false witness
Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG-13
Challenge:
Angel Food #09 - false witness
Flavor of the Day #243 - confute (to overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false)
Extras / Toppings: malt (Ichthus’ stocking stuffer: A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body), peaches (this morning increases the amount of incoming information. In this light, take everything you’ve gleaned with a grain of salt)
Word Count: 2,275
Story: Misfits
Summary: Dennis is interviewed by Internal Investigations. The official version of the Joseph Affair.
Notes: I have wanted to write this forever. It’s the reason I started to work on Angel Food but then it turned out to be rather hard to write.
The conference room where the Internal Investigations were going through the case the mysterious circumstances of Joseph Barnes’ death and Stella West-Barnes’ involvement in the matter looked even more sterile than any of the other conference rooms Dennis had ever entered in his time with Cerberus. There was nothing on any of the walls, not even surrealist paintings for decoration; they were all just painted with white primer and in the middle of the room was the wooden oval conference table.
Looking at the people sitting on the table, Dennis couldn’t help but think that this looked more like a tribunal than an investigation. Stella was sat at the end of the table, looking down so she wouldn’t have to look at him. To her left and right, there were two members of Internal Investigations each. Dennis recognized them all but couldn’t name them for the most part other than Peter Dietz, the head of this investigation. The last man on the table was Franklin Atton, current leader of Cerberus.
The only place that was still free was across from Stella, at the other end of the table and Dennis sat down, not sure how this would turn out but getting the feeling that in the end, Atton, Dietz and the rest would just do a majority vote and that would be how the matter would be handled.
This whole thing had made him nervous even before he had found out that they would be calling on him as the main witness, that he would have to testify about the day Joseph had died. So much depended on his statement. Stella’s career was at stake and they both knew it.
“Dennis Lawson,” Dietz, who was obviously the ring leader, began. “Do you know why you were summoned here today?”
Dennis nodded. “You want to talk about Joseph’s death.”
“We would like you to tell us your version of the story. The report you handed in was very inconclusive and sketchy, especially when it came to the involvement of Mrs. West-Barnes in the whole affair.”
Dietz was right. Dennis had written the report while still in shock and there were some huge holes in it. He had considered not even mentioning that Stella had been present but that had turned out as impossible when back-up had come in to find Stella bleeding on the floor, a bullet in her stomach. He had had to mention her presence and that was why they were all here now. Stella had specifically been ordered to stay out of the mission and she had ignored the order, getting involved.
“I guess it all started when Stella found out that Joseph had gone rogue. I wasn’t home yet when she called me and I picked her up at her apartment to drive her to headquarters so she could inform everyone about it.” Dennis looked at Atton. “You certainly remember the conversation and how you told us to go home and sleep. That you’d have someone make sure we were both in the apartment for the next eighteen hours and wouldn’t go after Joseph. We stayed at my place, both of us, and talked.”
“Did you plan on going after Barnes?” Dietz interrupted.
“No,” Dennis said adamantly. “We talked about him, how much he meant to us. We couldn’t believe what had happened and and we both agreed that even though we cared about him so much, he had gone too far and we had already lost him and could never get him back. We talked a lot, she made me promise her that I wouldn’t follow Joseph because we had been friends for so long now. Thinking back now, it was a very strange thing for her to do. I mean, I should have asked her, not the other way round. She was is wife but she insisted that I was more attached to him because I had known him so long.”
“So she didn’t voice any plans to go after him?”
“We didn’t address that topic. We were reeling from the events that had just unfolded. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation like that, Mr. Dietz, but when you just lost your best friend to Nachzehrer, thinking about killing him is not the first thing you do.” Dennis’ voice had grown louder as he answered the question and he had to take a few deep breaths to avoid getting out of control too much. He didn’t want to come off as a crazy man. That wouldn’t help Stella.
“What happened after you were assigned the mission to go after Barnes?”
“I got briefed on everything by Mr. Atton and then I went and did what I had to do. I didn’t think they would let me get involved considering my long history with Joseph but apparently, that would make it easier for me to get into his head, think like him. We flew to Fort Baker where Joseph had been last seen. Me and the handful of others.”
“Did Mrs. Barnes know that her husband was at Fort Baker?”
“Stella was present during the briefing. She had been told that she wouldn’t be part of the operation before but she was never sent away. She knew what was going on. I didn’t get to talk to her afterwards, we just hugged and she wished me good luck and then I was on my way.”
“How did Mrs. Barnes get involved in all of this? Wasn’t she ordered to stay put?”
“We split up while searching for Joseph and when I found him, he had Stella. At that point, I was too focused to even think about what she was doing there but over the course of the conversation, I remember him saying that he had called her and asked her to meet him. If she didn’t, he would kill me.”
Dennis made a theatrical pause after those words to let them sink in. He and Stella had worked on this story while she had been in hospital even before Internal Investigations had gotten wind of there being something wrong with Dennis’ strange report and the violations. The big thing was that Stella could never admit that she had come after Joseph herself. If that came out, she would be asked to resign or be fired right away. And then there had to be proof that she hadn’t really gotten involved. Dennis’ word was all the proof there was to what Stella had previously told them. He had to confirm the story. There was still the possibility of them both lying but Dennis and Stella weren’t known to be good friends and their reputation was a great help in this. If he didn’t like Stella, why would he lie to protect her.
“Keep going,” Atton demanded good-naturedly.
“He started to talk all kind of nonsense while pointing his gun at her. About how we should join him and we both refused to, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here today. I know my instructions were to try to capture Joseph alive and I tried to do that but with Stella suddenly being there, it was a lot harder. I couldn’t tell if he was serious about shooting her and I had to assume that he was. I … I felt so helpless. I was so afraid that if he noticed me pulling out the gun, he would shoot her. And she was just standing there. Oh my God, you have no idea how I felt.”
He looked up and his gaze met Stella’s for a fraction of a second. She looked nervous and he felt the same way. It was easy to convey the emotion necessary for this because the basics were still true, they had just changed some things. The fear and the horror Dennis had felt while facing Joseph were true. His fear for Stella’s well-being was as well. And the helplessness he had felt that only Stella had been able to break him out of.
“She did this amazing thing. She started talking, taunting him about how he had been so busy with his life as a double agent that he had been very absent-minded otherwise. Stella knew Joseph so well and I realized where she was going with this. She was going to exploit one of his main weaknesses. When Joseph is angry, he will lose focus somewhat and Stella knew exactly how to get him there. She kept telling him we were having an affair, that the child wasn’t even his. He was a very jealous man and she knew how to exploit it. He was so focused on her that he forgot me for a second and I could finally get my gun.”
He tried to establish eye contact with Stella as he reached for the glass of water in front of him and took a few slow sips to buy himself some time. Stella wasn’t adamantly avoiding his eyes anymore and he could sense how tense she was, how much she probably hated being in this room, having to listen to this. He knew he hated having to talk about it.
“I was about to shoot. I was aiming for the head. I couldn’t take the risk of not killing him instantly. I … I was aiming the gun at my best friend, a man I had known all my life and it was the hardest thing I have done in my entire life. He and Stella were fighting, they were distracted. And then he shot her right in the abdomen. She fell to the floor and that’s when I couldn’t take it anymore and pulled the trigger.”
“How many times did you shoot him?” That was Dietz.
“I said that in my report.”
“I want to hear it, Lawson.”
It was hard to say this. Harder than telling the rest of the story for some reason but he had to do it. He had already gotten this far, he couldn’t stop here.
“I had four bullets and I shot two into his skull, then another one into his heart and finally a third one into his forehead when he was on the floor in front of me.”
“Was that really necessary?”
Dennis shook his head. “It wasn’t about what was necessary to kill this man, Dietz, it was about what I needed. I needed to unload. I needed to know this bastard was dead and would never get up again. I knew I had killed him after the first shot but I kept shooting. I was so angry at him. It was my way to unwind. You don’t seem to understand under how much emotional stress I was at that moment, how much had happened to me over the past forty-eight hours.”
“And then?”
“And then I tried to stop Stella’s bleeding. She was pregnant, you know. And I’m not a specialist but I could tell that this probably wouldn’t end well. I needed to keep her alive. Once the backup came, they flew us to the closest hospital where she was taken care of. I stayed by her side through all of it.”
That was the truth. Nothing but the truth. Once he had knelt down next to the bleeding Stella, he had never left her side again, too concerned about her. He had felt guilty. The bullet hadn’t been meant for her and yet she had taken it for him. Nobody but them would ever know that.
“Were you having an affair with Mrs. Barnes?”
It was a question Dennis hadn’t expected but easy to answer. “I already see her enough at work. She was married to my best friend. She is the last person I would ever think of getting involved with. I think you know that we aren’t exactly best friends?”
Dietz nodded. “Of course. I just had to ask, you know how that is.” He seemed to have warmed up now and Dennis knew that this was good. He would be asked a few more questions but the worst part was over now. He would probably never have to talk about this event again and that’s how he wanted it to be. He and Stella had fabricated a lie and were prepared to live with it as well as with the consequences of hiding the truth, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed telling his lie.
“Okay, we’re done here,” Dietz sighed. “If you would please leave now. Both of you. We need to discuss Mr. Lawson’s version of the story. Mrs. Barnes, I would like you to stay in the next room and not go off on your own. We’re not done yet.”
Stella who hadn’t said a word through all of this nodded and got up, following Dennis out of the conference room into the small antechamber that separated the Internal Investigations’ conference room from the rest of the Cerberus corridors.
There were nothing but a few chairs and a small table in this room. Dennis could only imagine how horrible it had to be for Stella to have to sit here and wait for them to talk about things to then call her back in and go through more of this. Dennis saw the point of Internal Investigations, he just wished they would respect the fact that both he and Stella were mourning.
She came up to him and wrapped her arms around him. It wasn’t a gesture of support; she was the one who needed support, who needed to be held. Dennis embraced her and held her close.
“Thanks,” Stella whispered after what felt like an eternity.
“For what?”
“For lying.”