New Wings For Icarus | PART 4
Title: New Wings For Icarus
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,336
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Part of the Icarus 'Verse
But, with such an outlook ... which makes you judge and executioner
in your own case, it would be hard for you to confine yourself
to actions that would leave you forever immune to the power of
the law. Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours
himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
There were people already seated in the courtroom when Sam entered, the room just small enough that it felt a bit strange to walk passed them and push aside the little swinging gate that separated the people who had come to observe from those involved in the trial. On the left side of the room, behind the jury, was a regiment of windows with grey-white coverings over each, leaving the area entirely reliant on the pot lights in the ceiling. Oddly, the effect was soothing; it was possibly the most comfortable courtroom Sam had ever seen. Like so much of downtown Minneapolis, the architecture contributed to the sense of order, and the courtroom was composed of straight lines echoing and crossing each other, cherry wood paneling covering the walls blending with the dark maroon of the carpet and the chair coverings. The table where Sam deposited his briefcase was smooth maple and had a desk-pad on it. There wasn’t a great deal of space to move around, and he noted with a hint of amusement that, since he was representing two clients, there were three large maroon chairs pulled up to the defense table, which was clearly meant to comfortably sit only two.
“You better budge over,” Aaron muttered, elbowing Jesse good-naturedly in the side when the guard escorted them to their seats just as Sam was setting out the notes regarding the case.
“If I budge any more my dick’s gonna be bisected by the damn table leg.” They were in freshly pressed suits, and Jesse had tied his hair back in a low ponytail for the occasion, though Sam could see Aaron had spent about as much time as usual on his own hair, which, as far as he could tell, was just about none at all. Sam dragged his chair further over in an effort to get more space and realized that Jesse was right, the table didn’t have legs so much as a plank of maple running straight down. The plank wasn’t even at the far end of the table, which meant that if he tried to get some more space he had to sit with his legs on either side of it. “Well, this is cozy,” Jesse scoffed.
Their table was furthest away from the jury box, with Sam seated at the far left. “Jesse, pull your chair over to the edge of the table, and sit as far forward as you can.” At least that way, Jesse would be visible, and it still looked as if they were sitting in a close row. Sam rolled his chair back into the position he had found it, hoping the jury would see that he had absolutely no qualms sitting closely with his clients. “Now try not to look sullen and listen up for a minute.” Both Jesse and Aaron turned their attention to him.
When Sam had been driving over to the Hennepin County Government Center, there had been a moment where he wondered if his clients would even be there, or if maybe Dean had broken them out in the middle of the night. He’d switched the radio on to the all-news station and wondered what he would do if Jesse and Aaron never appeared. Sitting in the courtroom with the presence of his clients confirmed, Sam’s thoughts had turned to Dean, and he found himself torn between wanting his brother there and wanting him to stay away. The idea of having Dean watching as Sam proceeded with the trial made him impossibly nervous. With a huff Sam recalled a time when knowing Dean was in the audience had been a comforting thought. Dean had never missed a single one of his soccer matches, and Sam could recall his determination to push extra hard in order to make his big brother proud.
Holding on to that sense of determination, Sam set every other distraction aside. “We’ve had a bit of luck,” he said, keeping his voice low as he conferred with Jesse and Aaron. “Two of the witnesses have withdrawn their testimony, which means we’re only facing two witness accounts instead of four.” Jesse bumped Aaron’s shoulder, and Aaron gave a small but devious smirk, and Sam decided he didn’t want to know and wasn’t going to ask. Despite the fact that had been through trials before, he gave an overview of what to expect, if only to distract them.
Just as he was directing them to remain calm and to refrain from looking in any way threatening, which included scowling at anyone, but especially the judge and the jury, Dean entered the courtroom, settling into a seat a few rows behind them. For all the worry Sam had been wrestling with previously at the prospect of having Dean there, he felt a sharp surge of adrenaline at the same time as the tension unknotted inside him.
The first half of the morning was spent with the judge advising the jury as to the court proceedings. After a short recess, Sam flipped to a clear page on his legal pad while Seamus White, the prosecutor, stood from his seat and began his opening statement.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the court,” White said, as he walked over to the jury box. “I wonder if I could ask you all for a favor. I want each of you to close your eyes. Just for a moment.” White looked at each of the jury members. “Close your eyes and picture yourself coming home from work. It’s late and it was a long day so you don’t feel much like cooking. You find a pub, nothing special, just whatever’s closest, and place your order, settling-in for your dinner in a nice, quiet, respectable establishment. There’s a couple sharing a meal in a booth. Two businessmen are having a drink at the bar.”
White rested his hands on the rail by the jury. “Now I want you to picture two men coming into that pub. Picture them knocking back a couple of drinks and then joining you at your table. You talk. You probably ask them who they are, what they want?” White left that hanging, letting the image coalesce in their imaginations. “Now picture those strangers standing up, and both of them pointing a gun at you.” Beside him, Jesse snorted, and Sam glared at him, happy at least that the jury hadn’t seen or heard him. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is precisely how the victim, Edward Dowell, who was murdered on the night of January 24th. He was having a fish dinner in a pub, on his way back from work.”
White played on the jury’s sympathy, describing bits about Dowell’s day, which hadn’t been at all remarkable, building the man up to be an honest, working citizen who had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Jesse and Aaron, in White’s retelling, became nothing more than a couple of thugs who had entered O’Malley’s with the intent to kill someone, though not particular as to who. As far as Sam could tell, most of White’s case rested in the witness testimonies, in the line-up where they had picked out Jesse and Aaron, and in his own assessment of what must have happened that night, based, undoubtedly, on stories he’d heard about gangs who performed random killings. By the time White retook his seat, the jury was looking toward Aaron and Jesse with narrow eyes.
“Your Honor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” Sam cleared his throat as he stood up. “As the prosecutor asked you to imagine the night of the murder, I saw the looks of horror on each of your faces.” He stopped by the railing in front of the jurors as he said, “This is a despicable crime, made all the worse by the fact that it seemingly has no motive. That an honest, hard working person could be targeted by random, meaningless violence; it could have been any one of us that night.” Some of the jurors shifted in their seats. “I want you to know that my clients, Aaron Conyers, and Jesse Deacon, did not commit this senseless murder. They are not guilty. And that brings us to what I want to talk about for a few minutes, and that’s getting blamed for something you didn’t do.”
Sam’s clients were guilty. He knew they had each fired the shots that had killed Edward Dowell. His case was built around the fact that there hadn’t been a whole lot of effort made by the police in locating other suspects. There was no trace of the murder weapons, no motive, and Sam intended to cast doubt on the police line-up, as well as the fact that the police had been talking as if it were the Mad Dogs who perpetrated the crime, before they’d even spoken to any witness directly.
“Each of you have been empowered to determine whether the allegations made against my clients are true. If, after hearing all of the facts of this case, you each have absolutely no doubt in your mind that my clients are guilty, then you have to find them so. But if you have a reasonable doubt, if some part of the prosecution’s case does not hold for you, then you must find Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon not guilty. I believe that once you have heard all of the evidence you will recognize that this is not a case of random gang violence perpetrated by two thugs. This is a case of two innocent men, Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon, being brought before you today because of rushed police work and hasty conclusions drawn on little to no factual basis. And I think that each of you will honor the truth by saying yes, this was a horrible crime, but it hasn’t been solved yet. Thank-you.”
A recess was called for lunch, and Sam turned to his clients as Aaron said, “God damned.”
“It would be brilliant,” Jesse said, “If it weren’t so damned tragic to hear you saying all that.” He grinned a little as he jerked his head towards Aaron. “Are you sure we did what we think we did? I’m starting to have doubts.”
“Shut up, Man,” Aaron said. “We’re in the middle of a courtroom.”
“An empty courtroom,” Jesse pointed out as a guard came forward to escort them out for lunch. “I hope it’s not friggin’ macaroni,” Jesse muttered.
Marie Coulter had dark red, curly hair that she had pulled back with a clip. She wore a navy suit with a knee-length skirt and Sam could tell from the way she shifted on the stand that she had never seen the inside of a courtroom before. Still, she answered White’s questions with a clear voice, and she sat straight-backed and composed as she described the evening of January 24th, where a night out with her boyfriend had been cut abruptly short by gunfire and the murder of one, Edward Dowell.
Under any other circumstances, Sam would have held nothing but sympathy for her. Even growing up as a hunter’s son hadn’t exposed him to the kind of violence she had been privy to on her date, and he wondered if she was still struggling with the events of that night one month later. Still, it wasn’t Sam’s job to sympathize with her; he couldn’t afford any emotion toward her at all. Maybe that was part of the reason why people hated lawyers as much as they all claimed to, but even that was something that Sam couldn’t afford to wonder about too closely. The fact was that Marie Coulter was a witness to a murder that his clients were on trial for, and as their defense attorney, she was an obstacle for Sam to overcome.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Coulter,” Seamus White said, smiling a tight little smile as he turned and retook his seat behind the prosecution’s table. Sam let out a breath and glanced at the notes he had scrawled onto his legal pad before he rose from his chair.
“Good morning,” he greeted, flashing a professional, if slightly charming, smile and ducking his head a little as he walked forward. Marie Coulter’s eyes dropped somewhat bashfully and she answered with a soft greeting. “Ms. Coulter, in your statement you said that you had wine with your dinner, is that correct?”
“Yes it is.”
“Just one bottle of wine?”
She nodded, her slight smile saying that she didn’t quite know where he was going with his questions but that she trusted he’d get to the point. “Yes,” she said. “A bottle of red Chianti.”
“How about earlier in the day?” Sam pushed, “Did you have anything to drink at lunch?”
Her expression was no longer so open, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and frowned, trying to recall the events of that day. “I was out shopping,” she said, “and I stopped over at this little place…”
Sam raised a hand to stop her rambling words and said, “Please, Ms. Coulter, I would just like to hear if you had anything to drink at lunch.”
“A martini, and,” she hesitated, “probably some wine.”
“How many glasses of wine?”
“One,” she said, then licked her lips. “Or maybe it was two.”
“Would you say closer to two?”
“Yes,” she said, her tone indicating she wanted to be done with the line of questioning, was eager to tell him what he wanted in order to simply make him shut up. “Probably two glasses.”
“About what time did you have lunch?”
“Objection!” White rose from his seat. “What happened on the day of the murder has no bearing on what Ms. Coulter saw on the night of the murder.”
“How much she had to drink does, your Honor,” Sam contested.
The judge nodded, “Overruled.”
“Ms. Coulter,” Sam said.
She’d watched the exchange with slightly wide eyes, and shifted in her seat before she said, “About one thirty.”
“What did you have for lunch?”
“Uh,” she huffed. “It was a while ago. Probably a salad.”
“A martini and two glasses of wine,” Sam said. “And a salad. Is that correct?”
“Yeah,” she said, then cleared her throat and said more confidently, “Yes.”
“And then you had wine at dinner, which was about six hours later?”
“Yes.”
Sam nodded before he asked, “How much wine did you have by the time my clients allegedly walked into O’Malley’s?”
“Two glasses.”
He let the statement hang for a moment as he paced forward until he stood closer to the stand, raised his eyebrows a little and looked at her in that way Jess had frequently told him was adorable, and teasing, and wholly unfair. “Would you say that four glasses of wine and a martini within a six hour period is a lot for you to drink?”
Her cheeks flushed a little and she nodded while she said, “It is. Yes.” What else could she say? To deny it would be equally damning, implying she was potentially an alcoholic.
Sam nodded, tried to look considering as he turned and paced away from her. “Ms. Coulter, had you ever heard a gun fired before the night in question?”
The tension that had been building in her tone and posture released at the new line of questioning, and she shook her head. “No; never.”
“Could you describe the sound, please?”
“It was loud,” she said. “Like someone was setting off fireworks inside. Everything shook, I remember the glasses rattled.”
Sam looked at her, his face openly sympathetic as he asked, “The sound frightened you?”
She let out a huff of air and nodded. “Very much so.”
He paced a little closer to the stand, and dipped his head slightly as he looked at her. “Did you close your eyes?” he asked, like he was a friend she could confide in.
“At first,” she admitted. “But when the shooting stopped I opened them again.”
“Did you think the men firing the guns might kill everyone inside the pub that night?”
“I really didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I just knew that someone had been shot.”
“Did you think that you might be next?”
“I did,” her voice choked a little, reacting to the sympathy in his tone.
Sam paced away toward the jury, his voice confident and sure as he said, “Yet despite that fear, despite the fear for your life, you turned and you looked at their faces as they left?”
He had reeled her in so completely that she sat up straighter, shifted a little in pride at his tone. “I did.”
“Did you look at their faces?” he asked. “Did you really look?”
“I glanced as they walked by, but I did see them!”
Sam paused, “You glanced, you didn’t look.”
“But I saw them!”
“You glanced at them, Ms. Coulter, through the eyes of a very frightened woman who maybe had a little too much to drink.”
“Objection, your honor,” White said.
“That’s okay,” Sam said. “I have no further questions.”
“Thank-you, Ms. Coulter,” the judge said. “You may step down.”
“You know,” Seamus White said, jogging to catch up to Sam as they exited the courtroom. “When you turned down my plea bargain I thought you were a bit of a hack.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose and he let out a surprised laugh, “really.”
“A little bit, yeah.” Seamus wasn’t much older than Sam himself, though Sam knew the man was a bit wet-behind-the-ears; he had dark blond hair slicked to stay out of his face and a rueful smile. “After today, I might have a bit more respect for you, though.”
“That’s exceptionally kind of you,” Sam said teasingly. Seamus fell into step beside him and Sam shrugged. “A trial like this becomes a bit of a beauty contest. That’s probably why I am more confident than you were anticipating.”
“How do you mean?”
“Without any convincing evidence, I mean,” Sam explained patiently. “If you had the guns, that would be a different matter,” he shrugged. “The jury has to look closely at what’s in front of them, so it comes down to the lawyers, and the clients. Especially with the motive as sketchy as it is.”
“Gang violence,” Seamus nodded. “Well, both your clients are in a gang.”
“Really?” It was more than a gamble, Sam hoped he’d read the other lawyer well enough to anticipate how he would think, but it was a risk he had to take in order to open up more possibilities in an open-shut case. “See you tomorrow.”
Eric Torres had worked at Faribault Home for Boys in order to finance his way through law school, but had ended up working narcotics in Minneapolis. Dean had added the information he had compiled to the file Sam had left in his motel room, a photograph of a younger Torres on the page Sam had retrieved followed by a more recent image of the man in his police uniform. Clay had been darkly pleased to utilize his contacts in order to make his own contributions to Dean’s growing file, and as a result the folder was substantially thick and Dean was certain it would be enough information to send Torres away for a pretty piece of time, and with the little bonus gift from Clay, the prison doors would slam shut nice and tight.
Dean had called Evangeline Lilley as soon as he had the information, surprised when she had returned the call more or less immediately. Evangeline had been the prettiest piece of law enforcement Dean had ever had the pleasure to run into; she’d also been the fiercest. He had been well on his way up shit creek, but Evangeline, as it turned out, had been neither ignorant nor blind, and one nasty poltergeist later, she had agreed to release him from custody; they’d exchanged contact information. Unfortunately, she hadn’t succumbed to his charm, but she’d come through for him before, and this time was no exception.
Dean trudged through the snow to the old Toyota parked on the deserted side-street, heat spilling out of the car the moment he opened the passenger door and settled into the back seat. “Who the fuck are you, and how to you know Lilley?” the man asked as soon as Dean had pulled the door closed.
“Who I am doesn’t matter; the only thing that concerns you is how I can help you.” Dean grinned.
“Oh yeah?” Evangeline had promised she had the perfect candidate for what Dean was asking, and she’d taken care of arranging the meet for him as well. According to her, Jonathon Lorne was an ambitious agent for Internal Affairs, determined to make Captain before he turned forty. The best way to do that was to turn in a maximum number of dirty cops in a minimum amount of time. Dean thought the guy sounded perfect.
“One thing,” Dean said. “No one knows who fed you the information, clear?”
“How’d you get it?” Lorne asked, glancing in the rearview to try and catch sight of the folder.
“Fell into my lap,” Dean said. “Like it’s about to fall into yours.” He dropped the folder into the man’s lap and sat back, waited as Lorne flipped through it.
“You’ve got everything in here but a fucking confession!”
“I figured I’d leave something for you,” he said with a grin. “I recommend that you beat it out of him.”
“Are these surveillance photos?” Lorne flipped another page. “He’s pulling about five grand a month ripping off pushers, and he’s been doing it for three years?”
“Four,” Dean corrected. “Is it enough for a conviction?”
“That’s out of my hands.” Lorne closed the folder and glanced in the rearview again. “That’s the jury’s call.”
Reaching back into his bag, Dean pulled Clay’s little gift, rapped up nice and careful in a plastic evidence bag, and held it forward for Lorne to take. “Show the jury this.”
Lorne took it, snorting as he held up the bag, “And just what is that, Mr. Ness?”
“Three weeks ago the body of a drug dealer, Feraz Sparks, was found in the back alley of a club in the north of town. Three bullets in his head and nothing in his pockets.”
Lorne quirked an eyebrow. “And?”
“That’s the gun that killed him.” Dean dipped his head a little, gesturing to bag Lorne was inspecting, “and those are the shells.”
Lorne huffed, amusement and surprise blending in the sound. When he spoke again, Dean could plainly hear how pleased the man was. “What’s behind door number three?”
“The prints on the gun belong to Eric Torres.” Lorne was gaping in the front of the car and Dean let out a breath. “If you need anything else, talk to Eva, she knows how to get in touch with me.”
“Hey, Ness,” Lorne called, rolling down his window and smirking when Dean turned to look at him. “You ever consider becoming a cop?”
“What,” Dean said. “And leave the good guys?” he turned back, trudged toward the Impala with Lorne’s buoyant laughter echoing behind him.
Sam wasn’t entirely surprised to be called in to the judge’s chambers, along with White, but he spent the entire walk to the chambers hoping that things were about to play out the way he wanted, and not that he was about to get hit with a curve ball. He’d had more than enough of those.
As it turned out, it was exactly as he had hoped. “This is extremely irregular,” the judge said, peering over his spectacles to focus first on White and then on Sam. “I’m not entirely certain I see the relevance of this.”
“I appreciate that, your honor,” Seamus White said. “I want to put a face to the victim, to prevent him from being just another name in the obituaries.”
The judge glanced at Sam. “Mr. Winchester, do you have any objections?”
Sam tried to tamp down the excited twist of glee he was experiencing in favor of a cool shake of his head. “No, your Honor.”
Which was how, on the third day of the trial, the prosecution called Bryan Sullivan to the stand, and Sam had to struggle not to turn and glance at Dean, who was again seated two rows behind the defense table. It was hard enough to ignore the pencil that Jesse was using to poke his side inconspicuously in an effort to garner his attention. When Sam glared at him, Jesse mouthed ‘what are you doing’, but it wasn’t time to offer an explanation, and it was certainly too late for Jesse to start caring about how Sam was building his defense.
Sullivan was a lanky, dirty-blond man with sunken features and a tired smile. He was married, with one young son; he worked for social services and he taught Sunday school, and for two years when he had been on the waiting list for the county police department, he had worked at Faribault Home for Boys.
“Good morning, Mr. Sullivan,” White said, standing and walking closer to where Sullivan was seated. “I want to thank you very much for coming today. I understand that you have quite a busy schedule, but you and the victim, Edward Dowell, were such good friends that I think your testimony as a character witness would be very valuable.”
“It would be hard to find a better friend than Edward,” Sullivan said, ducking his head.
“Would you say you were his best friend?”
Sullivan shrugged one shoulder as he said, “I was certainly his closest.”
“How long did you know each other?”
“About eighteen years.”
“And how often did you see each other?”
“As much as we could. Weekends, holidays, things like that.”
White paced toward the jury box as he asked, “What kind of man was Edward Dowell?”
“He was a good man,” Sullivan said. “He was too good to be shot dead by a couple of thugs.”
“Objection,” Sam said, rising slightly from his chair, “the statement is one of opinion, not fact.”
“He was asked his opinion,” White said. Sam was overruled. Seamus proceeded to lead Sullivan into a detailed account of Dowell as a kind man with no enemies, who worked hard, always reliable and so on and so forth. Sam had to stop scratching notes when he felt the pen creak in his hand. Beside him, Jesse and Aaron were perfectly and completely still, their expressions entirely blank. Sam hated to picture his brother, sitting by himself somewhere in the seats behind, staring at the face of someone who had used him so horribly. He was more than a little relieved that Dean had been forced to leave behind his weapons in order to enter the courtroom.
When Sullivan’s glowing account of Edward Dowell was finished, Seamus White retook his seat. There was a moment where Sam almost reconsidered his plan, but it was too late to go back. Sam rose, buttoned his suit jacket with one hand as he stepped forward. “Mr. Sullivan,” he said, cleared his throat before he continued, “You and Mr. Dowell worked for two years together at a prison, is that correct?”
“No,” Sullivan corrected. “Faribault was a facility for young boys. But yes, we worked there for two years together.”
“What was your function as a guard while you worked at Faribault?”
“Standard stuff, really,” Sullivan said with a shrug. “Make sure they made it to their classes on time, put them down for the night, make sure they weren’t getting into any trouble, keep them in line.”
“As guards, were you and Mr. Dowell ever permitted to use force to, as you put it, keep the boys in line?”
“What?” he stuttered, his eyes shifted from Sam to White, and even over to the judge before he looked back to Sam and asked, “What do you mean, force?”
Sam’s eyebrows rose slightly and he tipped his head to the side slightly. “For example, were you permitted to hit them?”
“No,” Sullivan said emphatically.
“Were any of the boys, ever hit at any time at Faribault, Mr. Sullivan?”
“I’m sure that something like that might have happened, from time to time. Faribault was a big place.”
“Sure,” Sam said, paced away as he said, “Let’s narrow it down then. Did you and Mr. Dowell ever hit any of the boys in your care?” He let the silence stretch as he pretended to be scanning his notes, before he glanced up again at Sullivan. “Would you like me to repeat the question?”
“No.”
“Could you answer it, and remember that you’re under oath.”
Sullivan licked his lips. “A few of the boys, who we considered to be discipline problems, were hit on occasion.”
“And how exactly were they hit, Mr. Sullivan?”
Again, Sullivan’s eyes darted around before he said, “I don’t understand.”
Sam moved back toward Sullivan, held the man’s gaze as he asked, “A fist? Open hand? Kicked? Maybe a baton?”
“It,” Sullivan stuttered. “It depended on the situation.”
“Who determined that situation?”
Sullivan’s head jerked a bit upward at the question. “The guard on the scene.”
Sam pursed his lips and let out a breath, struggling to keep his mind focused on his questions and the man before him, and not drift into the horror stories Aaron had told him in a clipped, clinical voice, when Sam had approached him with his idea. “That’s a lot of power to have over a young boy. Isn’t it?”
“It was part of the job, sir.”
Sam nodded and paced away, asking, “Was torture a part of the job?” Silence again. Sam glanced back toward Sullivan. “Boys were tortured, weren’t they? Mr. Sullivan?”
Sullivan was wide-eyed and startled by the question. He blinked at Sam as he said, “Define torture.”
Sam nodded. “Sure, let’s define torture.” Aaron’s voice was playing through his head, recounting horror after horror as Sam hurried to scribble notes. When Aaron had sat back he’d said, “Do you think that’s enough?” Sam had asked, “Is there more?” Aaron’s flat expression had been answer enough. “What about cigarette burning?” he asked Sullivan. “Random beatings? Solitary confinement without food or light? Did that ever take place?” He was looking directly into Sullivan’s pale blue eyes and the man blinked slightly wide eyes back at him.
“On occasion.”
“Who tortured them, Mr. Sullivan?”
“The guards.”
“Which guards?”
“I don’t,” Sullivan dropped his eyes down. “… I can’t remember all of them.”
“So remember one,” Sam said. “Mr. Sullivan? Remember one.” He could see the man’s eyes drift over to Jesse and Aaron, his expression changing slowly. Sam wondered if Sullivan was remembering them, placing the memory of those six months when they had been fifteen over the two men who sat in the courtroom.
“Counselor,” the judge spoke, “is this line of questioning going to lead somewhere that has some bearing on this case?”
“It will, your honor,” Sam assured.
“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”
“Mr. Sullivan,” Sam said, noticed Sullivan was still staring at Aaron and Jesse. “Was there ever any sexual abuse at Faribault Home for Boys?”
He turned back to Sam and nodded. “I heard that there was.”
“I’m not asking what you may have heard, Mr. Sullivan. I’m asking what you saw.”
His eyes drifted back to Jesse and Aaron, and then up and away, like he couldn’t look at them for longer than a moment. “Yes, I saw.”
“Did you and Edward Dowell ever force yourself on any of the boys?” Sam’s jaw clenched and he thought about why he had ever considered this to be a good idea. Where they were sitting, Jesse and Aaron were stony faced and silent; Sam was too afraid to look beyond to where Dean was. He had read that some survivors of sexual trauma considered it necessary to their healing process to have their experience acknowledged, hear it spoken aloud. Sam couldn’t think how that could be so, but as far as he was concerned, Sullivan’s presence was a separate part of the trial that he had orchestrated entirely on his own, for the benefit of the only three men in that room who knew what the motive for Dowell’s murder had been. So he forced himself to rephrase, “Did you and Edward Dowell ever rape any of the boys in your care at Faribault Home?”
“Counselors,” the judge said, waving them over, “Approach.” When Sam and Seamus were standing by the judge, the man frowned, focusing his attention on White. “Counselor, what the hell is going on here?”
White, for his part, looked shell-shocked, and Sam wondered if that was why he hadn’t objected to anything up to that point. He was pale and his eyes were wide, even after he blinked. He stuttered twice before he could say, “I must have called the wrong character witness.”
“I’ve given you wide latitude in calling this character witness and now it has blown up in your face.” Sam tuned out, focusing on Sullivan, the sheen of sweat on his sickly flushed skin, he toyed with the gold cross around his neck like he wasn’t even aware he was moving.
Questioning recommenced and Sam asked about Sullivan’s son, if he or his wife left the little boy alone with Dowell, He pushed until Sullivan was defensive, insisting that it never came up in the same breath as he said there would never be cause. White had woken up, started objecting where he could, and Sam tried to push, carefully and not too quickly, further and further, until Sullivan was answering, half choked and with damp eyes, ‘yes’ into a lull and Sam turned back to face him.
“Yes?” he asked. “Yes what, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yes,” Sullivan said. “Edward Dowell had experiences with some of the boys.”
There was a moment where Sam just stood there. It had been his intention, but he had never actually believed that it would work. That White would take the bait, that Sullivan would give even an inch on the stand. “Were you there?”
“Yes.”
Sam shifted his weight, but couldn’t bring himself to move in case it shattered whatever moment and Sullivan went silent. “Did you observe these experiences?”
“Yes.”
“Did you more than observe these experiences?”
There were tears in the man’s eyes, he hiccupped as he answered, “I was drinking a lot and I …” he trailed off, a tear escaping from the corner of his eyes and he wiped it away with a closer fist.
“Were there any other guards around during these experiences?”
“Yes.”
“On more than one occasion?”
“…Yeah.”
Sam felt light headed, triumph merging with the repulsion that he felt every time he thought about what he had learned about Faribault. He stood, two fingers resting on the defense table, tried to quell the absolute rage that was roiling inside. “Mr. Sullivan, do you still think Edward Dowell was a good man?”
“He was my friend,” Sullivan said, openly crying.
“A friend who raped and abused boys he was paid to look after,” Sam said. Sullivan dropped Sam’s gaze and Sam turned away. “I have no further questions.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket as he retook his chair, couldn’t bring himself to even glance at Jesse or Aaron, kept focused forward because he thought he might be sick right there in the middle of the courtroom with court still in session.
“I want this to be over,” Sullivan said. His voice echoing in the room as the judge dismissed him from the stand.
“Mr. Sullivan,” the judge said, as the man stepped down, wandered somewhat dazedly toward the exit. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stray too far from home. There will be people who want to talk to you, do you understand?” Sullivan nodded and, with his head down, walked out of the room.
The Hennepin Government Center was a giant monolith of a building, twenty-four floors encased in cream-colored smooth stone. Technically, the building was two separate towers joined by a glass-encased atrium and white steel beams; from the outside it was meant to look like a letter ‘H’ for Hennepin, which Sam had been told by the chipper young man working at the information desk, who had mistaken him for a tourist before Sam had asked for direction to his assigned courtroom. Sam didn’t think of a letter when he looked at the building from outside, but he had an increasing appreciation for the architects in Minneapolis.
He’d bypassed the Skyway on his way out of the courtroom, Sullivan’s testimony causing enough of a stir that they had adjourned for the day. Sam had spent a few moments staring at the door that Jesse and Aaron had been escorted through, listening to the small audience they had garnered chatter and shuffle out before he had dared to turn around. Dean hadn’t been there. Maybe it was cowardly, but he was still reeling, every piece of him in turmoil, and it felt like he was barely drawing in air.
Buttoning his coat as he moved, Sam pushed open the glass doors of the building and stepped outside, the harsh biting wind like a cold slap across the face and he felt himself calming. He closed his eyes for a moment, stopped moving and tried to slow his thoughts, tried to settle away the day where it belonged, and told himself it hadn’t been anything he hadn’t been anticipating. Somehow, though, hearing Sullivan say it aloud, hearing the man admit it, was like a knife twist in Sam’s gut, dark confirmation of something he already knew.
When he opened his eyes again he noticed Dean, his coat collar turned up and a dark scarf wrapped around his neck. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but he had a hat pulled low over his ears and, Sam noted with some surprise, he was smoking a cigarette.
“Since when do you smoke?” he asked as he walked over to his brother.
Dean jerked his eyes over, frowned when Sam pulled the cigarette away and crushed it underfoot. “It’s not a habit,” Dean said as he fumbled through one of the pockets in his bag. “I only do it when some asshole cross examines a sick son-of-a-bitch about some pretty gruesome stuff without so much as a ‘hey, by the way.’”
Sam watched as his brother’s hands fumbled the lighter and then lit another cigarette. He pursed his lips at the nasty habit but letting it slide because, yeah, Dean could probably use some help calming down after what Sam had just put him through. “Are you really pissed at me, or are you riled up because of what Sullivan said, about seeing him again?”
Dean glared. Sam watched as his brother glanced at him from the corner of his eyes but didn’t turn his head. “No,” Dean said. “I’m not just ‘riled up’, I’m pissed. What the hell, Sam?” And then they were facing off and it was impossible to miss the extent of his brother’s anger, written out in the darkness of his eyes, the tightness of his mouth. “I told you to leave it alone.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dean. I couldn’t do that.” Dean snorted and turned away. They were standing by a large circular fountain that had been emptied of water for the winter months, in the center of the fountain was a hole, and it made him think of an oubliette. “This trial isn’t about Dowell,” he went on. “It’s not about who shot him.”
“Really?” Dean’s voice was low and gruff; he exhaled a puff of white smoke. “You could have fooled me.”
“You know what I mean,” Sam said. He looked away, felt some of the fight go out of him. “I didn’t get to give the opening statement that I wanted to, because what I would have said was that this was something justice couldn’t touch. If Aaron and Jesse hadn’t done what they did that night, Dowell would never have paid for what he did.”
“So you’re saying going around murdering people is a good thing.” Dean shook his head, laughed a harsh bitter laugh and looked back at Sam as he said, “Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be the good guy.”
“It was self defense,” Sam argued.
“Seventeen years after the fact.”
“Are you saying that the type of stuff Dowell used to do to you is something a person can just grow out of? That a person can stop wanting to hurt young boys, wanting to touch them?”
“Shut up!” Dean snarled. “And stop saying shit you don’t mean.”
“That’s just it, Dean,” Sam said. “Because a part of me means every word of it. A part of me can’t see any other way Dowell could pay for what he did. And I’m terrified that this time, I might not win. That Jesse and Aaron will be found guilty and sent to prison and…”
“What?”
“…and I’m not sure that would be justice.”
“They killed a man, Sammy,” Dean said, after letting out a long breath. He was looking away, out at the empty fountain, at the oubliette in the middle of it. Sam wondered what his brother was really thinking, if Dean was just trying to be the big brother teaching his kid brother right from wrong, or if he really believed what he was saying. “Murder,” Dean continued. “That’s wrong. You know it’s wrong.”
It was Sam’s turn to look away, because he knew if Dean saw his face he would see that Sam wasn’t soothed by the words, wasn’t convinced by them. There was still that dark part inside him that thought, if he’d seen Edward Dowell eating dinner that night, knowing what he knew about who the man was, Sam would have shot him.
“Don’t play games, Sam,” Dean said. “You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to make sure Aaron and Jesse get a fair trial. You’re looking for justice. A murder happened, you try to make sure Aaron and Jesse get a reasonable sentence. You can’t defend them from something that’s already happened. Don’t get caught up in ancient history.”
Dean stubbed out his cigarette and shifted his bag on his shoulder, taking one last look at Sam before he turned and walked away. Sam watched him go. “It’s not ancient history,” he thought, as he watched his brother move down the street. “It’s happening right now.”
The jury was ordered to disregard Sullivan’s testimony but Sam didn’t care, it hadn’t been about that; he felt like he’d got something back for his brother, for Jesse and Aaron, and even for Grady. Like maybe he’d already earned a little piece of victory. They could tell the jury to make their final decision and not let Sullivan’s words affect them, but no one could un-hear that testimony. It wasn’t just three survivors alone with the truth, there was a whole roomful, and they had a confession straight from one of the men who’d been a part of it all.
Seamus did his best to make his case, despite clearly being shaken by Sullivan’s testimony. He brought in a miniature model of the bar, threw a lot of science and big talk at the jury to distract from the fact that there was no weapon and so solid evidence. Yet when it came right down to it, with two witnesses both putting Jesse and Aaron at the scene, it didn’t matter how Sam tried to discredit the testimonies, the verdict was still anyone’s guess.
When Sam’s cellphone rang that night he was more than a little exhausted, flipping through pages of his notes and trying to think of any possible angle he had left unconsidered, anything else he could pull out for his defense. “Sam?” Pastor Jim answered his greeting.
“Jim? What is it?”
“I’d like to testify.”
Sam frowned; he set his papers aside and thought maybe he was having some bizarre, stress-induced dream. “Thank-you, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary. The trial is concerned with who Jesse and Aaron are right now, not how they might have been when they were younger…”
“You don’t understand,” Jim cut him off. “I’d like to testify, because on the evening of January 24th, Aaron and Jesse were with me at a basketball game.”
Sam was immediately and abruptly awake. He sat there, amidst papers and scrawled notes and felt suddenly and completely spent, and oddly grateful. Sam was an outsider; no matter how much he tried to understand, no matter how pissed he got, the truth was that what his brother and his friends had endured was beyond Sam’s ken. It was an odd thing to realize, but even as Sam fought to restore their faith in the system, to at least have them found innocent, he still wasn’t really part of the club. It was a sudden and tremendous relief to have someone else fighting to pull his brother and Aaron and Jesse back from the precipice it felt like they were about to go over, no matter the personal cost. Sam swallowed passed the choking constriction in his throat and nodded. “Okay.”
Lorne hadn’t wasted time following-up the lead Dean had passed him. Eric Torres was arrested and charged for the shooting death of the drug dealer, and eight counts of corruption and bribery. Sullivan had been taken out of Dean’s hands, and Dean wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with that; maybe that was why he found himself sitting in the middle of the graveyard on Sunday morning, staring at Albert Wilson’s gravestone.
It was over. Dean found it almost impossible to believe, but Dowell was murdered, Sullivan was about to get dragged through the mud for what he’d admitted on the stand, Torres was in prison where Clay had smirked and said it wasn’t likely things would go so smoothly for him, being a cop and all, and Wilson was taken care of, had been shot years ago. He hadn’t even lived to see the start of the new millennium.
It was over, but somehow it didn’t feel that way. He stood at Wilson’s grave and wondered what he should do. Dean wasn’t good in graveyards, and maybe that was partly because most of the time he spent in them involved digging up bodies. To Dean, though, graveyards weren’t where people went to rest; they were where people tended to dispose of bodies. At the heart of it, he didn’t believe in the traditional grieving process, with a funeral and eulogies and a somber burial. As far as Dean was concerned, that didn’t mean anything, didn’t amount to anything. Not for anyone.
Still, he’d been compelled to find Wilson’s grave, if only to convince himself that it was really there. Maybe to dance on it a little. He imagined that if Jesse were there, the man would have been armed with strong alcohol, likely would have ended up peeing on it at some point, and Dean thought he wouldn’t have stopped him. Dean couldn’t imagine Aaron bothering with any part of it. Maybe his friend would have been compelled to pass by it, but Dean thought it was enough for Aaron to simply know the man was dead, just so he could cross him off the list he was undoubtedly keeping. Dean had no idea what Grady would have done, maybe he would have cried or yelled some. Maybe he would have brought flowers. Grady was always talking about resolving the past, accepting it so that they could move passed it. Out of all of them, Grady had been the most sensible, probably the most mature, even if his sense of humor didn’t exemplify that. Grady’s suicide had been a cold-shock, and every day since that day Dean wondered if it had been Grady’s intention to kill himself, or if the medication had played on the darkness they’d all been fighting in some way or another since they’d walked out of Faribault. Either way, it hardly mattered any more.
So Dean spent most of his Sunday out in the cold, staring at a tombstone and lost in memory. He stayed until he didn’t feel like he was drowning in the past anymore, until he couldn’t feel the cold ache in his body, or the desperate clawing wish to get the hell away from Minnesota and all the history it had wrapped up in it. “You’re dead, you son of a bitch,” Dean said to Albert Wilson, to Edward Dowell and to the memory of Faribault.
He turned and headed back to the Impala, pushed his way through the snow that soaked the bottom of his jeans. He remembered being fifteen, sitting in an awkwardly stiff plastic chair as he read aloud, "Oh, God," he had been leaning over the book as he spoke to a class that was barely listening, "your vengeance may sometimes be slow in coming, but I think that then it is all the more complete." Dean remembered being stopped as he left the classroom, Mr. Pruitt, his English teacher inside Faribault smiling as he said, “I think you like that book.” He had shrugged and dismissed it because it felt like every thing he held dear was being taken away from him bit by bit and he couldn’t stand to add anything else to that growing list of loss. “You should have your own copy. Here.”
Dean had read other books before, for school mostly, but they were a good way to pass the time. He’d forgotten all of them. Dean knew the Bible, and he knew Dumas; only one of them he kept in his bedside table.
On Monday, after the prosecution rested, Jim Murphy found himself standing in a courtroom, one hand resting on the surface of the Bible as he swore to speak only the truth, while Jesse and Aaron, and Sam and Dean and an entire courtroom watched. He took his seat and thought that the only reason he didn’t feel nervous was because he had wrestled with his conscience already, and the moment he had walked through the doors he had been nothing but resolved.
Sam was in a sharp grey suit, the white shirt he wore beneath bright and crisp and his blue tie showing just a hint of sheen beneath the glowing pot lights that Jim knew it was silk. Jim found himself trying to recollect if he had ever seen the boy dressed in anything but jeans and grubby sneakers. Beside Sam at the defense table, Jim could see Jesse and Aaron, their heads dipping together as they whispered, no doubt wondering what the hell Jim was doing there; but it was to Dean, seated with other curious observers, that Jim looked. Dean, who had a black hooded jacket unzipped over a plain olive T-shirt, was still wearing a dark scarf around his neck and looked back at Jim with such wide green eyes, so overwhelmed, that suddenly Jim was seeing the child he once knew, lost and hopeful. If he had been harboring any lingering doubts, Jim was certain they would have fled with that look alone.
“Father,” Sam said, smiling a little awkwardly as he stepped away from the table behind which he had been sitting. “Do you recall where you were on the night of January 24 of this year?”
Jim smiled in encouragement and nodded. “Yes I do.”
“Where was that?”
“I was at the basketball game at the Target Center. Timberwolves versus the Rockets.”
“When did the game begin?”
“About seven o’clock.” It felt odd seeing Sam so professional, so detached and composed. Jim felt a surging sense of pride and wished, not for the first time, that John were still alive, if only so he could see what his youngest son had become.
“When did the game end?” Sam asked, recalling Jim’s wandering thoughts.
“Around ten thirty or so.”
“Can you recall who won the game that night?”
A corner of Jim’s mouth twisted up as he said, “Unfortunately, it was the Rockets, though it was pretty close.”
Sam nodded, and Jim watched him cross in front of the judge, wandering closer to where the jury was seated. “Father Murphy, were you at the game alone?”
“No, I went with two of my friends,” Jim said.
“Who were those two friends, Father?”
“Jesse Deacon and Aaron Conyers.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jim saw Aaron and Jesse glance at one another again, but he didn’t dare look over. Sam said, “The two defendants.”
“Yes, the defendants.”
“At 8:26 p.m. The time that police say the victim, Edward Dowell, was murdered, were you still with the two defendants?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And what time did you leave Mr. Deacon and Mr. Conyers?”
“Around ten thirty or so, they dropped me off at the rectory where I was staying that night.”
Standing by the jury, Sam spread his arms open a little as he said, “So, Father, if the two defendants were with you at 8:26 on the night of the murder, then they could not have shot and killed Edward Dowell as the prosecution contends.”
“Not unless he was shot from the blue seats at the Target Center.”
Sam smiled a little and ducked his head. “No, he wasn’t shot from there.”
“Then he was not shot by those boys.”
“Thank you, Father Murphy.” It was a little startling to see the extent of gratitude in Sam’s eyes as he spoke, and it occurred to Jim that Sam likely knew about Faribault, had probably wrangled the truth out of Dean, if not Jesse or Aaron, and had been struggling with it as much as he’d been struggling to prepare his defense. He wondered how the young man was coping, wondered if it had helped Sam make peace with his brother or if it had only added fuel to the fire.
The prosecution took over questioning, and Jim endured the scrambling effort to cast doubt on his testimony, refused to humor implications that he was lying about the game in order to protect ‘his flock’. He couldn’t let himself dwell on it, concerned that it might make him regret his resolve. He had a moment of sympathy for the prosecutor, so clearly struggling to hold together a case he had likely written-off as a guaranteed win, and that sympathy clashed with a startlingly strong sense of conviction that, no matter the cost, he had made the right decision. Jim glanced across to where Dean was sitting; the man no longer looked shell-shocked, but the gratitude was clear.
“Father Murphy,” the prosecutor was saying, “How do we really know? How do we really know you were at the game that night, with the defendants, as you claim?”
Jim turned back to the man and said, “I am telling you as a witness and as a priest, we were at the game.”
“Yes, as a priest,” White said, jumping on the statement. “And a priest wouldn’t lie, am I right?”
“A priest with ticket stubs wouldn’t need to lie,” Jim said. “And I always keep the stubs.” He produced three ticket stubs from the breast pocket of his jacket, never more pleased with his connections as a hunter and his own foresight. He’d arranged the ticket stubs before he had even phoned Sam, experience telling him that it was better to be cautious and thorough.
He watched as White took the stubs from him and peered at them closely, his mouth open slightly like he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he held them up and shrugged. “No further questions.”
“I wanted to thank you,” Sam said, walking with Jim through the halls as the courtroom emptied for a lunch break. “I don’t know why you would step forward like you did, but … well, thanks.”
Jim came to a halt, stepping to the side in the hall so as not to stall the pedestrian traffic. “I keep thinking of every trip I took to visit them, in Faribault. I should have known something was wrong.”
“You couldn’t have,” Sam said, his voice dropping lower.
“I know those boys,” Jim insisted. “And I know the signs. I should have put the two together, but … maybe I didn’t want to see the truth.” Sam dropped a hand onto Jim’s shoulder, and Jim gave a half-hearted smile, more exhausted than anything. “When your brother stopped by, told me, I was overcome with guilt, with regret. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted so badly to turn back time. I wanted his forgiveness for failing him and the others so completely, but first I think I have to forgive myself. It’s going to be a while.”
“For what it’s worth,” Sam said. “I don’t think Dean blames you. I don’t think any of them do.”
“They’re wrong not to, then. They were children, it was my responsibility to look out for them, just like it was the responsibility of the guards at that place to protect the children in their care, not exploit them.” Jim clenched a fist and looked away.
“Would you like to get some lunch?” Sam asked. “Or, I could drive you some place, if you need?”
“I’ll be alright.” Jim patted Sam’s hand and started to walk away. He walked a few steps before he turned back around. “What happened was horrible, and it was wrong, but it wasn’t your fault, either. You couldn’t be there for your brother if you didn’t know he needed you.”
“He’s my brother,” Sam said with a shrug. “Deep down, I knew.”
“Then at least keep a level head,” Jim advised. “He’ll need that. And Sam, hatred is blind.”
Sam tipped his head to the side, smiled a little as he said, “So is justice.” The corner of Jim’s mouth quirked upward, he nodded.
The verdict came in, a clean ‘not guilty’, stated with a cool confidence by the forewoman. The jury had barely needed the time to deliberate. Sam accepted a hard clap on the shoulder and squeezing handshake from Aaron, but Jesse near killed him with his tight hug. When Sam turned his grin to where Dean had been sitting, there was no sign of him, and Aaron gave him a nudge. “Go on, we’ll catch up later.”
Sam jogged through the building just shy of sprinting, caring little for what anyone else thought as he rushed by. He was barely aware of Seamus calling to him, possibly to congratulate him, Sam didn’t care. He caught up to Dean in the atrium, just shy of the entrance to the Skyway. “Hey!” he called, slowing to a stop beside his brother, who turned around at his call. “You running out on me?”
Dean shook his head. “Naw,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “Like I could. You’d just follow me, wouldn’t you?”
“Hell yeah,” Sam stated. “We won,” he said, because there was so much they needed to talk about but Sam needed to hold on to that realization for just a moment longer. “I can’t believe it.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Never doubted it.”
Sam would have cried bullshit, but the cheeky little grin on his brother’s face was so refreshing to see that he just shook his head, toed at the ground as he asked, “Are you going to leave now?”
Dean looked away, his gaze drifting to the tall grid of windows and the view they offered, grey skies threatening snow, city hall sitting like a ruling monarch across the street. When he turned back to Sam there was a cautious hesitance to his expression that Sam didn’t think he had ever seen before, but it was quickly overtaken by a cocky grin as Dean reached into the bag he had slung over his shoulder and pulled out a book. “You should have this,” he said, pushing the book toward Sam. Sam looked down at the cover, recognized the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that he’d never seen his brother without. “You did good, Sam.”
Sam flipped open the front cover. Printed at the top in blue ink and a messy hand was Dean’s name. Beneath, in a flowing black script, was a small note that Sam scanned. Dean, it read, “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.” Beneath the quote was a signature, but Sam didn’t recognize the name. There was another inscription on the other side of the page in Dean’s familiar script, and this one, Sam noted, was directed to him. “The law is the law,” Dean quoted, “and I am happy to put myself in her hands.”
Sam smiled and glanced up, noticed that as he had read his brother had begun to walk away. “Dean!” he called, watched as Dean shifted the bag on his shoulder and turned around. “What about my hands?”
Dean grinned, wide and bright, and said, “Those’ll have to do.” A few steps and Sam had bridged the distance between them, pulled his brother close and pressed their lips together. It felt like a new beginning, the old hurts healed between them and something tentative and shivering and new unfurling between them, a second chance. Sam leaned his forehead against Dean’s and smiled.
|<< END PART FOUR >>|
MASTERPOST
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,336
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Part of the Icarus 'Verse
But, with such an outlook ... which makes you judge and executioner
in your own case, it would be hard for you to confine yourself
to actions that would leave you forever immune to the power of
the law. Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours
himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
There were people already seated in the courtroom when Sam entered, the room just small enough that it felt a bit strange to walk passed them and push aside the little swinging gate that separated the people who had come to observe from those involved in the trial. On the left side of the room, behind the jury, was a regiment of windows with grey-white coverings over each, leaving the area entirely reliant on the pot lights in the ceiling. Oddly, the effect was soothing; it was possibly the most comfortable courtroom Sam had ever seen. Like so much of downtown Minneapolis, the architecture contributed to the sense of order, and the courtroom was composed of straight lines echoing and crossing each other, cherry wood paneling covering the walls blending with the dark maroon of the carpet and the chair coverings. The table where Sam deposited his briefcase was smooth maple and had a desk-pad on it. There wasn’t a great deal of space to move around, and he noted with a hint of amusement that, since he was representing two clients, there were three large maroon chairs pulled up to the defense table, which was clearly meant to comfortably sit only two.
“You better budge over,” Aaron muttered, elbowing Jesse good-naturedly in the side when the guard escorted them to their seats just as Sam was setting out the notes regarding the case.
“If I budge any more my dick’s gonna be bisected by the damn table leg.” They were in freshly pressed suits, and Jesse had tied his hair back in a low ponytail for the occasion, though Sam could see Aaron had spent about as much time as usual on his own hair, which, as far as he could tell, was just about none at all. Sam dragged his chair further over in an effort to get more space and realized that Jesse was right, the table didn’t have legs so much as a plank of maple running straight down. The plank wasn’t even at the far end of the table, which meant that if he tried to get some more space he had to sit with his legs on either side of it. “Well, this is cozy,” Jesse scoffed.
Their table was furthest away from the jury box, with Sam seated at the far left. “Jesse, pull your chair over to the edge of the table, and sit as far forward as you can.” At least that way, Jesse would be visible, and it still looked as if they were sitting in a close row. Sam rolled his chair back into the position he had found it, hoping the jury would see that he had absolutely no qualms sitting closely with his clients. “Now try not to look sullen and listen up for a minute.” Both Jesse and Aaron turned their attention to him.
When Sam had been driving over to the Hennepin County Government Center, there had been a moment where he wondered if his clients would even be there, or if maybe Dean had broken them out in the middle of the night. He’d switched the radio on to the all-news station and wondered what he would do if Jesse and Aaron never appeared. Sitting in the courtroom with the presence of his clients confirmed, Sam’s thoughts had turned to Dean, and he found himself torn between wanting his brother there and wanting him to stay away. The idea of having Dean watching as Sam proceeded with the trial made him impossibly nervous. With a huff Sam recalled a time when knowing Dean was in the audience had been a comforting thought. Dean had never missed a single one of his soccer matches, and Sam could recall his determination to push extra hard in order to make his big brother proud.
Holding on to that sense of determination, Sam set every other distraction aside. “We’ve had a bit of luck,” he said, keeping his voice low as he conferred with Jesse and Aaron. “Two of the witnesses have withdrawn their testimony, which means we’re only facing two witness accounts instead of four.” Jesse bumped Aaron’s shoulder, and Aaron gave a small but devious smirk, and Sam decided he didn’t want to know and wasn’t going to ask. Despite the fact that had been through trials before, he gave an overview of what to expect, if only to distract them.
Just as he was directing them to remain calm and to refrain from looking in any way threatening, which included scowling at anyone, but especially the judge and the jury, Dean entered the courtroom, settling into a seat a few rows behind them. For all the worry Sam had been wrestling with previously at the prospect of having Dean there, he felt a sharp surge of adrenaline at the same time as the tension unknotted inside him.
The first half of the morning was spent with the judge advising the jury as to the court proceedings. After a short recess, Sam flipped to a clear page on his legal pad while Seamus White, the prosecutor, stood from his seat and began his opening statement.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the court,” White said, as he walked over to the jury box. “I wonder if I could ask you all for a favor. I want each of you to close your eyes. Just for a moment.” White looked at each of the jury members. “Close your eyes and picture yourself coming home from work. It’s late and it was a long day so you don’t feel much like cooking. You find a pub, nothing special, just whatever’s closest, and place your order, settling-in for your dinner in a nice, quiet, respectable establishment. There’s a couple sharing a meal in a booth. Two businessmen are having a drink at the bar.”
White rested his hands on the rail by the jury. “Now I want you to picture two men coming into that pub. Picture them knocking back a couple of drinks and then joining you at your table. You talk. You probably ask them who they are, what they want?” White left that hanging, letting the image coalesce in their imaginations. “Now picture those strangers standing up, and both of them pointing a gun at you.” Beside him, Jesse snorted, and Sam glared at him, happy at least that the jury hadn’t seen or heard him. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is precisely how the victim, Edward Dowell, who was murdered on the night of January 24th. He was having a fish dinner in a pub, on his way back from work.”
White played on the jury’s sympathy, describing bits about Dowell’s day, which hadn’t been at all remarkable, building the man up to be an honest, working citizen who had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Jesse and Aaron, in White’s retelling, became nothing more than a couple of thugs who had entered O’Malley’s with the intent to kill someone, though not particular as to who. As far as Sam could tell, most of White’s case rested in the witness testimonies, in the line-up where they had picked out Jesse and Aaron, and in his own assessment of what must have happened that night, based, undoubtedly, on stories he’d heard about gangs who performed random killings. By the time White retook his seat, the jury was looking toward Aaron and Jesse with narrow eyes.
“Your Honor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” Sam cleared his throat as he stood up. “As the prosecutor asked you to imagine the night of the murder, I saw the looks of horror on each of your faces.” He stopped by the railing in front of the jurors as he said, “This is a despicable crime, made all the worse by the fact that it seemingly has no motive. That an honest, hard working person could be targeted by random, meaningless violence; it could have been any one of us that night.” Some of the jurors shifted in their seats. “I want you to know that my clients, Aaron Conyers, and Jesse Deacon, did not commit this senseless murder. They are not guilty. And that brings us to what I want to talk about for a few minutes, and that’s getting blamed for something you didn’t do.”
Sam’s clients were guilty. He knew they had each fired the shots that had killed Edward Dowell. His case was built around the fact that there hadn’t been a whole lot of effort made by the police in locating other suspects. There was no trace of the murder weapons, no motive, and Sam intended to cast doubt on the police line-up, as well as the fact that the police had been talking as if it were the Mad Dogs who perpetrated the crime, before they’d even spoken to any witness directly.
“Each of you have been empowered to determine whether the allegations made against my clients are true. If, after hearing all of the facts of this case, you each have absolutely no doubt in your mind that my clients are guilty, then you have to find them so. But if you have a reasonable doubt, if some part of the prosecution’s case does not hold for you, then you must find Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon not guilty. I believe that once you have heard all of the evidence you will recognize that this is not a case of random gang violence perpetrated by two thugs. This is a case of two innocent men, Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon, being brought before you today because of rushed police work and hasty conclusions drawn on little to no factual basis. And I think that each of you will honor the truth by saying yes, this was a horrible crime, but it hasn’t been solved yet. Thank-you.”
A recess was called for lunch, and Sam turned to his clients as Aaron said, “God damned.”
“It would be brilliant,” Jesse said, “If it weren’t so damned tragic to hear you saying all that.” He grinned a little as he jerked his head towards Aaron. “Are you sure we did what we think we did? I’m starting to have doubts.”
“Shut up, Man,” Aaron said. “We’re in the middle of a courtroom.”
“An empty courtroom,” Jesse pointed out as a guard came forward to escort them out for lunch. “I hope it’s not friggin’ macaroni,” Jesse muttered.
Marie Coulter had dark red, curly hair that she had pulled back with a clip. She wore a navy suit with a knee-length skirt and Sam could tell from the way she shifted on the stand that she had never seen the inside of a courtroom before. Still, she answered White’s questions with a clear voice, and she sat straight-backed and composed as she described the evening of January 24th, where a night out with her boyfriend had been cut abruptly short by gunfire and the murder of one, Edward Dowell.
Under any other circumstances, Sam would have held nothing but sympathy for her. Even growing up as a hunter’s son hadn’t exposed him to the kind of violence she had been privy to on her date, and he wondered if she was still struggling with the events of that night one month later. Still, it wasn’t Sam’s job to sympathize with her; he couldn’t afford any emotion toward her at all. Maybe that was part of the reason why people hated lawyers as much as they all claimed to, but even that was something that Sam couldn’t afford to wonder about too closely. The fact was that Marie Coulter was a witness to a murder that his clients were on trial for, and as their defense attorney, she was an obstacle for Sam to overcome.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Coulter,” Seamus White said, smiling a tight little smile as he turned and retook his seat behind the prosecution’s table. Sam let out a breath and glanced at the notes he had scrawled onto his legal pad before he rose from his chair.
“Good morning,” he greeted, flashing a professional, if slightly charming, smile and ducking his head a little as he walked forward. Marie Coulter’s eyes dropped somewhat bashfully and she answered with a soft greeting. “Ms. Coulter, in your statement you said that you had wine with your dinner, is that correct?”
“Yes it is.”
“Just one bottle of wine?”
She nodded, her slight smile saying that she didn’t quite know where he was going with his questions but that she trusted he’d get to the point. “Yes,” she said. “A bottle of red Chianti.”
“How about earlier in the day?” Sam pushed, “Did you have anything to drink at lunch?”
Her expression was no longer so open, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and frowned, trying to recall the events of that day. “I was out shopping,” she said, “and I stopped over at this little place…”
Sam raised a hand to stop her rambling words and said, “Please, Ms. Coulter, I would just like to hear if you had anything to drink at lunch.”
“A martini, and,” she hesitated, “probably some wine.”
“How many glasses of wine?”
“One,” she said, then licked her lips. “Or maybe it was two.”
“Would you say closer to two?”
“Yes,” she said, her tone indicating she wanted to be done with the line of questioning, was eager to tell him what he wanted in order to simply make him shut up. “Probably two glasses.”
“About what time did you have lunch?”
“Objection!” White rose from his seat. “What happened on the day of the murder has no bearing on what Ms. Coulter saw on the night of the murder.”
“How much she had to drink does, your Honor,” Sam contested.
The judge nodded, “Overruled.”
“Ms. Coulter,” Sam said.
She’d watched the exchange with slightly wide eyes, and shifted in her seat before she said, “About one thirty.”
“What did you have for lunch?”
“Uh,” she huffed. “It was a while ago. Probably a salad.”
“A martini and two glasses of wine,” Sam said. “And a salad. Is that correct?”
“Yeah,” she said, then cleared her throat and said more confidently, “Yes.”
“And then you had wine at dinner, which was about six hours later?”
“Yes.”
Sam nodded before he asked, “How much wine did you have by the time my clients allegedly walked into O’Malley’s?”
“Two glasses.”
He let the statement hang for a moment as he paced forward until he stood closer to the stand, raised his eyebrows a little and looked at her in that way Jess had frequently told him was adorable, and teasing, and wholly unfair. “Would you say that four glasses of wine and a martini within a six hour period is a lot for you to drink?”
Her cheeks flushed a little and she nodded while she said, “It is. Yes.” What else could she say? To deny it would be equally damning, implying she was potentially an alcoholic.
Sam nodded, tried to look considering as he turned and paced away from her. “Ms. Coulter, had you ever heard a gun fired before the night in question?”
The tension that had been building in her tone and posture released at the new line of questioning, and she shook her head. “No; never.”
“Could you describe the sound, please?”
“It was loud,” she said. “Like someone was setting off fireworks inside. Everything shook, I remember the glasses rattled.”
Sam looked at her, his face openly sympathetic as he asked, “The sound frightened you?”
She let out a huff of air and nodded. “Very much so.”
He paced a little closer to the stand, and dipped his head slightly as he looked at her. “Did you close your eyes?” he asked, like he was a friend she could confide in.
“At first,” she admitted. “But when the shooting stopped I opened them again.”
“Did you think the men firing the guns might kill everyone inside the pub that night?”
“I really didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I just knew that someone had been shot.”
“Did you think that you might be next?”
“I did,” her voice choked a little, reacting to the sympathy in his tone.
Sam paced away toward the jury, his voice confident and sure as he said, “Yet despite that fear, despite the fear for your life, you turned and you looked at their faces as they left?”
He had reeled her in so completely that she sat up straighter, shifted a little in pride at his tone. “I did.”
“Did you look at their faces?” he asked. “Did you really look?”
“I glanced as they walked by, but I did see them!”
Sam paused, “You glanced, you didn’t look.”
“But I saw them!”
“You glanced at them, Ms. Coulter, through the eyes of a very frightened woman who maybe had a little too much to drink.”
“Objection, your honor,” White said.
“That’s okay,” Sam said. “I have no further questions.”
“Thank-you, Ms. Coulter,” the judge said. “You may step down.”
“You know,” Seamus White said, jogging to catch up to Sam as they exited the courtroom. “When you turned down my plea bargain I thought you were a bit of a hack.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose and he let out a surprised laugh, “really.”
“A little bit, yeah.” Seamus wasn’t much older than Sam himself, though Sam knew the man was a bit wet-behind-the-ears; he had dark blond hair slicked to stay out of his face and a rueful smile. “After today, I might have a bit more respect for you, though.”
“That’s exceptionally kind of you,” Sam said teasingly. Seamus fell into step beside him and Sam shrugged. “A trial like this becomes a bit of a beauty contest. That’s probably why I am more confident than you were anticipating.”
“How do you mean?”
“Without any convincing evidence, I mean,” Sam explained patiently. “If you had the guns, that would be a different matter,” he shrugged. “The jury has to look closely at what’s in front of them, so it comes down to the lawyers, and the clients. Especially with the motive as sketchy as it is.”
“Gang violence,” Seamus nodded. “Well, both your clients are in a gang.”
“Really?” It was more than a gamble, Sam hoped he’d read the other lawyer well enough to anticipate how he would think, but it was a risk he had to take in order to open up more possibilities in an open-shut case. “See you tomorrow.”
Eric Torres had worked at Faribault Home for Boys in order to finance his way through law school, but had ended up working narcotics in Minneapolis. Dean had added the information he had compiled to the file Sam had left in his motel room, a photograph of a younger Torres on the page Sam had retrieved followed by a more recent image of the man in his police uniform. Clay had been darkly pleased to utilize his contacts in order to make his own contributions to Dean’s growing file, and as a result the folder was substantially thick and Dean was certain it would be enough information to send Torres away for a pretty piece of time, and with the little bonus gift from Clay, the prison doors would slam shut nice and tight.
Dean had called Evangeline Lilley as soon as he had the information, surprised when she had returned the call more or less immediately. Evangeline had been the prettiest piece of law enforcement Dean had ever had the pleasure to run into; she’d also been the fiercest. He had been well on his way up shit creek, but Evangeline, as it turned out, had been neither ignorant nor blind, and one nasty poltergeist later, she had agreed to release him from custody; they’d exchanged contact information. Unfortunately, she hadn’t succumbed to his charm, but she’d come through for him before, and this time was no exception.
Dean trudged through the snow to the old Toyota parked on the deserted side-street, heat spilling out of the car the moment he opened the passenger door and settled into the back seat. “Who the fuck are you, and how to you know Lilley?” the man asked as soon as Dean had pulled the door closed.
“Who I am doesn’t matter; the only thing that concerns you is how I can help you.” Dean grinned.
“Oh yeah?” Evangeline had promised she had the perfect candidate for what Dean was asking, and she’d taken care of arranging the meet for him as well. According to her, Jonathon Lorne was an ambitious agent for Internal Affairs, determined to make Captain before he turned forty. The best way to do that was to turn in a maximum number of dirty cops in a minimum amount of time. Dean thought the guy sounded perfect.
“One thing,” Dean said. “No one knows who fed you the information, clear?”
“How’d you get it?” Lorne asked, glancing in the rearview to try and catch sight of the folder.
“Fell into my lap,” Dean said. “Like it’s about to fall into yours.” He dropped the folder into the man’s lap and sat back, waited as Lorne flipped through it.
“You’ve got everything in here but a fucking confession!”
“I figured I’d leave something for you,” he said with a grin. “I recommend that you beat it out of him.”
“Are these surveillance photos?” Lorne flipped another page. “He’s pulling about five grand a month ripping off pushers, and he’s been doing it for three years?”
“Four,” Dean corrected. “Is it enough for a conviction?”
“That’s out of my hands.” Lorne closed the folder and glanced in the rearview again. “That’s the jury’s call.”
Reaching back into his bag, Dean pulled Clay’s little gift, rapped up nice and careful in a plastic evidence bag, and held it forward for Lorne to take. “Show the jury this.”
Lorne took it, snorting as he held up the bag, “And just what is that, Mr. Ness?”
“Three weeks ago the body of a drug dealer, Feraz Sparks, was found in the back alley of a club in the north of town. Three bullets in his head and nothing in his pockets.”
Lorne quirked an eyebrow. “And?”
“That’s the gun that killed him.” Dean dipped his head a little, gesturing to bag Lorne was inspecting, “and those are the shells.”
Lorne huffed, amusement and surprise blending in the sound. When he spoke again, Dean could plainly hear how pleased the man was. “What’s behind door number three?”
“The prints on the gun belong to Eric Torres.” Lorne was gaping in the front of the car and Dean let out a breath. “If you need anything else, talk to Eva, she knows how to get in touch with me.”
“Hey, Ness,” Lorne called, rolling down his window and smirking when Dean turned to look at him. “You ever consider becoming a cop?”
“What,” Dean said. “And leave the good guys?” he turned back, trudged toward the Impala with Lorne’s buoyant laughter echoing behind him.
Sam wasn’t entirely surprised to be called in to the judge’s chambers, along with White, but he spent the entire walk to the chambers hoping that things were about to play out the way he wanted, and not that he was about to get hit with a curve ball. He’d had more than enough of those.
As it turned out, it was exactly as he had hoped. “This is extremely irregular,” the judge said, peering over his spectacles to focus first on White and then on Sam. “I’m not entirely certain I see the relevance of this.”
“I appreciate that, your honor,” Seamus White said. “I want to put a face to the victim, to prevent him from being just another name in the obituaries.”
The judge glanced at Sam. “Mr. Winchester, do you have any objections?”
Sam tried to tamp down the excited twist of glee he was experiencing in favor of a cool shake of his head. “No, your Honor.”
Which was how, on the third day of the trial, the prosecution called Bryan Sullivan to the stand, and Sam had to struggle not to turn and glance at Dean, who was again seated two rows behind the defense table. It was hard enough to ignore the pencil that Jesse was using to poke his side inconspicuously in an effort to garner his attention. When Sam glared at him, Jesse mouthed ‘what are you doing’, but it wasn’t time to offer an explanation, and it was certainly too late for Jesse to start caring about how Sam was building his defense.
Sullivan was a lanky, dirty-blond man with sunken features and a tired smile. He was married, with one young son; he worked for social services and he taught Sunday school, and for two years when he had been on the waiting list for the county police department, he had worked at Faribault Home for Boys.
“Good morning, Mr. Sullivan,” White said, standing and walking closer to where Sullivan was seated. “I want to thank you very much for coming today. I understand that you have quite a busy schedule, but you and the victim, Edward Dowell, were such good friends that I think your testimony as a character witness would be very valuable.”
“It would be hard to find a better friend than Edward,” Sullivan said, ducking his head.
“Would you say you were his best friend?”
Sullivan shrugged one shoulder as he said, “I was certainly his closest.”
“How long did you know each other?”
“About eighteen years.”
“And how often did you see each other?”
“As much as we could. Weekends, holidays, things like that.”
White paced toward the jury box as he asked, “What kind of man was Edward Dowell?”
“He was a good man,” Sullivan said. “He was too good to be shot dead by a couple of thugs.”
“Objection,” Sam said, rising slightly from his chair, “the statement is one of opinion, not fact.”
“He was asked his opinion,” White said. Sam was overruled. Seamus proceeded to lead Sullivan into a detailed account of Dowell as a kind man with no enemies, who worked hard, always reliable and so on and so forth. Sam had to stop scratching notes when he felt the pen creak in his hand. Beside him, Jesse and Aaron were perfectly and completely still, their expressions entirely blank. Sam hated to picture his brother, sitting by himself somewhere in the seats behind, staring at the face of someone who had used him so horribly. He was more than a little relieved that Dean had been forced to leave behind his weapons in order to enter the courtroom.
When Sullivan’s glowing account of Edward Dowell was finished, Seamus White retook his seat. There was a moment where Sam almost reconsidered his plan, but it was too late to go back. Sam rose, buttoned his suit jacket with one hand as he stepped forward. “Mr. Sullivan,” he said, cleared his throat before he continued, “You and Mr. Dowell worked for two years together at a prison, is that correct?”
“No,” Sullivan corrected. “Faribault was a facility for young boys. But yes, we worked there for two years together.”
“What was your function as a guard while you worked at Faribault?”
“Standard stuff, really,” Sullivan said with a shrug. “Make sure they made it to their classes on time, put them down for the night, make sure they weren’t getting into any trouble, keep them in line.”
“As guards, were you and Mr. Dowell ever permitted to use force to, as you put it, keep the boys in line?”
“What?” he stuttered, his eyes shifted from Sam to White, and even over to the judge before he looked back to Sam and asked, “What do you mean, force?”
Sam’s eyebrows rose slightly and he tipped his head to the side slightly. “For example, were you permitted to hit them?”
“No,” Sullivan said emphatically.
“Were any of the boys, ever hit at any time at Faribault, Mr. Sullivan?”
“I’m sure that something like that might have happened, from time to time. Faribault was a big place.”
“Sure,” Sam said, paced away as he said, “Let’s narrow it down then. Did you and Mr. Dowell ever hit any of the boys in your care?” He let the silence stretch as he pretended to be scanning his notes, before he glanced up again at Sullivan. “Would you like me to repeat the question?”
“No.”
“Could you answer it, and remember that you’re under oath.”
Sullivan licked his lips. “A few of the boys, who we considered to be discipline problems, were hit on occasion.”
“And how exactly were they hit, Mr. Sullivan?”
Again, Sullivan’s eyes darted around before he said, “I don’t understand.”
Sam moved back toward Sullivan, held the man’s gaze as he asked, “A fist? Open hand? Kicked? Maybe a baton?”
“It,” Sullivan stuttered. “It depended on the situation.”
“Who determined that situation?”
Sullivan’s head jerked a bit upward at the question. “The guard on the scene.”
Sam pursed his lips and let out a breath, struggling to keep his mind focused on his questions and the man before him, and not drift into the horror stories Aaron had told him in a clipped, clinical voice, when Sam had approached him with his idea. “That’s a lot of power to have over a young boy. Isn’t it?”
“It was part of the job, sir.”
Sam nodded and paced away, asking, “Was torture a part of the job?” Silence again. Sam glanced back toward Sullivan. “Boys were tortured, weren’t they? Mr. Sullivan?”
Sullivan was wide-eyed and startled by the question. He blinked at Sam as he said, “Define torture.”
Sam nodded. “Sure, let’s define torture.” Aaron’s voice was playing through his head, recounting horror after horror as Sam hurried to scribble notes. When Aaron had sat back he’d said, “Do you think that’s enough?” Sam had asked, “Is there more?” Aaron’s flat expression had been answer enough. “What about cigarette burning?” he asked Sullivan. “Random beatings? Solitary confinement without food or light? Did that ever take place?” He was looking directly into Sullivan’s pale blue eyes and the man blinked slightly wide eyes back at him.
“On occasion.”
“Who tortured them, Mr. Sullivan?”
“The guards.”
“Which guards?”
“I don’t,” Sullivan dropped his eyes down. “… I can’t remember all of them.”
“So remember one,” Sam said. “Mr. Sullivan? Remember one.” He could see the man’s eyes drift over to Jesse and Aaron, his expression changing slowly. Sam wondered if Sullivan was remembering them, placing the memory of those six months when they had been fifteen over the two men who sat in the courtroom.
“Counselor,” the judge spoke, “is this line of questioning going to lead somewhere that has some bearing on this case?”
“It will, your honor,” Sam assured.
“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”
“Mr. Sullivan,” Sam said, noticed Sullivan was still staring at Aaron and Jesse. “Was there ever any sexual abuse at Faribault Home for Boys?”
He turned back to Sam and nodded. “I heard that there was.”
“I’m not asking what you may have heard, Mr. Sullivan. I’m asking what you saw.”
His eyes drifted back to Jesse and Aaron, and then up and away, like he couldn’t look at them for longer than a moment. “Yes, I saw.”
“Did you and Edward Dowell ever force yourself on any of the boys?” Sam’s jaw clenched and he thought about why he had ever considered this to be a good idea. Where they were sitting, Jesse and Aaron were stony faced and silent; Sam was too afraid to look beyond to where Dean was. He had read that some survivors of sexual trauma considered it necessary to their healing process to have their experience acknowledged, hear it spoken aloud. Sam couldn’t think how that could be so, but as far as he was concerned, Sullivan’s presence was a separate part of the trial that he had orchestrated entirely on his own, for the benefit of the only three men in that room who knew what the motive for Dowell’s murder had been. So he forced himself to rephrase, “Did you and Edward Dowell ever rape any of the boys in your care at Faribault Home?”
“Counselors,” the judge said, waving them over, “Approach.” When Sam and Seamus were standing by the judge, the man frowned, focusing his attention on White. “Counselor, what the hell is going on here?”
White, for his part, looked shell-shocked, and Sam wondered if that was why he hadn’t objected to anything up to that point. He was pale and his eyes were wide, even after he blinked. He stuttered twice before he could say, “I must have called the wrong character witness.”
“I’ve given you wide latitude in calling this character witness and now it has blown up in your face.” Sam tuned out, focusing on Sullivan, the sheen of sweat on his sickly flushed skin, he toyed with the gold cross around his neck like he wasn’t even aware he was moving.
Questioning recommenced and Sam asked about Sullivan’s son, if he or his wife left the little boy alone with Dowell, He pushed until Sullivan was defensive, insisting that it never came up in the same breath as he said there would never be cause. White had woken up, started objecting where he could, and Sam tried to push, carefully and not too quickly, further and further, until Sullivan was answering, half choked and with damp eyes, ‘yes’ into a lull and Sam turned back to face him.
“Yes?” he asked. “Yes what, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yes,” Sullivan said. “Edward Dowell had experiences with some of the boys.”
There was a moment where Sam just stood there. It had been his intention, but he had never actually believed that it would work. That White would take the bait, that Sullivan would give even an inch on the stand. “Were you there?”
“Yes.”
Sam shifted his weight, but couldn’t bring himself to move in case it shattered whatever moment and Sullivan went silent. “Did you observe these experiences?”
“Yes.”
“Did you more than observe these experiences?”
There were tears in the man’s eyes, he hiccupped as he answered, “I was drinking a lot and I …” he trailed off, a tear escaping from the corner of his eyes and he wiped it away with a closer fist.
“Were there any other guards around during these experiences?”
“Yes.”
“On more than one occasion?”
“…Yeah.”
Sam felt light headed, triumph merging with the repulsion that he felt every time he thought about what he had learned about Faribault. He stood, two fingers resting on the defense table, tried to quell the absolute rage that was roiling inside. “Mr. Sullivan, do you still think Edward Dowell was a good man?”
“He was my friend,” Sullivan said, openly crying.
“A friend who raped and abused boys he was paid to look after,” Sam said. Sullivan dropped Sam’s gaze and Sam turned away. “I have no further questions.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket as he retook his chair, couldn’t bring himself to even glance at Jesse or Aaron, kept focused forward because he thought he might be sick right there in the middle of the courtroom with court still in session.
“I want this to be over,” Sullivan said. His voice echoing in the room as the judge dismissed him from the stand.
“Mr. Sullivan,” the judge said, as the man stepped down, wandered somewhat dazedly toward the exit. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stray too far from home. There will be people who want to talk to you, do you understand?” Sullivan nodded and, with his head down, walked out of the room.
The Hennepin Government Center was a giant monolith of a building, twenty-four floors encased in cream-colored smooth stone. Technically, the building was two separate towers joined by a glass-encased atrium and white steel beams; from the outside it was meant to look like a letter ‘H’ for Hennepin, which Sam had been told by the chipper young man working at the information desk, who had mistaken him for a tourist before Sam had asked for direction to his assigned courtroom. Sam didn’t think of a letter when he looked at the building from outside, but he had an increasing appreciation for the architects in Minneapolis.
He’d bypassed the Skyway on his way out of the courtroom, Sullivan’s testimony causing enough of a stir that they had adjourned for the day. Sam had spent a few moments staring at the door that Jesse and Aaron had been escorted through, listening to the small audience they had garnered chatter and shuffle out before he had dared to turn around. Dean hadn’t been there. Maybe it was cowardly, but he was still reeling, every piece of him in turmoil, and it felt like he was barely drawing in air.
Buttoning his coat as he moved, Sam pushed open the glass doors of the building and stepped outside, the harsh biting wind like a cold slap across the face and he felt himself calming. He closed his eyes for a moment, stopped moving and tried to slow his thoughts, tried to settle away the day where it belonged, and told himself it hadn’t been anything he hadn’t been anticipating. Somehow, though, hearing Sullivan say it aloud, hearing the man admit it, was like a knife twist in Sam’s gut, dark confirmation of something he already knew.
When he opened his eyes again he noticed Dean, his coat collar turned up and a dark scarf wrapped around his neck. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but he had a hat pulled low over his ears and, Sam noted with some surprise, he was smoking a cigarette.
“Since when do you smoke?” he asked as he walked over to his brother.
Dean jerked his eyes over, frowned when Sam pulled the cigarette away and crushed it underfoot. “It’s not a habit,” Dean said as he fumbled through one of the pockets in his bag. “I only do it when some asshole cross examines a sick son-of-a-bitch about some pretty gruesome stuff without so much as a ‘hey, by the way.’”
Sam watched as his brother’s hands fumbled the lighter and then lit another cigarette. He pursed his lips at the nasty habit but letting it slide because, yeah, Dean could probably use some help calming down after what Sam had just put him through. “Are you really pissed at me, or are you riled up because of what Sullivan said, about seeing him again?”
Dean glared. Sam watched as his brother glanced at him from the corner of his eyes but didn’t turn his head. “No,” Dean said. “I’m not just ‘riled up’, I’m pissed. What the hell, Sam?” And then they were facing off and it was impossible to miss the extent of his brother’s anger, written out in the darkness of his eyes, the tightness of his mouth. “I told you to leave it alone.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dean. I couldn’t do that.” Dean snorted and turned away. They were standing by a large circular fountain that had been emptied of water for the winter months, in the center of the fountain was a hole, and it made him think of an oubliette. “This trial isn’t about Dowell,” he went on. “It’s not about who shot him.”
“Really?” Dean’s voice was low and gruff; he exhaled a puff of white smoke. “You could have fooled me.”
“You know what I mean,” Sam said. He looked away, felt some of the fight go out of him. “I didn’t get to give the opening statement that I wanted to, because what I would have said was that this was something justice couldn’t touch. If Aaron and Jesse hadn’t done what they did that night, Dowell would never have paid for what he did.”
“So you’re saying going around murdering people is a good thing.” Dean shook his head, laughed a harsh bitter laugh and looked back at Sam as he said, “Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be the good guy.”
“It was self defense,” Sam argued.
“Seventeen years after the fact.”
“Are you saying that the type of stuff Dowell used to do to you is something a person can just grow out of? That a person can stop wanting to hurt young boys, wanting to touch them?”
“Shut up!” Dean snarled. “And stop saying shit you don’t mean.”
“That’s just it, Dean,” Sam said. “Because a part of me means every word of it. A part of me can’t see any other way Dowell could pay for what he did. And I’m terrified that this time, I might not win. That Jesse and Aaron will be found guilty and sent to prison and…”
“What?”
“…and I’m not sure that would be justice.”
“They killed a man, Sammy,” Dean said, after letting out a long breath. He was looking away, out at the empty fountain, at the oubliette in the middle of it. Sam wondered what his brother was really thinking, if Dean was just trying to be the big brother teaching his kid brother right from wrong, or if he really believed what he was saying. “Murder,” Dean continued. “That’s wrong. You know it’s wrong.”
It was Sam’s turn to look away, because he knew if Dean saw his face he would see that Sam wasn’t soothed by the words, wasn’t convinced by them. There was still that dark part inside him that thought, if he’d seen Edward Dowell eating dinner that night, knowing what he knew about who the man was, Sam would have shot him.
“Don’t play games, Sam,” Dean said. “You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to make sure Aaron and Jesse get a fair trial. You’re looking for justice. A murder happened, you try to make sure Aaron and Jesse get a reasonable sentence. You can’t defend them from something that’s already happened. Don’t get caught up in ancient history.”
Dean stubbed out his cigarette and shifted his bag on his shoulder, taking one last look at Sam before he turned and walked away. Sam watched him go. “It’s not ancient history,” he thought, as he watched his brother move down the street. “It’s happening right now.”
The jury was ordered to disregard Sullivan’s testimony but Sam didn’t care, it hadn’t been about that; he felt like he’d got something back for his brother, for Jesse and Aaron, and even for Grady. Like maybe he’d already earned a little piece of victory. They could tell the jury to make their final decision and not let Sullivan’s words affect them, but no one could un-hear that testimony. It wasn’t just three survivors alone with the truth, there was a whole roomful, and they had a confession straight from one of the men who’d been a part of it all.
Seamus did his best to make his case, despite clearly being shaken by Sullivan’s testimony. He brought in a miniature model of the bar, threw a lot of science and big talk at the jury to distract from the fact that there was no weapon and so solid evidence. Yet when it came right down to it, with two witnesses both putting Jesse and Aaron at the scene, it didn’t matter how Sam tried to discredit the testimonies, the verdict was still anyone’s guess.
When Sam’s cellphone rang that night he was more than a little exhausted, flipping through pages of his notes and trying to think of any possible angle he had left unconsidered, anything else he could pull out for his defense. “Sam?” Pastor Jim answered his greeting.
“Jim? What is it?”
“I’d like to testify.”
Sam frowned; he set his papers aside and thought maybe he was having some bizarre, stress-induced dream. “Thank-you, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary. The trial is concerned with who Jesse and Aaron are right now, not how they might have been when they were younger…”
“You don’t understand,” Jim cut him off. “I’d like to testify, because on the evening of January 24th, Aaron and Jesse were with me at a basketball game.”
Sam was immediately and abruptly awake. He sat there, amidst papers and scrawled notes and felt suddenly and completely spent, and oddly grateful. Sam was an outsider; no matter how much he tried to understand, no matter how pissed he got, the truth was that what his brother and his friends had endured was beyond Sam’s ken. It was an odd thing to realize, but even as Sam fought to restore their faith in the system, to at least have them found innocent, he still wasn’t really part of the club. It was a sudden and tremendous relief to have someone else fighting to pull his brother and Aaron and Jesse back from the precipice it felt like they were about to go over, no matter the personal cost. Sam swallowed passed the choking constriction in his throat and nodded. “Okay.”
Lorne hadn’t wasted time following-up the lead Dean had passed him. Eric Torres was arrested and charged for the shooting death of the drug dealer, and eight counts of corruption and bribery. Sullivan had been taken out of Dean’s hands, and Dean wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with that; maybe that was why he found himself sitting in the middle of the graveyard on Sunday morning, staring at Albert Wilson’s gravestone.
It was over. Dean found it almost impossible to believe, but Dowell was murdered, Sullivan was about to get dragged through the mud for what he’d admitted on the stand, Torres was in prison where Clay had smirked and said it wasn’t likely things would go so smoothly for him, being a cop and all, and Wilson was taken care of, had been shot years ago. He hadn’t even lived to see the start of the new millennium.
It was over, but somehow it didn’t feel that way. He stood at Wilson’s grave and wondered what he should do. Dean wasn’t good in graveyards, and maybe that was partly because most of the time he spent in them involved digging up bodies. To Dean, though, graveyards weren’t where people went to rest; they were where people tended to dispose of bodies. At the heart of it, he didn’t believe in the traditional grieving process, with a funeral and eulogies and a somber burial. As far as Dean was concerned, that didn’t mean anything, didn’t amount to anything. Not for anyone.
Still, he’d been compelled to find Wilson’s grave, if only to convince himself that it was really there. Maybe to dance on it a little. He imagined that if Jesse were there, the man would have been armed with strong alcohol, likely would have ended up peeing on it at some point, and Dean thought he wouldn’t have stopped him. Dean couldn’t imagine Aaron bothering with any part of it. Maybe his friend would have been compelled to pass by it, but Dean thought it was enough for Aaron to simply know the man was dead, just so he could cross him off the list he was undoubtedly keeping. Dean had no idea what Grady would have done, maybe he would have cried or yelled some. Maybe he would have brought flowers. Grady was always talking about resolving the past, accepting it so that they could move passed it. Out of all of them, Grady had been the most sensible, probably the most mature, even if his sense of humor didn’t exemplify that. Grady’s suicide had been a cold-shock, and every day since that day Dean wondered if it had been Grady’s intention to kill himself, or if the medication had played on the darkness they’d all been fighting in some way or another since they’d walked out of Faribault. Either way, it hardly mattered any more.
So Dean spent most of his Sunday out in the cold, staring at a tombstone and lost in memory. He stayed until he didn’t feel like he was drowning in the past anymore, until he couldn’t feel the cold ache in his body, or the desperate clawing wish to get the hell away from Minnesota and all the history it had wrapped up in it. “You’re dead, you son of a bitch,” Dean said to Albert Wilson, to Edward Dowell and to the memory of Faribault.
He turned and headed back to the Impala, pushed his way through the snow that soaked the bottom of his jeans. He remembered being fifteen, sitting in an awkwardly stiff plastic chair as he read aloud, "Oh, God," he had been leaning over the book as he spoke to a class that was barely listening, "your vengeance may sometimes be slow in coming, but I think that then it is all the more complete." Dean remembered being stopped as he left the classroom, Mr. Pruitt, his English teacher inside Faribault smiling as he said, “I think you like that book.” He had shrugged and dismissed it because it felt like every thing he held dear was being taken away from him bit by bit and he couldn’t stand to add anything else to that growing list of loss. “You should have your own copy. Here.”
Dean had read other books before, for school mostly, but they were a good way to pass the time. He’d forgotten all of them. Dean knew the Bible, and he knew Dumas; only one of them he kept in his bedside table.
On Monday, after the prosecution rested, Jim Murphy found himself standing in a courtroom, one hand resting on the surface of the Bible as he swore to speak only the truth, while Jesse and Aaron, and Sam and Dean and an entire courtroom watched. He took his seat and thought that the only reason he didn’t feel nervous was because he had wrestled with his conscience already, and the moment he had walked through the doors he had been nothing but resolved.
Sam was in a sharp grey suit, the white shirt he wore beneath bright and crisp and his blue tie showing just a hint of sheen beneath the glowing pot lights that Jim knew it was silk. Jim found himself trying to recollect if he had ever seen the boy dressed in anything but jeans and grubby sneakers. Beside Sam at the defense table, Jim could see Jesse and Aaron, their heads dipping together as they whispered, no doubt wondering what the hell Jim was doing there; but it was to Dean, seated with other curious observers, that Jim looked. Dean, who had a black hooded jacket unzipped over a plain olive T-shirt, was still wearing a dark scarf around his neck and looked back at Jim with such wide green eyes, so overwhelmed, that suddenly Jim was seeing the child he once knew, lost and hopeful. If he had been harboring any lingering doubts, Jim was certain they would have fled with that look alone.
“Father,” Sam said, smiling a little awkwardly as he stepped away from the table behind which he had been sitting. “Do you recall where you were on the night of January 24 of this year?”
Jim smiled in encouragement and nodded. “Yes I do.”
“Where was that?”
“I was at the basketball game at the Target Center. Timberwolves versus the Rockets.”
“When did the game begin?”
“About seven o’clock.” It felt odd seeing Sam so professional, so detached and composed. Jim felt a surging sense of pride and wished, not for the first time, that John were still alive, if only so he could see what his youngest son had become.
“When did the game end?” Sam asked, recalling Jim’s wandering thoughts.
“Around ten thirty or so.”
“Can you recall who won the game that night?”
A corner of Jim’s mouth twisted up as he said, “Unfortunately, it was the Rockets, though it was pretty close.”
Sam nodded, and Jim watched him cross in front of the judge, wandering closer to where the jury was seated. “Father Murphy, were you at the game alone?”
“No, I went with two of my friends,” Jim said.
“Who were those two friends, Father?”
“Jesse Deacon and Aaron Conyers.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jim saw Aaron and Jesse glance at one another again, but he didn’t dare look over. Sam said, “The two defendants.”
“Yes, the defendants.”
“At 8:26 p.m. The time that police say the victim, Edward Dowell, was murdered, were you still with the two defendants?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And what time did you leave Mr. Deacon and Mr. Conyers?”
“Around ten thirty or so, they dropped me off at the rectory where I was staying that night.”
Standing by the jury, Sam spread his arms open a little as he said, “So, Father, if the two defendants were with you at 8:26 on the night of the murder, then they could not have shot and killed Edward Dowell as the prosecution contends.”
“Not unless he was shot from the blue seats at the Target Center.”
Sam smiled a little and ducked his head. “No, he wasn’t shot from there.”
“Then he was not shot by those boys.”
“Thank you, Father Murphy.” It was a little startling to see the extent of gratitude in Sam’s eyes as he spoke, and it occurred to Jim that Sam likely knew about Faribault, had probably wrangled the truth out of Dean, if not Jesse or Aaron, and had been struggling with it as much as he’d been struggling to prepare his defense. He wondered how the young man was coping, wondered if it had helped Sam make peace with his brother or if it had only added fuel to the fire.
The prosecution took over questioning, and Jim endured the scrambling effort to cast doubt on his testimony, refused to humor implications that he was lying about the game in order to protect ‘his flock’. He couldn’t let himself dwell on it, concerned that it might make him regret his resolve. He had a moment of sympathy for the prosecutor, so clearly struggling to hold together a case he had likely written-off as a guaranteed win, and that sympathy clashed with a startlingly strong sense of conviction that, no matter the cost, he had made the right decision. Jim glanced across to where Dean was sitting; the man no longer looked shell-shocked, but the gratitude was clear.
“Father Murphy,” the prosecutor was saying, “How do we really know? How do we really know you were at the game that night, with the defendants, as you claim?”
Jim turned back to the man and said, “I am telling you as a witness and as a priest, we were at the game.”
“Yes, as a priest,” White said, jumping on the statement. “And a priest wouldn’t lie, am I right?”
“A priest with ticket stubs wouldn’t need to lie,” Jim said. “And I always keep the stubs.” He produced three ticket stubs from the breast pocket of his jacket, never more pleased with his connections as a hunter and his own foresight. He’d arranged the ticket stubs before he had even phoned Sam, experience telling him that it was better to be cautious and thorough.
He watched as White took the stubs from him and peered at them closely, his mouth open slightly like he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he held them up and shrugged. “No further questions.”
“I wanted to thank you,” Sam said, walking with Jim through the halls as the courtroom emptied for a lunch break. “I don’t know why you would step forward like you did, but … well, thanks.”
Jim came to a halt, stepping to the side in the hall so as not to stall the pedestrian traffic. “I keep thinking of every trip I took to visit them, in Faribault. I should have known something was wrong.”
“You couldn’t have,” Sam said, his voice dropping lower.
“I know those boys,” Jim insisted. “And I know the signs. I should have put the two together, but … maybe I didn’t want to see the truth.” Sam dropped a hand onto Jim’s shoulder, and Jim gave a half-hearted smile, more exhausted than anything. “When your brother stopped by, told me, I was overcome with guilt, with regret. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted so badly to turn back time. I wanted his forgiveness for failing him and the others so completely, but first I think I have to forgive myself. It’s going to be a while.”
“For what it’s worth,” Sam said. “I don’t think Dean blames you. I don’t think any of them do.”
“They’re wrong not to, then. They were children, it was my responsibility to look out for them, just like it was the responsibility of the guards at that place to protect the children in their care, not exploit them.” Jim clenched a fist and looked away.
“Would you like to get some lunch?” Sam asked. “Or, I could drive you some place, if you need?”
“I’ll be alright.” Jim patted Sam’s hand and started to walk away. He walked a few steps before he turned back around. “What happened was horrible, and it was wrong, but it wasn’t your fault, either. You couldn’t be there for your brother if you didn’t know he needed you.”
“He’s my brother,” Sam said with a shrug. “Deep down, I knew.”
“Then at least keep a level head,” Jim advised. “He’ll need that. And Sam, hatred is blind.”
Sam tipped his head to the side, smiled a little as he said, “So is justice.” The corner of Jim’s mouth quirked upward, he nodded.
The verdict came in, a clean ‘not guilty’, stated with a cool confidence by the forewoman. The jury had barely needed the time to deliberate. Sam accepted a hard clap on the shoulder and squeezing handshake from Aaron, but Jesse near killed him with his tight hug. When Sam turned his grin to where Dean had been sitting, there was no sign of him, and Aaron gave him a nudge. “Go on, we’ll catch up later.”
Sam jogged through the building just shy of sprinting, caring little for what anyone else thought as he rushed by. He was barely aware of Seamus calling to him, possibly to congratulate him, Sam didn’t care. He caught up to Dean in the atrium, just shy of the entrance to the Skyway. “Hey!” he called, slowing to a stop beside his brother, who turned around at his call. “You running out on me?”
Dean shook his head. “Naw,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “Like I could. You’d just follow me, wouldn’t you?”
“Hell yeah,” Sam stated. “We won,” he said, because there was so much they needed to talk about but Sam needed to hold on to that realization for just a moment longer. “I can’t believe it.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Never doubted it.”
Sam would have cried bullshit, but the cheeky little grin on his brother’s face was so refreshing to see that he just shook his head, toed at the ground as he asked, “Are you going to leave now?”
Dean looked away, his gaze drifting to the tall grid of windows and the view they offered, grey skies threatening snow, city hall sitting like a ruling monarch across the street. When he turned back to Sam there was a cautious hesitance to his expression that Sam didn’t think he had ever seen before, but it was quickly overtaken by a cocky grin as Dean reached into the bag he had slung over his shoulder and pulled out a book. “You should have this,” he said, pushing the book toward Sam. Sam looked down at the cover, recognized the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that he’d never seen his brother without. “You did good, Sam.”
Sam flipped open the front cover. Printed at the top in blue ink and a messy hand was Dean’s name. Beneath, in a flowing black script, was a small note that Sam scanned. Dean, it read, “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.” Beneath the quote was a signature, but Sam didn’t recognize the name. There was another inscription on the other side of the page in Dean’s familiar script, and this one, Sam noted, was directed to him. “The law is the law,” Dean quoted, “and I am happy to put myself in her hands.”
Sam smiled and glanced up, noticed that as he had read his brother had begun to walk away. “Dean!” he called, watched as Dean shifted the bag on his shoulder and turned around. “What about my hands?”
Dean grinned, wide and bright, and said, “Those’ll have to do.” A few steps and Sam had bridged the distance between them, pulled his brother close and pressed their lips together. It felt like a new beginning, the old hurts healed between them and something tentative and shivering and new unfurling between them, a second chance. Sam leaned his forehead against Dean’s and smiled.
|<< END PART FOUR >>|
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