August 24, Monday
WHEN THE judge explained a second witness would testify behind a screen and with a disguised voice, Bryan Stone stood to vigorously object.
"Your Honor, this is courtroom theater. My client has a right to face his accusers. The U.S. Attorney is trying to convince the jury that my client is some monster that people are too afraid to confront in open court."
"Your Honor," U.S. Attorney McDavid said in a tired voice, "Mr. Stone is well aware that the witness being called is in the witness protection program because of their willingness to come forward to testify in this trial. He's the only one on stage here."
"Objection!"
"Overruled, Mr. Stone," Judge Arnold said. "Let's proceed."
"Can you describe what happened after you agreed to testify before the grand jury?" the prosecutor asked.
"Somebody left a dead bird nailed to my front door," the altered voice said, flat and toneless. "Didn't leave a note, didn't need to. I got the message."
The room had gone very still. Somewhere behind me was the soft creak of someone shifting their weight on the pew.
"Did you report that to law enforcement?"
"Yes. Nothing came of it." A pause, the modulator flattening the hesitation into something eerie. "Two weeks later my car tires were slashed. Then—" a choking noise sounded. "Someone killed my dog."
"You're sure it was intentional?" McDavid asked.
"Kimbo's throat was cut."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," the attorney said. "Can you tell me what other things happened to you and when?"
There were menacing phone calls in the middle of the night, someone had run her off the road into a ravine, and a man had followed her daughter when she was walking home from school.
My needles slowed for a full minute while I listened, some part of me finally understanding, in a way the earlier testimony about wiretaps and shell corporations hadn't quite managed to convey, exactly why a marshal stood at the back of this room every single day, exactly why my phone sat locked in a drawer somewhere, exactly why I slept behind a reinforced hotel door.
I glanced, involuntarily, toward Deputy Wells. He stood in his usual spot, but something in his posture had sharpened during this testimony.
Bryan Stone rose for cross-examination and spent a long, careful hour suggesting, without ever quite saying it outright, that Witness C's fear might be attributable to any number of sources unconnected to his client—a bitter ex-boyfriend, a random act of neighborhood vandalism, the ordinary background static of urban life.
He was good at it, I had to admit, laying a fog of alternative explanation over each incident so thickly that by the time he sat down, I found myself uncertain again.
I picked my needles back up, found my place in the pattern, and worked through the rest of the morning with a knot low in my stomach.
By the noon recess, I'd finished only two rows, my hands moving slower than they had in weeks.
I was starting to realize what kind of world I'd wandered into when I'd responded to that jury summons back in July.