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“How do you plead?”
“Not guilty, Your Honour.”
His Honour sat back in his chair, absently stroking his long white beard. The figure before him held his gaze. There was no defiance in that look. Nor arrogance. The accused stood relaxed, arms at his sides, feet comfortably apart. His head inside the hoodie was neither bowed nor proud. His Honour couldn’t quite make out the look on his face. Was that a faint smile?
“Really? Despite all the evidence to the contrary? That we know for a fact you killed this five-year old girl?”
The accused shrugged. “The facts are the facts. It’s how we interpret them, learn from them, that matters.”
This brought a snort from the third participant in the drama.
“This amuses you?”
The accuser ran a hairy hand over his red face, stopping at his own smaller, darker goatee. “Sorry, Your Honour. It’s just that I seem to have heard that somewhere before.”
His Honour raised an imperious eyebrow.
The accuser coughed. He shook his head. “No, maybe not. Sorry, Your Honour. Carry on. Please.”
But His Honour’s eyebrow was not to be dismissed so easily. Once raised, it dominated the small white room and everyone inside it. In fact, it gave the impression that everyone outside the room should also be holding their breath in trembling apprehension.
“Indeed.”
This came as an exclamation mark at the end of the eyebrow’s sentence, terminating the pregnant pause, permitting fearful lungs throughout the City to once again contract and expand.
“Alright. Let’s pretend that I haven’t already seen the evidence. Accuser, do what you do best. Take it away.”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
The accuser turned to the accused, taking two slow steps across the room so he could look him in the eyes.
“Gerald Reginald Ian Montgomery, please tell us, in your own words, what happened last night.” He glanced towards the large marble desk that dominated the room. “The facts, please. Just the facts. We’ll interpret them later.”
Before the imperious eyebrow could threaten to reappear, Gerald took a deep breath.
“It was a standard job. Same kind of thing I’ve done a million times before. More, probably. You lose track, you know? Well, you guys don’t, obviously. But I do.
A shabby little apartment in a tenement block on the lower East side of Chicago. That’s where this one had gone to ground. He was trying to hide from one of the local gangs. After a lifetime of crime, decades of dealing and thieving and bribing with the worst of them, he thought he could make amends by turning them in. He was going to testify against them.
But he was old. And sick. He knew he didn’t have long. So he didn’t bother with protective custody. The police posted a couple of guards outside his flat, but they didn’t even see me.
He did, obviously. When someone appears next to your bed in the middle of the night, especially when you’re a marked man... Let’s just say I didn’t have to do much. He nearly died of fright.”
“Gerald.”
“Yes, Your Honour?”
“Get to the point.”
“Sorry, Your Honour. Of course.
So the old man’s gone. Mission accomplished. And that’s where my part of the story normally ends.
Except this time, I turn from the bed and I see them, just standing there, looking at me. The old man’s daughter and granddaughter.”
“Sloppy work.”
“No, Your Honour. They weren’t supposed to be there.”
His Honour drew himself up in his chair. The accuser smirked, winking at Gerald as he hunched his shoulders protectively.
“Are you saying there was a flaw in my plan?” His Honour’s voice thundered across the room, making the solid furniture vibrate for some time afterwards.
Gerald shook his head. He wasn’t responding to the question, just trying to stop the ringing in his ears. He coughed to clear his head. Once. Twice.
The accuser leaned casually against His Honour’s marble desk, indicating with an open hand that Gerald still had the floor.
“No, Your Honour. No. Of course not. That would be... unthinkable.”
The imperious eyebrow twitched ominously.
“But I have to say, it threw me, seeing them both there. And especially when they both saw me there. That’s not supposed to happen. Ever.”
Gerald looked to the accuser for support, but drew a blank.
“I mean, the local thugs were supposed to have taken care of her the night before, trying to scare the old man into changing his mind.”
The accuser stepped forward, enjoying Gerald’s confusion. “That’s right, Gerald. That was the plan. So now here’s the question we’re all waiting to have answered.” He glanced up at His Honour before carrying on. “Gerald, why did you deviate from the plan and kill the child?”
It was a good question. It deserved an answer. A good answer. A great answer. The kind of answer that would drop mouths open and stop time in its tracks. Gerald hoped he had one.
“Gerald?”
“Yes, Your Honour?”
“Just so we’re clear. Is there any doubt as to who killed the child?”
Gerald shook his head. “None at all, Your Honour.”
“For the record, then...”
“I killed the child, Your Honour.”
“With your blade?”
“Yes, Your Honour. With the blade.”
“Right. Carry on.”
Gerald took another deep breath. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. That shouldn’t have mattered, but old habits die hard.
“Something had obviously gone wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be there.”
The accuser waved his hands. “Yes, yes, the local thugs... yada yada...”
“That’s right. The local thugs. They’d taken care of her the night before. They’d done things to her. Terrible things.”
“Oh, come now. You’ve been around the block. You’ve seen worse.”
Gerald squared his shoulders. He raised his chin and looked the accuser in the eyes. “That’s right. I have. Maybe I’ve seen too much. Maybe I didn’t want to see any more.”
“What?” His Honour roared the question across the room. It took the other two by surprise. He never raised his voice twice in one day. Not anymore.
“But that’s your job. You can’t just change your mind. Not after all this time.”
Gerald shrugged. “Things change, Your Honour. People change.”
“They do. You don’t.”
Each pair of words was a full stop, bringing that line of conversation to a complete halt. No response could be given. None was expected.
The accuser glanced up at his superior, pointed tail still curled protectively between his legs. “Should we carry on, Your Honour?”
A reflective pause. Then a thoughtful nod. “Let’s.”
“Right. So, Gerald. Take us back. You’re in the old man’s room. With his daughter and his granddaughter.”
“His dead daughter.”
“Yes, that’s right. His dead daughter. After she’s had terrible things done to her.”
Gerald glared across the room. He knew his place. He knew how the hierarchy worked. But the sneer that had accompanied those words...
“She was a mess. Physically. Emotionally. Even spiritually. I mean, obviously she wasn’t supposed to still be there. But she held tight to that little girl’s hand, and she wasn’t letting go.”
The accuser turned to the bench. “Your Honour, is that even possible?”
His Honour nodded. “In extreme cases.”
Gerald carried on. “Then I heard them. The local thugs. They’d grown tired of waiting. A rattle of gunfire removed any opposition in the lobby. Then they were on the stairs, clattering towards the door of the apartment, hell-bent on bloody retribution.”
“They didn’t know the old man had already passed on.”
“No, Your Honour. And the only living thing in that apartment was the dead woman’s child. The look in her eyes as she held her out to me...” He shook his head.
“She could still feel what they’d done to her the night before. She knew what they would do to her daughter. I heard them at the door, kicking it, laughing, shooting out the lock. I could smell them as they burst into the room. Old sweat. Dried blood. Stale wine and rotting meat.
But all I could see were a dead mother’s eyes as she begged me without words to save her child from a fate that she knew beyond doubt was worse than death. Then the little girl reached out and took my hand. She squeezed it tight. There were tears in her eyes. But she looked up at me and smiled.”
Gerald was done. He had run out of words. The lump in his throat would allow no more to pass through to his lips. He looked up at the bench, resigned to his fate.
“So you used your scythe on an unsanctioned innocent.”
Gerald ignored the accuser.
“You are a force of nature. You are not permitted to have emotions.”
Gerald kept his face turned up towards the light.
“I recommend -“
“Silence.” His Honour spoke quietly, but the word still resonated with power. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “He’s right, you know. You cannot have emotions.”
Gerald shrugged. “And yet, I do.”
“Indeed you do.” His Honour smiled, briefly. It was gone before anyone could really be sure it was there. “But the fact remains - you went outside of your job description and killed an unsanctioned innocent. That was not part of the plan. And you are not authorized to make changes to the plan.”
“Your Honour, how can you – “
His Honour raised a wrinkled hand. His ancient forefinger stressed the words that followed. “Don’t ask. Everybody asks. Nobody understands. Just accept that there is a plan, and you have your part to play in it.”
Gerald’s shoulders sagged. He reached up and removed his hoodie. His close-cropped skull was slick with sweat. “Okay, Your Honour. I accept that. And I submit myself to your judgement. But...”
“Yes?”
“I still feel no guilt for what I did.”
His Honour smiled again. This one lasted longer. Disappointment, he could handle. He had grown accustomed to it over millennia. Expected it, even. But surprise... He hadn’t been surprised by anything in such a long time, he wasn’t even sure he recognized the feeling.
He chuckled. There was still hope.
His eyes sparkled as he raised the gavel and prepared to deliver his verdict.