William Bernhardt - Capitol Murder

“No, sir. I am not.”

“Very well.” He turned back to Padolino. “Move on to something else, Mr. Prosecutor.” He paused. “I’ll decide later whether to impose sanctions for contempt.”

Padolino nodded and shuffled on to his next index card. “Did you take any actions to verify the accuracy of the tape?”

“I certainly did,” Scott replied. “I would never recommend airing something like that unless I knew it was genuine.”

“Please tell the jury what you did.”

“We have our own voice analyzer in the C-SPAN office building. So I drummed up some old footage of Senator Glancy giving a speech, then compared the voice print with that of the man speaking in the videotape.”

“And the result?”

“They matched. Perfectly. There was no doubt that Senator Glancy was the man in the tape. And by slowing the tape down frame by frame, we were able to capture a full-face photo of the woman whom he was with. With that photo,” Scott continued, “we were able to confirm that his, um, companion was Veronica Cooper, an intern working in Glancy’s office. At that point, the newsworthiness of the video was unquestionable.”

“And did it bother you that you didn’t know who had sent you the tape?”

Scott shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I would’ve rather known my source, but I’d confirmed that it was accurate information. So regardless of who the whistle-blower was, I realized the American people had a right to know about this… questionable conduct by an elected official.”

“Indeed they do.” Padolino looked up toward the bench. “Your honor, with your permission, may we lower the lights? It’s time to show the video.”

It seemed to take forever. Loving sat at the bar, nursing a 7Up, waiting as patiently as possible. A woman much older than he was sat on a stool behind him in between two girlfriends, all of them decked out in black.

“I was okay when Mark got the tongue stud,” the woman was saying. Loving tried to block her voice out, but she had become his personal mosquito who wouldn’t be swatted. “And then he got the navel stud, the nipple ring. I put up with it. But when he had his thing pierced-I mean, that’s just gross.”

“Why are you so uppity?” one of her friends said. “You had your boobs done.”

“I did not have my boobs done.”

“Oh, you so did.”

“If I had my boobs done, I would’ve had ’em done a hell of a lot better than this.”

“I liked Mark,” the other friend said. “He was cute. Kinda like John Cusack, except fatter.”

“And with a stud in his thing. I’m pretty sure John Cusack doesn’t have that.”

“And how would you know?”

Dear God, Loving thought, his eyes toward the heavens, I know I’ve done some evil deeds in my time, but surely never anything bad enough to deserve this. Where is she?

A high-pitched voice sang into his ear, “Here I come to save the day-y-y-y-y-y!”

Loving whirled around. Lucille.

“Will this do?” she said, patting the back of her head and shaking her hips in her best Mae West imitation.

“I kinda think so,” Loving answered. She was decked out in black-black fishnet, mostly, with a leather skirt and strapless top. As if her hair weren’t red enough already, she’d put on a big Lillie Langtry-style wig. She was wearing makeup twice as heavy as before, dark black lipstick and eyeliner. Some kind of glitter was streaked through her hair, and the black hip boots were a nice touch. She was an ample girl, perhaps not a born beauty, but she knew how to work it. And that was what they needed at the moment. “Man would have to be made of stone to say no to that.”

“Still the flatterer.” She tweaked Loving’s cheek. “Shall we go for it?”

Loving showed her the way to the stairway leading up to the private room. The two guards posted outside were new, not the two who had booted him and Daily out on their first attempt, which was good. It would make this a little easier.

Lucille began sashaying up the stairs, shaking her hips, allowing her already too-short skirt to creep up with every step. Loving and Daily stayed a few steps behind. As before, as soon as they neared the top, the two guards converged in front of the door.

“Gotta have an invitation,” the guard on the right said.

“He’s expecting me,” she said, following Loving’s coaching.

The guard gave her the once-over and shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing you around before.”

“Trust me, sugah. I don’t get dolled up like this for my own amusement. I’m one of the Chosen.”

Apparently she fit the mold. He tilted his head toward Loving and Daily. “What about those two?”

“They come with me.”

“I don’t think so. Not his type.”

“He’ll like what they brought him.”

“And what would that be?”

She singsonged her reply. “A little pick-me-up. Might be enough for you, too. Par-tay time.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed slightly. He turned to his partner. “I don’t know about this.”

Lucille brushed her hand down his chest, stopping just below his belt. “Play your cards right, sweetcakes, and I might have a little something for you, too.”

He frowned, shrugged, then stood to the side.

Lucille opened the door. Loving and Daily followed in behind her.

They were inside.

At least Ben managed to thwart Padolino’s plan to haul in a big-screen TV. He was still certain the jurors had all seen the video before, but no one outside the legal system and the C-SPAN offices had seen it like this-with no deletions from the sound track, without the pixilated blurring of Veronica Cooper’s bared breasts or Senator Glancy’s insistent genitalia. It was almost like a scene out of A Clockwork Orange ; the entire room was forced to watch a porn video that was not the least bit sexy, but thoroughly repulsive. When they reached the part where Veronica began making the hideous gagging noises, Ben thought several of the jurors were going to be sick.

The reaction from the gallery was worse. When it was over, Marie Glancy rose to her feet and ran out of the courtroom, her hand covering her mouth. Ben couldn’t fault her for being upset. But showing the jury that she was upset effectively undid what little may have been accomplished by positioning her behind her husband, creating a show of support that all sixteen jurors now knew was a huge lie. Her hasty exit from her husband’s side could be more damaging to their case than the tape itself.

After the proceedings adjourned, Marshall Bressler led the defense team out of the courtroom, wheeling his chair with a fierce intensity. “You’re not going to cross?”

Ben shook his head. “No point. The reporter knows nothing I want the jury to hear. Best to get the damn tape out of their minds as soon as possible and move on to something else.”

“Probably a smart move,” Bressler muttered. “That man has had it in for Todd for years.”

“Who?” Ben asked. “Padolino?”

“No. The reporter. Scott.” He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Goes back to when Scott was covering the committee Todd chaired when the Democrats were in power and they were considering that health insurance bill. About seven years ago. You remember the one. Would’ve guaranteed coverage nationwide for anyone in need, mandatory coverage of controversial therapies for terminally ill patients. Scott’s a bleeding-heart liberal and he really wanted it passed. But Todd buried it in committee-it was an election year and he felt he had no choice. Scott’s been biding his time ever since, waiting for a chance to get back at Todd. Hell, he probably made that tape himself.”

Ben’s brow furrowed. He knew that Bressler was inveterately loyal to his senator, but this was sounding a little paranoid-more like one of Loving’s conspiracy theories than anything that could really happen. “Big risk to take just to smear a senator.”