Just Ask Them How They Made It
Hey guys! Here's Chapter Twenty-Five! Please remember to review!
May
Chapter Twenty-Five: No Choice
"Hello?" Bridget tried her hardest to listen to the person on the other end of the line over a screaming Regan, but there was no telling whether she would be able to hear anything.
"It's got to be for me," said Juliet. "London's supposed to come over again today. My phone's not working, so she's probably calling the house phone."
She took the phone from Bridget's hand and left the room. Bridget patted Regan on the back and tried to bounce her up and down. She truly didn't know what was wrong with her. She had already been changed and fed. Maybe she was uncomfortable from sleeping in her crib all night. But, whatever the matter was, it didn't look like it was going to be fixed any time before Bridget and Andrew had to leave for the courthouse.
Andrew walked into the room with Portia in his arms. "No luck?" he asked, referring to Bridget's attempts to get Regan to stop screaming.
Bridget shook her head, wondering why Andrew would even have to ask that question. The answer was obvious from five blocks away. "No luck at all. We can't leave her here with Juliet if she's going to be like this all day."
Juliet came out of her bedroom again and put the phone back on the hook.
"London says she's gonna be a little late. Daddy, my phone's not working."
"Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. I'll look at it when we get back," said Andrew.
But, Bridget still wasn't keen on leaving a crying baby with Juliet. "Maybe I should stay home," she said. "I don't feel good leaving Regan so fussy."
"I can handle it, Mom," insisted Juliet, reaching for Regan and grabbing her around the middle. "I know what to do. She'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" Bridget asked, very skeptical that Juliet would be able to handle anything as hard as a fussy baby. She had always complained before.
"Yes, I'm sure," the teenager said. "I'll give her some Benadryl if she doesn't go to sleep."
Bridget gave her a look. No way was Juliet giving such strong medicine to a baby so small.
"Just kidding, Mom. But, really, she'll be fine. Go on ahead."
"Why the sudden urge to kick us out?" asked Andrew, as he placed Portia down in the play pin. "You would never have offered to take care of a baby in the past. Not one so fussy, at least."
"No reason," said Juliet, a bit sheepishly, but Bridget ignored it. She was sure she and Andrew would find out what trouble Juliet was going to cause soon enough.
Five minutes after Andrew and Bridget had left the apartment, a call came in from down in the lobby.
"Hello?" Juliet picked up the phone and shouted over Regan's screams.
It was Linda, the receptionist.
"Hey, Juliet," she said. "This is Linda. There's a woman down in the lobby to see you. A Kasi Rochefoucauld. She says you're expecting her."
"Oh, yes!" Juliet replied excitedly. Finally. Now, she could finally have some peace and quiet. "Send her up."
In truth, Juliet had been so fed up with taking care of her two little sisters that she had finally felt the need to call a babysitting service. A secret one, of course. Neither one of her parents could know. Her plan had been to find someone to come over after they were gone and leave just before they arrived back home. After looking through a bunch of inconvenient websites, she finally found a woman who looked reliable, and not to mention, was very cheap. Only ten bucks an hour, and she would still have some money left over. The call Bridget had answered earlier had really been the babysitter Juliet had hired, but she had pretended it was London so that Bridget wouldn't get suspicious. She was actually going to go to London's house to watch the trial.
A few minutes later, a young woman with short brown hair and dressed in a jogging outfit appeared in the foyer.
"Hi," she said. "Are you Juliet?"
"Yep," the teenager said, "but my parents aren't supposed to know about this. I just need you to watch my sisters until I come home. I'll be back around one-thirty. Anyway, Regan's been screaming all morning. You said you knew how to calm babies down, right?"
"Sure thing," Kasi said. "I'm a natural. I've been doing this for years."
"Thanks," Juliet handed Regan to Kasi and headed out the door. "My other sister's in the play pin. See ya!"
Like it had been the day before, the courtroom was packed with people. But, this time, there were so many that Andrew and Bridget were forced to sit in the very back, close to where the bailiff was. Henry was escorted in a few minutes after the audience had been settled. He was clean-shaven today, an odd contrast to his usual scruffiness, and was dressed in a dark gray suit. It was very strange, as yesterday, he had been wearing nothing but an orange jump suit. She wondered why he had the sudden change in attire. Maybe to look more presentable. But, it wasn't until the trial began that the reason for this change was revealed.
As he was led into the courtroom, his entire body began to shake. He had made the horrific decision to testify on his own behalf. It scared him, but he knew he had to do it. If he had any chance at freedom, he would have in shake up emotion in the jury somehow.
He looked around the room at the audience. Again, Tim and Deb were seated in the very front. It took him a while to spot Andrew and Bridget, but they were seated in the back. Bridget was wearing her hair in a pontytail today, something Siobhan would have done. In fact, if it hadn't been for the loving way in which she was clinging to the refined Welshman beside her, Henry would have thought she was Siobhan.
Siobhan.
He still loved her; there was no doubt in his mind. He thought about her every chance he got. He had never gotten a chance to mourn her himself. (Did he even deserve to do so?) He knew what he did had been wrong, but his heart was still broken for her all the same. He wanted nothing more than to see her again.
But, did he feel bad about what he had done? After all, Siobhan deserved it. She was a liar, a cheater, a complete fraud. His lawyer had told him to present all of that in his defense, to really play emotions with the jury, but the truth was that he wasn't playing at all.
There weren't a lot of questions that Sherwood himself was going to ask him. He told Henry that the majority of his defense would have to come out with the prosecutions line of interrogation, and because self-defense didn't seem to be appealing to anyone, painting Siobhan as the perpetrator in other ways was his only option now. It meant that he would have spill out everything that Siobhan had ever done to him. Luckily, there were plenty of things he could say.
His thoughts were interrupted when Judge Whitfield entered the room and the entire courtroom rose.
As soon as the courtroom was given permission to sit down again, the defense called Henry to take the stand. Bridget was shocked.
"Mr. Butler," Sherwood began, "how long had you been having an affair with Siobhan Martin?"
"Approximately three years," Henry stated, stealing a quick, nervous glance at Andrew. Out of the corner of her eye, Bridget could see Andrew was trying his hardest to look stone-faced, but he was failing. The reality of his wife's affair had to be heart-breaking for him. Bridget rubbed his arm comfortingly.
"And in those three years, Mr. Butler," Sherwood asked, "did Mrs. Martin ever do or say anything violent toward you or anyone else?"
"She never specifically did anything, but once…" he looked straight ahead now, at Andrew. Bridget glanced at him, trying to reassure him that nothing would go wrong, "she told me that she wanted to have my wife and Andrew dead so that we could be together."
"And when was this?"
A pause. "About two years ago."
"And is it not true that your wife is now deceased?"
"Yes."
"Explain to us how she died."
"She was murdered by a man, a man, whom I have every reason to believe Siobhan hired."
"Is that because she told you before that she wanted your wife dead or because of some other reason?"
"I believe she hired him."
"What proof do you have of that?"
Henry lowered his eyes. "I don't have any."
But, obviously seeing this as a blow to his defense, Sherwood chose to ignore this and go on with his questioning.
"Let's go through what happened the day Mrs. Martin was killed. What went on?"
"She came into my house, screaming at me, because she found out that Andrew had filed for divorce and that I knew about it."
"And how did you find out?" Sherwood asked.
"My father-in-law told me."
Sherwood nodded. "What happened next?"
"She…grabbed the knife from the kitchen and attacked me with it. But, then I was able to grab…the end of the knife and I turned it on her."
"Do you recall how many times you stabbed Mrs. Martin?"
Henry shook his head. "No."
"Why did you wait nine hours to call the police, Mr. Butler?"
"Because I was afraid they might suspect me. I didn't know what to do."
Sherwood nodded. "No further questions."
Another shock wave came over Bridget. She and Andrew looked at each other, he showing the same concern that she felt. What? That was all the defense was going to ask? The prosecution certainly had a leg up.
"Mr. Butler," Melton began his line of questioning with a flourish, "so, you don't have any proof that Mrs. Martin was planning to kill your wife? Or to hire someone to have her murdered?"
Henry lowered his eyes even further. Everyone in the courtroom was holding their breaths with anticipation. "No. I don't."
"So you're going off nothing but word-of-mouth?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Butler, there has been a lot of evidence presented here about the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Martin's death, and I have to say, things are not looking good for you. Why is it, if the case were self-defense, as you claim, that you waited nine hours to call the police?"
"I already told—"
"Yes, you already told Mr. Sherwood that you were afraid, but why, Mr. Butler? If she really did attack you, what's the harm in admitting that to the police? There is nothing to be afraid of if you didn't do anything wrong. The police would understand. Furthermore, why stab her as many times as you did? If it were truly self-defense, wouldn't it suffice to stab her simply once to get away?"
Henry paled. "I don't—"
"I mean, Mr. Butler, why not stab her once to subdue her and then call the police? In that case, they would have believed you if you had said there was a woman in your house trying to attack you."
Henry was silent, but Bridget could tell that something was stirring inside him. She gripped Andrew's hand.
"And furthermore, do you even remember your nine-one-one call? Or how many drinks you had? You had enough time to guzzle down Bourbon and Scotch before the police came, did you not? You had enough time to sit and watch her blood stain the tiles of your kitchen."
"I—"
"Please tell us, Mr. Butler, if this were someone else's trial, would you have believed the defendant if he had waited nine hours to call the police and then claimed self-defense?"
More silence.
"Mr. Butler, would you believe anyone else if that were the case?"
"Answer the question, Mr. Butler," Judge Whitfield looked over her glasses at him.
"No, I would not believe something like that if it were happening to someone else."
"Then, how do you expect all of us to believe you?"
"Do you not understand everything I had to go through?" Henry suddenly shouted. "She killed my wife! She was going to kill her husband and her sister! Do you know how I suffered, listening to her talk about how happy she was going to be once Bridget was dead, or about all the things she was going to buy with Andrew's multimillion dollar life insurance policy?"
His face turned from deathly pale to a fiery red as his anger leapt out of him. "Can you not understand that? She was going to have her sister and her husband murdered! It was all she ever talked about! What was I supposed to do? I was sick and tired of just sitting on the sidelines and watching her plan all that crap! I loved Siobhan, with all my heart. In fact, I loved her more than anything. I was so crazy in love with her that…that I don't even know what I was going to do. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her, but you have to understand: she was wicked; she was evil; she was insane, and I was not going to let her get away with anything else. If you had known her, you would understand."
"So, you're now admitting that it wasn't self-defense? That you murdered her?"
Bridget knew what was going on, and she held tight to Andrew. This trial was no longer about self-defense, but about both Henry and Siobhan's states of mind.
"I didn't murder her!" Henry shouted. "Don't you get it? She was going to kill them, and I was not going to let it happen. It was awful, the things she was doing. I wasn't going to be a part of it anymore. Don't you get it? I don't know if her future plans included me or not, with all her lies and the fact that I found out she was sleeping with Tyler Barrett, too, but I was going to stop her."
"Mrs. Martin was sleeping with Tyler Barrett?" Melton asked, a light bulb going off in his head. "Is that why you killed him, too?"
"Objection!" shouted Sherwood, causing the entire courtroom to jump.
"Sustained!" Judge Whitfield banged her gavel. "The jury will disregard the prosecutor's last question. Mr. Melton, please."
"Withdrawn," Melton said as he waved his hand, as if that were necessary at all. "But, Mr. Butler, you do see the trouble you're in, don't you?
Henry's jaw began to twitch. Whatever strategy he had to win this case had gone out the window.
"She was evil," he repeated. "She wanted them dead just so she could have what she wanted. She hated them more than anything, and I wasn't about to just sit back and allow her to take the lives of two innocent people."
Tears welled up in Bridget's eyes. Hearing Henry say it cemented all of Bridget's worst fears. Siobhan had never loved either of them, and all Bridget's years of hoping that her sister could forgive her had been in vain. She looked at Andrew. He had tears in his eyes as well. She rested her head on his shoulder as her own tears began to fall.
Henry suddenly rose from his chair and pointed straight to them, neither of them caring that everyone was staring. "Look at them! Look at them, crying, because they just realized how much Siobhan despised them. They did not deserve what she was going to do to them! I had to stop her, even if it meant her death."
"Sit down, Mr. Butler," shouted the judge.
But, Henry stood his ground. "What else do I have to tell you to get to you to believe me? I didn't do anything wrong!"
"Why didn't you just go to the authorities and tell them what she was planning, Mr. Butler?" Melton asked. He was just as determined as Henry was.
"They never would have believed me. I had no proof. I had to take care of it on my own." He sat down, enraged, and buried his face in his hands. He said, barely audible, "I had no choice."
"You had no choice?" Melton asked, condescendingly. "You had the choice to stab her fifteen times! You had the choice to wait nine hours to call the police. You chose to straddle her and have her blood stain your clothes and the tiles of your kitchen. You had the choice, and the time, I might add, to drink your heart out before you did anything." Melton had anger in his eyes. "That is not the case of someone trying to defend himself from a murderer. That is the case of a malicious killer, wanting nothing more than for their victim to suffer."
"I was defending myself," until now, Henry had kept his face buried his in hands, but now, he looked out on Melton, angry and defiant. "I was defending myself and everyone else that Siobhan was about to kill! I was defending Bridget, I was defending Andrew, and I was defending Gemma!"
"Whom you didn't even love," Melton commented.
"Objection!"
"Withdrawn," Melton said, his nostrils flaring. "Still, Mr. Butler, it doesn't matter what Siobhan Martin did. What matters is what you did! Siobhan Martin is not on trial here, you are, and thanks to you, we will never know her real intentions, and those don't even matter anymore. Yours do. What you did was cold-blooded and vicious, and you had no right to any of it."
Henry was silent. Melton had definitely thrown him a curve ball, one he couldn't dodge.
A/N: So, what do you think? Will Henry be found guilty or not? Please review!