part0049

Tension filled the courtroom, oozed from the richly polished mahogany walls, flooded soundlessly down the ludicrously wide aisles. The unnerving silence was shattered by the clack of heels on marble. Prosecuting Attorney Sonia Bowman, dressed to the nines, made her fashionably late entrance.

A heavy door opened and the grossly obese Judge Kevin Hannigan wobbled into the courtroom. All the players were now present in the game called Justice.

Sonia Bowman’s eyes swept the courtroom, seared Jake’s before quickly moving on. He’d slept with her when she was clawing her way up the ranks. Her newfound prominence left no room for a slouch like Jake. Jake had even heard rumors that she was humping Your Overstuffed Honor. Still, she looked remarkable in her snug-fitting suit and fuck-me heels.

Jake’s eyes wandered to the seating area behind Sonia and all illicit thoughts vanished. Gretchen and Edward Dempsey stared straight ahead, their blank faces permanently etched in pain. Equally stoic was Alice McCauley, who refused to glance in Jake’s direction.

The jury members looked bored and strangely out of proportion in the massive leather chairs. Seven women, five men. Various races, various walks of life and, Jake sensed, varying degrees of intelligence. None of them looked like they’d be caught dead interacting with one another outside the walls of the courthouse.

No one in the room stood out more prominently than the defense attorney, Mac “Machete” Underwood. Garish orange hair sprouted from a ghoulishly pale and deeply pockmarked face that melded into a long stalk of a neck. His gangling body moved like a puppet across the courtroom. Jake thought if he looked hard enough, he’d see the strings.

Grandstanding was child’s play to this bottom-feeding rodent. If twisting the truth was art, then Underwood was a regular Picasso. He’d sell his own mother down the river to get off the likes of child molesters and wife beaters. Or teenage killers.

Beside Underwood, Martin McCauley played the innocent boy-next-door routine, perfectly choreographed right down to the neatly pressed suit and freshly trimmed hair. Martin sat up straight, his solemn eyes begging the jury to acquit.

The words “All rise” reverberated and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Martin McCauley began.

When all was said and done, justice prevailed. But there were no winners in this game. Martin McCauley, tried and convicted as an adult, would plunge deeper into hell, murdering a prison guard four years into his sentence, then allegedly drowning in an escape attempt decades later. The Dempseys would struggle to move on with their lives, eventually succumbing to their grief in a suicide pact. Alice McCauley would never recover from the understanding that the child she bore was a cold-blooded murderer and within a year would admit herself into a psychiatric institution where she would serve out the remainder of her days. Her husband would be spared his son’s sentencing, succumbing to a brain aneurysm.

Others fared better. Sonia Bowman would see her career lifted to celebrity status. “Machete” Underwood would pick himself up by the bootstraps and move on to The Next Big Thing.

Jake decided that Drew McCauley had gotten the rawest deal of them all. He was left to struggle endlessly with the realization that he played a major role in locking away his twin brother, his flesh and blood. His blood brother, a reference Jake recalled Drew using to describe Martin. Marriage, children, and a lucrative writing career would mask the wound, but would never fully heal the scar it left.

Jake would have that dinner with Sheila Jamieson, who would go on to become Mrs. Jake Hawksworth. A child. A respectful career. Then tragedy would strike, forever leaving its mark.

But as Jake Hawksworth walked out of the courtroom on that wintry day, he felt only elation. For a legal system that, every once in a while, actually worked. For the dream date with the intriguing woman he’d only just met. And for a promise that he’d made to himself–to always be there to help a lost young man somehow find his way back from hell.

The media descended upon Andrew McCauley. He looked more forlorn than usual. Jake nodded, threw him a wave. Drew managed a smile and was lost in a flurry of cameras. Jake would not see him again for more than a quarter of a century.