Part Four. Duende

*

24

B en and Padolino were huddled in the judge’s chambers, both hunched over the man’s desk while Christina and Padolino’s assistants stood barely a foot behind them, each feeding their attorneys case law and citations as the legal wrangling roiled. The court reporter sat just behind them, her fingers rapidly taking down everything that was said.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” Padolino declared. “The trial is over. He was done.”

“I never rested,” Ben said. “The judge specifically said we could have more time.”

“To interrogate Tiffany Dell, yes. Not to drum up some surprise witness.”

“Right,” Ben shot back. “Only the prosecution is allowed to do that.”

“I never put Tiffany Dell on the stand!”

“You used her as a witness just the same.”

“Gentlemen, stop!” Herndon put his hands down firmly on his desk. “I’ve had enough of this bickering. If you have a legal argument to make, then make it. If you have some precedent to present to the court, heaven forbid, please do so. Otherwise, be quiet!”

They both started to speak at once. Herndon raised a finger. “I want you to both sit down. Now. We’re going to take turns. You remember about taking turns? Perhaps your mothers introduced the concept one day when you were playing Candy Land.”

Both attorneys eyed each other. Lips parted.

“Padolino,” Herndon declared, “you’re first.”

“Your honor, in the name of fundamental fairness, do not allow the defense to pull out some unknown witness at the eleventh hour in a desperate attempt to salvage a case they are going to lose-for good reason. My associates can provide you with a dozen cases in which judges refused to hear testimony from witnesses who were not on the pretrial witness list.”

“Nonetheless, this is surely a matter that has to be considered on a case-by-case basis.”

“But we didn’t even know this woman existed before Mr. Kincaid called us last night. We’ve had no opportunity to talk to her.”

“I have it on the authority of Lieutenant Albertson of the DCPD that Mr. Kincaid himself did not know about this woman or talk to her prior to her discovery by his investigator last night. And the only reason you haven’t been able to talk to her is that she’s been in the Bethesda intensive care unit along with many other young women discovered on the same premises.”

“Just the same-”

Herndon adjusted the direction of his finger. “Okay, you’ve had your say. Now it’s Mr. Kincaid’s turn.”

“Your honor, the only reason I’m asking the court to permit this testimony is that it is vital to uncovering the truth.”

“It always is,” he said wearily.

“Moreover, it is critical to understanding what happened to Veronica Cooper.”

“Oh honestly,” Padolino said, “as if we didn’t already know what-”

“Counselor,” Herndon admonished, “it is not your turn. Back to the Peppermint Stick Forest.”

Padolino clammed up.

Ben continued. “Of course we’ll give the prosecutors access to her, the same as we’ve had, as much as her doctors will permit.”

“What about this other person? The one the police chief called ‘the Sire’?”

“Real name Barry Dodds, real estate agent by day. Vamp by night.” Ben shook his head. “He’s not talking-for obvious reasons. Judge, this girl is all we’ve got.”

“And the minor problem of her not being on the witness list?”

“I could show you mounds of case law in which new witnesses were allowed to be added when they were discovered after the trial began-but I don’t have to, because you already know all about them. Mr. Padolino was allowed to use a previously unlisted witness, and whether he actually called her or not, her testimony was devastating to my client on cross-examination. All I’m asking for is the same leniency you gave the prosecution.”

“But my witness was a young woman of unquestioned integrity,” Padolino insisted. “His witness is-is-well, for God’s sake. She’s a vampire!”

“Not exactly,” Ben corrected.

“Okay, she just runs with the wolves, whatever. The point is, the fundamental credibility required of any witness, and especially from an eleventh-hour surprise witness, is utterly lacking.”

Herndon batted his finger against his lips. A long time passed in silence while the attorneys waited in excruciating suspense.

“You both make good points,” Herndon said, at long last. “And I suspect I could rule either way and not be wrong. The only difference is, if I say no to Mr. Kincaid, he’s going to lose, and Appeal Item Number One would be my ruling against his new witness. Why should I let that happen? That’s not good for me or the prosecutor’s office. Furthermore-” He paused, looking deeply into Ben’s eyes. “-I’ve been watching the defense work for several weeks now. And I tend to think that if Mr. Kincaid says this witness is critical to learning the truth about what really happened-then she probably is. I’m going to allow it.”

“But-”

Herndon turned his finger. “Don’t bother. The prosecution’s objection is noted. But the jury is going to hear what this woman has to say.”

Given all that she had been through, Beatrice looked better than Ben expected, but there was no denying her fragility, the brittle-glass quality of her demeanor. She had been brought to the stand in a wheelchair, and her doctors had insisted that she should testify for no longer than one hour without taking a break of equal length, and that she should be on the stand for no more than four hours a day. Her skin was pale-almost to the point of being translucent-but Ben knew she had suffered severe blood loss and probably had not seen the sun for a very long time.

“It was all fun at first,” Beatrice explained. Her voice was quiet and delicate; even with her microphone turned up to its maximum volume, the spectators in the rear of the gallery had to strain to hear what she was saying. “We were just four DC working girls out partying, trying to have a good time. Originally, we frequented the usual twentysomething haunts-the Rhino Bar and Pumphouse, that sort of place. But as we soon learned, we all had a dark side-probably what brought us together in the first place. We were all into Goth, so we started going to those clubs. We thought the whole occult thing was kind of sexy. So it was inevitable that we would end up at Stigmata. The owner’s head toady, Sid Bartmann, took a shine to us and invited us to their upstairs apartment one night-and that was when our lives began to fall apart.”

“Was that when you first began taking drugs?”

“Yes. Bartmann had a lab not far from the club where he cooked the stuff up. The drugs only increased the intensity of the fun, at first. And the sex… well, you got used to it, after a while. If you were high enough, that could be fun, too. Some of the men up there learned about our… interests, and they took us to a meeting of Circle Thirteen. That was where the Sire spotted us. His minions invited us into the Inner Circle, allowed us to take part in their secret ceremonies. All very thrilling. Exciting. Sexy. Like I said, fun, fun, fun. Until Colleen got killed.”

Beatrice described how the Sire had taken them, while they were all high, and involved them in the Inner Circle’s sacrificial rites. Colleen had been chosen to be the first because she was so immersed in the vampiric mythos. It had long been a fantasy of hers to participate in a gothic vampire sexcapade.

“Her hands were bound behind her back,” Beatrice explained, her voice halting. “She was tied to a chair. And we just stood there watching, thinking how cool this was, getting more than a little turned on. We’d been warned that the ceremony required some small bloodletting, but hey, we were vampires, right? They assured us the drugs would prevent Colleen from feeling any pain, only erotic pleasure, and the injury would be small and temporary and invisible.