by John Bowers
Victoria Cross felt the pulse throbbing in her throat. She wasn’t scared, but she was pumping adrenaline—what she was doing was outrageous, even for her.
She stopped in front of Wallace Frie and smiled.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Frie.”
The witness merely nodded. He gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes, as if facing Satan himself at the gates of Hell.
“You testified that you spent the night of January 24th with Sonia Winters?”
“Tha’s right.”
“If I’m not mistaken, parolees assigned to a halfway house are expected to remain on the premises after hours, is that right?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Yet you spent that night somewhere else?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I had a pass.”
“A pass?”
“Yes, Ma’am. After you been there a month or so, and they get to trust you, they’ll let you out once in a while with a pass. That’s how I did it.”
“So you were not in violation of the halfway house rules?”
“No, Ma’am.”
Victoria nodded. She took a step back and balanced on her right leg, hooking the toe of her left shoe behind her ankle. She crossed her arms and studied the witness.
“Before you were arrested, did you know where Lloyd Randal lived?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“How did you know that? Did someone point out his house to you?”
“No, Ma’am. There’s a sign in the alley, on one of the garbage bins. It says ‘Randal residence’.”
Victoria’s eyebrows rose. She and Gabel had visited that alley, but she hadn’t noticed the sign. But she had looked at the fence, not the garbage bins.
“I see. Do all the houses on your route have signs like that?”
“No, Ma’am. Just one here and there.”
“The sign says ‘Randal residence’?”
“Tha’s right.”
“Lucaston is a city of two million people. How did you know that ‘Randal residence’ meant Lloyd Randal? Surely there must be more than one Randal residence.”
“I reckon so. I knew it was him because, one time, some of the trash fell out of its container and I had to pick it up. There was an envelope with his name on it.”
“The envelope was addressed to Lloyd Randal?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And this was in the alley behind his house?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Mr. Frie, you claim that the murder weapon does not belong to you, nor was it ever in your possession. Is that accurate?”
“Is what accurate? That I said it, or that it’s true?”
“That it’s true.”
“Yes, it’s true. I don’t own a gun. I never have.”
“Have you ever fired a gun?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“When was the last time you fired a gun?”
Frie’s forehead wrinkled as he thought back. He shook his head.
“Must be thirty-five year’ ago, maybe longer.”
“You haven’t fired a gun in thirty-five years? Why so long?”
“I’m not a gun person. Don’t love ‘em, don’t hate ‘em. Just don’t want one.”
“What was the occasion on which you last fired a gun?”
“I was in the CDF back in my late teens.”
“The CDF? The Colonial Defense Force?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I served two years.”
“And that was the last time you ever fired a weapon?”
“That was the only time I ever fired a weapon. Never fired one before that, never fired one after that.”
“Before your first arrest, you worked as a cargo pilot, is that correct?”
“Yes, Ma’am, but I never done what they said. I never—”
She held up a hand to stop him.
“Mr. Frie, we aren’t going to mention anything about that first trial. If you or I say the wrong word at this point, it will trigger a mistrial. I’m sure you don’t want to go through all this again, do you?”
“No, Ma’am, I don’t.”
“Okay, good. Now, when you were a cargo pilot, you worked for North Continent Freight, is that right?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“There was testimony in your first trial that you were a difficult employee. A trouble maker. Was that true?”
“No, Ma’am. We had some malcontents, but I wasn’t one of ‘em.”
“You never started fights or threatened other pilots?”
“No, Ma’am.” In spite of his predicament, Frie chuckled in irony. “I’m about the most peaceful person you’d ever want to meet. All I want is to do my job and get along with people. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“And what do you do if someone brings trouble to you?”
“I do my best to avoid it. I’ll walk away if I can.”
“And if you can’t? Are you a fighter?”
“No, Ma’am, I’m not. Fighting is against my nature.”
“You spent twelve years in prison. Did you get into fights there?”
“No, Ma’am. Not a single one.”
She stared at him. She nodded. She pursed her lips.
She turned and walked to the prosecution table, ignoring Anderson Gabel’s angry glare. She shuffled through her stack of documents and pulled out a pair of flat photos; she had printed two copies off her computer before coming to court.
She turned and walked back toward the witness. Judge van Wert glared at her, as if debating whether to crack the whip. Victoria stopped in front of Frie.
“Approach the witness, your Honor?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Frie, would you take a look at this, please?”
She handed him one of the photos. He peered at it with a puzzled expression.
“Can you tell the jury what this photo depicts?”
“It looks like shell casings.”
“How many shell casings?”
“Four.”
“Do you recognize the shell casings?”
“Not for sure, but they look like…”
“They look like what?”
“They look like the shells you had in that little bag earlier.”
Victoria nodded.
“In fact, Mr. Frie, the shell in this photo is from that group. But there’s only one shell casing here, shown from four different angles.”
“Okay.”
“What else, if anything, do you see?”
“Looks like a fingerprint.”
“A fingerprint on the shell casing?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He handed the photo back, but she pushed it away.
“Hang onto that for a minute, if you don’t mind. Take a closer look. Study the fingerprint and tell me if you see anything unusual about it.”
Frie glanced up at her, as if suspecting she might be trying to trick him. He gazed at the photo again.
“Do you see anything unusual?”
“No, Ma’am. But I’m not much of a’ expert on this kind of thing.”
“Neither am I, actually. But you don’t need to be an expert to see the problem. You just have to look closely, and take your time.”
She waited. He stared at the photo a moment longer, then sat back and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Victoria walked over to the defense table and handed the second photo to Crawford, then returned to the witness.
“Mr. Frie, when you were a member of the Colonial Defense Force, did you ever load your own weapons?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Usually we just inserted clips, but when they were empty we had to reload ‘em.”
“And when you inserted a bullet into a clip, how did you hold the bullet?”
“With my fingers.”
“With your fingers? How many fingers?”
“Well…two, actually. A finger and a thumb. You can’t pick up a bullet with just one finger.”
Victoria smiled as if he
had just announced the secret of the universe.
“Exactly! It takes two fingers—or a finger and a thumb—to hold a bullet. And what would you expect to find on the shell casing after you did that?”
“I’m…not sure what you’re getting at.”
“You would expect to find fingerprints, right? Not one fingerprint, but two! Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I guess it does.”
Hayes Crawford, staring at the photo, came halfway out of his chair with an exclamation. As everyone turned to look at him, he gazed directly at Victoria with his mouth hanging open.
“”Wait, Mr. Crawford!” Victoria cautioned. “I know what you want to say, but please hold it.”
Crawford settled back into his chair.
“Mr. Frie, take another look at that photo. How many fingerprints do you see?”
“I see…” He looked up at her. “One. I only see one.”
“That’s right. This photo depicts one fingerprint, and only one, that wraps all the way around the shell casing. Is that what you see?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“When you were back in the CDF thirty-five years ago, loading your own clips, did you ever wrap one finger all the way around a shell casing?”
“No, Ma’am. The casing is round, so that would be impossible.”
“Yes! That would be impossible because it is impossible! It takes a finger and a thumb to pick up and manipulate a bullet, and each will leave only a partial print, because the surface of the shell isn’t large enough for the entire fingerprint to touch it. And you would find not one partial print, but two.”
She took a step back. She gazed directly into Frie’s red-rimmed eyes.
“You didn’t do it, did you? You really, really didn’t do it.”
“Wh-what?” Wallace Frie’s eyes expanded in surprise.
“You didn’t murder Lloyd Randal. This fingerprint is a fake. It was planted.”
Chapter 33
Hayes Crawford leaped to his feet.
“OBJECTION!!!”
Crawford’s mouth was open, but he hadn’t spoken. Judge van Wert’s head jerked toward the prosecution table where Anderson Gabel was on his feet, leaning so far forward he had to brace himself to avoid falling on his face, which flamed as red as a binary sunset.
“Objection, your Honor! I OBJECT!”
“Remove the jury!” van Wert snapped. “Nobody say another word until the jury is out of the courtroom.”
“I demand a recess!” Gabel panted.
“Mr. Gabel, you are not the attorney of record here, nor are you second chair. SIT DOWN or I will hold you in contempt. And while you’re doing that, you can also shut up. When I want to hear from you, I’ll send you a v-mail.”
A bailiff moved quickly to get the jury out of the room before they could hear anything more prejudicial than they already had. Hayes Crawford stood in place for a moment, his mouth working as if he also wanted to say something, but he now seemed uncertain what that might be. Breathing hard, he sat down again. He gazed at Victoria with questions in his eyes.
Victoria still stood in front of Wallace Frie, her ankles locked and arms crossed. She hadn’t said another word. The gallery was abuzz and Anderson Gabel was still babbling, but it all sailed over her head. She gazed up at the judge, who glared down at her as if she had just dumped a chamber pot on the floor.
Gary Fraites crawled out of his seat against the back wall and walked down the aisle to the wing gate. He stepped through and approached the prosecution table, where he placed a hand on Gabel’s shoulder, then bent over to whisper to him. Gabel shook his head angrily as Fraites talked, but Fraites tightened his grip and finally, with extreme reluctance, Gabel got to his feet and allowed Fraites to escort him out the side door.
Victoria stood silent as everything swirled around her. Wallace Frie sat stunned in the witness box, silent tears streaming down his weathered cheeks.
It took a full minute for the jury to be escorted out. Once they were gone and the door to the jury room closed, van Wert banged her gavel.
“Order in the court!” she demanded. “I will have order or I will have everyone removed. If you can’t put a sock in it, then get out. Right now!”
The room fell silent.
Nobody budged.
Nobody dared.
Van Wert laid down her gavel and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the bench. She glared down at Victoria.
“Miss Cross, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Victoria smiled.
“I am hot on the trail of justice, your Honor. Would you like me to explain?”
Van Wert’s expression suggested she would rather cut Victoria’s throat, but she nodded instead.
“I think it’s high time you did. And you’d better make it good, or you’ve just bought yourself a mistrial.”
Victoria unlocked her ankles and walked to the bench. She took the photo from Frie and handed it to the judge. Van Wert took it and studied it for a moment, then looked at Victoria.
“Your Honor, the only way you can get a fingerprint to wrap around a shell casing like that is with a piece of tape. You transfer the print to the tape, then wrap the tape around the casing to transfer it again. That’s the only way it can be done.”
Van Wert studied the photo again, frowning, for nearly twenty seconds.
“I disagree.”
“Excuse me?” Victoria’s eyebrows tilted.
“You could do it without the tape if you used both hands.”
“I don’t understand.”
Van Wert held up her left hand with the thumb and forefinger three inches apart.
“You could hold the shell with your left hand, for example—holding the ends between these two fingers—then you could rotate the shell against another finger to make the print wrap like that.”
She handed the photo back. Victoria frowned at it.
“Okay, I’ll buy that theory, but why would anyone do that? A perp wouldn’t do it, for obvious reasons, and someone planting a fingerprint wouldn’t have the victim’s finger available, unless he was dead. So my tape theory is a better explanation.”
Van Wert scowled as if she liked her theory better, but didn’t pursue it.
“What do you think it means?” she asked instead.
Victoria grinned.
“What it means, your Honor, is that Wallace Frie is innocent of murder. It means Wallace Frie was wrongly convicted twelve years ago. It means that Alpha Centauri owes Mr. Frie a great deal of money in compensation for his wrongful conviction. It means that whoever murdered Lloyd Randal is still at large. It means we have dirty cops, dirty agents, and—God help me—maybe even dirty prosecutors in this city. It means something is rotten in the state of Denmark, if Denmark is actually a state, and it means the Federation is dropping all charges against Mr. Frie, with my profound apologies for all the hell we’ve put him through.
“That’s what it means, your Honor.”
Victoria fell silent. She stood where she was, waiting for a response. Hayes Crawford stared at her from his table. Nancy sat with both hands over her mouth, as if watching a scary holo-vid. Holo-cams whined and correspondents scribbled. Gary Fraites reentered the courtroom and leaned his back against the wall, watching and waiting.
Nobody else moved.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody breathed.
Van Wert, off balance for once, stared at Victoria as if she didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. Finally she rubbed both hands over her face, then heaved a sigh and picked up a stylus. She made a few notes on a pad and then laid it down again.
“Miss Cross, are you serious about dropping the charges?”
“Yes, your Honor. I’ll have the datawork to your clerk by the end of the day.”
“Do you have authorization to do that? You are not the U.F. Attorney.”
“No, your Honor, she doesn’t.”
Van Wert looked toward the side door.
“Miss Cross can’t drop the charges without clearing it with me,” Fraites said.
“And what say you, counselor?”
“The Federation drops all charges, your Honor.”
“With prejudice,” Victoria added.
“With prejudice? Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, your Honor. I don’t ever want to see these charges refiled. Attach double jeopardy and we’re done.”
“Do you agree, Mr. Fraites?”
“I do, your Honor.”
“Mr. Crawford?”
“No objection.”
Van Wert heaved another sigh. She looked almost disappointed, as if she needed to bite the head off a chicken but was fresh out of chickens. She turned to Wallace Frie, who still sat in the witness box, bent over, elbows on his knees, both hands over his face.
“Mr. Frie…”
Victoria had never heard van Wert speak so gently.
Frie looked up, wiping his eyes.
“The charges against you are dismissed with prejudice. Dismissal with prejudice means you can never face these charges again, so you are free to go. Good luck, Mr. Frie.”
Frie blinked at her.
“For real? This is not a joke?”
“No, Mr. Frie, this is no joke. You are a free man, and the Court apologizes for any and all horrors that you have been through. You are free to come and go as you please.”
Van Wert waited while Frie returned to the defense table, where both Hayes Crawford and his associate hugged him. Frie sat down, waiting until court was adjourned to leave the room.
“Bring in the jury,” van Wert ordered.
The rest was a formality. The judge explained to the jury, without giving any details, that the case had been adjudicated and their services were no longer required. She dismissed them with the thanks of the Federation for their service, then turned back to the attorneys.
“I want to see all counsel in my chambers immediately. That includes you, Mr. Fraites. This court is adjourned.”
*
The session in chambers didn’t take long. Judge van Wert settled behind her desk and glared at everyone in the room.
“Congratulations, Mr. Crawford, on the dismissal. Miss Cross…I appreciate that you were willing to view the evidence with an open mind and dismiss charges against the defendant. But I’m not real thrilled about the way you did it.”