November 23

Courtroom No. 6

10:00 AM

Deirdre Brigit

As we arrived in the courtroom, I looked carefully around the area. Everything seemed to be a bit less disastrous than it had been in the past, and the members of the prosecution were calmer now. They had come to understand what was happening with Mr. Morix, and that seemed to have made all the different for all of them. They had previously not known enough to truly come to any conclusions about what had happened, given that they were granted with minimal information about the fact that the victim was a branch of Oracle's aliases and nothing else. I would have been upset and anxious if I was in their position as well, so I couldn't blame them for acting strangely in the past.

Even though he hadn't been upset previously, Anton seemed to be feeling much better as well. I assumed that it was because the stress was gone from the others around him. That meant he wasn't constantly surrounded by their anxiety, and it seemed to be doing him infinite amounts of good. He was far less fidgety and nervous than he had been previously, and I couldn't help but smile at the sight of him so calm.

"Court is now in session," came the cry of Judge Diaphan as she hit the gavel against the podium before her. Her voice was strained and concerned. Given all the messiness of the case leading up to this point, I couldn't exactly blame her. I had seen more than enough stress in the past few days as well, and I was anxious about how this was going to go much the same. "Are the defense and prosecution both prepared for the trial to come?"

"The defense is ready," I announced confidently with a nod. Both Victoria and Yuri followed the gesture from beside me, and I glanced at them out of the corner of my eyes before squaring my vision once again on the prosecution.

"The prosecution is also ready," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke announced next. He cleared his throat before looking up to Judge Diaphan once again. "If it's alright with you, Your Honor, the prosecution would like to open today's segment of the trial by calling a new witness to the stand. We have been given reason to believe that someone has figured out the identity of the culprit without us needing to inquire with the previous witness."

Judge Diaphan nodded. "Of course... If you don't mind my asking, just where is the victim?" she asked carefully. "I don't see her in the courtroom at this time. I would assume that she would need to be here given her important role in this case."

"She's waiting in the prosecution lobby right now," Prosecutor Burke replied. "She's with a friend right now, and if she just so happens to be needed at any point during the trial, we will call upon her. I think that she's still exhausted from recent events and is looking for a break from the hustle and bustle of all that has taken place. We decided to honor her request by giving her as much space as she requires."

"I understand," Judge Diaphan murmured. "I suspect that we will need to summon her to the witness stand soon enough, but for now, we have much to take care of. You said that you had a witness who would be able to reveal the identity of the culprit, yes? Go on and call such a party to the witness stand."

I glanced to the others on the defense team out of my peripheral vision. They both seemed to be just as nervous about this as I was. I wondered who it was that would be called to testify. Part of me already seemed to know, but I figured that it would be for the best if I gave it time to see what came next. It was the least that I could do, especially after all the highs and lows that this case had provided to us throughout its duration. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few days given how stressful and difficult the investigation and trial had both been since the case first came to our attention.

"The prosecution now calls Detective Abilene Umber to the witness stand," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke declared. I frowned to myself. There it was. I had been thinking that she would be the one called to talk about everything given her discussion with her brother the day before, but I hadn't been sure of it until after she was summoned. There was no going back from here. She had chosen to say what she had witnessed, and all we could do was wait and see what it was that she had uncovered. If she truly did know who the culprit was, then we were going to be thrown a massive curveball. How would she even have access to this sort of sensitive information? There was only one way to find out, and it involved patience.

A few moments later, Detective Umber walked up to the witness stand. She held herself with a strange sense of pride, and I found myself frowning even more at the sight of her. I prayed that she knew what she was doing with all of this. Heaven knew that it was already rattling to me. Even if I had expected her to testify, that couldn't have prepared me for what she was going to say. I wondered if anything would ever be able to help me out on that front.

"State your name and occupation for the court," Judge Diaphan announced, capturing the attention of the gallery in the blink of an eye. None of the onlookers seemed to understand the situation and its severity quite as well as myself, my teammates, or the members of the prosecution, but I supposed that was a given. After all, they were not privy to the true secret that waited behind the scenes of this case. We were all simply factors in another display by Oracle, and we had to wait it out until the end to see what came next.

"I'm Abilene Umber," Detective Umber replied quickly. She was still anxious, but she was doing a much better job of hiding it than she had been previously. In fact, if you looked closely enough, it was easy to see that she was fiddling around just as much as she had been since this whole incident started. Her eyes had grown hardened, but the upset was still there. Nothing would be able to truly hide her anguish, it seemed.

"Please testify about what you know about the crime," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke replied. He seemed to be rather intense all of a sudden as well, and I figured that it was because he knew exactly what she was going to say. Somehow, that didn't help the situation for me in the slightest. It only made everything worse, and my stomach tied into a knot to show that it most certainly agreed.

Detective Umber. "This is something that I witnessed alongside one other person, but... I wanted to be the one to share it. It felt right that I was the person who told the story," she explained. After a brief pause, she took in a long breath before preparing herself to speak.

"I bet that the other person she saw this with was her brother," Yuri whispered to me. "I guess that she does know something about the culprit. We were right in that assumption, but... I don't know what it is that they could have seen. How would they know the truth about the one responsible for this case when they haven't shown any signs of being involved with it at all up until recently?"

"All we can do is listen and see what they have to say on the matter. I suspect that she's speaking on behalf of her brother as well, after all," Victoria said with a loose shrug. She began to clench her fingers into a fist, and I could see the tension in her shoulders. This was a stressful matter for everyone involved, it seemed.

"Let's go on and listen then," I said conclusively as I turned my attention back to the matter at hand. I would have been lying if I said that I didn't have a bad feeling about this, but I was doing my best to hide it for the sake of the outcome of this case. Whatever she had to say was undoubtedly important, and I was going to do everything in my power to hear her out and make sure that she was being honest. Then again, I doubted that she was going to lie.

This had been an issue for quite some time, and as I watched Detective Umber, I couldn't help but note that this was cathartic for her. She knew that there was something going on, and she was finally being given the chance to speak out. It mattered a lot to her, and she wasn't going to let anybody forget about it. I took in a deep breath before zoning in on her testimony, and she started to speak a few seconds later.

~ Witness Testimony ~

~ Who the Culprit Is ~

-"I think it's important that you all know just what it is that I saw the day of the crime."

-"At the time, I didn't think anything of it. I was working with my brother and our current coworker on paperwork."

-"Our alliance with him started quite some time ago, you see, and I think that... Well, there's a lot that went into it."

-"The point is that he walked out of the office we've been sharing with a knife in his hand. When I asked about it, he said that he was going to 'take care of business', though I didn't know what he meant."

-"It wasn't until hours after the fact that I realized he had been talking about the attack on the victim."

-"In all honesty, I've had my doubts about him for quite a while, but... I was scared of what would happen if I spoke out about it, so I did what I could to stay quiet."

-"But I've had more than enough. I'm here to tell the full truth about who he is and everything that he has been responsible for. Ask me any questions that you want, and I'll answer them. I've hidden the truth for more than long enough."

As soon as she finished her testimony, I felt a shiver run up my spine. This was a sign that there was more going on in this case than we had originally anticipated. Then again, that felt like a given after all that we had seen, but it still struck me in a strange way. I bit down on my lip as I narrowed my eyes in her direction.

"I think it would be for the best if we simply asked her questions about what she knows," Victoria suggested. "She wants us to question her instead of simply coming out about the truth regarding this whole matter, so... I guess that we should comply with her request for the time being. I think that she knows what she's doing, and it would feel wrong to shut her down after she's clearly had to pull together so much courage to do this."

"Whoever she's working for has to be the one behind this," Yuri said softly. She turned her attention to Detective Umber a moment later. "If you don't mind my asking... What does this employer of yours look like? Does he have white hair and pale skin?" Even though she didn't say it outright, I knew that she was trying to compare this to the perception of the culprit that we had already heard about from the victim. It was a sound line of reasoning, and I would have asked something similar if she hadn't beaten it to me before the cross-examination could start.

Detective Umber nodded firmly. "Yeah, that is how he looks... He's been like that for as long as anybody can remember," she confirmed. "I didn't think that it would wind up being relevant to a case like this, but... I guess that life is full of surprises. I know that what he's been doing has been wrong though, and... I hate that he manipulated both me and my brother into doing things for him that he shouldn't have ever even considered. It's... It's awful. I'm sorry about all of it."

"Why is she already apologizing? It must be really bad if she's this worked up about it," Victoria murmured. She shook her head a moment later. "I guess that all we can do is wait and see what she says about it during her testimony. She's bound to tell us something important that we can use to figure out everything related to this case's culprit... Well, of course she's going to do that. It's why she's testifying in the first place."

"Please begin your cross-examination at this time, defense," Judge Diaphan announced. She was hiding it well, but there was immense curiosity bubbling just beneath the surface. I could hear it loud and clear in the way that she spoke, and I couldn't blame her for it in the slightest. There was quite a bit going on in this case, and Detective Umber's cryptic words only added to the intrigue.

I nodded my understanding in response to Judge Diaphan before looking back to Detective Umber. This was going to be the set of words that changed everything, and I was desperate to hear about what had happened in full. It was what we all deserved, and I was going to make sure that the truth came out. Nothing was going to stop us after how far we had come.

~ Cross-Examination ~

~ Who the Culprit Is ~

-"I think it's important that you all know just what it is that I saw the day of the crime."

-"At the time, I didn't think anything of it. I was working with my brother and our current coworker on paperwork."

-"Our alliance with him started quite some time ago, you see, and I think that... Well, there's a lot that went into it."

-"The point is that he walked out of the office we've been sharing with a knife in his hand. When I asked about it, he said that he was going to 'take care of business', though I didn't know what he meant."

-"It wasn't until hours after the fact that I realized he had been talking about the attack on the victim."

-"In all honesty, I've had my doubts about him for quite a while, but... I was scared of what would happen if I spoke out about it, so I did what I could to stay quiet."

-"But I've had more than enough. I'm here to tell the full truth about who he is and everything that he has been responsible for. Ask me any questions that you want, and I'll answer them. I've hidden the truth for more than long enough."

"Hold it!"

"I believe that you should start from the beginning in explaining everything that you are aware of," I suggested. "You've been somewhat vague up to this point, and I somehow believe that it would be better for you to build up to the truth rather than simply dropping the culprit's name on us at a moment's notice."

Detective Umber nodded her agreement. "You're right... There's a lot more to this than you realize, let me tell you. The culprit... They aren't who you would expect. In fact, I doubt that anybody would even consider this possibility without me and my brother being aware of the full truth," she said. She let out a small sigh before speaking. "Allow me to take you back over twenty years to look at the past. You see, all of this starts with Interpol."

"Interpol?" Yuri echoed. "What does Interpol have to do with anything? None of their agents have been involved with this case at all, so why in the world would she want to bring up something like that? How would the culprit possibly be related to Interpol in the first place?"

"I guess we're about to find out," Victoria commented simply before looking back to Detective Umber. The woman was growing more anxious than before, but she was still trying to hide it in favor of revealing the truth to the rest of the people in the court. I was thankful to her for making the effort given how desperate we were for answers, so I allowed myself to concentrate solely on what she was saying.

"You see, the leader of Interpol a while ago was one Cade Green," Detective Umber started to say. "He left when his true identity was revealed to the public, placing him and his family in danger... I'm sure that all of you are already aware of this fact. My mother... She was once married to him. He was my brother and I's father, but we never quite had the chance to get to know him. He was forced away from us because of his position, so we couldn't ever learn about who he was as a person or anything like that."

"Cade Green... He's come up a few times in recent cases, hasn't he?" Victoria murmured. She didn't seem to be expecting an answer, and I was glad for that much since I didn't know how I would have responded anyways. It was clear that he was involved somehow, but the true depth of his connection to this case remained a mystery. We would simply have to see how Detective Umber explained it all to us.

"Cade Green later appeared once again under a different name... Carson Rinko," Detective Umber went on. "But he wasn't around for all that long before he was exposed once again. He retreated into hiding and cut all of his notable ties with Interpol at the time, not wanting to place his family in any more danger. He hasn't been seen since then as far as many people are concerned. He vanished out of the public eye because he wanted to defend those close to him, but... There was never any direct evidence that he passed away. In fact, there are many out there who are convinced that he is still alive."

"We've certainly seen a few people like that in our recent cases," I remarked, shaking my head. The tidbit of information about him changing his name to Carson Rinko didn't sit well with me though, and I glanced over to Yuri. Her lips were pressed together into a frown, and I could tell that she wasn't liking the idea in the slightest either. Yuri hadn't ever known her father, a fact that she hadn't hesitated to share with me when I asked about it. With both of her older sisters dead, the only one that she had left to rely on for direct family ties was her mother. Her father had disappeared when she was young, and the only one of her sisters who would have potentially remembered anything about him would have been Venus. However, Venus had been dead for two years, so it was difficult at best for us to ask anything of her.

"Since he did so much in the legal world back when he was in charge of Interpol, there were countless people out there who came to hold grudges against him," Detective Umber said. "That was another reason that he went into hiding, and even though the truth isn't known to the world at large... I can tell you with confidence that he is alive. He's been hiding, and even if others have come to the conclusion themselves, they had minimal evidence to back it up. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that he is still alive, and he's involved with this case a lot more than you would like to believe."

The courtroom's gallery burst into chatter, and I glanced up with a small frown. I wanted everyone to quiet down so that we could hear about this case's truth as soon as possible. I didn't like what Detective Umber was saying in the slightest, but I knew that I couldn't change it simply because I hated what she was telling us. Cade Green was involved with this case, and if her buildup to this moment was anything to go off, he was certainly a major player, most likely the figure that we had been trying to uncover for all this time.

Judge Diaphan hit her gavel against the podium in front of her chair, and the glare in her eyes was something I could feel even though she was wearing her mask as usual. She didn't even bother to admonish the gallery, instead simply looking back down to Detective Umber. "Please continue, witness," she said simply.

Detective Umber nodded. "He hasn't been going by the name of Cade Green in quite some time, but... He is in fact alive. He has heavy ties with someone involved with this case as well, and... I'm sorry to have to be the one to say this," she confessed. Her gaze shifted over to where Yuri was standing, and Detective Umber let out a sigh. "He... Well..."

"You're trying to say that he's my father, aren't you?" Yuri cut in, not bothering to wait for Detective Umber to wrestle up the courage for a proper explanation. Detective Umber refused to actually answer, instead deciding that staring at the ground would be a much better option. Yuri let out a sigh and shook her head. "I knew that there was something going on here... It isn't as if my surname is a common one. I... I wish that I had heard about this sooner."

"Members of your agency were involved with a case where the truth of his past came to light... Well, the truth in some ways, that is," Detective Umber commented. "I guess that... Without any evidence that you two were connected, then they didn't want to tell you about it. Besides, the subject was dropped pretty quickly after that initial case. I know that pretty well. After all, I've been tied with every case that he's been involved with over the past few months. Even if it hasn't seemed like I'm tied in with it, I most certainly have been... And he's told me himself that he's your father. That's proof enough that he's tied with you as well."

Yuri's gaze was lifeless and lacked anything resembling her regular passion. "I believe you," she whispered softly before shaking her head. "Just keep going with your explanation of everything that's happened."

"He wanted revenge," Detective Umber explained next. "That's the reason that all of this has been happening. He said that he wanted to lash out against Morix Law Offices for doing what he perceived to be causing the deaths of Venus and Cassidy Rinko. Even if he was never in their lives, he was angry that someone had acted against his daughters, and he was fully confident that Morix Law Offices having ties with Oracle was the reason for it all. He thought that if the agency disbanded, then everything would be better. That was his thought process, at the very least. You can call it flawed all you want. I think that we can all make our own minds up on what exactly constitutes a good decision on his part."

"He hates the agency?" Victoria asked, her eyes going wide. "I think I get where you're going with this... Everything that's been happening as of late has been because he's been trying to make us fall apart. That... That is what you're trying to say, right?"

"Yeah... That's the short version of it, at the very least," Detective Umber replied. "There's a lot of other factors to it, but that's the basic stuff that you need to know about the situation. He was thinking that if he could somehow get rid of your agency, then his problems would be solved... I think that he was afraid for the one Rinko daughter that he had left. If he was able to make the agency crumble, then she wouldn't be able to suffer damages as a result of its existence."

"How deep does this scheme go?" I found myself questioning. Somehow, I was confident that there was much more to this than met the eye. Detective Umber was so anxious about it all that she had to be more heavily involved than she had let on thus far.

"Very deep," Detective Umber answered immediately. "There's a lot going on that you haven't seen yet, but... It's really bad. Remember during the case when there was an attack at a mansion? It was the one where the truth about Carson Rinko was revealed in the first place... All of that was orchestrated by him."

I saw Prosecutor Burke grow tense from her place on the other side of the courtroom. "Somebody attacked me when I was going to speak with someone curious about Oracle... I had reason to believe that he was involved with Cade Green somehow since I was conducting a subtle investigation. It hasn't gone anywhere since then, but... I guess that I was looking in all the wrong places," she muttered.

"He hired the culprit to lash out at you if things went south," Detective Umber explained. "As for the case where my mother passed away... He said that it would be for the best if we wanted to make the agency fall apart if the defendant of the case was arrested for it all... It was coincidence that she was targeted as the suspect, but it turned into something that he wanted to use for the sake of furthering his own ambitions against the agency."

I frowned at her words. I had been the one arrested during that case, and it was a disastrous experience. It hadn't been easy to endure, something that came with the territory of being arrested, but this only made me more upset than I had been previously. "He took advantage of my involvement with the case since he thought that it would help everything to fall apart," I muttered.

"You see, he... I think that he lost sight of the truth along the way," Detective Umber said. "He thought that you had been responsible for it, and even if he was upset with the culprit for what happened with my mother, he was still wishing that he had been given the chance to see you squared away without any contact with the agency. He thought that would help him to reach his goals... And that wasn't the only time that he had characters close to the agency fingered as suspects. He wanted me and my brother to make it seem as if somebody from the agency was responsible."

Realization dawned on me in that instant, and I did my best to keep from openly cringing. "That's why Chrysalis was suspected... She was already involved with the case, so it was a matter of convenience," I murmured.

"Yeah," Detective Umber confirmed. "There was another case where somebody was trying to find the truth behind Cade Green along the way, and that was when James Devine was arrested. That didn't have anything to do with what was happening with us directly, but... It still involved people looking for him. They were desperate to figure out the truth about what happened to him no matter who they hurt along the way."

"Your nervous behavior started in the case at the local high school," Victoria commented. She was more intense in that moment than I had seen her in a long time, and it made my stomach churn. Victoria was always so bright and cheerful even when she was nervous, and seeing her this way was almost nauseating.

"The culprit... This is where things start to get a bit more complicated," Detective Umber chuckled. "The culprit wasn't the one who was responsible for the death of the victim. In my eyes, the victim was always the one responsible for this. I didn't know about this at the time, but... My father hired somebody to try and abduct a member of your agency. That was when the killer arrived and fought the assailant off, resulting in the latter dying. It was out of self-defense, but... As soon as I realized what had happened, I... I didn't know what to say. It was all terrible."

"You're going to have to go into more detail about that case in particular," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke commented, his eyes narrowing. "But for the time being, I think that you should tell us exactly how he's managed to hide from us all this time. How has he been able to slip under the radar without being detected? There has to be a method that this man has been utilizing to hide the truth from all of us."

Detective Umber nodded. "As a matter of fact, that is true. He's been going by a false name for quite some time to keep from being found out, and... I'm assuming that you're going to want to hear about this. It's quite the shock though, so I would suggest holding onto something before I say it." She let out a nervous chuckle before shaking her head, starting to fidget with the edges of her hair to keep herself from completely losing herself to nerves.

She continued a moment later after she had managed to gather her courage, and she let out a small sigh. "The culprit is Cade Green, otherwise known as Carson Rinko. He was once the head of Interpol, but he has since retreated into hiding. The cover that he has been using to keep from being discovered is a false identity... And the name of that alias is... Collack Strann."

Surprise! Plot twist! This book does have an overarching plot!

-Digital