Crooked Halos

by Charlie Cottrell

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The wheels of justice sometimes spin a little faster than you’d like. Within a week of my arrest, my trial date had been set. The judge considered me a flight risk and held me without bail, so I had that week to sit in the lock-up in the 4th Precinct and stew. I didn’t see my public defender until the day before the trial, at which point he told me I would do well to take the plea bargain the prosecution was offering. I’d spend a few years in prison, lose my private detective’s license, and serve several years’ probation. But there was also the chance the judge would decide to make an example of me and put me away for life, plea bargain or no. I decided to fight the case against the advice of my attorney, whom I fired five minutes later in a pique. I’d represent myself, even if that meant I had a fool for a client. At the initial hearing, I entered a plea of not guilty, and my trial date was set for two weeks later.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The first day of the trial saw us presenting opening arguments. The judge, Herman Marshall, was a stern-looking, heavyset man in his late 50s with steel-gray hair and a small face on a large head. The prosecutor was a young hotshot in his late 20s, his dark hair slicked back and his suit immaculately tailored. By contrast, my suit looked like I’d slept in it for a few weeks and I hadn’t shaved since before Crowder had shot me.

  I kept my opening statement simple: I didn’t commit Ms. Pratt’s murder. I was being framed by Dresden Crowder, who had committed the murder.

  The prosecutor was a little more detailed in his presentation.

  “We have a multitude of physical evidence,” he said, standing behind his desk and speaking directly to the jury, “connecting Mr. Hazzard to the crime. We will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mr. Hazzard is guilty of the premeditated murder of Genevieve Pratt.”

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted. “Premeditated? That’s extra bullshit on top of the bullshit sandwich that is this case.”

  Judge Marshall banged his gavel. “Mr. Hazzard,” he snapped, “another outburst like that and I will find you in contempt of court. Now sit down and wait your turn.”

  So yeah, the trial was off to a great start.

  II.

  What followed was not good for me in any way, shape, or form. It turns out that, just because you’ve spent most of your adult life in law enforcement and law enforcement-adjacent careers does not mean you know how to properly defend yourself in a court of law.

  The prosecution had a solid case against me. My fingerprints were on the murder weapon. The gun I’d been shot with was registered to Ms. Pratt, and her fingerprints were all over it. Security cameras caught me entering the building, but somehow all traces of Crowder’s entrance and exit had been conveniently erased. It was the perfect setup.

  Miss Typewell and Miss Janovich were allowed to visit me one evening after a particularly trying day at the Fourth Precinct’s jail.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, massaging my stomach where Crowder had shot me. The stim mesh the doctors had used on the wound itched something terrible. “The DNA evidence is obviously faked, but I can’t prove it. Crowder must’ve had his goons put my fingerprints on the murder weapon after I’d passed out but before the cops showed up. Hell, he probably had a room in the hotel and just ducked into it after he killed Pratt.” I looked at my employees, both of whom wore concerned expressions and looked like they hadn’t slept much since my arrest. “I need you two to go back to the office and dig into the hotel’s records. Maybe if we can prove Crowder was staying there, too, we can throw a bit of doubt on their case.”

  “Um,” Maya said, staring down at her lap.

  “There’s a slight problem there, Eddie,” Ellen said. “We weren’t quite sure how to tell you, but…the office is gone.”

  I blinked at them in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I asked slowly.

  “Like, the building is no longer there,” Ellen replied. “We left one night, and came back to an empty lot the next morning.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t just, I dunno, go to the wrong address by mistake or something?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, Eddie. After almost ten years with you at the same location, I’m pretty sure I didn’t just ‘go to the wrong address’. They had the building demolished overnight! We lost everything. All the hard copies of our old casefiles, the backup server, any field equipment you didn’t have on you at the time…it’s all gone.”

  I sat in sullen silence for a moment. “So framing me for murder wasn’t enough, huh? Okay, this is a setback, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ve got an alternate location you can work from over on Church Street.” I gave Miss Typewell the address and the password to get in; Kimiko would be there already, so the place would be safe.

  “There’s food and a place to sleep there, too,” I said. “You two probably should hole up in the building with Kimiko until everything gets sorted out. Don’t leave for anything, not even to see me.”

  “But—” Miss Typewell started.

  I cut her off. “No. Don’t leave for anything. I need you two out there working to get me out of this if the trial goes the way I think it will. Okay? I’m depending on you, Ellen. You’re my only hope.”

  Miss Typewell managed a weak smirk. “Aren’t I always?” The smile fell away and she looked tired and aged beyond her years. “I’m scared, Eddie,” she said quietly.

  I gave her what I hoped was a brave look. “Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

  III.

  The trial continued going badly for me. The majority of my defense could be summed up as, “I didn’t do it, honest,” and that just didn’t carry much weight in a court of law. My only hope was to cast as much doubt on the prosecution’s case as I could manage.

  Not that it was going to be easy. They had plenty of experts and lots of physical evidence. Crowder had done a pretty solid job of framing me.

  But there were holes to exploit, even if they were tiny and far too few.

  First was all the DNA evidence. I pointed out that most of my blood was sitting on the curb outside the Zimmerman, not inside one of the rooms. The prosecution countered that there was plenty of my blood inside, and while they couldn’t explain the pool of it outside, it didn’t change anything as far as they were concerned.

  “But what about the Denton Method?” I asked. The Denton Method was a way of synthesizing blood from a small original sample. It would’ve been easy for Crowder and his goons to take a small amount of my blood—as I said, there was plenty of it all over the curb outside—and create massive quantities quickly.

  But not quickly enough. “The Denton Method takes 24 to 48 hours to produce the amount of blood we saw at the crime scene,” the prosecution’s expert forensics guy said from the stand. “There is no way that much synthetic blood could have been produced between the time you were shot and the time the police arrived.”

  “Hey, I’ve bled in lots of places over the years,” I said. “They could’ve grabbed a sample ages ago for something just like this.” The prosecution objected to my conjecture and the judge agreed with them. He did that way too often. I was starting to think this whole “be your own attorney” thing was a bad idea.

  That plan having failed, I attacked their other big problem: motive.

  “Why would I kill Genevieve Pratt?” I asked. “The prosecution has given us a lot of facts, but they haven’t been able to answer this question. The woman was a client of mine. I’d been hired to stop her murder.” Okay, that was a bit inaccurate in the particulars, but the specifics of the case were probably too unbelievable for the jury. “Why would I want to kill her?”

  The prosecution’s response was that I clearly had something against the late Ms. Pratt. “The nature and brutality of the murder are evidence that Mr. Hazzard has some strong, preexisting connection to the victim. Just because he has not disclosed this prior connection does not mean there is not motive.” Then, they dropped a couple of bombshells.

&
nbsp; “We would like to enter into evidence this collection of emails between the deceased and Mr. Hazzard,” the prosecutor said. A large vid window popped up on the wall beside the judge, a half-dozen emails between myself and Ms. Pratt scrolling slowly up it.

  They were all dated from months ago.

  “Hey, hold on a sec,” I said, staring in confusion. “I never met the woman before a few weeks ago! This stuff is fabricated!”

  “Sit down and be silent, Mr. Hazzard,” Judge Marshall growled.

  “Your Honor, these documents have been authenticated by our top experts. The emails are very real. Mr. Hazzard had a long-standing relationship with Ms. Pratt prior to the murder. As you can see from the communications, Mr. Hazzard was angry with Ms. Pratt over a case she had refused to pay him for. As you know from his bank statements, Mr. Hazzard is perpetually broke and always on the verge of losing everything to his creditors.” Which wasn’t exactly untrue, if you went by my bank accounts. But I had the Organization’s money now, too, so cash was not a problem.

  Not that I could say that to the jury. “No, I’m actually financially well-off. I totally run a criminal syndicate and have access to all of their vast assets.” I’m sure that would go a long way toward helping me win the case.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The next day, the prosecution decided to pull out all the stops and show photos and film from the crime scene. It was the first I’d actually seen of it, of course: I’d passed out in the elevator foyer before I ever got to Ms. Pratt’s room.

  It was every bit as disgusting as I’d imagined. Blood was everywhere, and half the room had been wrecked in the apparent struggle between Ms. Pratt and Crowder. But there was something off about the whole thing.

  “Here’s a close-up of Ms. Pratt’s wound. As you can see, Mr. Hazzard hit her just above the left eye, caving in her temple and killing her almost instantly.”

  My mouth hung open. Not because of whatever nonsense the prosecutor was spouting—I’d already accepted I was probably going to lose this case and get sent to Pratchett Correctional for the few weeks or so the inmates there allowed me to live—but because of what I saw in the picture.

  “That’s not Genevieve Pratt,” I said quietly.

  The loud report from Judge Marshall’s gavel made me twitch. “Do you have something to say, Mr. Hazzard? I’m certain we’ve had several conversations about your outbursts and conduct in my courtroom.”

  “I said, that’s not Genevieve Pratt,” I replied, louder.

  The judge exchanged a glance with the prosecutor, who shrugged in confusion. “Mr. Hazzard, I’ve had it with your behavior. You are hereby found in contempt of court. Bailiff, please escort Mr. Hazzard from the courtroom. He is to meet with me in quarters tomorrow morning, when the court will determine his punishment for his behavior and decide how to proceed with this case.” He banged his gavel again, and everyone got up to leave.

  “Don’t you people see? That’s not Genevieve Pratt! I’m being framed!” I shouted as the bailiff grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me from the courtroom.

  IV.

  The realization that Crowder and Pratt had pulled a switcheroo on me—that the woman who’d been found dead in that hotel room in the Zimmerman was not, in fact, Genevieve Pratt—should have filled me with some sort of relief, or at least made me really angry at the layers of deception and trickery involved. Crowder and Pratt were clearly working together, but to what end? What was the point of the whole elaborate scheme? If they wanted me out of the way, they could’ve just killed me at any point. Carmen was more than capable of that.

  But I just felt tired. They’d won, and I probably wouldn’t live long enough to figure out the whys and wherefores of the case. There wasn’t anything I could do about it while I was on trial or once they put me behind bars, which seemed increasingly likely as the trial wore on. The questions niggled away at the back of my mind, but I was too preoccupied with my impending fate to really think much about them.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I sat in the judge’s office—or quarters, as he’d called them yesterday—and fidgeted. Across the desk from me, Judge Marshall sat stoic and solemn, a massive slab of annoyed judicial prerogative.

  “Mr. Hazzard,” he said, folding his hands on the desktop in front of him and leaning toward me, “your behavior in my court has been absolutely abysmal. We are meeting today to determine what to do about that and how to proceed in this case. Do you understand what contempt of court means?”

  “Yeah,” I said, slumping in my chair and crossing my arms. I was feeling petulant, but in my defense, I was being railroaded and had no chance of winning. The best I could hope for was to get in a few shots before they locked me up and threw away the key.

  “Seeing as you are already on trial for first-degree murder, the court has decided that the consequences for your behavior are that you will no longer be allowed to speak in the courtroom.”

  I sat up. “But I’m defending myself! How am I supposed to do that if I can’t talk? Pictionary? Charades?” One word, two syllables. Sounds like mule spit.

  “You’ll be provided a public defender. They will speak on your behalf for the rest of the case. If you speak out again in my courtroom, you will be removed and not allowed back in until the verdict is read. Understood?”

  “Yeah, I get ya,” I replied with a scowl.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The rest of the trial went about how you’d expect. I sat in sullen silence while some kid barely out of law school mumbled and bumbled his way through the rest of my defense. It wasn’t really his fault, of course. He’d been put in an unenviable position of bailing out a sinking ship with a slotted spoon. He was a nice kid, nervous as hell, but in the end the verdict was pretty damn predictable.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The jury filed back into the courtroom after only an hour of deliberation. I figured most of that had been spent deciding what bar to get drunk at after they’d declared me guilty. My attorney stood beside me, trembling like a newborn. I patted him companionably on the shoulder. “First case?” I asked him. He gulped and nodded. “Well, don’t feel too bad about taking an ‘L’ here. You’re young, and no one’s gonna hold this one against you.” He stared at me goggle-eyed, his mouth working silently as he tried to process what I was saying.

  “You think we’re gonna lose?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yup. But hey, I don’t blame you. The odds were stacked against me from the beginning. That’s what happens when someone frames you for murder.”

  The lawyer gave me another confused look. “You were framed?” he asked.

  “Yup. Not that it matters much at this point,” I said. “I mean, they’re about to read the verdict. A bit late for trying to prove it, y’know?”

  Judge Marshall asked the jury forewoman if they’d reached a verdict, which she replied they had. I stood there, hands clasped in front of me, as she read the jury’s decision.

  “Guilty on all counts,” she said. A gasp ran through parts of the courtroom, while the prosecutor simply grinned in triumph. Judge Marshall declared that sentencing would take place in a week and then dismissed everyone.

  “Well, that went about the way I expected,” I mumbled.

  Sentencing went the same way a week later.

  “Mr. Hazzard, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of committing the premeditated murder of Ms. Genevieve Pratt. The severity and brutality of the crime demand that we issue the heaviest penalty possible. Therefore, you are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, to be served in Pratchett Correctional Facility. Court is adjourned.” He banged the gavel a final time, and the bailiffs came for me with manacles. I was escorted out of the court and into a prison transport, which took me to my new home: Pratchett Correctional Facility, the prison where I’d sent dozens of criminals and violent goons over the years. So yeah, it was going to be a lot of fun.

  P
art Three: DO NOT PASS GO

  I.

  Prison has never been what you’d call a pleasant place. As a form of punishment, incarceration is pretty…well, punishing. Brutal, even, especially for people of color and poverty. You definitely get the feeling someone out there in broader society does not like you or the things you’ve done. You most certainly come to understand that you are separated from everyone else, and not just physically with the walls and the guard towers and the horrible orange jumpsuits and all that. No, there’s a psychological separation as well. Your experiences are so unlike those of average, everyday people that you might as well be two completely alien species living on different planets.

  What prisons don’t do is rehabilitate or correct behavior, which you’d think would sorta be the whole point of a correctional system. It’s not. The point is that punishment bit I mentioned. Prisons say to the people: stay in your place, or else. They say: don’t rock the boat, or else. They say: Don’t. Or else.

  So finding myself behind bars in Pratchett Correctional was not something I was particularly looking forward to, I guess you could say. Crowder had succeeded: he’d framed me for a murder he’d committed, and it looked like I was probably going to spend the rest of my very short life in a 10 by 10 cell shared with a guy who had badly-spelled knuckle tattoos.

  I say “my very short life” because, once any of a dozen or so of the horrible criminals I’d helped put in here found out we were roomies—broadly speaking—they were going to track me down and they were going to murder me with malice aforethought.

  Also, the only alcohol you can get in a prison was made in a toilet, and though I’ll drink bottom-shelf liquor all day and not say a word, I do have standards. I will draw a line, and that line is drawn between me and toilet booze.

  Clad in a ridiculous orange jumpsuit, my wrists and ankles clapped in irons like some jailbird from an old cartoon, I sat in a gray bus and waited to arrive at Pratchett Correctional. The prison is located just west of Arcadia, close enough that it brings down property values on that side of town. The security guards escorting myself and the half dozen other new prisoners were stern and built like sides of beef. The ratio of necks to guards was not great.