble doing so again."

I sat down in my chair. What more choice did I have?

"Strike everything from the prosecution apologizing for not having a witness until now," Judge Andrews said, turning to the court stenographer. "We are starting fresh."

Even as the stenographer crossed every one of those incriminating lines out, I wrote down as good of a shorthand of the exchange as I could remember. I added the time, the name of the officer found in contempt, and what all happened.

I wanted to object to having that stricken from the record. But with the warning – with the threat I'd been given, I couldn't risk it.

"Now." Judge Andrews surveyed the courtroom, eyes glaring holes into everybody present. "I am ordering a brief recess to allow us to calm ourselves. We will reconvene in one hour."

The gavel came down. A crack of wood resounded, and the head fell to the floor, bouncing several times before stopping.

"And in the meantime," Judge Andrews said, only audible because nobody had dared move yet. "I shall acquire a new gavel."