William Bernhardt - Capitol Murder

Ben nodded. Hell of a dramatic story. But was the jury buying it? “What did you do then?”

“What else? We ran. Tried to disappear, become invisible. We knew the Sire had connections everywhere-including with the police, so that was not a realistic option. We had to lie low, deep down under the radar. But how far can you get without using ATMs, credit cards, contacting friends? And just to make everything harder, remember-we were going cold turkey, trying to function without the drug for the first time in months. We were a mess. Couldn’t think straight, couldn’t plan more than a minute ahead at a time. Stuffing ourselves with sugary foods and booze, trying to make the pain go away. Eventually Amber couldn’t stand it anymore. She went back to Stigmata for a fix. Of course, once Randy had her back in his clutches again, he never let her go. Until she ended up getting shot. Through his police connections, the Sire had learned that Amber’s father was in town and tracked him down. When her father refused to talk, the Sire killed him, stuffed his body in the trunk of his car, and stole his wallet. They looked enough alike that he could pass using Daily’s photo ID, as long as no one looked too closely. He eventually caught up to Amber in the hospital and killed her. I got to hear him brag about it.” Her head fell. She pressed her fingers against her forehead, as if trying to extinguish the pain, the grief. “Because he caught me, too.”

“But he didn’t kill you?”

“No. He’d had to kill Amber, since he couldn’t get her out of the hospital without being seen, but there was no reason to be so harsh with me. He pumped me full of drugs that kept me half stoned and tried to brainwash me, torturing me, making me participate in sick ceremonies, slapping me around and then making me beg for more. He broke my nose. But I never gave in to it. I pretended that I did-but I didn’t. The problem was-he knew.”

“So why didn’t he kill you?”

“He wanted me to suffer, just as he said he had suffered after we ‘deserted’ him. He wanted to put me through hell. So he put me in that room with the others in the back of that church of his, tied me down to the bed-and he sucked my blood. While I was still awake and alive.”

Sickened expressions crossed the faces in the jury box. The outpouring of pity was so strong Ben could feel it. If only some of that sympathy would spill over to his client…

“Not all at once, mind you. He’d take a pint here, a pint there. When he wasn’t around, his assistants would take our blood in the more conventional way. Me and the others-we were his living blood bank. He’d wait till I’d had time to produce more blood, then suck me down again.”

“A fact the police can confirm,” Ben inserted, and he noticed Padolino didn’t object. Because he knew it was true.

“But every day,” Beatrice said, “every single day he reminded me that eventually he was going to kill me. He’d… play with me. Hurt me. Torment me in any way imaginable, both mental and… physical. He never let me move, stretch, go outside. He would spoon-feed me the most disgusting gruel you could imagine. He didn’t even let me go to the bathroom-just gave me a chamberpot and told me to do the best I could. I couldn’t shower. I got bedsores. My muscles atrophied. I still can’t move my left arm. Every day the pain got worse, but he didn’t care. He wanted me to live in hell, the sadistic bastard. And I did. I did.” Tears again streamed down her cheeks. “And the worst of it was-I knew I had no chance of escape. None. The only thing I had to look forward to was death. A slow painful death caused by that disgusting psycho sucking out all my blood.”

Ben paused a moment. Her testimony had been painful, not only for her to give, but for everyone to listen to. But he had a little more ground to cover before they took a break.

“Beatrice… who killed Veronica Cooper?”

“The Sire. He told me he was going to do it, then laughed about it after she was dead. Laughed because he’d not only silenced her-he’d made a quarter of a million dollars.” She paused, wiped the water from her face, then continued. “He went to the Senate the morning after the video broke-the same morning he sent his flunkie after me and Amber. He bribed some old security guard to put a false name on the ‘expected dignitaries’ list so he could get in and out without leaving a trace. He found Veronica, overpowered her, bit her, took her money-and gave her that anticoagulant to make sure she bled to death.”

“Let the record reflect,” Ben said quietly, “that a police search of the so-called Temple of the Vampire, detailed in the report admitted as Exhibit D-235, reveals that a quarter of a million dollars in cash was found in a satchel in the man known as the Sire’s bedroom. A comparison of serial numbers has established that this money came from the Glancys’ Grand Cayman bank account. And the satchel was splattered with blood that matches that of Veronica Cooper. They also found a bottle of the anticoagulant known as warfarin.”

“We never meant for this to happen,” Beatrice said, her voice cracking, tears streaming through the fingers spread across her face. “All we wanted was a little fun, something to relieve our stress at the end of the workday. And now-now-” She began to choke, her words mingling with her sobbing. “Now all my friends are dead. All of them. And I don’t feel as if I can go on living another day. The doctors watch over me, trying to save me, and I keep thinking-why? Why bother? Why not just let it end and let me finally-finally-find some peace?”

Silence blanketed the courtroom like a shroud. Judge Herndon called for the prearranged break. But no one was listening. Everyone’s eyes were on the poor broken girl in the witness stand, not yet even twenty-two, who only a few months ago had a life so vibrant, so promising, that almost anyone might’ve envied it. And who now was so miserable that she secretly wished her doctors would let her die.

After the break, Padolino attempted to cross-examine Beatrice, but there was little he could do, and he was smart enough not to push her over the brink, an act that would’ve made the jury despise him. He emphasized how ill she had been, how often she had been on drugs, and naturally suggested that anything she said, anything she thought she remembered, was suspect. The prosecutor repeatedly hammered the fact that she had not seen the Sire commit the murder and was in reality only making surmises about what had happened based upon what this career liar had told her. And he reminded the jury that despite the horrific tragedy these girls had suffered, all the hard-and-fast evidence still pointed to Senator Glancy.

After the drama of Beatrice’s testimony, closing arguments were almost anticlimactic-but still of critical importance. Perhaps more than in any previous case in his career, Ben realized that everything could hinge on them, as the jury tried to weigh the credibility of Beatrice’s astonishing testimony, whether it could possibly be true, whether it was enough to overcome all the evidence that pointed to Todd Glancy as the killer.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Padolino began, “when all is said and done, it comes down to this. Which is more likely: that Veronica Cooper was killed by a man who knew her, worked with her, had an illicit affair with her, was being blackmailed by her, had scheduled a meeting with her, left a meeting just before the time of her death, and controlled the hideaway in which she was found? Or that she was killed by some hitherto unknown person with no knowledge of or access to the Senate, who the defense wants you to believe was a-” He rolled his eyes. “-a vampire, covering up the evil deeds of his equally diabolical coven. Which one sounds like the truth, the world as we know it, and which one sounds like a preposterous fantasy cooked up by a desperate defense? In the final analysis, I don’t think it’s all that hard a question to answer.”