all rise

[self_composed]

No plea bargain is struck. The jury is picked, and Lucinda asks a few random ones whether they have accepted bribes and sees who looks nervous: no one, as it turns out, so she strikes people who are too young to have children and one fellow who looks like he hates the entire world for her picks. Paul strikes a grandmotherly type and someone who admits when asked that they don't think much of rich people.

"All rise," comes the command as Judge Roberts walks in.

Comments

[self_composed]

"Well, now that you're thinking about it, please tell us about any evidence you may have seen regarding the allegations at hand," Lucinda says.

[Is he always this cagey?] Bella asks Alice.

[edgeofyourseat]

[He hates telling anybody anything about anybody else. I'm half sure he used to work for a family a lot shadier than mine.]

"I didn't... notice anything," says Theo, with great difficulty. "Nothing specific. Nothing that stood out."

[self_composed]

"Then why are you so unsure about whether your employer could have been abusing his son? Please, explain," Lucinda says.

[She is being way more patient than I would,] Bella remarks.

[edgeofyourseat]

This is the point at which Theo decides to cut the bullshit just to bring this torture to an end.

"I never noticed anything that made me think, at the time, that my employer could have been abusing his son," he says. "But the general impression I've formed of his personality over the years makes it not that surprising to hear that he could've been."

Alice is careful to only laugh on the inside.

[self_composed]

"Thank you," says Lucinda, rewarding this sudden openness. "No further questions."

Paul declines to question this one. Or maybe he's just hoping to doze a little longer.

[edgeofyourseat]

Mr. Hammond is scowling thunderously; Theo flees back to his seat as soon as he is dismissed.

[self_composed]

Lucinda calls up Mrs. Hammond. Swearing in yada yada.

"Mrs. Hammond - I believe you are still technically Mrs. Hammond? Would you prefer Judith?" Lucinda says solicitously.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yes I would," she says firmly.

[self_composed]

"All right, Judith. Please describe for us the development of Mr. Hammond's... disciplinary measures, insofar as you were aware of them."

[edgeofyourseat]

"It all started out very ordinary," she says. "Sending the boy to his room, that sort of thing. I didn't pay much attention; I didn't think there was any reason to worry. So while I don't think he was hiding it from me, exactly, I only knew well after the fact that he had started hitting him... I'm sorry, is there such a thing as a box of tissues in this courthouse?"

[self_composed]

Lucinda gets a little packet of them out of her purse and hands them over.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Thank you," she says, and removes one, and holds it in her hand in case of tears.

"Delaney has this way of being certain of things that makes him very hard to disagree with. He was certain that his way of handling his son's discipline was the best possible way, and nothing strange or unusual at all, and that is wasn't my place to have any kind of opinion on the subject. So I didn't. I convinced myself that it wasn't very bad and it wouldn't get any worse, and then of course it did, but slowly..." She dabs carefully at her eyes.

[self_composed]

Lucinda nods. "The aforementioned documentations lists you as being present for the entirety or for part of forty-seven incidents. Would you like to review them and make a decision about whether you'd like to corroborate that part of the documentation, or do you already know?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"If Junior said I was there, then I was, and if Junior said it happened, then it did," she says.

[self_composed]

"Thank you, Judith. No further questions."

Paul lurches to his feet.

"So if all this was happening," he says, "why didn't you go to the cops or something?"

He might fall over at any moment, really. [I'm almost sorry for him.]

[edgeofyourseat]

"My husband had already demonstrated that he was violent and controlling," she says. "I was afraid to do anything that contradicted his wishes."

[I'm not,] says Alice. His mental voice is quite cheerful.

[self_composed]

"Oh," says Paul. He closes his eyes for a moment. "And... no further questions."

[He's probably going to get fired or something unless he's got one hell of a track record,] Bella says as Paul sits down.

[edgeofyourseat]

[Watch me care,] says Alice, not caring.

[self_composed]

Lucinda calls up Bella, and Bella limps to the front of the room.

Swearing in, blah, blah.

"Please tell us about how you came to help Laney with the documentation," Lucinda invites.

Bella says, "I suspected from only a day or two after I first met Laney [sorry, Alice] that at least one of his parents was hitting him - mostly just a hunch, I have pretty good instincts, and there wasn't any other obvious reason for him to have been in the hospital in November. I didn't know for sure if it was one or the other or both until I went over to his house and I met them, and watched how Laney was around them. After that he pretty much admitted it - he was covering for his dad, before. And after Laney met my dad, he was willing to trust that nothing awful would happen if he told - if he stopped covering for the abuse. So he rattled off everything that had ever happened - I didn't even know he had an eidetic memory before that. And I took it down for him while he dictated so he wouldn't have to. And so it'd be organized."

[edgeofyourseat]

['Sokay,] he says fondly.

[self_composed]

"Besides Laney's say-so, what led you to believe that his father was an abuser?"

"Well," Bella says. "His entire demeanor is one of someone who might snap at any minute. He was constantly, relentlessly fault-finding, about everything from the fact that Laney had me over - with his mom's permission - to neglecting to put down the piano key cover."

[edgeofyourseat]

Not gonna bring up the fornication, is she? Probably a good plan.

[self_composed]

[Right. I don't see how that could possibly help.]

Lucinda's done here. Paul wobbles up.

"Why didn't you tell a father - your cop - your father who is a cop - as soon as you were sure?" he asks, waving a finger accusingly.

"I didn't want to put Laney in danger," Bella says. "If Laney didn't want to risk testifying or something like that, and had to go home to his father, he could have ended up worse off than before. I did repeatedly try to convince him to cooperate with telling my dad, though."

[edgeofyourseat]

[If I didn't know better I'd think he was drunk,] Alice marvels. [He's not drunk, is he?]

[self_composed]

[I don't think so. I think he's just terribly sleep deprived. I may have been dwelling too much on that particular avenue of bad luck when I issued the curse,] Bella muses.

"No questions," Paul says. "Further."