Paradigms Lost (67 page)

I got up and walked over to the witness stand. “Kimberley, until that night, you considered Angela a friend, didn’t you?”

She nodded, looking uncertain. “Yes.”

“Did you see Angela leave the party?”

“Yes. She told me she was leaving.”

“Did she say why?”

Kimberley was silent.

“Kimberley, I know the situation is difficult, but remember back to that night. Is it true that she told you that Frederic had tried to take advantage of her?”

I thought for a minute she might simply refuse to answer, given that she now knew Angela was a monster, but it really is hard to believe a friend has changed that much. I remembered trying to argue Elias Klein out of killing me, even when I
knew
he wasn’t human and was transforming right in front of me. I counted on that gut-level disbelief.

“Yes,” she said finally. “She did.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Oh, yes. Freddie was like that when he got drunk, especially when he was mad at one of us for . . . well, for not . . .”

I passed over the implication. The expressions on the jurors’s faces showed that I probably didn’t need to; they’d already figured out the score. “Did you see the deceased, Frederic Delacroix, after Angela left?”

“Yes. Just after she left.”

“And what was he doing at that time?”

Kimberley hesitated. “He . . . he looked really mad. His hair was mussed, and so was his suit, and he was asking for Angela.”

“Did he ask you where Angela was?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell him?”

A pause. “No.”

“Why didn’t you tell him where she was?” I asked. When there was no answer, I sighed. “Kimberley, your close friends call you ‘Kitty,’ don’t they?”

She nodded.

“Did Angela call you ‘Kitty’?”

Keeping her eyes averted from Angela, she answered, “Y-yes.”

“Then, Kimberley, isn’t it the truth that you told Frederic that Angela had gone off with someone else, one of the other guests at the party, because you were afraid of what would happen if he caught her?”

Very quietly, she said, “Yes.”

“You heard some of your other friends try to do the same thing, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear Trisha tell Frederic that she’d actually just left, alone?”

A momentary flicker of anger. “Yes.”

“And Frederic then left quickly?”

“He ran out the door after Angela, yes.”

I looked her in the eyes. “And at that time, when Frederic ran out in pursuit of your friend, Angela, did you think Angela was in danger?”

“Y-yes. Yes, I did. I thought Freddie was going to . . . well, hurt her bad.”

“Did you have reason to believe this? Had you ever seen Frederic Delacroix hurt someone, or heard convincing evidence that he had done so?”

Her eyes wide, she just nodded her head. A moment later she said, “Yes.”

“Your Honor,” Hume said, “the dead man is not on trial here.”

“True, Your Honor,” I agreed, “but establishing the character of the dead man is an important element of the defense. I have no more questions at this time, but I may need to call this witness or some of the others from the prosecution to the stand for the defense.”

Judge Freeman nodded. “You’re done with this witness for now?” He glanced at Hume. “Any redirect? No? You may stand down, Ms. Carronada.”

I saw Angela flash a grateful, relieved smile at Kimberley, who hesitantly returned it.
Damn,
Angela was good. Very, very good. We could—if we were really lucky—actually win this one.

How I wished I could feel good about
that
.

CHAPTER 96

Connect the Dots

I sat down in my fuzzy bathrobe and pulled my laptop to me. I’d rather be pulling Syl to me, I thought, but she couldn’t also afford to be spending weeks here in California rather than working on her business (and filtering the nutcases from mine). Syl’s psychic friend, Samantha Prince, was visiting, so at least she wasn’t alone. I had a computer for company; the best thing I could say about that was that the machine was pretty undemanding.

I’d managed to get one nagging worry cleared up—although the clearing up simply caused me more heartburn. After that day’s trial proceedings, I’d had another private conversation with Angela. “The prosecuting attorney in this isn’t stupid,” I pointed out. “I find it hard to believe that he, or at least some of his investigative staff, don’t have any suspicion that you might have had an ulterior motive in working for Freddie. If they figure that out, it won’t take very long to discover that someone had screwed with all of the CryWolf units owned by your clients.”

Angela laughed. “Oh, certainly, that wouldn’t have been good, would it? But don’t worry. The first thing my . . . pack, I suppose you could say . . . was to do if any of us were compromised in such a way was to go back and restore the functionality of the systems, immediately. This is obviously a
terrible
setback for us, a year’s worth of work totally gone, and we’ll have to be even
more
careful for the next few years to make sure no one catches on. But you don’t need to worry about them bringing
that
up at trial.” She smiled sweetly. “See? All taken care of.”

I winced at the memory. Ugh. And as I took my confidentiality seriously, I couldn’t tell anyone about the situation. The best my conscience would allow me to do—some time
well
after the trial—would be to hint about the possible approach used by the wolves to circumvent security. Sometimes, having a professional conscience is a pain in the ass.

Right now, I wanted to do some work that didn’t threaten me with Pyrrhic victories. I opened my notes on Kevin Ferrin’s problem cases, which posed a challenge I could feel better about than the ambivalent hell I had just gone through.

I had—in a way—managed to find a common thread among all the victims, but I didn’t know if it was a
significant
common thread. In his original narration of the problem, Kevin had mentioned that both the Roquettes and Buckley had recently attended a party. A quick investigation turned up the fact that
all
of the victims had attended a big bash within a few days of their deaths. Of course, given the higher-society nature of the neighborhood, parties were probably common. And after reviewing the guest lists, we hadn’t found any guests in common with the majority of the victims. There were plenty of names that showed up on three or four guest lists, but none that showed up on all of them or even a majority. This again was not a big surprise; people in the same neighborhood with similar interests, or employed by the same or related organizations, could be invited to more than one or a couple of parties, but not all of them.

I studied the evidence gathered in each case. Ferrin hadn’t exaggerated about the variety of killing methods. Knives, poison, strangulation; one victim just dropped dead somehow, and one death involved homemade explosives. That one hadn’t left much to examine in the way of intact body parts. I found the pictures in that case to be even worse than those of the not-too-lamented Frederic. Still, there was almost
too
much evidence. I agreed with the lieutenant; individually any of these cases was . . . okay, but all of them had something just slightly not quite right in the evidence. The bomb guy, for instance; there wasn’t any good evidence he’d had any skill in that direction, just a couple mentions by people that he’d recently mentioned something about how easy it was to make them, and some evidence that he’d hit some webpages on the subject. The bomb used was awfully, awfully good for someone who hadn’t been doing this stuff long. Then again, maybe he was just a natural at bomb-making and really, really bad at bomb safety.

I concentrated on the pieces of collected evidence that appeared to have no bearing on the case—that is, the kind of stuff you pick up in the investigation that turns out to not be relevant, like fingerprints from the once-a-week cleaning lady, or undeveloped film which has just pictures of the kids at the beach, or that giant dust-bunny under the bed which simply gives evidence that the deceased didn’t do much vacuuming. It was as I went back over the first two folders the lieutenant had given me that it finally hit me.

That woman at the trial—the one with the spectacularly long, red hair—had strongly reminded me of the murdered Jesse Roquette. I grabbed the file and looked up Jesse’s maiden name: Grandis. Armed with this new piece of evidence, my search skills, and the name of the politician who the redhead had apparently been working with, it took me only a few minutes to confirm that Virginia “Ginny” Grandis was indeed working with California State Senator Henry Reed, and was undoubtedly the slightly older sister of Jesse Roquette, neé Grandis.

Now the whole thing was clear. Everything made sense. I picked up the phone. I could at least confirm or deny the crucial question. Then it would just be a very tricky matter of proof and timing. Which might get me killed if I screwed it up, but hell, that was no surprise.

“Verne,” I said, when he got on the line, “tell me something. You know that little stunt that Angela pulled on me while she was yanking my strings—hitting me with a supercharge from the energy she’d taken from Delacroix?”

“Yes. I understand how such things could work, certainly. What do you want to know?”

“I guess . . . well, you fought these things and even ended up having to do unto one of them as they would’ve done unto you.”

“Yes.” His voice was unusually . . . cold? Restrained? Nervous? I knew that particular event embarrassed and upset him, but I thought he’d have been over it by now.

“Anyway, from what I got out of her I guess she used maneuvers like that fairly frequently with her clients. What I want to know is, how much energy would that be in their terms? I mean, if you were a wolf and killed one guy, could you jazz up one client, ten, a hundred times that with the energy?”

“That,” he said, more animation coming back into his voice, “is a very interesting question. Let me think on what I have sensed and what impressions remain from those and similar contacts.” He was silent for several minutes. “Not many, Jason. The transfer in that direction would not be tremendously efficient. Humans are not designed for input, so to speak, and wolves are not generally for output, though they are certainly capable of it. More than one, less than ten I would guess.”

“Thanks, Verne.” I took a deep breath. “Exactly what I needed to know.” I hung up after a quick good-bye.

Now the real dangerous game would begin.

CHAPTER 97

Reasonable Fear

I stood before the Court now, the prosecution having just rested its case. I turned to face the jury. “You have heard the prosecution’s case, and you have been instructed as to what the requirements of the law are in this case.

“I think it is important, however, to establish that the broad general principle—that non-human, intelligent creatures deserve the same justice as those who are human—is one in need of establishment. If the wolves are what we believe them to be, it would be difficult to argue that there is any justification—for the protection of our own species—for according them such rights.” I took a deep breath.

“With the approval of the Court, I am going to present some evidence previously shown only to a very limited number of people, prior to this trial, on which basis the trial was permitted to proceed. In short, I want to introduce you to someone it
would
be worthwhile to protect—by giving them the right to trial.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” David Hume said. We’d already hashed this out in chambers, but we both knew he needed to get his objection on the official records, and I didn’t mind as it meant my rebuttal would be there, too. “Defense is attempting to sway the jury through introducing irrelevant facts designed for emotional appeal.”

“In a sense true, Your Honor,” I responded, “but if we are honest about this trial and its setting, it would be essentially impossible to get a truly impartial jury. For the past year and a half and more, entire
governments
have changed their courses of action because of the revelation of the existence of the wolves—and not always for the better. I simply want to prove to the jury—and to the world—that allowing such justice is not merely and solely going to be an avenue to permit monsters to go free.”

Judge Freeman nodded. “Objection overruled. Proceed, Mr. Wood.”

This time the screens were visible to the courtroom. While specific identification had been eliminated from the video, any sufficiently determined and intelligent researcher would probably be able to trace the source, and that was why it had taken a great deal of soul-searching and courage by the principals to allow me to show this video. I felt renewed gratitude towards the whole family as Lizzie Plunkett, face blurred digitally, appeared. “Hi. You can call me . . . Victoria. I want you to meet my best friend in the whole entire world.” Her voice was also subtly altered, but still clearly that of a young girl. “This is Arischadel.”

A tiny dragon, seemingly sculpted of smoky black quartz, flew into view. A murmur sprang up around the courtroom. “He can’t speak English very well because his throat isn’t made for it, but he’s just as smart as you or me. So, he’s going to write for you.”

Arischadel took a little notebook from Lizzie’s outstretched hand and, gripping a small pencil in his claw, began to write in a clear, if somewhat shaky, script. The camera zoomed in to show him actually writing each word, and Lizzie read out each line as he completed it. “Hello, ar . . . arbiters?” she glanced suspiciously at Arischadel. “Is that a real word?” He bobbed his head again. “Okay. Hello, arbiters of justice. I am Arischadel. I am one of many kinds of creatures you would call supernatural or magical. I live with”—here Aris wrote an “L” but managed to convert it to a “V”—“Vicky and her family and watch over them the best I can. I cannot journey to your courtroom, as I am bound to this place.” The little dragon looked directly into the camera, large dark eyes giving an appeal which was reinforced by the slightly childlike proportions of the creature’s head and body. “I do not ask you to set the one called Angela free for my sake. All that I ask is that you judge her fairly for myself and all other creatures that are not of your blood, but are still of your world.”