Her body lay on the floor. Her slender arms outflung, palms up. Death. Cold and brutal, strangely intimate.
The people rose in the court room as the judge emerged from his chambers. The Honorable Judge Franklin Monahan. The figurehead of justice. The decision would be his.
Black pools of blood in the silver moonlight. Her life drained from the puddle on the hard crypress floor.
Chris Kudrow, the defense attornrey. Thin, grey, and slumped shouldered, the fervor for justice weakly corsing his vains while the little muscle mass he wore were tense. Clouded eyes and the whhimper behind his voice gave the image of a scared child.
Her naked body inscribed with the point of a knife. A work of violent art.
Smith Pritchett, the district attorney. Sturdy and aristocratic. The gold of his cuff links catching the light as he raised his hands in supplication.
Cries for mercy smothered by the cold shadow of death.
Chaos andd outrage rolled through the crowed in a wave of sound as Monahan pronounced his ruling. The small amethyst ring had not been listed on the search warrent of the defendents home and was, therefore, beyond the scope off the warrent and not legally subject to seizure.
Pamela Bichon, thirty-seven, separated, mother of a nine year old girl. Brutally murdered. Her naked body found in the vacant house on Pony Bayou, spikes driven through the palms of her hands into the wooden floor; her sightless eyes staring up at nothing through the slits of a feather Mardi Grass mask.
Case dismissed.