Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

We have a picture of the hickey she gave you. She was hot stuff, right?” Wink, wink. “I understand. But then she started to give you mixed signals…”

Matt reached his snapping point. “No, we were not on a date, no, she did not give me a hickey, and when I tell Mr. Forbes you called Caroline hot stuff, winkey winkey, he’s gonna get you fired, mister. And I’ve heard of mixed signals, but I’ve never seen them. I can hear ‘no’ as well as you can, and I figure one ‘no’ means

‘no’!”

After that they beat him up a little bit. Matt was surprised, but considering the way he had just threatened and sassed them, not too surprised.

And then they seemed to give up on him, leaving him alone in the interrogation room, which, unlike the jury room, had no windows. Matt said over and over, for the benefit of the video camera, “I’m innocent and I’m being denied my phone call and my attorney. I’m innocent…”

At last they came and got him. He was hustled between the good and bad cops into a completely empty courtroom. No, not empty, he realized. In the first row were a few reporters, one or two with sketchbooks ready.

When Matt saw that, just like a real trial, and imagined the pictures they’d sketch — just like he’d seen on TV, the lead in his stomach turned into a fluttering feeling of panic.

But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it, to get the story out?

He was led to an empty table. There was another table, with several well-dressed men, all with piles of papers in front of them.

But the thing that held Matt’s attention at that table was Caroline. He didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a dove gray cotton dress. Gray! With no jewelry on at all, and subtle makeup. The only color was in her hair — a brazen auburn. It looked like her old hair, not the brindled color it had been when she was starting to become a werewolf. Had she learned to control her form at last? That was bad news. Very bad.

And finally, with an air of walking on eggshells, in came the jury. They had to know how irregular this was, but they kept coming in, just twelve of them, just enough to fill the jury seats.

Matt suddenly realized that there was a judge sitting at the desk high above him.

Had he been there all along? No…

“All rise for Justice Thomas Holloway,” boomed a bailiff. Matt stood and wondered if the trial was really going to start without his lawyer. But before everyone could sit, there was a crash of opening doors, and a tall bundle of papers on legs hurried into the courtroom, became a woman in her early twenties, and dumped the papers on the table beside him. “Gwen Sawicki here — present,” the young woman gasped.

Judge Holloway’s neck shot out like a tortoise’s, to bring her into his realm of sight. “You have been appointed on behalf of the defense?”

“If it pleases Your Honor, yes, Your Honor — all of thirty minutes ago. I had no idea we had gone to night sessions, Your Honor.”

“Don’t you be pert with me!” Judge Holloway snapped. As he went on to allow the prosecution attorneys to introduce themselves, Matt pondered on the word “pert.” It was another of those words, he thought, that was never used toward males. A pert man was a joke. While a pert girl or woman sounded just fine. But why?

“Call me Gwen,” a voice whispered beside him, and Matt looked to see a girl with brown eyes and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she looked honest and straightforward, which made her the prettiest thing in the room.

“I’m Matt — well, obviously,” Matt said.

“Is this your girl, Carolyn?” Gwen was whispering, showing a picture of the old Caroline at some dance, wearing stilts, and with tanned legs that went up and up to almost meet before a miniskirt took over, black and lacy. She had on a white blouse so tight at the bust that it hardly seemed able to contain her natural assets. Her makeup was exactly the opposite of subtle.

“Her name’s Caroline and she’s never been my girl, but that’s her — the real her,” Matt whispered. “Before Klaus came and did something to her boyfriend, Tyler Smallwood. But I have to tell you what happened when she found out she was pregnant—” She’d gone nuts, was what had happened. No one knew where Tyler was — dead after the final fight against Klaus, turned into a full wolf in hiding; whatever. So Caroline had tried to pin it on Matt — until Shinichi appeared and became her boyfriend.

But Shinichi and Misao were playing a cruel joke on her, pretending that Shinichi would marry her. It was after she realized that Shinichi didn’t care at all that Caroline had gone totally ballistic, and had really tried to make Matt fit the gaping hole in her life. Matt did his best to explain this to Gwen so she could explain it to the jury, until the judge’s voice interrupted him.

“We will dispense with opening arguments,” said Judge Holloway, “since the hour is so late. Will the prosecution call its first witness?”

“Wait! Objection!” Matt shouted, ignoring Gwen’s tugging at his arm and her hissing: “You can’t object to the judge’s rulings!”

“And the judge can’t do this to me,” Matt said, twitching his T-shirt back from between her fingers. “I haven’t even had a chance to meet with my public defender yet!”

“Maybe you should have accepted a public defender earlier,” replied the judge, sipping from a glass of water. He suddenly thrust his head at Matt and snapped, “Eh?”

“That’s ridiculous,” cried Matt. “You wouldn’t give me my phone call to get a lawyer!”

“Did he ever ask for a phone call?” Judge Holloway snapped, his eyes traveling around the room.

The two officers who had beat Matt up solemnly shook their heads. At this, the bailiff, whom Matt suddenly recognized as the guy who’d kept him in the jury room for around four hours, began wagging his head back and forth in the negative. They all three wagged, almost in unison.

“Then you forfeited that right by not asking for it,” the judge snapped. It seemed to be his only way of speaking. “You can’t demand it in the middle of a trial. Now, as I was saying—”

“I object!” Matt shouted even louder. “They’re all lying! Look at your own tapes of them interrogating me. All I kept saying—”

“Counselor,” the judge snarled at Gwen, “control your client or you will be held in contempt of court!”

“You have to shut up,” Gwen hissed at Matt.

“You can’t make me shut up! You can’t have this trial while you’re breaking all the rules!”

“Shut your trap!” The judge belted out the words at a surprising volume. He then added, “The next person to make a remark without my express permission shall be held in contempt of court to the tune of a night in jail and five hundred dollars.”

He paused to look around to see if this had sunk in. “Now,” he said.

“Prosecution, call your first witness.”

“We call Caroline Beulah Forbes to the stand.”

Caroline’s figure had changed. Her stomach was sort of upside-down-avocadoshaped now. Matt heard murmurs.

“Caroline Beula Forbes, do you swear that the testimony you shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

Somewhere deep inside, Matt was shaking. He didn’t know if it was mostly anger or mostly fear or an equal combination of both. But he felt like a geyser ready to blow — not necessarily because he wanted to, but because forces beyond his control were taking hold of him. Gentle Matt, Quiet Matt, Obedient Matt — he had left all those behind somewhere. Raging Matt, Rampaging Matt, that was about all he could be.

From a dim outside world, voices came filtering into his reverie. And one voice pricked and stung like a nettle.