Chapter 98
Davian
In Court
Crime Scene Mystery Investigation
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“Are we going to make it?” I asked, my tension growing as I – dressed in one of my dark blue suits – and Miss DeLoughrey – in one of her black three-piece suits – made our way up the steps to the Supreme Court building in Richmond.
It was hard to ignore the reporters who immediately rushed toward us but were held at bay by security guards working for the courthouse.
“Believe me, Mr. Rydell, no one ends a trial without a DeLoughrey,” she said matter-of-factly and with the self-assured tone I was used to hearing from her.
Over the past two months, we had met weekly to work out our plan.
She had always remained professional, for which I was secretly grateful, though that was also why I didn’t know who she was.
All I had been able to find out was that she had graduated from Harvard just a year ago and that this was her first major case.
She was from Canada, where she planned to open a law firm as soon as she returned.
Anyway, after my call two months ago, she had invited me for coffee in Baltimore, explained the situation in Quill’s case to me, and eventually let me in on her plans.
However I had managed to work on this case amidst all the sleepless nights, the nightmares, my panic attacks, and the deepening emptiness inside me, it had brought us here today. To Quill’s trial.
Nervousness was already eating away at me, because the last thing I wanted was to fail. If I didn’t do what I had done best all those years in D.C. before Maplecrest, and convince the jury of Quill’s innocence, my Feather would have no reason left to be proud of me. And I couldn’t let that happen.
The lawyer had driven us here as if we had been part of a street race, and the only reason my heart hadn’t leapt out of my chest was that I no longer had one.
The feeling of being watched made me look back across the intersection, which was filled with people and traffic.
A cold-blond man in a dark blue coat, black suit, and black sunglasses stood on the other side of the street.
Abruptly, I stopped in my tracks.
What on earth?
The lawyer from the cemetery…
A truck blocked my view.
“Mr. Rydell?”
Miss DeLoughrey had stopped and was looking at me searchingly.
I turned to look back, but… the man was gone.
Either I was already hallucinating from all the sleep deprivation, or…
Or what, Davian?
I forced myself to continue up the steps, and we reached the entrance to the courthouse, where the double doors were opened for us and we walked through the building’s marble lobby, taking more stairs until we came to a stop in front of another set of double doors, and she turned to me.
“You know who you’re doing this for?”
Where my heart had once been, it twitched traitorously, and my gaze darkened.
“For Quillon Veritas.”
Miss DeLoughrey nodded, squared her shoulders, then opened the double doors, and the two of us entered the packed courtroom.
Grand Jury
Atli ?rvarsson
It must be mentioned that literally everyone who had had anything to do with Quill had been summoned as a witness. And so I was prepared to see Monica, Lara, Anthony, Quill’s friend Thomas, and other professors and students who had been questioned after New Year’s Eve sitting in the front rows.
But I ignored them all, searching for the man I was going to ruin today.
Joseph, dressed in one of his fancier suits, was just rising from the witness stand, but froze when he spotted me and, like everyone else in the room, stared at me.
He looked as though he hadn’t expected me to show up here.
And fuck, it felt good to know that I was playing my first trump card right now.
I hadn’t seen him since that night and my pathetic attempt to attack him the day after. And the fact that he looked as though absolutely nothing in his life had changed for the worse made me clench my hands into fists.
You’re the reason my feather no longer breathes. Why she has spent her entire life racing along the edge of existence.
Glad to have missed his hypocritical speech, which would likely have made my nerves explode, I stopped next to Miss DeLoughrey.
“Miss DeLoughrey. How timely. Your witness is next,” the judge remarked.
This was pure luck. If I had arrived late, the case would have been closed. There was no official second hearing date.
“Mr. Richter, please take a seat.”
He finally stirred and stepped – fortunately for him – in a wide arc past me before taking a seat next to… Arnold.
What was that bastard doing here?
He glared at me, just as he had done to Monica for years.
If only you knew that this day won’t end well for you, you vile old bastard.
“Mr. Rydell”
First Day in Court
Atli ?rvarsson
He gestured to the seat next to him, and I walked past the jury, up the wooden stairs, and took my place in the witness stand, where the audience had an unobstructed view of me, while Miss DeLoughrey sat down at one of the two front tables.
“Mr. Rydell, for your benefit: the facts of the case are as follows.” The judge cleared his throat.
“The defendant, Gravia Onera Richter, shot Troy Fitzek, her professor of business law, with a semi-automatic pistol on November 25, 1995, at 10:37 p.m. on the Fitzek family’s private property in Maplecrest. The shot struck the victim fatally in the neck.
According to the investigations to date, the weapon was in the defendant’s possession, and she fired it deliberately.
Surveillance footage depicts the incident.
Whether the act was committed in self-defense, in the heat of the moment, or with intent is the subject of further investigation. ”
Surveillance cameras.
The Fitzeks were said to own eight of them.
I still wondered where exactly the other seven were, because it seemed insane to me that not a single camera had captured him pulling out the knife – which the police had never found in his possession – or me rushing to the car with Quill in my arms.
Someone must have massively tampered with the evidence. Someone who had a history of covering up other people’s tracks.
My gaze shifted to Joseph, and my jaw clenched as our eyes met.
If only I had evidence.
“Furthermore, the defendant enrolled at a private university using a false identity, forged academic records and falsified official government documents in order to gain unlawful access to academic services and institutional resources. This constitutes intentional fraud, identity theft, and forgery of documents in multiple instances.”
The judge looked up at a man who seemed familiar to me. Jean Kutolski.
I had already won many cases against him. Back at the beginning of my career, when I had worked for the city. And for a moment, I thought I detected a hint of schadenfreude in his gaze. As if our verbal sparring in court had ever been personal…
“Prosecutor Kutolski”
Kutolski stood up and looked at the judge.
“The defendant is charged with intentional homicide, fraud, identity theft, and multiple counts of forgery, as well as violations of federal firearms laws. An investigation into the motive has been concluded based on numerous witness statements.”
Concluded my ass.
I knew who was behind it, and I didn’t hold back from returning Arnold’s death stare until the audience was looking back and forth between us.
After further formalities, my witness oath, and a few words from my attorney, the prosecutor finally got down to business and, clearing his throat, turned to me.
I broke eye contact with Anthony, who, after five miserable months, still looked as if he harbored the deepest resentment toward me.
He blamed me.
Lara didn’t say it, but I knew it from Monica, who worked closely with him on the director election campaign.
“Mr. Rydell. What was your relationship with the defendant?”
Even though I had prepared myself for such questions, I found it hard not to grimace as I answered.
“We were close.”
An understatement that didn’t do justice to what had bound us together.
Anthony’s expression darkened.
“How close?”
Miss DeLoughrey looked up from her notes.
“Objection, relevance.”
Kutolski wanted to continue, but the judge raised his hand.
“Sustained.”
Kutolski looked up at him in confusion, and Arnold leaned back in his bench, snorting inaudibly.
“Your Honor?”
“Proceed.”
This could get interesting…
“Mr. Rydell, please tell the court what you know about this case.”
“I know that Quillon Veritas never committed murder and merely acted in self-defense against a knife attack by Troy Fitzek.”
The mere memory of that November night broke something inside me that I hadn’t thought I still possessed.
For a long time, I had believed my feather would never again find back to the sparkle in her eyes.
And to this day, I was glad she had put that bastard six feet under, even if I should have been the one to do it, not her.
We wouldn’t be here now…
“And what precisely leads you to that assumption?”
My inner irritation was the result of months of isolation. I had never had a problem with people before. But ever since the only person I had ever needed was no longer walking this earth, I couldn’t care less about anyone else.
“I found Quill in the hallway, distraught and curled up as if she were in shock. She was covered in blood, and I took her home, where she told me what had happened.”
“Why didn’t you contact the police at the scene?”
“Because I was in a state of shock.”
Kutolski glanced dissatisfiedly at the documents on his table while I endured the curious stares of the court observers and the other witnesses.
They wanted me to say it. To confess what I had done.
Tony, Joseph, Arnold…
Why they hadn't pressed charges against me? Probably less because of a lack of evidence than to avoid a scandal.
Back then, it would have upset me that Tony was so easily manipulated, so infiltrated by that man who hardly appreciated him. Now I didn't care. I didn't care about anything.
“Was Miss Veritas carrying the murder weapon?”
“Yes.”