by K. T. Tomb
Storm sighed. He had hoped for more than that. The man had left no details that would hold up in court or convince a jury. He grumbled something to Alex and went back to his room. He buried his head in his pillow, pulled the covers over himself and fell asleep.
He woke up when his phone’s alarm went off. It was 4:30 and he was supposed to be having dinner with his neighbors. He showered, dressed in jeans and a golf shirt and walked over. Carmen was standing by the stove, leaning on the worktop. She was reading something.
“Evening.” Storm announced his arrival.
“Evening,” Carmen answered without looking up.
Storm came closer. “What are you reading?”
Carmen showed him what it was. It was the diary.
“He had a wife and child. Chose to live on the streets for a while.”
“Mad then,” Storm concluded.
Carmen shook her head. “He was emulating Orwell who lived on the streets of Paris for a year.”
Storm said nothing. It made it more of a pity the man was dead. A madman would be no loss to the world, but this man seemed to have been quite the intellectual.
“Alex is upstairs. I’ll be done with dinner in ten.”
Storm went up the stairs and found Alex in the bedroom. She was sandpapering a post of a four-poster bed. It had been beautifully turned and carved. “Our love nest,” Alex explained when she heard him come upstairs.
“It’s very nice.” Storm said, “Seems like you can do this then.”
“Told you.” Alex looked around. “And I didn’t trash your living room just so I could make you some furniture. Business is booming, so I don’t need to resort to that.”
Storm laughed. “The thought never would have crossed my mind, but now that you mention it...”
Alex chuckled too. She dropped the sandpaper and sat down with her back against the post. “So your man was a bit of an intellectual, not just a bum.”
“Would seem so, yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Tell his family I suppose, if I can find them.”
Alex shook her head. “I mean about the case.”
Storm went over to the window and looked out at the spot where they had found Ben Jones’s body. “I think I’m going to have to try and smoke them out. And I need to get John himself to talk.”
“How are you going to do that? Seeing as he’s not supposed to be able to speak.”
Storm kept looking out. “I will know when I get there.”
Chapter Ten
Jury selection began the week after Ben Jones’s death.
It was a nightmare. Storm knew from the get*go that it was impossible to find jury members who would be impartial. He proposed to move the trial to Baltimore or Philadelphia, given that it was under federal law with D.C. not having state law, but the prosecution refused. The judge too had been doubtful. They both felt that decision had already been taken and the venue changed once already. Storm argued then that in a city where the presence of the FBI was so prevalent perhaps the citizens might be so keen to have justice that they would not weigh the facts properly, but to no avail.
It took all week and Storm noticed he kept running his hand through his hair every few minutes. He could not stop the tick now; he reckoned it was the stress. He also began noticing he crossed his toes inside his shoes when he was not standing or walking around. He began cracking his wrists and was having trouble not pulling his lips and nostrils into odd shapes. He had not done that since he was a child. But then it was a stressful time.
He’d also spent most of the last week trying to find Ben Jones’s family. They had been tearful, upset and overcome with grief when he had told them, but the news of his death didn’t come as unexpected. They knew the life he had chosen to lead for a while was a dangerous one and something that could get him killed, but they had agreed to let him do it. They had expressed those fears to him as well, but it had not mattered to Ben. The news of how he died though, was something entirely different. His wife and daughter were staggered to hear he had been beaten to death outside a beachfront home in the Hamptons by people who seemed to want to stop him from talking about what he had seen outside the Federal Reserve building.
It had been a tough task to tell them about all of it. But Storm had had to do stuff like that when he’d been an FBI agent, he just never thought he would have to do it again after he quit and focused on his law firm. He had always been bad at it, but this time had been less disastrous than others. Perhaps it was because he was actually there to help and had helped Ben, rather than representing the authorities.
At the end of the week he was a wreck, but a jury had been selected. There were twenty-one people who he thought might be somewhat neutral in the case, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up. He didn’t actually think it was possible to find an objective person in the whole of the District of Columbia.
The twenty-one people were from all walks of life, young and old, rich and poor and, most importantly, Storm had made sure there were no finance people in the mix. He figured they were most unlikely to be objective. Likewise, there were no lobbyists or anyone associated with politics or law enforcement. It was actually harder than he had thought it would be to find people like that, and he had not been optimistic at all. Of course, Washington DC was a place filled with politicians, lobbyists and law enforcement and to find people who were not directly related or involved with someone in those lines who could easily be influenced by their views was a dreadful task. It was easy to find African American people from the less well-off areas, but outside of that demographic, it was a nearly impossible challenge. Storm and his secretary, who had come over to assist him with the trial, dug through piles of files of people who fitted the profile, only to find they had a brother, sister, parent, or partner in law enforcement, politics, finance or the related lobbying industry. He even dismissed a student working at Noodles because he had seen him on YouTube expressing his political views. They seemed so idiotic and MTV influenced that Storm was sure he could not be relied on to make a half-decent decision.
It took the rest of the month to get them together and for the trial to actually begin. The last two weeks before the opening of the trial, Storm bounced around between the Hamptons, D.C. and the prison in Petersburg, Virginia. The one light in this stressful time was that Alex had worked hard to replace all the broken furniture. She was a true artisan and it was a joy to visit her workshop at the harbor to watch her divide her time between the woodturning and carving, making new boat designs and actually building boats. She was always busy and when she was working, she barely had time to talk. She seemed to stop every twenty-odd minutes for a cup of tea, but other than that she seemed to work from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon without actually stopping. She had lunch while drawing or carving, and she almost ignored anyone who came into the workshop. There were some clients who came in and she spoke to them, but never longer than a few minutes and after that, she would talk to them while continuing her work.
Carmen worked from home and she usually had time for coffee or for lunch. It was a great thing to be in her company too, Storm found. Talking to her, or visiting her lover in her workshop, he found his tics receded and only the running of his hand through his hair remained a prominent sign of his Tourette’s. They came back in all forms when he was back at work though.
He could not help twitching every time he went to the prison, for example. He snapped his neck and pulled his shoulders back compulsively as well now. Every time he was made to wait outside the room where he would have to meet with John Bainbridge, he twitched like a maniac, getting it all out of the way so he could sit still and keep his face straight during the time he would be spending with his client.
The problem he faced was that he could not communicate with his client at all, and worse still, it seemed John was not always able to meet with him. He never received an explanation when John didn’t appear in the room, but he knew the man would be prevent
ed from meeting with him to stop him from telling him stuff one way or another.
On the morning of the start of the trial, Storm felt strangely calm. His tics were gone as he went down for breakfast. He had put his secretary up in the room next to his and he knocked on her door before going down. He waited for her to show and they went down for breakfast together. She was dressed prim and proper already, but Storm wore a tracksuit. He didn’t want to risk spilling anything on the pressed suit he would be wearing in court. Appearance counted for a lot when trying to convince a jury, he had found through experience.
He discussed the case and the trial with his secretary over breakfast. It was the first time she had done this. Normally, he had a junior lawyer in his firm assisting him, but he figured they were best employed in trials they could win, rather than something which already looked to him to be a sham. On top of that, his secretary knew the ins and outs of the case better than anyone else. And she was a very handsome appearance, which could make some difference, especially since the prosecutor himself was a fat old bugger and he would be assisted by a lawyer Storm had known since his FBI days. The woman was a dowdy creature, very clever, but her appearance didn’t inspire anything.
After breakfast, Storm dressed and, together with his secretary, walked the few miles to the courthouse. It left them some more time to talk, and the crisp, cold air was welcome if they were to spend the day inside the stuffy courthouse.
They approached the courthouse from the back and Storm already spotted the van that had brought the members of the jury from their rooms. They walked around the building and walked through the front door. There were plenty of media, but everyone seemed to be crowding around the prosecutor and his company. The few cameras that were turned his way were more interested in his secretary’s bottom than anything else. Storm didn’t mind, and he smiled as the young woman actually swayed her hips a bit more and adjusted her posture when she noticed the attention paid to her. It suited Storm perfectly. He didn’t really want to be answering any questions right now.
The courtroom was buzzing. There was an excitement in the air; the media had come out like vultures to snack on the corpse that was the story of the robbery and protesters were outside. By far the most rallied against the crime against the government, but a small group demonstrated against the president’s foreign policy and against his drone policy, claiming it was that which caused extremists to rise up everywhere.
They were right too, thought Storm. He wanted to go and talk to them all, but he had a more pressing issue to deal with at that moment. His client was not at the courthouse. The transport that was supposed to have carried him was not there, and he had received no message about whether it would be there at all. He had spoken to the prosecutor and to the people in charge of prisoner transports, but it seemed the only thing he could do was wait. And waiting was something he could not do, with the opening of proceedings in a short while.
When the call came to enter the courtroom, John Bainbridge was still not there. Storm didn’t know what to do about that, apart from just getting on with the proceedings. On his own, he sat down on the accused bench in front of the judge’s chair. He stood up, urging his secretary to do the same when the jury entered the room. Most of the men in the jury focused on the flash of thigh she gave them before adjusting her skirt.
Storm smiled to himself. It was always a good tactic, having a pretty girl by your side to win over the male contingent of the jury. Most judges were easily softened by a skirt too.
The judge entered the courtroom and they stood up again.
The judge opened the proceedings, and before even making a statement, Storm put forth a motion to suspend the trial as the accused was not present to hear the charges. The prosecutor argued against that, saying the accused’s lawyer was present to hear the charges. Storm countered that by saying it was the state’s responsibility to make sure the accused was transported from the prison to the court, and they had failed at that, not even giving him or the court notice as to why the accused would be absent.
The judge thought about it for a moment, then decided it was not necessary for the accused to be present to hear the charges against him. His defense attorney was present to hear them, and he had already been informed about the charges some time ago.
Storm shook his head and told the judge that was a highly irregular thing to do, and it didn’t suit the court or the prosecution to not stick to. If this was the vein in which the trial would be conducted, he would be sure to demand a mistrial.
The judge told him his protests had been noted and that they would proceed with the case.
The prosecutor was asked what the charges were and Storm heard it uttered again. Multiple murder, grand larceny, destruction of government property and treason.
He was asked by the judge what the defense pleaded. Storm stood and answered, “Not guilty.” There was a murmur in the room, and Storm could not help but smile at the indignation. He noted the faces of the members of the jury too. Some of them kept a straight face, but it seemed most of the members were looking unhappy with that plea and were shaking their heads. It didn’t change anything for him. He had known that would be the case from the very start.
The judge confirmed he had noted the plea and he postponed proceedings until midday. It would leave Storm some time to adjust his opening statement and find out what was actually going on with John Bainbridge.
He didn’t stay in the courthouse: instead, choosing to go to a restaurant across the road. They served some good brunch there and it was nice to be out of the courtroom. There was not a lot to talk about with his secretary. They had gone over the case so many times now it was quite superfluous to speak about it further. He rehearsed his statement in his head again, and it was as he did it, he finally realized what was going on behind the scenes of this case. He had come around to the conclusion that John Bainbridge was being set-up, but he didn’t realize until that moment why someone had tried to kill him. He told his secretary instantly.
“The only way to get him off is to find out who is actually behind this. So they don’t only need to stop me defending him properly and making their poor case stick, they need me to stop investigating, period.”
“But who are ‘they’ then?” his secretary asked incredulously. She didn’t know her boss to talk about conspiracies like that.
“There’s only one option there.”
His secretary frowned, trying to think along. “CIA?”
Storm shook his head. “No, they would have caught me at home, and I would have been suicided.” He smiled because he had finally realized what was going on. “These were highly skilled and powerful amateurs. Not the FBI or the USSD either. They would not have done it like that either.”
His secretary frowned at him.
“It’s the FedRev, themselves.”
“The Federal Reserve?”
Storm nodded. “It’s pretty common knowledge that it’s owned by a number of powerful banking consortiums. Vanderbilt and Rothschild families helped set up the Federal Reserve, amongst other families and consortiums. And with the economy the way it is, they need two things: the Federal Reserve and the IRS need to gain more power, and they need the industry to get going again. More industry means growth, more loans, higher interest rates and that’s really what’s needed now.”
He knew he was rambling a bit when he saw the dazed look in his secretary’s eyes. She was anything but stupid, but what he just said went completely over her head. But instead of explaining, he looked at his watch and instantly stood up. “We’ve got to go. We need to be back in fifteen minutes.”
In the courtroom, it was the prosecutor to address the jury first.
“Members of the jury,” he began. “Over the coming weeks, you will hear the defense tell you John Bainbridge and his brother were not responsible for the robbery of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. They are lying. We have absolute proof they drove an armored vehicle into the Federal Reserve Bank and caus
ed the deaths of security personnel, police officers and bank employees. You will hear his own statement of the events, which will no doubt fail to persuade you of his innocence, simply because there is no doubt about his guilt.”
From then on, the words flew past Storm. According to the first reports there had been thirty victims; now there seemed to be many more. There had been no mention of that in any report he had ever seen. It was almost the same as watching the news. He found the prosecutor repeating every single meme he had been hearing for weeks.
After an hour, the man was done with his endless rambling summary of memes. The judge suspended the session again for a quarter of an hour, letting people make use of the restrooms before hearing Mr. McCoy’s statement. Outside in the courthouse hallways, the media was hard at work. Of course, with the limited access they’d been granted due to the high publicity of the crime and the trial, very few news people had been allowed to cover the proceeding and the rest were up to their usual speculative, or as members of the press often referred to it, ‘creative journalism’. They crowded in from every side trying their best to get a reaction or remark out of anyone who had been inside the courtroom.
Storm muscled his way through and went to stand by a column, hoping that no one else would notice him there. There was a pretty woman standing in front of a television camera with a microphone in her hand reporting on the proceedings. She wore a red dress with a blue and white scarf tied around her neck and her hair was done up in a retro style featuring pin curls and victory rolls. He recognized her from the press box in the court.
Wow... grasping at straws now, are they? Trying her best to tug at the heartstrings of good, old-fashioned Americans with nostalgia and farmhouse values, Storm thought.
He strained to hear what she was saying.