Here we are. The end of another case. I hope you've all been folowing along, beause this is where it all ends. Now, this chapter might make you think that this is the end of Gordon Truth, but rest assured, cases 3 through 5 will be appearing soon. Thanks to all of you readers out there who are willing to read a bit of OC heavy fanfiction. Thank you!

--

The judge had called another recess. I didn't bother go to the defense lounge, since I knew I'd only find angry faces. Just a bit more and then… then Ken will be taken away; away in chains. I held my head, I felt as if I was experiencing déjà-vu. Did I really want my friend arrested? … I couldn't answer my own question.

"Mr. Attorney."

The sharp rasp of a cold voice pulled me back into reality. I looked up from my desk to see Ian Vice's pale face grinning and staring blades into my eyes. I stood.

"You want something?"

He gripped my arm, my gaze shot to his expression; he was no longer smiling.

"Listen, you have no idea what kind of hell you might set loose if you continue chasing this case the way you've been doing." He looked quickly from side to side, checking for eavesdroppers. "Please, I'm asking you, and this is the only time I'm going to be polite. Stop trying to acquit your client. Find him a reduced sentence or… I don't know." He looked down to the floor, worried. "You can say he was not right in the mind, if he was really in a fit of anger. Defense attorneys play that card all the time."

I pulled my arm away from him. "Stop it. I won't ever betray the trust of my client." I walked closer to him and looked into his face. "And if you are hiding something from this court, I'll make sure it all comes out into the open. Because I'll never quit on a case or any other matter until I know the entire truth. Thank you, Mr. Vice."

I didn't get a good look at his face before he turned and made his way back to his desk. My sister wrapped her arm in mine. "It's okay big brother. He was probably trying to trick you anyway."

"Yeah," I looked to the audience, where I could make out the figure of Ken Cline staring back at me, "maybe."

--

"I don't think a testimony will be necessary."

The judge, caught in mid-sentence in directing Ms. Wreath to the stand, turned his head to me. "What?"

I knew this would work. This part of the stage would be easy. "I only require one thing of our witness."

"And what would that be?" She addressed me directly, with a tone of disdain. She had cleaned herself up, but I could still see faint red stains in her hair. "How could you possibly bring me lower?" She said with anger.

"It depends on one piece of evidence." I smiled. "Your cell phone please."

"Wha-what?"

--

"Tell me, Mr. Cline." I paced in front of him, holding my hands together behind my back with my face to the ceiling. I lifted Holly's cell phone. Under the records of calls dialed from her phone, Ken's name was highlighted. "Why would she call you at exactly 2:52am that night?"

Ken's face blended into the others of the audience, despite his being on the witness stand. "I dunno, small talk I guess?"

"According to testimony, you let your phone ring five times. Strange behavior isn't it? And you didn't even look at your phone. I'd think that if someone were calling you, you'd answer."

His face was hidden under his hair. "My cell phone habits have nothing to do with this case, do they?" He bit his lip in annoyance and anger. "I'm afraid I've lost my appetite for speech. Why don't you just keep talking about what a horrible man you'd like me to be? Why don't you prove that once and for all that I'd ever want to kill someone? Why don't you…" I saw a tear drip down his face. "…just get this over with?"

I lowered my pointed finger. "Ken… I'm sorry. But you've done something that is unforgivable. Just the fact that we're friends won't change that."

"Friends? Sure, friends. 'Friends treat friends like criminals'. Yeah, I think I read that on a shirt somewhere."

"Ken…"

"We're not friends, Gordon." He turned away. "Not anymore."

I bit my lip in shame. "I'm sorry I have to do this. But I have to continue."

"Go ahead. I won't stop you."

I shook my head and held it in my hand. "If you let it ring five times, then you must have expected it. You expected Ms. Wreath to call you that night. Why? Sid Herms was called out of his office, why else would he go to the seventeenth floor? I think this…" I held up the stone that helped me prove my earlier point, "held the message. Perhaps a paper tied or taped to this stone; a paper that told him to meet somebody on the seventeenth floor, because he was being blackmailed." I sat down; my legs painfully laying limp. "You wanted to cover your tracks. You entered his office the only way without having your face caught on camera. You arranged a meeting with him at an hour when only the cameras outside the building operate. You would call him to you, and leave a witness…" I nodded to Pat Kantby in the audience, who looked as if someone close to him had died. "A witness that would say you left the room for only five minutes, hardly the time to go to his office on the 30th."

I sighed. "Ms. Wreath didn't come back to the Herms' co. company building that night to retrieve her cell phone. No, she had her phone alright. She really went at your request. How you managed to convince her is not my or the court's business. You needed her to signal you, she would call you when she saw him leave his office, so you could time your departure from the room and meet your victim for a short amount of time, so as not to leave your witness suspicious. And on the 30th floor she stayed until you needed her yet again…"

"Let's just say all of this ridiculous babble is true." Ken looked to me with reddening eyes. "If things went the way you explained it, the blackmail would have gone by without a hitch. He'd return to his office with his precious document, and I'd take the money." He rested his head on the witness stand. "So why would Mr. Herms end up dead?"

"Because..." I had to fight to keep going. We were reaching the end, and the closer I came, the more pain I felt. "Something went wrong during the blackmailing." I turned and addressed the judge and prosecution. "I presume we all remember the murder weapon?" I took out my picture of it. "I visited the forensics department of the local precinct, arranged by my good friend Detective Terry Scours. While I was there, I found one print; one fourth of a print that matched with the print on the stone, which was Mr. Herms'."

"So that one unreadable print actually led somewhere after all," Ian was staying unusually quiet and calm, "and here I thought it was of no importance because un-whole prints cannot be tested."

"This proves that when Mr. Herms came down t the seventeenth floor, he was holding the knife. Not the murderer." I looked to the audience. "One can guess as to why he would bring a knife with him? He did not want the news of his illegitimate child reaching the press. But he was pretty keen on not letting go of the money either. So he made himself a third choice. And that choice was to…" I stood back up, my hands plastered against my desk. "…kill the blackmailer."

I shook my head. "That's why nobody heard the glass weapons case break either. Sid Herms broke it so he could arm himself. It was too bad he was unprepared for a fight. He was stressed, not in sound mind. I know, I saw him that night. He was a nervous wreak, and he knew that with his choice, he was facing life or death. Obviously, we know how that gamble turned out."

I saw Ken tense up, recalling painful memories.

Good morning Mr. Herms. I'm glad you followed the instructions… good man.

…

Why don't we take a ride in the elevator? We can talk inside in privacy.

… I won't let you do this you… swine! You, the people who took my son away from me!

What is this all about? Surely you knew?

Of course I knew you bastard! My own son, a member of that despicable criminal organization! That's why I want his name taken off my will! No son of mine will be a thug! He deserves no money from me!

Well that's unfortunate for you. Soon as we heard you weren't going to pass the money onto us, we had to compensate, you see. You brought this blackmail upon yourself, now it's about time I take the money that belongs to us; that belongs to NYM.

… No, I won't let you.

Won't let me?

I found a third option. My son won't get it, you won't get it, and my reputation remains unsoiled…

What are you-

Take this!! RAAAAAAHHH!!

"He almost got me… I only managed to press his wrist on the wall, making his drop his weapon…" Ken whispered under his breath so that nobody could hear.

What? You were going to KILL me?

No… I'm sorry… I was foolish, please… let me go!

No one EVER touches a member of NYM! You brought this upon yourself! Now DIE!!

No, please!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!

--

Ken breathed in and out rapidly. He held his hand to his chest and almost choked with a coughing fit.

"Are you feeling all right, Mr. Cline?"

He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. "What do you care?" He spat.

I backed away from the witness stand. "Now you had a huge problem. Here was the man you were supposed to be blackmailing, dead by your hands; by your rage. You were running out of time, you couldn't take much longer to keep your witness of a friend from getting suspicious. What were you to do with the body? Then you remembered, you had an accomplice on the thirtieth floor. You needed to return to your room, so you hurriedly wiped away the blood with towels from a nearby restroom and used a card key to transport the body to the thirtieth floor, let her take care of it while you returned to your insurance, your friend who could witness to you only leaving the room for less than five minutes, if the circumstances demanded it."

He wasn't looking at me. He laid his head facedown on the witness stand, silent.

"Now, we come to the final piece of the puzzle. What occurred after you called your accomplice, after she found the body in the elevator?"

I leaned over on my desk, fatigue starting to get the better of me. "She panicked."

Holly was still there, standing at the front of the audience, shedding tear after tear.

"Where would she hide the body? She must have dragged it to the office, the closest door and the only place she could think of. Luckily, however, she found what she thought to be the perfect hiding place. Outside the broken window, a window-washing platform sat. He pulled it up and put the body on it, thinking she could quietly lower the body to the ground level where she could easily pick it up on her way out…"

"Something doesn't make sense." Ian had his eyes closed, "Your client, Doug Grave was supposedly cleaning up an office mess at the time on that floor, right outside of Mr. Herms' office door. He would have seen Mr. Herms leave his office, and he certainly would have seen the secretary dragging his dead body into the office."

I presented the fingerprints on the payphone. "My client told me that he spent well over fifteen minutes trying to reach his wife at home to tell her he would be late at the payphone in an isolated hallway on the thirtieth floor. Sid would have gone during this time."

Ian didn't seem to be affected at all. "That seems hard to prove."

"Just listen, it'll make sense soon. As he was coming back, Ms. Wreath heard him. Panicking, she must have only just put the body on the now raised window washing platform. She heard him coming, so she had to get out of the office as fast as she could. Seeing the open door, Doug Graves became curious and took a look inside. But as he looked over the broken window, the impossible happened…"

SNAP!

"The window washing platform was already in bad condition, but just before Mr. Graves looked outside the window, one of the pulleys on the side of the platform broke."

I pushed one of Roger Watcher's photos to the edge of my desk. "This is the first photo, since it is well lit without any other light source, before the flash on Roger's camera shattered. I wondered what this strange part of a metal object and rope were doing at the top of the photo. Now I can see, it is part of the broken window washing platform. The body fell off of the platform as is swung on only one rope, then…

AIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!

"Doug Graves saw the body falling and let out a terrified scream. Not only had he just seen a dead body fall out a window, he had also just stepped on a piece of glass. He fainted out of stress. This is the scream Ms. Holly Wreath heard and was oh-so-eager to tell us about when she gave testimony earlier. As she stared in horror at the unconscious body in the office, she received instruction from Ken Cline; whom she had told about what had just happened. He told her to sweep the glass shards out the window, to make it look as if the body had been pushed out the window." I breathed deeper than I had ever inhaled or exhaled. "That is what really happened that night, your honor."

He blinked in surprise. "R-r-really? Err…"

"You can't prove it."

I turned my attention to Ian Vice. "What now?"

He wasn't smiling, which unnerved me. "It's a nice story, and the pieces even fit all pretty like. But no amount of evidence is ever going to prove this without a doubt." He opened his eyes, "I knew that you'd never be able to finish what you started. You performed very well, exceptionally well for a rookie. But it's over. Without proof, it's just a story, not a fact."

I squeezed my fists together; one last piece of evidence, one last piece of the puzzle. But this evidence won't get the acquittal alone, I needed to show it to somebody; somebody who knew the whole story, but may be reluctant to do so.

"Ms. Wreath?"

She was staring at her blue heeled shoes. Her face came to my gaze with mascara dripping over her face. "Y-yes?"

I handed her the blue card key covered in Ken's prints.

If that's the case, then how were you able to go up to the 30th floor that night, unless you took the stairs?

I stared into her face, the entire case was coming to a close… right now.

But then again; only Sid's and mine are special.

"Do you recognize this card key?"

Umm… And why would you call yours and Sid's key cards 'special', Ms. Wreath?

She took it in her hands, a tear from her cheek dropped and splashed onto the blue card.

Wha-? They're blue!

She looked into my eyes, tears blurring the color of her own. "This is Sid's card key…"

I sighed. "That's what I thought." I placed my hand behind he head. "Do you see what he's done? I know he probably convinced you otherwise, but this proves that he had no card key of his own."

"H-he lied to me…"

"So he probably told you that he didn't kill him…"

She couldn't speak.

"Will you tell us, can you tell me if what I've said is the truth?"

She looked to Ken. He was red in the face, raw from crying, mouthing the word, "please" … "please".

"Y-you…" she sobbed. She threw down the card to the floor. "You told me he killed himself! You told me he committed suicide! How could you… how could you USE me like this!! You kept his card key… you thought I wouldn't be able to get inside the office, or anywhere! You took my card key the day before! You were going to leave me with the body on the top floor, I wouldn't be able to use the elevator and then I'd…" she looked as if she might hyperventilate. "I'd drag the body downstairs… try to get it out of the building… because I… I LOVED you! But you'd have been long gone, and the police would have shone up… and then… then…"

She burst into tears. "It's all true!! Everything the defense says is true!! He killed him with that dreadful knife… and I panicked… thank god the office door was open! I found the window washing platform and tried to lower the body down… but then I heard somebody coming and I…"

She was unable to go on any longer, her throat closed up. Gently, I took her hand and led her to her seat. She looked into my eyes again, and they looked brighter, as if the clouds had finally cleared. I kissed her wrist as she sat back down.

"Thank you."

--

"Not Guilty."

Ken was escorted out of the courtroom by two guards dressed in black, their garbs almost looking like deathly cloaks in the right light. I saw Mike Angelo to my right, frowning shaking his head in what looked like shame. I went up to him. "I can't believe it."

He grasped his hands together and held them to his lips. "You can't believe what, Gordon?"

I looked into his face. "I can't believe Ken actually did this. The Ken I knew and loved as a friend. The Ken I met in high school. The Ken I defended just two weeks ago." I held my hand up to my forehead, where a warm sweat had formed.

"Fantastic, Gordon."

I did a double-take. "What now?"

He smiled. "I was testing you. If you had said, "I can't believe I won the case!" In a tone of excitement or happiness, that would have shown me that you cared more for the case than the fate of our friend. Now I know it was always his best interests you held at heart. Not only did you trust your client, you were also confident and trusted Ken, in a way, to accept what he had done. Bravo."

With a huge grin, he began clapping his hands in front of me. After a minute, I realized that the entire court was applauding me. Sketchers, reporters, even regular citizens were celebrating my victory. As the joy washed over me, I finally felt happy for the first time this week. I smiled and waved to the audience, some of whom had even begun cheering for me. I, Gordon Truth, had solved one of the most important cases in history. The murder of the richest man in New York City was closed. I drank it in for one last second, then made my way back to the defense lounge.

"You were amazing big brother!"

I laughed, gently rubbing my little sister's head. "I couldn't have done it without you. If you hadn't have come to my defense when Pat Kantby accused me, I'd probably be on trial myself right now!"

She laughed with me. "Yeah, I was amazing too. I know."

I spied Pat Kantby back against the wall to my left, he came up to me. "Listen, Gordon. I'm sorry for trying to put the blame on you…"

"It's fine." I looked with at pity at him, the man Ken Cline had played all the way to the end. I quickly turned toward the other door, where Benjamin Bell was leaning against the wall, almost the same place he was leaning the last time I was in this room.

"Hey Ben."

He looked to me and his lips quivered into a thin smile. "I've never seen anything like that." He began looking at his shoes again. "I've never even dreamed of winning a case of that magnitude… You know that you're now in the public eye, right?"

"Huh?"

"Well, look at what you've just won! As far as the public knows, you're the best attorney in New York City."

The news came at me like a blow to the stomach. Was I really the best attorney in New York? A rookie with only two cases under his belt? … Wow…

"So I guess it's really Truth & Bell now, not just Bell?" I said with a smile.

He smiled back. "Maybe, or maybe just Truth after that victory."

I held up my fist. "Unstoppable Defenders Of Justice?"

He looked at my fist longingly, then shook his head. "N-not in front of all these people."

It was when he said that when I noticed one more person in the court. A black-haired, black-gloved, red-faced someone.

"Ken?"

"They say I can have a few seconds with you."

"Ken… I'm so sorry."

Then something impossible happened, he laughed and smiled. "Don't be."

"W-w-w-what now?"

"Do you know how long I've wanted to get out of that New York Mob crap? Well, I guess I didn't think I did. But now when I think about it, yeah, I definitely didn't like it."

I only stared at him. He sighed and lost his smile. "Look, I would rather have not gone to jail, that's why I fought so hard out there. But now that it's over… I feel…"

He laughed, then his eyes found mine. "You've freed me, Gordon Truth. It may look like I'm imprisoned, but the opposite is true."

"But Ken, I don't understand… why join NYM?"

He sighed again. "I really can't tell you anything about that. Let's just say I had little choice." He grabbed my shoulder. "Anyway, if you were able to bring me down, you probably have a chance to take down NYM entirely."

"Wha-? Take down NYM?"

He shrugged. "Well, you never know. I thought I had zero chance of being discovered. I guess I made one mistake to many, am I right?" He ended with a chuckle.

I frowned. "Ken, what you did to those people. You played Pat like a fiddle, making him your insurance witness, getting information out of him… And especially what you did to Holly Wreath, you made her fall in love with you just so you could manipulate her, and even frame her for murder if it came to it?" I shook my head. "I just can't understand."

"Yeah…" He frowned too. "The thing is, I can't either."

"Oh, and I figured out the last part of your plan."

"Eh? What's that?"

I drew the card I had gotten from my client from my pocket; my card. "I heard you were passing my card out to everyone during lunch, your last part of your insurance. Any one of those people could have been blamed for the murder of Sid Herms, since they were all on the thirtieth floor. So you passed out my card, you wanted to make sure that it was me who defended this case, because you thought that I'd never name you as a suspect, even if I thought about it."

He looked away again.

"Ken, Pat Kantby and Holly Wreath weren't the only people you played, you played me too. Or at least tried."

"That's what I don't get…"

My eyes widened. "What now?"

He looked me in the face. "What made you chase me down as soon as you began to suspect me?"

I hesitated, looking into my friend's face. "The truth."

The guards appeared behind Ken. "Mr. Cline, that will be enough."

He turned around. "O-okay, thanks." And with one last worried look to me, he disappeared behind the door along with his guards.

--

There have been calls; my God, have there been calls. Even though everyone though so highly of me, I still couldn't shake the feeling of butterflies in my stomach every time someone asked for my defense. I enjoy the interviews a lot more. I was on national news and someone even mentioned something about appearing on the Letterman show, which I knew I'd turn down if it ever came up again. But there was still this feeling plaguing me, NYM was still out there, and they were still up their dirty tricks. Somehow, Will Edgedamin managed to keep his name on his late father's will, and he ended up with the fortune. No one has heard from him since.

ring

Wait, I have to take this.

"Hello? Gordon Truth, Attorney at Law speaking."

"Mr. Truth? I need a lawyer, so I thought I'd call you up… I'm at the detention center."

"Don't worry about a thing. I'll be there in a minute."

"Thank you."

"Well, it was nice talking to you. I know I've kind of stolen the business from you, only for a few days though, calls for you come every now and then. I took your advice; I've heightened my fee, and they don't even bat an eyelash at it. Sure, I'm sad about Ken, but I think he was glad where he ended up, in a way. I want to thank you for all of the great advice, it's really helped with the last few cases, especially that double homicide one, I almost lost myself in that one. Thank god for Clara, she's always there for me when I feel down. She's saved me from losing some cases many times. It's good that we talk like this, I know you're suddenly so interested in what I've been doing ever since that Ken Cline case, and I have to admit I was bit creeped out at first. But I enjoyed telling it, I hope you enjoyed listening. Sorry, I've got to go, new client at the detention center, wish me luck Ben!"

"Yeah, sure. Thanks for all the… info."

Gordon walked out the door of our office, smiling sunshine to all the neighbors. I walked to the chest behind my desk and stuck my key in, popping open the top. I reached in and took out a small pistol.

"This bullet's meant for you, Gordon. Just you wait."