Paradigms Lost (68 page)

Lizzie looked up as he finished. “And that’s all we ask. We’re afraid of wolves, too. But people like Aris need to be protected by the law. That’s the point of this trial. Thanks for listening and . . . good luck.”

I nodded to the jury, some of whom were looking startled, a few of whom were looking suspicious. “That video was taken by me personally. It has been verified—and the facts in it examined directly—by personnel from the prosecutor’s office as well. You saw no special effects, except the blurring of the girl’s face and certain background details to protect her anonymity. Arischadel is a real, living, thinking being, and he is far from the only non-wolf, non-human out there.

“This will be an emotional trial, and decisions are and have always been affected by emotions. But this is also a question, in many ways, of what defines a person, of whether we have the right to pass summary judgment on someone because they are different from us. The wolves are, to us, truly horrifying. Perhaps Angela is just as much a monster as the prosecution wishes you to believe. But her people think, and feel, and hate, and I believe they can choose to love, to care, and to protect. Anything that thinks and lives can do those things. Arischadel certainly can, and certainly has. Remember this, when the time comes to render your verdict.”

I turned. “The defense calls Angela McIntyre to the stand.”

A ripple of murmurs circled around the courtroom as the petite form of the shapeshifted werewolf entered the witness box. She was sworn in, with a line added specifically for her: “I swear to tell the truth by the name of our King, Virigar himself.” Angela had very, very much
not
wanted to accept that change, but in the end, she’d realized that I wasn’t budging on that.

I advanced to the witness stand. “Angela, the oath that you’ve sworn does actually bind you, doesn’t it?”

She glared at me, although the glare at this point was mostly for show. “Yes. As you well know.”

“What would happen if you were to directly lie on the stand, having given that oath?”

She looked bleak for a moment. “Worse than the death your people threaten me with. I will not elaborate.”

I nodded. “Good enough. So we can count on the truthfulness of your testimony at least as much as we could with any other witness.”

“More, I would think, Mr. Wood.”

I led her through a series of questions establishing her identity and history. “Exhibits ten-A through ten-F verify that the identity of ‘Angela McIntyre’ is one used solely by the wolf before us, over the last several years. This is not an identity stolen from a human being but a unique identity of her own.”

From that point, I quickly rehashed her career with Frederic Delacroix, again avoiding the rather intimate nature of the “escort” duties. “Now, Angela, is it true that Frederic Delacroix pressured you, as one of his employees in a rather . . . intimate sort of industry, to be more than merely professionally involved with him?”

“Yes. Freddie didn’t choose his employees just for the target clientele. He had his own interests.”

“Would it be fair to say that he applied this pressure to most of his escorts?”

Angela nodded. “Yes.”

“But you refused.”

“I did. He wasn’t my type, you might say.”

“How did he accept your refusal?”

“Poorly.” Angela gave a half-smile. “He wasn’t bad-looking for a human and he could behave decently, so given that plus money, connections, and his position as employer, I do not think he was accustomed to being refused.”

“Did you at any time lead him on, give him the impression that you might be accessible?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I was professionally friendly but no more. I had no interest in him and I tried to make that clear.”

“Tell us about the night in question.”

The story followed what had already been established, until we reached her flight from the party. “So you left the party?”

“It was pretty clear to me that Freddie just wasn’t giving up, he was actually becoming almost obsessive, and I didn’t want to put up with it anymore.”

“Did you think he would follow you?”

“Most of us girls stick together, so no. I thought he wouldn’t realize I was gone until it was too late and he’d calmed down a bit.” For a moment, she
did
look venomously angry, glaring at Trisha, who was just visible in the audience. The girl shrank back. “But
someone
told him that I’d gone.”

“Were you afraid of Frederic?”

“Not at that time, no.”

“What happened?”

“I was about half a block from Freddie’s when I heard a shout behind me, and I saw him coming after me. So I ran.” She sighed. “But, as you can see, I’m not built to outrun people like Freddie. He was a running back in college, you know.”

“If you weren’t afraid of him at that point, why run?”

“Because I thought fighting him might be too revealing. I was
trying
to get out of his sight long enough to shift to another shape—one that he wouldn’t recognize, so he’d think he lost track of me. But he kept way too close. If he were to
see
me change, well, that would have been bad. I didn’t want to kill him and have to leave the area; I had everything nicely set up.”

“So Mr. Delacroix caught up with you. What happened then?”

She grimaced, the pretty face looking both repelled and slightly frightened. “He grabbed my arm, said something like ‘where the hell do you think you’re going, bitch?’ and then backhanded me across the face.”

“Were you afraid of him then?”

She hesitated, looking almost embarrassed, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I was, after he hit me.”

“Why would you be afraid of him then?”

“Because he
hurt
me.” She took a tissue and swabbed makeup from the side of her face. A shadowy bruise, along with some still-visible scarring, came into view.

I turned to the judge and jury. “Exhibit twelve is a photograph of Angela’s face shortly after she was taken into custody. You will note the cuts and heavy bruising on her face, in the same place as these scars. Referring to Exhibit four-E, it can be seen that Mr. Delacroix wore a set of rings on his right hand. Trace material found caught on points and angles of the rings has been analyzed and shown to have DNA content identical to the DNA of Angela McIntyre.” I glanced over at Prosecutor Hume as I continued. “These rings are described in the accounting of the deceased’s possessions, in the ME report, page seven. The most important point of the descriptions is that the two rings which caused the cuts contain a high proportion of silver.”

That
got a reaction. “Exactly. Until that point, Angela was not afraid of Frederic. But when he struck her, it was with a weapon known to be very deadly to her species, a weapon that could easily kill her if she did not defend herself.” I returned to Angela. “Was that when you changed and fought back?”

She shook her head. “Not quite. He knocked me down, and I tried to get away, but he was too fast and pushed me back down. He pulled out his knife and I realized what he intended to do, and
then
I fought back. And then the police came around the corner,
just
at the wrong time. I was not able to get away.”

“Thank you, Angela.” I nodded to Hume. “Your witness.”

Hume was conferring with a couple of people at his table. “Your Honor, as it is getting late, we would like to begin our cross-examination tomorrow.”

Judge Freeman nodded. “I have no objection to adjourning until tomorrow. Does the defense object?”

“No, sir.”

“Then court adjourned until tomorrow. When we reconvene, the prosecution may begin its cross-examination of the witness.”

CHAPTER 98

Lest You Become Monsters Yourselves

“Mr. Wood, do you think you have a chance to win this case?”

“Mr. Wood, don’t you feel you’re betraying your own people by doing this?”

There were a dozen other questions, all being shouted at once, as I exited the courtroom with Angela. Other questions were bellowed at Angela, but she completely ignored them, looking scared and small. Her Oscar-winning performance continued all the way to the car that would take her back to the lockup. I stopped before I reached my car. “Okay, people, I’ll give you some footage. Do I feel I have a chance to win? Yes, I do, as long as the jury is fair. The evidence we just presented shows—contrary to the prosecution’s original contention—that Angela did in fact have reason to fear for her life.

“No, I’m not betraying anyone. I don’t like the wolves any more than most people, and—in fact—there isn’t anyone alive that has more reason to be afraid of them than me. But if we let our justice system be run by anything other than fairness, or at least the willingness to
try
to be fair, we’ve already lost what makes this country worth living in.”

Brian Clement of CNN knew an opening when he saw one. “What do you mean by that, Mr. Wood?”

“I mentioned in court today that entire governments changed after the existence of the wolves became known. The fact is that a lot of the panic over the werewolves has been used by opportunists to get away with things that would
never
fly in ordinary times. The WAS Act—Werewolf Alertness and Security—made a lot of things legal that simply shouldn’t have been, all in the guise of allowing the federal government to detect and deal with wolves. Monitoring cameras sprouting up everywhere, background traces to detect discontinuities, my own CryWolf systems doing double-duty as security monitors in thousands of places that never were watched before; there’s a serious danger here, worse than anything those monsters could do. They
live
on fear, you know, and if they make our whole
society
based on fear, I’m not at all sure they wouldn’t be willing to risk the increased so-called security measures.”

“But if that’s the only way to be safe—” someone began.

“—then we had better accept that there’s no such thing as real safety.” I cut him off. “Ben Franklin said it best: ‘Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Yes, by not allowing the government to monitor whatever it desires, it’s possible for werewolves, or murderers, or terrorists, or whatever, to sometimes get away with something.
That’s the price you pay for living in a free society
. Sometimes a monster—human or otherwise—will abuse that freedom to do something to you or yours.” I shrugged. “I would rather take that risk than allow a slowly creeping fear to erode our freedom until there’s nothing left.” I opened my car door. “That’s all.”

“You’re really playing with fire, Wood.” Clement whispered.

Thinking of how the endgame of this whole mess might play out, I agreed. Timing was going to be absolutely
everything
. . . and I had to make sure that all three sides involved—mine, the prosecutor’s, and the police—knew the right info, at the right time, to act on it, or else the whole thing would blow up in my face—and I’d be the first casualty. I had the proof in hand, though, courtesy of poor, dead Joe Buckley and a very thorough scene investigator who’d bagged a single hair that was out of place. Now if I could just get through these next few days . . .

CHAPTER 99

Perry Jason

“Mr. Clarke, what is your profession?”

The prosecution had cross-examined Angela efficiently. Bound by her oath, she had admitted that even with his silver rings, she thought Frederic could not have beaten her to death and that she probably would have had many chances to escape. She also admitted that she could probably have incapacitated him without killing him. She had taken the Fifth Amendment on other potentially incriminating questions, such as whether she had ever killed anyone else. I knew some damage had been done by the time she stood down . . . but I’d expected that. Thus Mr. Caston Clarke.

“Yes, sir. I am a private investigator. CC Investigations.”

“I hired you to perform an investigation, correct?”

“You did, sir.”

“What were my instructions to you, exactly?”

“I was to go to the crime scene relevant to this case, at the parking garage, and search outside of the scene in a specific direction for any object or objects which seemed out of place. If I found such an object, I was to call you and follow further instructions.”

I nodded. “Tell me about your investigation.”

Clarke leaned back. He was a medium-sized man who, at first glance, looked portly, but who was actually mostly muscle, and surprisingly strong and quick. He’d been strongly recommended to me by Lieutenant Ferrin. “Well, sir, I returned to the crime scene and began searching outward from the perimeter in the direction indicated—a fan-shaped area centered roughly northward.”

“And did you find any object of significance?”

“Yes, sir. About seventy-five feet from the perimeter, I found an object I considered quite significant in a storm drain where it appeared to have fallen recently.”

“You took pictures of the object as it lay and then called me, correct?”

“Yes, sir. You then instructed me to wait until you arrived.”

“And after I arrived?”

“I removed the object, using gloves and other means to prevent contamination, while you took a video of the process. We then took the object to an independent laboratory—VeriAnalysis Incorporated—where it was examined.”

“What was the object that you discovered, Mr. Clarke?”

“A large combat folding knife, blade found locked in the extended position. Research showed that it was number one hundred twenty-seven in a limited series of three hundred such knives sold by the DiamondEdge Corporation under the brand name Excalibur. Inquiries at DiamondEdge further showed that this particular weapon was sold to Mr. Frederic Delacroix.”

After a few more questions from me and the prosecution (which didn’t bring out anything of consequence), I let Clarke stand down and called Dr. Herman Dell to the stand. “Dr. Dell, you work for VeriAnalysis Incorporated, correct?”

“Indeed, Mr. Wood.”

“What is your job there?”

“I am an independent forensic researcher, specializing in the examination of physical evidence in accordance with proper police procedure. I am qualified through fifteen prior years of work with the New York State Forensics Laboratory.”