Edge of Reason Ch. 02

"Not me, I'm pretty sure," she said, desperate to get away before he recognised her from TV. Curiously, the priest sat beside her, taking a good close look at her face. She gulped and tried to turn away.

"Don't bother hiding, my child," he said genially. "You've seen my face too."

She turned towards him and her jaw dropped in amazement.

"Juror number six."

"My parish likes to call me Father Donnell," he joked.

The white hair was combed back neatly as every time Heather had seen him in the jury box. Immediately, she got up to leave.

"I'm sorry, Father, but I have to go. If news of this meeting gets out, I could be charged with jury tampering."

"Oh nonsense, you're not here as a lawyer," he waved off. "As of now, we're strictly priest and parishioner."

"The court might see it differently," she insisted. "Moreover, you don't want me here. I'm sorry for coming. I thought I could be in and out without anyone noticing."

"Why?" he asked, trying to read her expression. "Is it because you're gay?"

She looked straight ahead, not answering. He sighed and leaned back.

"You should stop listening to what some idiots say on TV. God is for all of us. Who are they to tell you otherwise?"

"Tell me, Father, what does the holy book say about revenge murder? I remember God saying to turn the other cheek, not seek out vengeance."

"You take the word of God too literally," he laughed. "There are crimes you can forgive, but killing an innocent child? No one's God can tell you to let that go. There is also the 'eye for an eye' principle."

He put his arm around the lawyer and said. "We could go on debating the semantics of what she did forever, but that's not why you came here, right?"

"No," she admitted, for once looking into his kindly grey eyes. "I have some long overdue confessions to make."

"How many?"

"Too many."

"Carrying around the weight of all those sins is not easy," he said. "Would you like to shed some of them here?"

"Not here, not now. Not when you have to decide Natasha's fate tomorrow morning. Trust me, Father, you will utterly despise every bit of me by the time I'm finished."

"You don't think very highly of yourself, Ms Franklin."

"Neither will you. Irrespective of the verdict, I will be here tomorrow night to make my confessions. Keep a large block of time open, Father Donnell, I will need all the Hail Mary's and Our Father's I can give. I should get going now, my closing isn't finished."

"Godspeed, my child."

* *

Seth Watkins rose from his chair and straightened his tie. All eyes were riveted to him when he walked to the jury with brisk, even strides. He took a moment to look at them individually.

"Members of the jury, I have a private admission to make. I admit to feeling a degree of satisfaction in the actions of Mrs Belvedere. If it were my child, I would have been tempted to do the same thing and not feel bad about it. But I wouldn't have, and neither would you. Do you know why?

"Because we have laws in our country. We do not give in to anarchy and let ourselves be ruled by our emotions, however natural they may seem. As much as we may want to condone her actions, we cannot forget she broke the law when she killed Mr Whittaker. You and I well know that she was not temporarily insane. It is merely misdirection by the defence, hoping you will let her walk because you will sympathise with her plight.

"I do sympathise with her plight, I really do. None of us can stand here and say their hearts do not bleed for her. But think of this, by excusing her actions, you are essentially sending a message that vigilantism is okay, that it is okay to take the law into your own hands when you need to. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that deep down inside your heart, you know that that is not the message you want to send out. We need to tell the people to have faith in the system. We need to restore faith.

"I will ask you to leave out your feelings and evaluate the defendant's guilt objectively, on the basis of the evidence shown. This is your trial now and you are being challenged to uphold the law, as you swore to do.

"I end my closing by requesting each of you to go home today and say a prayer for Cody when you have a moment to spare. But please, don't go home after excusing a murder. This case is about whether we as a society adhere to our laws even when doing so is so heart-wrenchingly painful and I am confident that you will. Thank you."

Nothing was said even when he walked back to his seat. Tom looked beside him to see Heather's eyes closed.

"Are you ready?"

Wordlessly, she got up. The cameras in the room captured every movement and nuance of her body as she made her way to the jury. A billion bated breaths waited for her to part her lips.

"Mr Watkins told you about how the defence used misdirection. He told you the case was about adhering to the letter of the law. I am here, to tell you not to fall for his misdirection. The case is not about the law, or vigilantism, or what kind of message we send out. It's about a young boy named Cody Belvedere."

On cue, the projector facing the jury lit up with a picture of Cody dressed in a Yankees tee with an oversized mitt and ball in his hand. He smiled, baring a row of pearly white teeth for the jury.

"Natasha tells me, Cody had a different dream every day. One day, he wanted to be a pilot; the next, a teacher; an astronaut; the President. He loved to play softball.

"Members of the jury, Cody will not be a pilot, or an astronaut, or a teacher, or President. He will not blow out seven candles over a birthday cake. He will not have a first crush. He will not have a first date. He will not have a first kiss. He will not go to prom. He will not wear a graduation gown and he will not play softball any more. Cody Belvedere was brutally and heinously murdered, so he will only be a memory now."

Heather paused to wipe away a few tears.

"Do you know the question we lawyers are asked all the time? How can we sleep at night knowing we help criminals get back on the street? I'll tell you how – because every once in a while there comes along a case like this one and it reminds us what we're fighting for. Ladies and gentlemen, Natasha Belvedere does not deserve to spend her life in jail. She had one lapse of sanity, after undergoing an ordeal we can't even begin to imagine. Her son died an excruciatingly painful death and the man responsible was let free.

"Mr Watkins asked you to help restore faith in the system. I ask you, where was the system when Natasha needed it? She didn't kill Mr Whittaker at first, instead letting the police and the courts handle it, like a model citizen, and what did that get her? Nothing. Where was this exalted system then? How dare Mr Watkins or anybody defend such a system? Tell me what I'm missing here, because all I see is that the indecency of a system which lets a child killer walk free can only be surpassed by the inhumanity of the same system prosecuting a grieving mother to the fullest for doing what they couldn't."

She wiped away a few more tears and cleared her throat before resuming.

"I apologise for my digression. Let us return to the facts of this case and the only fact that matters is that Cody died and his killer was not punished by the state. It was then, and only then, that my client took the law into her own hands. You heard Dr Kravitz, her mind could not bear the second shock of seeing her son's killer walk a free man. She has no history of violence prior to this, so why would she in her sane mind ever kill someone? It took a trauma, the scale of which confounds us, to push her over the edge to do what she did.

"If it were your child, would you have let it go? Would you have been able to sleep at night knowing the man who meted out such a brutal end to him is out there? Think about the grief you feel at Cody's death and make it a thousand-fold, and maybe, just maybe we can begin to imagine what his mother felt. The grief drove her to something she would never do. You will find within yourselves sympathy, understanding and compassion enough to let her remain free. She does not represent the worst of society in any way, for whom we reserve prison.

"I will end my closing with hope. Hope that if mercy truly resides in your heart, you simply cannot reconcile sending a grieving mother to prison for a crime she did not commit out of malice or forethought. We are better than that. We have to be. Thank you for your time."

She walked back robotically to the defence table, averting the multitude of gazes on her. She sat beside Natasha and squeezed her hand tightly. Tom leaned over and whispered in her ear.

"Were any of those tears real?"

"Not a single one," she replied coldly, desperate to believe it.

* *

"I got an offer from Pearson to write a book," Natasha said inside the waiting area. "I've thought about it and I want to write on dealing with the grief of losing a loved one."

"What are you going to do if you're found not guilty?" asked Tom.

"The publishers want to set me up with an agent to start a book tour around the world. They plan to pay me a lot for it. I've also come to the decision to sell my house. There are too many memories of Cody there. I will give some of the proceeds to my butler, Gerard, and use the rest to pay off some of my debts."

"Would you mind if I bought it?" asked Tom. "I'll pay well above the current market value."

"Thank you, Mr Markham," she said. "I don't need all that money though. The last time I checked, there are several Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns out there for me and I stand to get quite a lot from them."

"Natasha," he said, indicating to her right where Heather sat silently. Natasha turned her face towards her and saw the hint of fear flit across it.

"Don't worry, Heather. Even if I am found guilty, we can still appeal this to higher courts, right? You'll still be there for me."

"Of course," came the hoarse reply. The very real possibility of hearing that solitary word – guilty – was beginning to sink into Heather's mind.

"If I am found guilty, there is one more thing I need to ask of you. Can you promise you will do that?"

Her lawyer nodded.

"Promise me you will not let this case be the end of you. Promise me you will know that you did all you could and more and not let yourself be destroyed by this one loss. Prison can't hurt me anywhere near seeing you destroy yourself. Can you promise me that you will be okay even if I'm not there with you?"

"Yes," said Heather and they kissed. The kiss was tender and quaint, like the first kiss they shared on her yacht all those days ago. They were interrupted by a knock on the door.

"The jury's back."

* *

"Mister Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict?" said Giles.

"We have, your Honour," said a middle aged black man on the far right.

"Will the defendant please rise."

Natasha, Heather and Tom rose in unison. Natasha and Heather held hands tightly. Heather didn't show it, but there was something new to her now. She knew for the first time in a long while, she would be able to look at herself in the mirror when she got back home.

With that knowledge, there resided hope.

"Andy: [in a letter to Red] Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

- The Shawshank Redemption

As an exercise, I leave the ending open to the reader, rather than enforce a verdict myself. If you have made it till here, do drop a comment on your way out and let me know what your verdict is.