Mind Change

by T'Gracie Reese

  And, so saying, Adam Marsh sat down.

  The judge:

  “Prosecution’s first witness?”

  “Your honor, we’d like to hear from Ms. Barbara Richardson.”

  “All right, will the bailiff bring in Ms. Richardson?”

  Marsh frowned.

  “What could she have to say?” whispered Nina.

  But he merely shook his head.

  Barbara Richardson entered and sat down at the witness table.

  “You are Ms. Barbara Richardson?”

  “I am.”

  “What is your occupation, Ms. Richardson?”

  “I am CEO of Adornher, a cosmetics firm based in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I also have the honor to serve as chairman of the board of directors of Ellerton University.”

  “And it is in connection with these duties that you were in our city yesterday.”

  “Yes. The board convened for its monthly meeting an ten a.m.”

  “And what happened approximately one hour before that meeting?”

  “The president summarily dismissed the full-time faculty as well as the entire administration.”

  “And how did the board react to this?”

  “We were shocked, as everyone was. But rather than dismiss President Herndon immediately—which we thought might have added to an already chaotic situation—we simply implored her to wait, to reconsider her actions.”

  “And she did not do so.”

  “No. She called a meeting of all adjunct faculty, to whom she offered what were, in essence, full-time contracts.”

  “And she had no power to do this?”

  “Of course not. And, I might add, it was all done without the board’s knowledge.”

  “And how did Dr. Charles Iverson react to this?”

  “He was at a meeting in Hattiesburg. We called him immediately, of course, and he was shocked. He insisted that we hold a massive gathering last night at the stadium, in order to explain to the general public that the stories they were reading in The Gazette and on the AP wire were completely without foundation.”

  “These were stories Mr. Barnes had written.”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “What happened at the meeting?”

  “Dr. Herndon somehow managed to appear via the Jumbotron screen and announce a tuition cut of fifty percent. This was met with wild applause by the parents and students, and the entire event degenerated into chaos. The board was unable to make clear to the public that such a cut would be completely impossible, and that President Herndon was acting irrationally and needed to be, in fact had officially been, replaced by Provost Iverson.”

  “Can you talk about the events that transpired just before the announcement you have described?”

  “Yes. Provost Iverson and I held an impromptu meeting with several reporters, telling them essentially just what I’ve told you, and about how the university was planning to proceed.”

  “Was Mr. Barnes present?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately.”

  “How so?”

  “When I attempted to describe what happened at the board meeting, he became enraged and called me a liar. He was, I assume, attempting to defend the veracity of the bizarre stories he had been writing. Dr. Iverson attempted to point out to him the damage his tales had done to the academic community.”

  “Did Dr. Iverson threaten to have him fired?”

  “Yes. He also told him of the university’s plans…plans that are already being carried out—to sue The Gazette.”

  “Was Ms. Bannister present?”

  “Yes. She was embracing Mr. Barnes.”

  “Did you have the impression that the two of them were lovers?”

  Marsh:

  “Objection!”

  The judge:

  “Sustained.”

  And, to the prosecutor:

  “Let’s leave that for now.”

  “Very well, your honor. But Ms. Richardson, can you tell us what happened next?”

  “Mr. Barnes attacked the provost. The two men scuffled for several seconds before security police could get them apart.”

  “All right. And after the fight was over, you went into the stadium.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did either you or the provost see Mr. Barnes and Ms. Bannister again?”

  “No. I don’t know where they went or what they did.”

  “But you did hear from them? Or at least you heard from Mr. Barnes?”

  Marsh leaned over and whispered to Nina:

  “What’s he talking about?”

  She shook her head:

  “I have no idea.”

  Barbara Richardson:

  “It was about twenty minutes after the Jumbotron speech. The provost and I were still outside the stadium, calling as many people as we could, to try to undo the damage the president had done. Suddenly, a young man—probably a student—ran up to us and gave a folded sheet of paper to the provost, saying that he had been asked by Mr. Barnes to deliver this message. I could see the provost’s face begin to turn red. I heard him hiss the words, ‘If you write that, Barnes, you––’ He said an obscenity then.”

  “I understand.”

  “But he went on to say, ‘If you write that, I’ll kill you!’”

  There was silence in the courtroom.

  Rick, dumbfounded, was simply shaking his head.

  “And then, Ms. Richardson?”

  “The provost walked away, fast. I never saw him alive again.”

  A pause. Then the judge:

  “Mr. Marsh, do you have any questions for this witness?”

  Adam shook his head:

  “Not at this time, your honor. Reserve the right to recall.”

  “Very well. Mr. Prosecutor, your next witness.”

  “We call Officer Robert Swinton of the city police force.”

  A young, uniformed, blonde man entered the room, and took his place at the witness chair.

  “You are Officer Robert B. Swinton?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Were you called to investigate a shooting last night around ten thirty?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Who did you receive the call from?”

  “Dispatch. They said they’d just received a call saying that shots had been fired, and they gave us the address. My partner and I answered the call, and another unit joined us, pulling up to the door of the house just as we were. The door of the house was closed, but we could see two people standing inside. We called out to them to open the door, but for a time they did nothing. Finally, one of them, the woman, did what we asked, and we entered the premises.”

  “Are the two people you spoke of here today?”

  “Yes, sir, they are seated here at the two tables beside you.”

  “Let the record show that the witness has referred to Mr. Richard Barnes and Ms. Nina Bannister. Now, Officer, will you go on and tell us what you discovered in the room?”

  “We found the body of the man we later learned was Provost at Ellerton University.”

  “He was dead?”

  “Yes. His chest had been blown apart.”

  “And the murder weapon?”

  “It was lying beside the couch; a twenty gauge shotgun.”

  “What else did you find in the room, after a more thorough search?”

  “Sir, on a desk not too far from the sofa, a computer had been set up. It was open and turned on, and the screen was easily visible. I ignored it for some minutes, because so much else was happening in the house.”

  “I understand. Go on.”

  “But finally, I decided that whatever was on the screen might have some relevance to the case, because it seemed to have been written by the occupant of the house. So I went over and read it. After reading it, I decided that it certainly was relevant. A printer was hooked up beside the computer, so I printed off the document, which was a letter. Then I made sure that the computer got taken downtown as evidence.”

  Adam Marsh: />
  “You had no warrant to search the house, Officer, is that correct?”

  Prosecutor:

  “Officer, did you not say that the computer was in plain sight?”

  “Yes, sir. You couldn’t miss it.”

  “And the letter that apparently had just been written on it, did you make copies of that letter?”

  “Later on in the evening, yes, sir.”

  “Are these the copies that I’m holding in my hand?”

  “I believe they are.”

  “All right. I’m going to pass these around. Your honor, here’s one for the court. Mr. Marsh, here’s one for the defense. I’ll keep one myself. Your honor, permission to read this letter aloud to the court.”

  Marsh:

  “Objection, we do not know how this document was obtained nor have we had a chance to examine it beforehand.”

  The judge:

  “You’ve just heard how it was obtained. Perfectly legally, since the computer was there in plain sight. And you’re getting a chance to examine it right now, as we all are. Read the document.”

  The prosecuting attorney adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and read:

  “The Gazette has recently learned that Dr. Charles Iverson, provost of Ellerton University, has been engaged for almost a year in a complex scheme of embezzlement and money laundering, siphoning huge sums of money from the university’s retirement fund, and secreting it in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. The sum involved appears to be more than twenty-five million dollars, and the provost was able to obtain the funds for his own use by means of a complex scheme in which university financial officers as well as board members thought the money was being invested in conservative stocks and bonds. Mr. Iverson’s fraud was so cleverly carried out that even the most careful examinations were not able to––”

  The prosecutor stopped, then put down the letter.

  Nina looked at Rick’s face, which had not changed, and still remained frozen in an expression of shock.

  Finally, he shook his head and whispered:

  “This is insane. I never wrote such a thing.”

  The judge:

  “Defendant will refrain from speaking.”

  Silence for a time.

  Finally, the prosecutor:

  “Your honor. Our theory of the crime should now be quite obvious. The message that the young man delivered to the provost was clearly the story appearing on the computer, or at least the partial story. Mr. Barnes was enraged at the provost for threatening a major lawsuit, and also threatening to have him fired from his job at The Gazette. He thought if he could create this scandal, the furor would in some strange manner put the provost in the spotlight and make it look as though the provost were on a witch hunt. But more: he hated the man so much, that he wanted to cause as much pain as possible by showing him the story in advance. He probably knew that the provost would be enraged, and even come looking for Mr. Barnes. When the provost arrived, things got out of hand. The provost is a big man, he may have intimidated Mr. Barnes. What actually happened, we may not know for some time. But as for sufficient evidence—your honor, we have the murder weapon, and, even though it has been wiped clean of prints, it unquestionably belongs to Mr. Barnes. We have the fight earlier in the evening; we have the testimony of Mrs. Richardson, who saw the document delivered; we have Ms. Richardson’s memory of the provost––outraged––in as much as saying he was going after Mr. Barnes; and we have the document itself, just as it had been written, obviously by Mr. Barnes, and on his own word processor.”

  He paused, then said:

  “Of course, your honor, this is not a trial. We have no way of knowing whether Mr. Barnes’ allegations concerning financial misconduct are accurate. We do know that the two men hated each other, and that somehow they clashed in Mr. Barnes’ house, at a time when Mr. Barnes was there with a woman who seems to have been his mistress. Could this be a case of self defense? Possibly. Was it a crime of passion in some way? Also a possibility, and we will not know the truth of it until we get the truth out of the surviving witnesses. But sufficient evidence? Of course, there is. And so we move that these two defendants be bound over and held, without bail, awaiting trial.”

  The judge:

  “Mr. Marsh, both of these defendants are, I believe, your clients?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “Statements?”

  “Rick, you go first.”

  “All right.”

  Rick walked to the witness table. He spoke quietly, his voice shaking somewhat.

  “I have no idea what could have happened in my house last night. None of this makes any sense to me, any sense at all. Yes, I covered the assembly at the stadium and yes, the provost and I had a fight. He said my reports concerning what went on at the board meeting were inaccurate, and, worse still, that they were lies. They weren’t lies. They were entirely accurate. The board was shocked to find out what President Herndon had done, and they were about to vote for her dismissal. But Peter Stockton bribed them with the offer of millions of dollars in donations and fifty acres of prime land. They decided to do nothing at all, and simply wait to see if Lucinda Herndon’s revolution—and that’s what it is, a revolution—would be successful. I reported those things, just as they happened. When the provost attacked me, all right, I attacked him back. Then the meeting at the stadium happened. I covered it, wrote a story about it, and sent it to The Gazette. Then Ms. Bannister—we had been together all this time—parted, because she received an invitation to dine at the residence with President Herndon. That is where she went, and that is where she was from approximately eight until ten p.m., when we met at a wine bar.”

  “What did you do between eight and ten?”

  “I just walked. I’m sorry, I don’t remember exactly where I walked.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Of course, there are always students around, walking on campus.”

  “You didn’t speak to anyone?”

  “No, I was—just kind of lost in my own thoughts.”

  A pause.

  Then:

  “Mr. Barnes, this is going to come out eventually. It might as well come out now. What were you thinking about? What was occupying your mind to the extent that it pretty much blocked out everything else?”

  Rich was silent for a time, and finally looked at Nina.

  She nodded.

  And he said:

  “I had met Ms. Bannister only a day or so before. We found ourselves together during the remarkable events of yesterday. I guess we found that we were developing feelings for each other. I was debating whether, at the wine bar on Hacker Street, I would ask her to come home with me, and spend the night with me.”

  “And what did you decide?”

  “I decided to ask her, and she said yes.”

  “And so the two of you walked together back to your house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which you entered, and in which you saw the provost’s body?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You did not write the document that has been shown to the court?”

  “I’ve never seen such a document.”

  “You know nothing about a financial scam being perpetrated by the provost?”

  “Nothing at all. Even hearing about such a thing comes as a complete shock to me.”

  “You sent him no message, warning him that you were about to expose him?”

  “No. I was thinking about other things.”

  “About Ms. Bannister.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Rick, that’s all.”

  He returned to his seat.

  And it was her turn.

  It was as though she stepped out of her body and watched another human being walk the six steps to the witness table.

  But there she was.

  She had, she knew, a much better situation than Rick.

  She had an alibi.

  So she found it somewhat easier to say:r />
  “Mr. Barnes has pretty much told you all there is to say. I was with him at the stadium. I saw the fight and saw him write the story about what happened in the stadium. And yes, we parted. And yes, we had developed feelings for each other. He told me he needed to walk for a time. I knew what he was wondering about. I was wondering about it, too. But it was easier for me, because I was eating a late supper with President Herndon. She told me about her ideas in a bit more depth, and she asked me if I would accept a job she had mentioned earlier in the day. I told her I would take the job.”

  “And that job was?”

  “Locating more retired teachers—truly excellent teachers—who would come and spend a semester at Ellerton.”

  “And what time did you leave the residence?”

  “About ten minutes before ten.”

  “And then?”

  “I walked to the wine bar. I had a glass of wine with Rick—with Mr. Barnes. He asked me if I would go to bed with him, and I said yes. Then we left together, walked back to Mr. Barnes’ house, and discovered the body.”

  “Do you have anything more to say, Ms. Bannister?”

  “No, that’s all.”

  “All right, then, you may stand down.”

  She did so.

  The judge:

  “More witnesses, Mr. Marsh?”

  “Yes, your honor. Defense calls Lucinda Herndon.”

  Lucinda entered the room, impeccably dressed in a dark red suit. She walked briskly to the witness table and sat down.

  “Dr. Herndon, you are president of Ellerton University?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you know both Richard Barnes and Nina Bannister?”

  “I know them both and have great respect for each of them.”

  “How long have you known Ms. Bannister?”

  “For more than forty years. We were students together.”

  “Did you invite her to come and teach for a semester at Ellerton?”

  “Yes. She was the first winner of the Golden Age Teaching Award. I chose her myself.”