Epilogue
After that, with the pressing need for haste removed, the trial of Arthur Loki fell into a more typical pattern. The judge's clerk—temporarily sidelined due to uncomfortable but not permanent hand injuries—tagged along to observe the proceedings. The press had become bored after a few days and wandered off, all except for a stringer for The Worker's Daily—a Berkeley rag which had recently gone bi-weekly—and even he looked disappointed with the defendant's calm and cooperative demeanor.
When Mr. Loki had, with the assistance of his public defender, gotten a continuance in order to properly prepare his defense, even the guy from the Worker threw in the towel. Mr. Peter Solanger's testimony was given a few weeks later, in the course of a very ordinary morning, with no one present in the courtroom but the parties immediately concerned with the trial.
Ms. Eve Ostermann, missing and presumed deceased, was obviously not available, so the statements from Solanger—eyewitness to all of the events in question, and known to the bench to be a valuable member of the social service community—went a long way toward exonerating the defendant of the worst of the charges.
As to the rest, the undeniable flight from justice, the DA agreed that the relatively low culpability of the defendant in the original crimes, combined with his apparent complete ignorance of the other defendants' intent to escape, rendered his actions merely those of a man in immediate fear for his life.
The defense counsel invoked the concept of flagrant necessity, along with an element of coercion in his closing argument, though not failing to admit responsibility, on behalf of his client, for a series of bad judgments. The judge's clerk (now fully recovered but still sneaking out of class whenever possible to see the real-life working of the court), who knew the man's opinions on most things, thought he'd be receptive.
So it came as very little surprise, to Mark McCormick at any rate, that the bench found Arthur Loki not guilty on all but a couple of the lesser charges, and that for those he assigned no further jail time, substituting a moderate period of probation and a decent chunk of community service.
00000
At the trial of Ruth Bendell, Mark played a far more active role—being the chief witness for the prosecution. Naturally that kept him from hearing any of the other testimony, but after the fact (twenty years for kidnapping, battery, and a myriad of other charges including arson and interfering with a trial) he wormed the whole story out of Frank.
"She swears up and down, still, that she loved Eve. She finally admitted the woman is dead. From what we figure, the last time anyone saw her—the real Ostermann—had been about five years back. And she had already given Ruth a lot of gifts—money, property.
"Bendell says she died on a camping trip—fell into a river. That's probably not true—I'd say chances are good, though, that she died of natural causes and Ruth disposed of the body. Her death was damn inconvenient, so why would she have killed her? Ostermann had no will as far as anyone knew, and Bendell had no claim to her property."
"So, then she did the logical thing," Mark said, "and just became Eve?"
"More or less," Frank nodded.
"As little as possible, just when she needed to be," Hardcastle observed. "She had a history of cons, grifting—all before the boyfriend incident. She knew a helluva lot more about stealing an identity than Loki did. But it wasn't going to stand up to any close scrutiny, so she couldn't let the Loki case go to trial."
"And the kids—thanks for going to bat for them." Mark nodded toward both men.
"They aren't exactly ready to have their pictures on holy cards ya know," Hardcastle said tartly.
"Yeah," Mark nodded, "but give 'em a year of public service with Brother Pete. He'll shape 'em up."
"What did you stiff Loki with?" Frank asked curiously. "I didn't think he'd be too happy working for Solanger again."
"Nah," Hardcastle said, "found him the perfect gig: the library at Men's Central. It's needed a real librarian for a long time. Might take the whole five hundred hours to get it up and running."
Mark nodded in agreement. "It's a mess. You start ignoring the Dewey Decimal System—maybe let Huck Finn hang out in biographies—and the next thing you know you've got anarchy."
