T. Bunn - The Great Divide

He waited until Mrs. Folley had completed her check and risen to her feet. She pointed at the central button in a vast array of dials and switches and said, “Push that and it will run.”

“Thank you. Please, if you would return to the stand.” Then he turned the photograph, and set the picture on the easel.

It was only as he turned back that he knew they had chosen wisely.

Mrs. Folley had not moved.

She stood staring at the photograph. It was the first time she had ever seen Gloria Hall anywhere except on the video. Her attention was rapt. The fact that her face revealed no emotion whatsoever did not matter. With her, the jury’s attention was drawn to study a black woman in her midtwenties, poised upon the bottom step of a well-appointed house, dressed in a fashionable cocktail gown, her head thrown back and her eyes closed with the pleasure of laughing with all her body and mind and spirit. Marcus saw a number of the jury smile in return. They had no choice. Gloria’s joy challenged one and all.

He said merely, “Mrs. Folley, could I please ask you to resume your seat upon the stand.”

The woman moved in jerky stages, a puppet hung by knotted threads. It was only when she was reseated and searching her purse for a handkerchief that she sniffed. Once. But it was enough to draw all the jury back to her and away from Gloria, enough to reveal the tears streaming down her flat, hard face.

Marcus pushed the button.

This time Gloria was no longer hidden by lights. The image was vividly clear. The laughing young woman was gone. Her hair was so matted that one side of her head appeared shaved. A deep bruise painted one cheek with a nightmare bloom. Her lips were so puffed and misshapen that they snagged on each word. Her left ear was crusted with dried blood. She was battered to the point of being scarcely recognizable. The same, yet Gloria Hall no longer. The change, heightened by the poster standing alongside the television screen, brought such gasps from the jury that Austin Hall’s own agonized moan was scarcely heard.

“Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad. I am fine. Everything is fine here. I am staying here awhile. I am working. I study hard. I am fine. I need money for my work. Send money now. Send money and I will be … fine. I am happy. Send money. I want to be left alone. But send money. A hundred thousand dollars. Send it to the Hong Kong branch of the Guangzhou Bank, account four-five-five-seven-two-two. I am happy. Send the money. Do it now.”

Marcus waited a long moment after the screen went blank to turn off the machine. He turned and gave Gloria’s parents a very long stare, as long as he dared, willing the jury to look with him. There was nothing more to be said. The realization that he was approaching the end of his line of witnesses left him neither jubilant nor drained. He was too depleted for anything except the realization that the case was no longer his. “No further questions.”

Marcus returned to his seat. Logan and Suzie Rikkers rushed forward and plucked the photograph from the easel. They stowed both behind their own table, then pushed the television stand back out of view. Each time she passed, Suzie Rikkers raked Marcus with her furious gaze. In the moment’s silence, Marcus finally understood why Logan kept bringing her forward, why the warning was being made. His rising fear was such that he did not even hear the questioning or the testimony, did not object once to Logan’s furious tirade. He remained seated and staring at his hands, seeing only the horror that now lay revealed. When Logan finally reseated himself, Judge Nicols twice had to ask for Marcus to call his next witness.

Rising to his feet was the hardest point thus far in the case. Marcus said the words because he had no choice, because the pieces were laid out and the next move foreordained, “Plaintiff requests a special hearing in chambers.”

The hallway from the courtroom to the judge’s private chambers was lined with old Norman Rockwell prints. The prints had followed Judge Nicols from one set of chambers to another. In her early days there had been a great deal of speculation about them-how they had been chosen to appease the white voters who might not like having a hyperintelligent, uppity black woman reigning over a courtroom. But those who knew Judge Nicols were certain she did it for herself alone.

Judge Nicols’ conference room seated eighteen at an oval table and another dozen in leather chairs around the perimeter. She did not bother to shuck her robes, nor to wait until she had seated herself to say, “All right, Mr. Glenwood. Let’s hear what this is all about.”

Marcus found it harder to ignore Suzie Rikkers now that the presence behind her presence was known. “Your Honor, we feel that the case as it currently stands requires an expansion in the number of defendants.”

Logan huffed his frustrated rage. The scalding that the video had given his case remained evident in his voice. “Your Honor, this is patently absurd. We have the two senior vice presidents of the North Carolina company currently present. This charge he’s leveling against the board is ridiculous.”

“I was speaking,” Marcus replied quietly, “of General Zhao Ren-Fan.”

The moment’s silence was not all he had expected, nor was the shocked expression on Logan’s face. Marcus turned and studied his opponent carefully, ignoring Suzie as best he could. Logan knew, Marcus finally decided. The stupefaction was good theater, but theater just the same. The defense knew.

But Logan merely said, “What?”

“General Zhao Ren-Fan,” Marcus repeated quietly. “The man named in the corporate documents as head of the factory in China. The man our witness claimed was proprietor and chief operator of Factory 101.”

Logan turned back to the judge. “This entire case is a travesty of federal jurisprudence. This latest absurdity only shows that Mr. Glenwood will go to any and all lengths to subvert the good name of my client.” Logan tossed an exasperated glance at Marcus. “Just how is he planning to extend the court’s jurisdiction to include someone situated more than nine thousand miles away?”

Marcus’ trial sense clamored that none of this was the surprise Logan was pretending it to be. There was a carefully rehearsed quality to the man’s shock and outrage. Marcus nodded once. It was all the confirmation he needed, all he would probably ever have, that he had finally arrived at the secret they had so viciously sought to hide.

“Your Honor, the last conversation I had with Ashley Granger, the Washington attorney who was murdered-”

“Here we go again,” Logan blasted. “First of all, I have spoken with the Washington police, who categorically deny that the evidence they hold suggests wrongdoing of any sort. The man was killed in a tragic highway accident. Secondly, the plaintiff’s counsel seeks to use this man’s demise in all sorts of tangential ways, tying together an argument that holds nothing but hot air.”

Marcus sprang what he was certain would be a surprise only to the judge. “Your Honor, two weeks ago General Zhao Ren-Fan took up the position of defense attaché to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C.”

Judge Nicols’ astonishment was undisguised. “He’s here?”

“Right under the court’s nose, Your Honor. This was the information Ashley Granger had uncovered the day he was killed.” And what Gloria Hall had discovered, Marcus knew beyond a shadow of doubt, that had made her journey to China so urgent. She had known of this, all right. As did the defense.

“Your Honor!” Logan’s voice demanded the judge’s attention. “We object on a number of grounds. First of all, the information Glenwood used to present this joint venture as reality is anything but sound. His evidence was nothing more than a photocopy from a so-called Chinese government office nobody has ever heard of. It is not admissible evidence. And secondly, the concept of drawing a foreign diplomat to North Carolina on what is essentially a missing-persons case, and doing so on such highly questionable evidence, will make this court a laughingstock.”