Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.
Rated: K+
Author's Note: The second-season episode 'Never My Love' is the source for some of the imagery. 'Poker Night,' from season three, provided additional references.
Westerfield is the guy who is not Mark's psychiatrist in the stories 'All Things Change but Truth' and 'Sessions'
Many thanks to SusanZ, Cheri, and Owl for tireless beta services.
Judgment
By L. M. Lewis
March, 1985
In dreams you always wake up before you die, and he was pretty sure anything this awful had to be a dream—though there'd been a few times in his life when he'd been sure of that before, and it hadn't turned out to be so.
A box, metal, large enough to be a coffin, the lid fastened down, and the noise of the furnace jets audible only a few feet beyond where his head lay, in the moments when he'd stopped shouting long enough to hear them. Maybe it wasn't a dream—he felt his heart squeezed tight by a rush of adrenalin, and his hands ached numbly from pounding on the inner side of the lid. It all seemed strangely hyper-real—the heat tingling on his scalp—the box would enter the crematorium chamber head-end first.
This happened before, this happened before. It was a mantra; he heard himself saying it out loud, and the roar of the gas jets became louder, the heat more intense. That other time it had gone no further; he was sure of that. Hardcastle had arrived, the conveyer had ground to a halt, and then reversed.
No other sounds but the jets. No voices. No one else with him in the box and just the heat, now searing, almost stopping his breath.
Not a dream. And he prayed one last word for the mercy of death.
00000
He opened his eyes. The light was muted, with a brown-red tinge to it. He was lying down. The ground, he decided. Dirt, but not cold—nor particularly hot, he noticed with relief.
You're out. You were rescued. But that didn't seem quite right, either. He wasn't in the crematorium, not even in the cemetery. In fact, the place didn't have an outdoor feel to it at all, though it was most definitely dirt that his cheek was resting on.
He propped himself up onto his elbow, feeling bone-weary and somehow weak as water. It was all that heat. In a flash he remembered what had gone before. That was the end, then. It got no worse than that.
One part of him felt another rush of relief, another was embarrassed that he had bothered to make such a fuss about it all. All that screaming and carrying on, good thing no one heard you.
He sat up, taking in his surroundings with vague curiosity. The light was diffuse—no more than a twilight, really—and still with that unnatural color. The air above him had an odd look to it—not like the velvet black of night, but as though there was a boundary, not far beyond his reach.
"Hello?"
Sound was muted, too—no echo whatsoever. No answer, either.
He got to his feet. He supposed they were his feet, and the ground beneath them seemed solid enough. He thought for a moment about what had happened to him, to the real him, and shuddered. Then he tried to decide if he felt any different—less corporeal—and finally gave up.
"Anybody home?"
He felt like an idiot, and then he felt stupid for feeling that as well. It seemed like idiocy ought to be one of those things that got left behind. He sighed. He took his bearings, such as they were, and tried to decide if the light was perhaps a bit stronger from one direction than another. He was tempted to lick a finger and hold it up in the air, though there was no breeze, and not much spit, either.
He jammed his hands into what passed for pockets in what appeared to be the afterlife, and slouched off.
00000
With nothing to measure them with, time and distance became relative. All he had left was boredom, offset by a slowly rising feeling of dread. Both emotions were old companions. He'd known them in nearly equal proportions in prison. One now pushed him on; the other slowed his steps, but he had an uncanny feeling that, willing or not, if he did not continue forward, whatever it was that lay ahead would come to him.
There was a difference in the light now, still brown but with hints of green. It had a flickering quality, like bad fluorescent lighting, and all still without any apparent source.
And somehow the open and undifferentiated plain had become a passageway, with a smooth surface beneath him. Linoleum. The thought struck him as absurd, but then he decided that, for him, the Great Hereafter might well involve linoleum instead of marble.
He still hadn't seen any other people. Specters, whatever. But now, and almost expectedly, he'd come to a set of double doors—heavy, dark wood, and varnish blackened with age. Their top halves contained windows of frosted glass; nothing but shadows could be seen within.
He paused, surprised to find he already had one hand on the knob. It felt cool and almost slippery, as though it would be hard to get a tight grip. It was hesitation based on fear, but he beat that down, knowing—without knowing how—that he had to go in.
Somehow, nothing on the other side of that door surprised him—a raised desk at the far end, two tables down in front of that, and a railing. Then, outside of that, a few rows of wooden benches, all the same dark wood as the doors.
He knew if he walked over and touched them, the finish would be slightly gummy; it would crust up under the scratching of a nervous fingernail. There might be a little inscribed mischief here or there, something short and vulgar and desperate.
He'd spent a fair amount of time in rooms like these, child and man, having his fate determined by others. It was run-down, drab, utilitarian. It shouldn't be frightening anymore. Yet somehow his breath caught in his throat. He knew the direst words could be spoken in the most prosaic of voices.
He edged to the front and passed to the inner side of the railing. No point putting it off; 'time served' had no meaning in this place. And almost as soon as he was at the defendant's table, he heard a voice, the speaker unseen. It was utterly bureaucratic, no hint of the sepulchral—announcing that all should rise.
There was only him, and he was already on his feet. He cast a glance downward for a moment and briefly considered asking for a lawyer. But, really, what's the point? And then there was movement, and he lifted his gaze—
An instant of relief, followed by a cold clench of terror in the pit of his stomach. The face was familiar, but somehow off—reconfigured in a minor key: a shadow there, a harsh line there, and something different about the eyes, when he finally worked the nerve up to meet them. They were flat, not a gleam of recognition.
Of course it's not him. He's still alive. He frowned. There ought to be no element of uncertainty in that thought, and yet there was. That new concern momentarily distracted him.
"I said you can be seated."
He frowned, and almost dropped into the nearest chair. The voice was off, too, something in the tone. Cold, not even the warmth of anger. The man at the desk was studying him. It wasn't much of an appraisal, apparently.
"Do you wish to enter a plea?"
He opened his mouth, still frowning. Now there was confusion along with the fear. He finally said, "I don't know what the charges are."
"Hmph." The man looked down at some papers in front of him, then back up again, pinning him with a hard stare. "I doubt that very much."
"No, really, you're supposed to state the charges first." He felt more than a little odd, having to point that out to this man.
"You have some familiarity with these proceedings, I gather?" The look was even more piercing.
He looked around anxiously, feeling that a trap had been laid and sprung. He swallowed hard and said, "No . . . well, not exactly." He subsided into nervous silence.
"And you want me to believe you have no idea why you're here?"
"Well, no. I mean, I think I know why I'm here."
This last admission got him a grim nod from the man behind the desk, but nothing more, as though he was still waiting for him to say something further.
"I'm dead," he finally blurted out. It sounded pretty guilty, all by itself.
At least the older man's look of exasperation was weirdly familiar. He looked down and gave that obvious admission a slow shake of his head, and said, equally slowly, "Confession is good for the soul."
No it isn't.
He thought that didn't matter, though. They'd get it out of him sooner or later. It was already a done deal, from the moment he'd pulled the trigger.
"I guess it's because I killed someone," he muttered. He couldn't help it; that had come out sounding both guilty and sullen.
"You 'guess'?"
"I did," he said flatly. He frowned again and then looked over his shoulder, quick and worried, then back again. "Is he here?"
"And so, how do you wish to plead?" The other question was ignored.
He thought about that one for a moment. "I dunno," he finally said. "I killed him, but everyone says it wasn't murder."
"And what do you think?"
He ducked his head, staring at the table top in front of him, suddenly, and for the first time, understanding about confession and the soul.
"Sometimes," he said quietly, "I think you get to do the right thing, for the wrong reason." He didn't dare look up; he thought one look of disapproving confirmation would be more than he could take.
"So, you are pleading 'guilty'?"
He nodded, still looking down. He didn't ask what the sentence would be. He no longer cared.
He heard a sharp bang of the gavel.
00000
He jerked his head up, startled, at the early morning sunlight streaming through the window. The guest bedroom. He'd heard something, though exactly what eluded him. But now there was a string of low-grade muttered words, spotted with a cuss or two, that pulled him upright, out of bed, and onto his feet with alarm.
Across the room, half-tripping over the pants he'd dropped on the floor, and into the hallway. The cussing had subsided, but he'd already triangulated it as coming from Hardcastle's room, where the door, which Mark had left open twice during the night, was again closed.
He hesitated, then knocked, then didn't wait any longer before he said, "You okay in there?" Again he didn't wait before he reached for the knob and entered.
The judge was standing—pajama-clad and in slippers—in the doorway of the bathroom.
"Dropped the damn thing," he said, frowning at the floor, then up at McCormick, with apparent equal parts of disapproval for both. "And don't come over here in your bare feet. The pieces went flying."
Mark saw a glint from a shard lying just inside the bathroom.
"Drinking glass," Hardcastle muttered. "Slipped, that's all."
Mark let it alone—exactly who, or what, had done the slipping. As long as there was no blood involved, he'd gladly just sweep things up and ignore the details.
"Okay." He'd meant it to come out brisk and efficient, but instead it sounded like he needed a glass of water himself. He cleared his throat and started again. "Okay, you just come out of there, and I'll go get the broom."
Hardcastle stepped out into the room, shaking his head. "It can wait until later." He was glancing down at the bedside clock. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Mark tried for an insouciant grin, looking at the clock himself. "Hell, Hardcastle, it's almost six-thirty. When was the last time you let me break training and sleep in till seven?" The only answer he got was a look, which he recognized with a ping of familiarity, as exasperation coupled with worry. "I was up anyway," he added with slightly-forced cheerfulness.
"No, you weren't." Hardcastle said. "You might've been tossing and mumbling in there, but you looked asleep."
McCormick ignored the implication that he needed keeping an eye on. That, he figured, was just Hardcase trying to keep a grip on the proper order of things.
"Probably just a dream," he finally said. "I don't remember." He shrugged almost elaborately. "Sorry if it woke you up."
"Listen, the dang hospital rousts everyone out at six sharp to ask 'em if they need their morning pain pill. I'm used to it."
Mark nodded; it wasn't like he needed reminding that the judge was one day home from there, and only two weeks back from the edge of the grave. "So," he asked dryly, "you need your morning pain pill?"
It had the expected effect. Hardcastle growled and shooed him out. Mark wasn't sure why he was glad for the change of subject, but he was. He just tossed over his shoulder, "Stay out of that bathroom till I get back," and went in search of the broom.
March, 1986
This time he looked up at the metal lid and understood. Things can happen any number of times, and whether they are real, or not, is only a matter of conjecture. But it was damn hot, either way.
00000
He trudged. He didn't mind this part; it gave him time to think. He still couldn't help the dread part, though he couldn't quite explain it. Like going to an oral exam. He never felt well-prepared enough, always had trouble sleeping the night before.
But this isn't one you can study for, anyway.
He reached for the doorknob and let himself into the deserted room. He went to the usual place. He stayed standing, because he knew it was only a matter of time, and he wasn't far off on that, either.
The man who took a seat at the bench still unnerved him. There was still the jarring, not-quite-rightness to him, but all of that seemed slightly less off-key, or maybe he was getting used to it.
"Your plea?"
"State the charges," he requested, nervous, but firm.
"That would seem to be a matter of record."
"Then I'd like the record read back to me."
He was being frowned down upon, now, and he heard an impatient huff, but the man at the bench finally said, "As you well know, the charge is murder in the first degree."
He frowned right back. "That's a little sketchy."
"This court has no intention of tolerating any delaying tactics. You must enter a plea."
"What if there were . . . extenuating circumstances—lives at stake?"
"The main issue is intent. Did you accept the weapon, against your better judgment, in knowing violation of the law, and carry it with you to the place where you knew the man might be? Had you, before the fact, thought about the act which you committed? And did you, or did you not, with malice aforethought, deprive a man of his life?"
He backed down, all certainty departed. He realized the answers were on his face and every one of them was 'yes'. Dropping his head, he scratched at the black surface of the table.
"All right," he finally admitted, "maybe some sort of diminished capacity . . . I was scared, see?"
He only looked up when he heard the gavel strike the block.
00000
There was dappled, too-bright light through the open front window of the den.
Hardcastle had followed the ambulance that had taken Frank to the hospital, while he'd stayed behind to deal with the onslaught of police, firemen, and sundry officials that had followed in the aftermath of the evening's hostage situation. Mark hadn't seen the last of them off until a little before dawn.
He remembered lying down, once the company had left, and he'd gotten most of the window glass swept up and things sorted out a little. The book he'd tried to distract himself with was on the floor next to the sofa. It must've slid down when he'd fallen asleep.
Mark heard the truck pulling up—more audible than usual because the glass was out of the front window. The smoke smell had mostly dissipated. There was only cosmetic damage in the hallway from his experiment in chemical weaponry. He got to his feet, groggily, and was half-way to the door by the time the judge had it open.
"How is he?" McCormick asked.
"Oh," Hardcastle scrubbed his face wearily, "not fine . . . but okay. He'll be all right. Claudia's there with him. He was asleep when I left." He stood there in the doorway to the den, surveying the remaining wreckage. "It was pretty damn close."
Mark nodded.
The judge sniffed once, turned around, and looked at the hallway. "Where'd you learn to do that?" He indicated the scorches on the floor and walls with a quick duck of his chin.
"Make a mess?" Mark grinned lopsidedly. "Just a natural."
Hardcastle grunted, then headed for his spot behind the desk.
"Uh-uh," Mark steered him away from that, and toward one of the other chairs, "still might be some glass over there."
The judge frowned, and sat with no argument, but wasn't down long before he sighed deeply and cornered the younger man with a questioning look.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "we still got some weapons stashed out in the pool house."
"Yeah," Mark said, holding on to the grin, "Better Homes and Artillery, you never know when you'll need to lay your hands on a nice field piece."
"Like tonight," Hardcastle said pointedly.
McCormick's grin settled down into something a good deal more subdued. "Look," he said, "I hear confession is good for the soul." He swallowed once hard. The words had almost stuck in his throat, though it seemed that the whole thing was hardly worth worrying about at this point.
The judge was still waiting, studying him. He looked puzzled.
"I snuck in upstairs," Mark said. "I needed that bottle of rum. I didn't even know there was anything wrong until I found Frank up there bleeding. So, I was in here, and those guns were out there. It was time to improvise, right, Kemosabe?
"But you—"
"And all's well that ends well."
March, 1989
He supposed it was a rite of passage, or something symbolic, maybe Freudian. He'd have to ask Westerfield about it . . . if you can remember it. He frowned up at the dark, metal lid, and tried to breathe the searing air.
But maybe not the part that comes after.
00000
He looked around slowly, like someone returning home after a long absence. The linoleum, he'd decided, was an almost-forgotten relic of a juvie hall he'd stayed in on-and-off when he was fourteen. The color of the walls was difficult to pin down, somewhere between San Quentin gray and courthouse green.
One of these days, he thought, he was just going to sit down and let it come to him. He had a feeling it would—with or without his cooperation. But not today. This time he wanted to get it over with.
He walked through the double doors and set his briefcase on the floor next to the table, then stared down at it, puzzling for a moment. It was utterly familiar, though he wasn't sure how it had gotten here. He didn't even remember having it a moment ago. He bent over again and touched it, cool and real.
But he was upright, on his feet, a moment later, and said, "Please state the charges," before the man at the bench could even open his mouth.
"First degree murder." The tone was more matter-of-fact—a job needing to be done, nothing malicious or personal. "How do you plead?"
He did not like the man looking down at him very much, he had decided, but he'd also concluded that didn't matter. The guy was just doing his job.
"I wish to enter a motion to dismiss," he said.
"On what grounds?"
"Insufficient evidence, Your Honor. Failure to meet the standards of the crime as defined."
"The defendant has previously admitted to the substantive facts of the case, that he did take the life of a man, and that there was malice aforethought, and that there was a tangible element of premeditation: the gun, brought to the scene."
He sighed; he hoped it was inaudible. He concluded that only a fool has himself for a lawyer.
"The case," he began slowly, "hinges on two key points, both essential. First, the necessary presence of mens rea—the guilty mind."
"There was an admission of malice—"
"Aforethought, yes, that's true. But a passing notion of anger, of a desire to take revenge for a heinous act, that by itself isn't a crime. That's only human, isn't it? I had it; I'll admit that."
"Then how are we to know if it wasn't still present at the time of the murder?"
"The shooting, Your Honor."
"Sounds like a technicality to me. Can you say that your wish to inflict suffering on that man, the desire to end his life, had passed completely?"
"I . . ." He frowned. Lying wasn't an option, not to himself, anyway. He closed his eyes and studied the question carefully. None of the above.
"Maybe not. Maybe I'll never be sure."
He looked up at the man seated at the bench. The expression he saw there was stern.
"But," he started again, "there is a second point, equally essential. The killing, in this case, was a lawful act in the defense of another, not murder at all."
"You can offer proof of that?"
"If I have to," he said grimly. "I can produce a witness."
"Who?"
"Weed Randall."
"And this necessity, this legal necessity, you believe, supersedes any culpability on your part stemming from a desire to commit the act?"
"Maybe not," he admitted again. He thought he was on the verge of pleading guilty one more time, but he pushed that down and continued on. "All I know is, I'll never have the chance to find out what I would have done—if I'd gotten my hands on him in the courtroom, if I'd had any choice in the parking lot of that motel. Everything but what actually did happen is guesses and supposition, and I'm tired of it."
He was looking down at the table when the man at the bench said, with no preamble, no warning whatsoever, "Motion to dismiss is granted," and the gavel struck solidly.
He raised his head slowly, thinking he must have missed something.
"That's it?" he asked. "It's as simple as that?" He frowned and looked around. He was still sitting in the same room, the same dark furniture. "Where do I go from here?"
The man looked down on him, not unkindly. "Forward," he said.
00000
He was staring up at the ceiling. It was daylight, though not very far along, and there was a steady, low buzzing that he gradually recognized as his alarm—that, and another couple of hard raps on the door.
"You up?" No closed door was a barrier for Hardcase, but this time he was acting under a request from the night before—'And for God's sake, don't let me sleep past six-thirty.'
"I'm up, I'm up," he mumbled, and hit the alarm. 6:31.
"Okay, well, you better hustle," the judge was half-way up the stairs already, "you got ten minutes."
"I've got more time than that. I can't even get in until eight-thirty, and the exam doesn't start till nine."
"Yeah, but you wanna allow time for flat tires—"
"How many?" He grinned. "I can change one in five minutes."
"—and breakfast. Which'll be ready in ten minutes. So hustle." And Hardcastle departed, leaving him to it.
And he did make it to the table in plenty of time for a leisurely, if nervous meal.
". . . So you just gotta remember to pace yourself, okay? It's three days." Hardcastle concluded, at the end of a long string of other advice, delivered as a monologue to a man who was mostly distracted.
"Pacing, yeah." Mark nodded. "And read everything carefully, and make sure I pull well off the road if I have to change a flat. I think I got it all."
"And don't be a smart-ass." Hardcastle thwacked him on the shoulder. "Got enough pencils?"
Another nod, and then he was slipping on his jacket, still feeling a little separate from it all.
"I'll take you out for steaks tonight, if you survive. You gotta keep your strength up."
This finally produced a grin. "I'll be pushing a pencil, Hardcase. 'Fill in the circle completely.' I mean, the hardest thing is going to be writing in full sentences for the essay sections. Anyway, it's just day one."
"Yeah," the judge admitted, "but ya gotta eat. Gotta sleep, too," he added, with an upraised eyebrow that indicated he might've noticed the light on at the gatehouse well into the night.
"I did that, too." McCormick backed down from the grin, but still offered a smile. "Really. I feel okay . . . settled."
The judge looked slightly puzzled at the choice of words. "Yeah, well, I thought you might be more jittery. It's okay to be jittery, though," he amended hastily. "Everybody is."
"I'm pacing myself. See? I listen to you."
"Okay, hotshot." Hardcastle shook his head as he followed him to the door. "Call me during the break." Then a frown. "Sure you don't want me to drive you over there?"
This got an outright laugh, after which Mark swiped at his eyes and said, still smiling, "The day I'm not in good enough shape to drive, you just go ahead and call the funeral home and make the arrangements."
Then he stood there, on the front steps, looking back at Hardcastle, the smile frozen somewhat.
"You forget something?" the judge asked.
"No, I . . . remembered everything," Mark said with a sudden start, then he paused before he added, "I'm okay."
"You are." Hardcastle thumped his shoulder once—not his writing arm, thank God. "You'll do fine. Just pace yourself. One question at a time. Keep moving forward."
"Yeah," Mark smiled again. "Exactly."