Stu flipped both documents into the empty picnic basket while Candi fiddled with her second button.
Flesh has been sighted, Stu messaged. Anybody want to bet how long the third button will last?
Stu's rolled sleeves were now at his biceps. Out of his right breast pocket, he took out half of a green tennis ball and placed it on Candi's table. "I was at a magic show where this was used. I liked how the magician used it to draw attention to what he was doing. It'll make a funny noise when I press down on it. I'll show you."
Honk.
"I'll come back to the tennis ball soon. Let's review what we've learned about you so far. Your name is Candi and you've used no other names. Is that right?"
"Right."
Stu went back to the table, lifted another clipped pack, and made the rounds. From now on, the reader can imagine what Stu is doing every time he hands out one of his packs of legal documents. I won't bother describing it.
"Your Honour. The paper in front of you is a copy of the lease agreement between the witness and her landlord. You'll see that, in the lease, the witness is referred to as Stephanie Hansen."
"Objection. Anybody could have made up a document like that."
The judge looked at Stu standing with another document in his hand. "Bring it here."
"Judge, you'll see that the second document shows that the landlord has signed in front of a notary public that the first document is a true copy of the original lease. He further attests to the fact that the leaseholder also went by the name Candi."
"Make your point, Counsellor."
Stu lifted a hand over the green tennis ball nose and brought it down. "Honk" the nose said. "You lied under oath," Stu added.
Using another signed deposition, Stu established that Stephanie Hansen was 26. Honk, honk. "You lied under oath again."
She had dropped out of school in grade 8. Honk, honk, honk. "You lied under oath again."
She had never studied anything at all about forests in school. Honk, honk, honk, honk. "You lied under oath again."
She had been convicted of the crime of Leaving the Scene of a copter accident but was warned rather than being fined. Still, she had been convicted. Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk. "You lied under oath again."
Candi was flinching at each honk now. The judge was barely scanning the documents landing on his desk. The prosecutor had given up making objections since there was always a document ready to overcome his argument. Wolf's tower was steadily diminishing.
"Counsellor, I caution you that you have not yet proven your client innocent of the charges levied against him."
"I'm honking through Candi's lies as quickly as I can, Judge."
"Honk faster. We're going to take a recess. Mr. Prosecutor, during the recess, you might want to advise your witness that unless she has a fish hidden inside her dress, I am not interested in what else is in there. She should return to the courtroom with her dress fully closed. We're adjourned for fifteen minutes."
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 33
The courtroom was not quite the same as it was before the recess. A large video display unit was now obstructing the view of the liquid fungus in the water bottle. Stu had replenished the chocolates on the judge's plate and on the plate that was now sitting directly in front of Yolanda. The chocolates weren't there to unsettle the witness. That had been accomplished and Candi was looking at the ground full time now. That certainly made her look guilty. Yolanda asked for the chocolates because she liked them. "A secret passion," she admitted.
Lucas still wore his stone face. "Will I have to testify?" he asked Stu.
"No. And if I don't bring you to the witness chair, the prosecutor can't either. Relax. We're almost finished. Is the prosecutor eating the chocolates yet?"
"Not yet," TG said. "He touched one and almost put it in his mouth."
The other change was the presence of a large, muscular female bailiff sitting next to the courtroom's hallway door. She probably happened to come by, saw the chocolates and popped in hoping to be offered some.
When the trial resumed, Stu called TG to the witness stand and established him as an expert in electronic surveillance systems.
# # # # # # # #
Stu led TG through a quick recital of some events.
•How TG had been asked by the defense to look at the school grounds in the hopes of finding a camera that might have caught some glimpses of what had happened near the log fence behind the school.
•How he had found two very old surveillance cameras and had immediately brought them to the attention of school officials.
•How they, in turn, had brought in the district's technical expert, and on their own, they had discovered that events in the area where Candi rested between lessons had been captured by those cameras.
•How the district's technical personnel had looked through the woods and had found additional cameras.
•How, upon examination of the placements of those cameras, the district personnel had learned that quite a bit of the forest was captured by the cameras.
•How, through examination of the brand and serial numbers of the cameras, the district personnel had concluded that the order for such surveillance must have been placed at least twenty years ago.
•How the school personnel had found an order for those cameras in their computer records.
•How school personnel had also discovered that this unexpected surveillance system had come at a time when the school was experiencing a great deal of vandalism on its grounds and rowdy behaviour in the woods. The presence of such cameras was obviously justified.
• How district personnel had also found that the surveillance cameras must have been hooked up to the computer network at that time, but had never been activated.
• How district personnel had found that all the wiring and program commands for that surveillance system were in place waiting for somebody to make a few connections. That activation required the district's technical supervisor to spend only a few minutes online.
• How the school's vice-principal scanned through three months of camera data and saw what had been captured. Knowing that TG had asked for assistance in proving the innocence of a young home-schooler, the vice principal let TG roam through the records but under close supervision. The cache on the cameras had storage capacity for up to eight months of surveillance data. TG had started his study with the video records for October, 2084.
# # # # # # # #
"Objection, objection, objection."
Well, the objections didn't all come at once. But they did come in a flurry.
"Invasion of privacy!" the prosecutor thundered. That was countered by two pages of precedents.
"Undue influence by a member of the defensive staff!" This was countered by sworn affidavits from school district personnel that summarized who had been involved in this project, when, and for how long. TG had hardly been involved at all as would have been obvious if the prosecutor had been listening to TG's evidence. (Narrator: TG HAD been involved in buying those cameras in 2064 with Wizard's stash of $20 bills, but nobody asked him about that.)
"Potential planting of fake incriminating evidence!"
"Really?" the judge asked. "You're insinuating that the defense installed those cameras twenty years ago – years before this defendant was born. Then they brought in actors who played out some scripted scenes. Then they managed to date stamp the data to 2084 after the fact. You sure you want to go there, Mr. Prosecutor?"
"Twenty year old cameras are unreliable?"
"Let's see what they show first, shall we?" the judge said. "I'm ordering the court cleared of everybody except court officers. We don't know who or what we're going to see."
# # # # # # # #
TG had stopped at the end of the first clip. The judge was sitting in his comfy chair in front of the screen; the prosecutor and defense were on either side of him in wooden chairs. The court secretary was
facing away from the screen. TG was there to run the clips of the cameras that he had put together into montages. A separate three-ring binder held legal documents attesting to the fact that all of the montages had been drawn from the surveillance cameras. Nobody bothered looking at the binder. Candi with an i was sitting in the hallway under supervision of the young female bailiff. Lucas, Wolf, Yolanda, and Hank were sitting in the staff cafeteria under the supervision of the older bailiff. Yolanda was feeling a little nauseous. "I need to drink something very sour," she had said on the way out.
"I agree, Counsellor," the judge said. "The witness was definitely taking young boys into the woods well before your client came on the scene. Does TG have anything showing what her tutoring consisted of?"
"I have a montage starting in October 2084," TG said. "Tell me when you want me to stop."
The judge watched for about two minutes before calling out. "Freeze that one." Then he ruled. "Definitely her face. The boy is definitely a minor. Definitely sex."
The judge turned to Stu. "Counsellor, I acknowledge that you have shown multiple cases of the witness committing perjury and multiplie cases of the witness having illegal sex with minors. I'll deal with her later. But you have yet to show me that your client was not acting as a pimp or that he didn't assault her. Do you have anything in these montages that provides insight on that?"
"Objection," the prosecutor called as he stood up in panic at what this could do to his case.
"This better be good," the judge warned.
"Neither the defense nor the school provided the prosecutor's office with information about these tapes before the trial. That makes all of these data inadmissible."
Stu pointed to the small stack of documents still sitting on his table.
The judge shook his head wearily. "Boil it down for him, Counsellor. He should have known this."
"It's not the job of the defense to do the jobs of the investigating officers or the prosecuting office. We are not required to share information that we gain in the course of our pursuit for justice."
"Couldn't have said it better, myself. Sit down, Mr. Prosecutor. Eat your chocolates."
The prosecutor did as directed and seemed relieved to be able to do so.
"Show me your client in these montages, Counsellor."
"Coming right up, Judge."
# # # # # # # #
"Stop here," the judge ordered.
"Counsellor, I haven't seen anything so far that hurts Lucas. He touched some breasts but nobody objected. Candi offered to let him touch her breasts too, but she did so for compensation. She was very close to soliciting. They went back to her apartment, but she asked him to go there. Do you have any idea what happened in the apartment?"
"She took all of his money. The next montage is important."
# # # # # # # #
Lucas. Help me.
Lucas. Please.
Hey! What are you doing?
I'm trying to leave the woods. Red skirt here is trying to stop me.
I gave him a lesson, Lucas. He won't pay me.
Is that true? She tutored you?
That's not what I'd call it, but yeah she did. What's it to you?
Then you gotta pay.
Who's going to make me?
"She called for help," Stu said. "Lucas came to her rescue. Clearly, he didn't understand what kind of tutoring she was giving. The boy challenged him and swung first."
"This was the assault that the witness claimed had happened to some young man? The assault that had frightened her into prostitution?"
"Yes."
"That charge is dropped. Let's move on."
"Here's what happened immediately afterwards," TG said.
# # # # # # # #
How about I pay you for protecting me instead?
How would that work?
Some of my students are kind of rough. Some are like that other guy and don't want to pay. What am I supposed to do? I'm just a young teacher. They're stronger and bigger. I don't have anybody to help me because I'm self-employed.
Do they hit you?
No. I stop arguing if they look like they will. I can't be hit in my face, Lucas. I wouldn't be able to work. I couldn't speak if they broke my jaw.
What would you want me to do?
Be there when we agree on the price of the lesson. Make sure the student pays. Get the money first. Protect me if they become unruly. You'd be like the school principal. Keeping order.
I never went to school. What's a principal?
The boss of the students and the teachers.
I'd be your boss?
Not really. I'm my own boss. But I'd pay you.
"She hired him to be her pimp; he had no idea."
"That's the way we saw it too, Judge."
"He's innocent of those charges too. Convince me that he didn't rape her in her apartment."
"These documents will help."
# # # # # # # #
"OK, you've proven that there's a WiFi dead zone in her apartment and that she had known enough about that to complain to the landlord," the judge said. "So what."
"The WiFi dead zone meant that if Lucas wanted to do anything on the Internet, he wouldn't be able to do it in her bedroom. This is a document provided by the host of the game that Lucas loves to play. Some Star Trek derivative. You can see the days and the times that he played, plus how long he took between key strokes. The quicker the key strokes, the more points he earns."
"Now what?"
"Check out the data on the lines I've highlighted."
"He was on the game a long time. Keys clicking constantly. Why do I want to know this?"
"Those data are from the afternoon of April 24. Candi alleged that Lucas took her to her apartment and raped her repeatedly in her bedroom from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. that very afternoon. Those are the times that she testified to. The data on this document say he wasn't in the bedroom and he couldn't have been raping her."
"Bailiff," the judge bellowed. When the door opened, he added these instructions to his bellow. "Reconvene the court. Cuff the witness to the bench in the hallway first."
# # # # # # # #
Yolanda and Hank were delighted with the judge's decision to find Lucas not guilty of all charges. In the history of most delighted beings, only the firefly that had accidentally backed into the rotating fan was more de-lighted.
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 34
It was eight days after Lucas' trial. Friday night at the compound found Hank and Yolanda in the gun cellar. With Zzyk dead, they didn't need to clean and oil the weapons every week, so both parents were busy working on their current hobbies. The cellar was comfortable and private, and the lingering smell of gun oil was reminiscent of events and days behind them. Other warriors would take the lead for the family soon. Speaking of warriors...
"Did you try to thank Stu again?" Yolanda asked.
"I tried to tell him how much we appreciated what he had done for Lucas. He said it wasn't necessary. He had finally been able to contribute to the family in one of its battles and appreciated the confidence we had shown in him."
"Two battles actually," Yolanda said. "Five months in a cell next to Double-Tom and running an operation the whole time. Then jumping into another battle with no warning."
"Quite the lawyer."
"I like Stu. I like him a lot," Yolanda admitted. "Not only for what he did in the battles, but for how he's helping Momaka."
"Whenever I walk into the community hall, I wonder if I'm going to see them there, pretending to look at recipes, but secretly holding hands. I cough before I go in so that they won't jump apart."
"Were they there tonight?"
"Stu was," Hank said. "Momaka had been called away this afternoon on some sort of plant emergency. She hadn't returned yet."
"I didn't know plants had emergencies."
"Neither did I. Stu didn't say much about it. They're going to take a submarine ride over the weekend. Bi
g secret again. I don't know why they just don't reveal that they're a couple and climb into one of their beds together."
"Momaka can't. It's impossible for her to be in a bed with another person. Submarines don't have beds."
"Did she tell you this in that long talk?"
"Yes. I'm sworn to secrecy about most of it. I can tell you that she went through abuse that makes what Tom-Tom did to Dreamer seem tame. She has the scars to prove it. Physical scars as well as emotional. Momaka let something slip to me though. There's a significant man in her life and it's not Stu."
"Does Stu know that he has competition?"
"I don't know. I didn't get the sense that she felt romantically drawn to the other man. But he's some form of companion. They have a long history together."
"Should we be encouraging Lucas to participate in Momaka's cleansing ritual the next time she has one?"
"I think we should. He's speaking with his brothers again but Momaka says that he has a long road in front of him. Perversion affects everybody – male and female. It doesn't help that he's a stone face like you. Holds everything in."
"We have to expose the children to real life earlier and more often."
"We have no wars to fight now. That'll help."
"Wizard? Dreamer?" Hank curious and somewhat concerned.
"Long road for her too. Wiz is OK, but he doesn't want to be alone with Dreamer except for business. Have the boys stopped snickering about Yollie's name for the battle Stu fought during Lucas' trial?"
"Operation Fighting Boobs with Chocolate?" Hank said. "They haven't; I have."
"One point for the male gender. You're still way behind the superior gender. Did Yollie give a name to the D-T operation?"
"Operation Raging Gardeners."
"Good name. I give up on this hobby," Yolanda admitted. "Everything I whittle turns out to be shredded firewood." She put the whittling knife down in disgust.
"I give up on my hobby too," Hank said. I can't make sense of this instruction book. He put his knitting needles down in disgust.
"Finding a hobby to ease gently into grandparenthood is going to be more difficult than I thought," Yolanda admitted. "We've tried both whittling and knitting. We suck at both of them. Do you have any other bright ideas?"
# # # # # # # #
From a news release to local Internet news blogs
May 15, 2085: Surrey police are investigating the disappearance of a prostitute who goes by the name of Candi with an i. The prostitute, aged 26, escaped from a mental health institution where she was being assessed following a trial in which she was found guilty of a number of sex-related charges. She may have panicked when she was told that she would not be released into a half-way house but would face hard time instead. The police have determined that she had sex with a staff person in exchange for him unlocking an exterior door.
Bob, the Invisible Dragon Page 20