TITLE: "Motion to Deactivate" Chapter Six -- Witness for Prosecution
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Tensions on all fronts begin to mount as Declan presents his next two witnesses...
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "The Animatrix: Second Renaissence, Part I", its characters, concepts, imagery or other indicia which belong to the Wachowski Brothers, RedPill Productions, Warner Brothers, et al. Nor do I own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: Another delayed chapter, I'm afraid! Part of the problem was the way this chapter wrote itself. One scene came out in fragments and I had to figure out how to put them together; writing is a lot like making a movie, some times you just can't create the scenes consequetively from start to finish, much as you'd like to. I actually have two different ending scenes for this already drafted (one ending for the fanfic version, the other for the straight robot novel version).
* * * * * * * *
Chapter Six -- Witness for Prosecution
The phone in the kitchen rang while they were having breakfast. Sabrina got up to answer it, thinking out loud that it might be one of her customers calling with a complaint or a request.
Declan, who was standing and reading the newspaper while he waited for his toast to pop up, reached for it. "Let me take it," he said, and picked up the phone.
On the other end of the line he heard nothing for a moment. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing just offline.
"Metal-lover," a male voice muttered. Then the line cut out.
Declan set the receiver back on the phone.
"Now who was that?" Sabrina asked.
Declan's toast popped up. "Someone must have been angry with their employer and they were too unfocussed to dial the phone right," he said. But he could tell by the look in his wife's eyes that she suspected something.
* * * * * * * *
"Hey, Declan," Wilson called out, sticking his head around the open door of Declan's office.
Declan looked up from reading over his snail mail. "Hey, what?"
"I got some good news and some bad news about those emails you been gettin'."
Declan pushed back his chair. "All right, let's hear it."
"Well, the good news is, I traced it to an online account. The bad news is, it seems to be an anonymous account, like someone made up a phony name and address to disguise him-herself."
"All right, were you able to trace the IP address?"
"Yeah, I scanned that next: they're coming from a public access computer at the library in Amherst, which brings us back to square one... almost. I'm gonna check with the library's access log, see who was on what computer when. That might give me a better lead."
"I suspect they might have figured out that we're scanning them: I stopped getting emails, but I've started getting crank calls. At home."
"Uh oh, those can be worse."
"I know. They called this morning during breakfast."
"Ouch! Well, I got a friend who could trace the call for you," Wilson said. "Did they say anything that might clue you in?"
"The first call, all I got was a lot of heavy breathing, but the one this morning... someone grumbled 'Metal-lover' and hung up. This isn't the first time I've gotten threats before."
"Does Sabrina know about this? the emails, the calls?"
"I keep it from her. I don't want her and Cecie to worry about me. They got enough trouble right now: the media has been buzzing our house."
"Oh yeah, I saw that on the news. 'The Executive District Attorney and his family were unavailible for comment'," Wilson said in a mock news-anchor voice.
"I've gone on media black-out; Sabrina doesn't watch much TV anyway, so we don't mind."
"Good idea, but I'm afraid you're gonna feel the ill-effects anyway," Wilson warned.
"I'm prepared for it," Declan said.
"Oh yeah, that kid-reporter who keeps writing about you: Sweets or something."
"You mean Sweitz? He's a good young man, just tells it as he hears it, plain and simple."
"Only this case ain't so simple," Wilson said.
"No," Declan replied, agreeing.
* * * * * * * *
"So when you examined the defendent, did you find anything unusual about him?" Declan asked his second witness, Zeke Castleroux, one of the Cybertronics technicians who'd been on the collection crew at the Varritecks' house.
Castleroux pushed his glassed further up the bridge of his lean nose. "We were unable to run a complete scan on the subject, but I had the logs from a scan just four months before the incident. They showed nothing unusual. For a unit as old as this and near complete obsolesence."
"Did you scan his memory cube?"
"No, we didn't get a chance to do this, and it isn't usually done during deactivations particularly when the unit is to be deactivated for mechanical reasons, unless the owner or contractor requests it. According to the owner-contractors, the unit was fully functional but maintaining him had become burdensome since replacement parts for this model are no longer in production."
"So, what exactly happened when the defendant entered the Varritecks' living room?"
"We, the crew and I, were preparing to restraint chair in order to transport the unit, when Mr. Varriteck entered with the B1 unit. He asked the unit why it had taken it so long to finish raking the yard; the unit replied that it detected a faulty actuator in it's left hip, which made walking difficult for it. Mr Varriteck explained to the crew that he had tried to obtain an new actuator but was unable to do so. Mrs. Varriteck asked if the newer models of serving men ever had this kind of trouble and how easy was it to obtain replacement parts. We replied that the actuators on newer units were considerably smaller and much more standardized."
"And what was the defendant's reaction to this discussion?"
"The unit was unresponsive, not in a sense that it was unfunctional, but in a sense that it was clearly process the words being said about it. In fact, it asked Mr Varriteck what was going on and why there was a technical crew in the house since he had only had a service inspection four months before. At that point, Mr. Varriteck asked if the crew could step outside for a moment while he explained the situation to the unit. We thought it was an odd request, but we needed to bring in another box of equipment from our transport."
"And what did you do after that?"
Castleroux adjusted his glasses again. "Mr. Varriteck had said that he and his wife would step outside and tell us when the unit was ready. Fifteen minutes passed, but no one came out. We were just about to go up to the house, when the Varritecks' son Damon drove into the yard. He let us into the house using his passkey, since the house's alarm system was armed. We entered by way of the front entryway, stepping through the dining room into the living room where we had left the Varritecks... We found the restraint chair mangled..." Castleroux paused and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. "And over by the couch, we saw the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Varriteck."
"Is it possible that the defendant could have done this? Are there any other instances where another droid of the same make killed or injured anyone?"
"No. The B1 series has been consistently reliable and blameless. There was one instance when a B1 unit fled from its owners home, when the owner tried to have it deactivated, but no B1 unit has ever harmed an Orga before this incident."
"Do you think the defendant could have killed the Varritecks?"
Ms. Te had been quiet through the proceedings, but now she spoke up. "Objection: relevance and speculation!"
"Overruled. Please rephrase the question, Mr. Martin," Judge Wendell ordered.
"Considering the Three Laws prompts that are part of all robots basic programming, is it possible for a B1 unit to override these prompts and harm a human?"
There, he thought, that should hold Ms. Te, although he had to admit to himself that the question was as jargon-heavy as Castleroux's answers.
Castleroux hitched his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "That's a rather peculiar question, but it does have some bearing on this case. To put it colloquially, some older androids as they near obsolescence, not jus the B1 series but other models as well, have been known to... get funny."
"Could you please elaborate on this?"
"Gladly. Most artilects are capable of learning in an intellectual sense: they can memorize recipes or newspaper items verbatim from reading them through one time. But a few seem to learn behavioral prompts from the Orga families and individuals they associate with. Granted, these can be programmed into an artilect, and they are standard on all Mechas in order to make them seem more human. But they were not programmed into most older models, and certainly not service droids like the B1 series, which were intended solely to be general workers, albeit with a variety of servic options. You once found B1 units in everything from hotel service to sanitation to construction crews.
"But there have been reports of B1 units, the few that are extant and still serve as household help, manifesting... emotions. Not just emotional emulation, such as you find standard on Mechas, but proto-emotional responses. We have a report of a B1 unit owned by a Brazillian family living in Chicago which showed genuine distress over the terrorist attacks in Brazil City last year -- the family that owned this unit had friends and relatives there. A manager of a family-owned restaurant in Colorado Springs reports that a B1 unit that worked in the kitchen showed genuine joy when the manager's granddaughter was born."
"But how does this relate to the present case?" Judge Wendell asked.
"I am just getting to that, your honor," Castleroux replied. The tech paused, collecting his thoughts. "Getting back to the case of the B1 unit that ran away from its owners: that one manifested distress at being told of its impending deactivation and literally ran from the house. When Rogue Retrieval picked it up several hours later, it tried to run away again and even tried to fight off the Retrieval agents."
"Nothing further," Declan said. This guy's so thorough, will Ms. Te have anything to ask him? he wondered.
But as he thought this and settled himself in his seat, Ms Te rose from her bench and appraoched the witness stand.
"Returning to what happened at the Varriteck house the day of the incident, did you see anyone approach the house? Anyone who looked suspicious?"
"No, we saw no one."
"You were at the front of the house. Is it possible someone could have entered from the rear entrance?"
"It is possible that someone could have approached from the rear, but they would have been unable to enter."
"And why is that?"
"The droid would have prevented them from entering. It is equipped with a direct interface with the alarm system on the house, and the house was armed at that point."
"If someone had tried to enter the house, what would have happened?"
"If it was an intruder, the droid would have notified the police via a self-contained cellular link, and it would have approached the intruder and put them out. That is why serving men are equipped with high strength regulators."
"Now, getting back to what you said... You say some B1 units have manifested emotional responses?" she asked.
"Yes, we have dozens of these incidents documented. Dr. Allen Hobby himself has taken an interest in them as part of his research toward developing self-motivated reasoning parameters."
"Have any B1 units taken drastic measures to defend themselves when they were attacked or threatened?"
Castleroux wagged his head. "There have been a few cases, but they aren't coming to mind. ...No, there was one case. B1-51-TH grabbed the arm of its owner when the man was about to beat his wife, a thing he unfortunately was in the habit of doing. The man hit the unit in the face, breaking an optical receiver; the unit responded by pinning the man's hands to a wall while the man's wife called the police."
"Have any B1 units -- or any other droids or Mechas for that matter -- ever claimed self-defense if they harmed an Orga?"
"No. No other B1 unit has ever resorted to such extreme measures to protect its existence."
At that point, a courtroom page entered, approached the balliff and conferred with him in an undertone for a moment. The balliff approached Declan. "There's a phone call for you from St. John Bosco Catholic High School. You want to take it, Mr. Martin?"
"Yes, just give me a moment to request a recess."
"Nothing further," Ms. Te said, turning away from the witness. Even in his distracted state of mind, Declan could hardly help noticing the note of irritation in his voice.
"Prosecution requests a recess for personal matters," Declan said.
"In which case, this court is adjourned untill tomorrow at nine a.m.," Judge Wendell announced.
* * * * * * * *
Declan had the call patched through to his cellphone; the school principal, Sister Teresia Benedict was on the line.
"I hate to disturb you while you're working, Mr. Martin, since I know you're in the middle of a very important case, but Cecie's gotten into some trouble."
The sound of that made his stomach cringe. "What kind of trouble?"
"She got into a fight with two boys. She claims she was acting in self-defense. Could you please come to the school to help us sort this out?"
"Court's adjourned for the day; I'll be right over," Declan said.
As he hung up, he caught sight of Glynnis waiting for him several paces away.
"Trouble at home?" she asked.
"No, it's at Cecie's school. She got into a fight, but she's claiming she was defending herself."
A humorless smirk passed over Glynnis's face. "How much you wanna bet it has something to do with this case?"
"I'd take you up on it, but I'm not a betting man," Declan replied, heading out and hailing a cab.
* * * * * * * *
He found Cecie in the principal's office, sitting on a plain wooden chair, her hair mussed and dirty, her eyes blazing. A bruise showed on her neck and the pits of someone's teeth dented the skin of her wrist.
"What happened?" Declan asked.
"She got into a fight with two boys," Sister Imelda, the principal, explained. "She dislocated the arm of one and knocked the other unconscious."
"What do you have to say for yourself, young woman?" Declan asked his daughter.
Cecie looked up at him out of the corner of her eye then raised her head. "You gonna cross-examine me?"
"Just tell me what happened."
She breathed audibly, an annoyed sound. "It was the Murphree twins, you know, the pair that got kept back twice?"
He knew the Murphree twins well: their father had been caught selling firearms without a license and the family was known to have ties with the Irish Mob in Cambridge. "So what did they do?"
She pushed her hair out of her face. "First they were just pushing me around when I was coming back from gym class. I tried to avoid them, but they grabbed me and backed me into a corner. Tim tried to choke me, but I punched him in the temples and knocked him out. So Ted tried to punch me in the face, so I grabbed his arm and twisted it."
Both techniques Cecie had learned in the self-defense classes Declan had enrolled Cecie in last year, when she passed through her menarche. It was the least he could do to give her a sense of security and he'd hoped she never had to use it.
"At least you stopped them from doing worse things to you," he said. He took her by the shoulder and lead her out.
Self defense....
* * * * * * * *
"You seem quiet," Sabrina said as she and Declan washed the dishes much later, after supper, while Cecie was upstairs finishing her homework. "Does it have anything to do with the trial or with Cecie's trouble at school?"
He wiped a plate dry in slow, easy circles. "It's a little of both," he admitted. "She acted in self-defense. I saw the Murphree boys myself: I doubt their injuries were self-inflicted, nor were Cecies' bruises."
"Deck, we're talking about our daughter," she cut in, looking him in the eye.
He set the plate in the drying rack and leaned the heels of his hands on the sink ledge. "I questioned the Murphrees about what happened. Turns out they were teasing her about this case I've taken... They evaded the question, but Cecie tells me they asked if I mess around with lover-Mechas, that's how the fight escalated. But she was acting in self-defense... just like the defendant in the case that started all this trouble for us."
Sabrina blotted her hands dry and took Declan by the shoulders, turning him to face her. "But that droid is different from our daughter. She has a soul; she has emotions. You know how aggressive she can be."
"But they both have minds and logic. They can both choose to defend themselves or to find some other means to escape. They both could have chosen othe options. Only in this case her conditioning and her personality caused her to choose differently."
Conditioning... Was there something in B1-66-ER that caused the droid to make the choice it had made? He would have to pursue that, but now was certainly not the time...
* * * * * * * *
"How would you describe your parents' relationship toward B1-66-ER?" Declan asked.
Damon Varriteck shrugged his shoulders. "How do you describe your relationship to your vacuum cleaner or to your garbage disposal or your telephone? He was a machine. He cleaned the house, washed the dishes, kept the yard clear of leaves and the lawn mowed. He did those million and one things that eat up our precious time."
"So he was a labor-saving device," Declan said.
"Objection: rephrase as a question," Ms. Te called out.
Declan turned his statement over in his head. "Was he ever more than a mere labor-saving device?"
Rolling his eyes, Damon emitted a low sigh of barely veiled annoyance. "He was just a beat-up machine that scrubbed the toilet. God, it cost more to maintain him than it would to pay full wages to an Orga servant. That thing belonged in a museum, not working in someone's house!"
"Does this mean you viewed the defendant as a machine, not as an individual?"
"Yes. My dad really hated it when the MIT Bill went through when I was a kid and he had to start paying that thing wages."
"Did your father resent the defendant?"
"He couldn't stand hearing that thing creaking around the house and he hated having to scrounge around on E-Bay for replacement parts. I was going to help them out when they bought the new model my mother wanted."
"How did your father treat the defendant?"
"What do you mean?"
"Was your father a strict employer, or did he try to establish some rapport with the defendant?"
"It's pretty hard to treat something like that as if it were part of the family. I mean, look at it: it's got a face that would stop a clock. It's not even a face!"
B1-66-ER raised its face, turning toward the witness stand. Declan thought he saw something like confusion in the way the droid tilted its head.
"Excuse me, Mr. Varriteck, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury," Hammurabi spoke up. "But may I make a suggestion?"
"You may," Judge Wendell said.
"I sense that he is becoming stressed, and though his emotions after the tragedy that befell his family are understandable, they may be tainting his testimony and his ability to present it."
"Listen, whatever you have to say, machine-voice, I'm not interested!" Damon cried.
"I think Juror 12 has a good point. This court will recess for thirty minutes. During this time, Mr. Varriteck, I strongly suggest that you find some non-chemical way to relieve your obvious distress. We are well aware that you are still grieving the deaths of your parents, but your grief is hurting yourself and your case," Judge Wendell announced. "Court recessed. Mr. Martin, I'll see you in my chambers."
Damon looked annoyed. Ms. Te's brow constricted with worry. Declan himself had had reservations about admitting Damon as a witness, but he had been there the day of the murder and he knew what had led up to that day. He followed the balliff and Judge Wendell into the judge's chambers.
Judge Wendell unbuttoned the top of her black robes, uncovering the neck of a soft pink silk blouse. "I'm concerned, Mr. Martin: your witness is becoming incendiary and his statements may taint the jury."
"He's an angry young man who lost his parents," Declan said. "But he was there when the bodies of his parents were found and when the police took the droid into custody. He has some idea of what happened."
"But his anger is poisoning his testimony," Judge Wendell pointed out.
"Please, give me a few moments with him. Maybe I can convince him to cut back on the inflammatory words."
She refastened the neck of her robes. "All right, but if he can't calm down, his testimony is void." The look in Judge Wendell's eye brooked no objection.
Declan caught up with Damon in the men's room, where he found the young man drying his face on a paper towel.
"Are you all right, Damon?" he asked.
"I'll pull through, it isn't easy, though," the younger man replied.
"I can imagine. ...I hate to put it this way, but your anger is messing up your testimony and it may get stricken from the record."
"Look, I'm doing my best out there. If you think this is easy for me, you're wrong," Damon snapped.
"I understand. It's not easy for me, handling cases like this day in and day out."
"Just do your job. Just put that thing where it belongs."
"Like I've told you, I'm only presenting the State's side of the case. What ultimately happens to the droid is for the jury to decide. But in order for them to do that, they have to know as much of what happened and why as we can piece together. As much as you know. Just the facts."
Damon listened, breathing deeply, his nostrils flared a little. Then they relaxed. "All right. I think I can handle this."
"I hope you can. I'm almost finished with you. But next you'll have to answer defense's questions. And Ms. Te has ties with the CRF. She's going to try everything she can to make you angry, so it looks like your parents may have been to blame for what happened."
"She should know better! She wasn't there. She saw the tape from the security camera, just like everyone else."
"She knows that. But she's a lawyer. She'll do everything she can to keep her client from ending up behind bars or being dismantled."
"That's what he deserves, dammit!"
Declan paused, drawing in a long breath to clear his head, letting the air circulate through his nasal passages and deep down into his chest and upper abdomen. He let the air out slowly between his lips. "Damon, what would you do if an Orga had killed your family?"
Damon shrugged. "Put him on trial."
"And what if he plead that he acted in self-defense?"
"He'd have to give proof: it's not like my parents were trying to beat him to death and he had to fight them off."
"That's true..."
"Listen: are you working for or against me, because right now you sound like you feel sorry for that thing."
"I'm only trying to figure out what happened, why B1-66-ER acted as he did." Declan looked at his watch. Their time was almost up. "Now... we have to go back in there. I want you to try to remain calm. If you feel yourself getting excited, I want you to stop and breathe in deeply, hold the breath for five counts and then let it out, count to ten, whatever it takes to help you keep your cool."
Damon nodded. "I'll try that."
They went out together, returning to the courtroom.
* * * * * * * *
"Were you present when your parents decided to have the defendant shut down?" Declan asked.
"Yes, he discussed it with my mother and I at the dinner table about a month before ... the incident," Damon replied.
"Was the defendant present?"
"No, he was washing dishes the way he always did while we were eating."
"Was there anyway the defendant could have overheard your conversation?"
"No, there's a sunroom and a short hallway in between the kitchen and the dining room. He has good hearing, but I doubt he could have heard us from that distance."
"Where were you on the afternoon of the incident?"
"I'd gone out for the day. I had a business appointment with a client, a woman from Orleans Amusments about a design for a half-grav rollercoaster. After that, I went straight home, about three that afternoon."
"Did you know your parents were going to have the defendant deactivated that day?"
"Yes, I was going home to help them if they needed it, but I got stuck in traffic on I 90: a truck rolled over and there was a traffic jam on the Pike, so I was late getting home."
"And when you got home, what did you find?"
"I met the service crew from Cybertronics, waiting on our driveway. They told me they had stepped outside for a little while, when my father asked them to give him a minute to explain the situation to B1. but they'd heard nothing since. They told me they'd been out there for fifteen minutes. I had a passkey, so I bypassed the security system and let them in, by the front door."
"And what did you find inside the house?"
Damon licked his lips. His breath caught in his throat. He looked away for a moment, then turned back. "It was too quiet. I didn't hear any voices or anything. I asked the crew where they'd last been. They told me they'd been in the living room..." Damon paused. "So we went there.... and that's when we found my parents' bodies... lying there... there was blood all over the place..."
"What happened next?"
"I didn't know what to do. One of the crew called the police. Then I realized that... that robot must have done it, who else could be that strong? What else could have crushed my mother's head like that?"
"So when the police came, what happened?"
"While the crime scene people and the... people from the coroner's office were in the living room, the police started looking through the house. First they found blood in the drain of the bathroom sink. Then I lead them upstairs to the second floor... where we found that droid trying to sneak out by the back staircase. He tried stepping past the police, so they zapped him with some kind of electrical gun, like a stun gun for droids, they said. They told me what it was, but I don't remember the name."
"Nothing further," Declan said, stepping down.
Ms. Te stood up. "Before I begin cross-examining you, Mr. Varriteck, I just want you to know that you have my deepest sympathy. I never knew my father and my mother passed away just a year ago in a boating accident, so I know a little of what you must be going through.
"Now... What's this I ran across about your father's gambling debts?"
Damon's brow furrowed. "Hunh? What's that got to do with anything? My father's been in Gambler's Anonymous for twelve years now, ever since we nearly lost the house because of his debts. What are you getting at?"
"Does your father have any enemies? Anyone he still owes money to? Any loan sharks or anyone else who might happen to own a similar droid?"
"No. We had to declare bankruptcy, but we're better off than we were when he hit bottom. And besides that, we were the only people in the area who still had a droid that old. Everyone we know has a Mecha."
"I see. ... It occured to me, as I was preparing for this case, that someone who wanted your family dead might have planted another droid in the house, optimized with assassin skill chips."
Something rustled in the press gallery. Someone emitted a low, hyena-like hoot of laughter.
"SSSSHHHHH!" someone who decidedly sounded like Sweitz hissed. The hyena laugh stopped.
Damon rolled his eyes.
"Objection: defense is clearly offering a futile argument!"
"Sustained. Nice detail for a murder mystery, but keep to the matter at hand, Ms. Te," Judge Wendell ordered.
"Nothing further," Ms. Te replied. She turned away from the witness box, her face drawn, her eyes a little glazed.
* * * * * * * *
Once the session had adjourned for the day, Declan and Glynnis left the courthouse by way of a back entrance and headed for a small pub nearby, to escape the press. Declan ordered a glass of non-alcoholic white wine, while Glynnis asked for some water.
As they sat there at the bar, the two young reporters entered and sat down beside them. At the same moment, Declan looked up into the mirror on the wall behind the bar, and noticed a shadowy reflection of Ms. Te sitting at a table in the back.
"Hey, can y' send a bunch of drinking straws to the Asian-lady lawyer with the secretary Mecha in the back?" McGeever asked the bartender.
The tall, beefy man behind the counter looked down at McGeever. "Why? Whatcha gettin' at?"
"So she can grasp at 'em, of course!" McGeever said, making groping motions with his hands, his eye on Ms. Te's reflection.
Declan had to laugh at this, which revived his spirit almost more than the wine. Glynnis, sandwiched between Declan and McGeever, rolled her eyes and focused her attention on her glass.
McGeever eyed the side of Glynnis's head. "What, y' didn't think that's funny?"
Glynnis did not turn to McGeever as she spoke. "I'm feeling bad for her: she's trying so hard to win this case, she's hurting herself and her client."
"Hey, that's one very, very good way to put it," Frank said, fumbling in his pockets for his notebook. He found it and jotted something on the first clean page he came to. "You mind if I quote you on that?"
Glynnis smiled wanly. "You can have the quote, just don't give me credit for it. Don't even insinuate that I said it."
Frank gave her a grateful smile, a boyish blush passing over his cheeks. "Oh? Oh, thanks."
"So the case is falling into your lap, eh?" McGeever said, looking over Glynnis's shoulders at Declan.
"I wouldn't say that," Declan said. "Ms. Te has to call in her witnesses: one of them is the next door neighbor, Marvyn Kunz, but I'm not sure about the other: she made mention of calling in an expert in the field of robotics, but she said security didn't put her at liberty to give out his name.
"My goodness, who's in robotics that would require that kind of security?" Frank asked.
"Ooh, the drama continues!" McGeever said, grinning over his vodka. "A mystery star witness!"
Frank put his notebook back into his pocket. "Now, there was one thing I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Martin," he said. "I'd heard talk that that there was some... trouble at home for you."
"Actually there was," Declan said. "Because of all the news hype, my daughter was teased by some of her classmates, including two boys who tried to beat her up."
"Oh, that's terrible! Has this happened before?"
"She's had other kids tease her on account of a case I was handling before, but she goes to a Catholic high school with a very strict 'No Bullying' policy. This is the first time it's ever escalated into something like this. But I saw to it that she knows how to defend herself. When she was eleven, I put her in martial arts training to help her learn self-discipline... and how to defend herself."
"It works both ways," Frank said.
"My worst concern is that in this case, it may have backfired and she took it too far," Declan added.
"So, how are you handling this?"
"The school has a homeschool program, so if need be, we'll take her out and my wife will teach her at home until this blows over."
"Is that a good idea though? She'll be away from her friends," Glynnis said.
"Well, for one thing, she's admitted she's one of the school 'geeks', and for another thing, she told me herself she feels like she has more enemies than friends there right now," Declan said.
"Poor kid," Frank said.
Declan looked up into the mirror: he noticed some of the news crew had discreetly slipped into the back and were now talking to Ms. Te. "I know," he said.
* * * * * * * *
When he got home that night, he found Sabrina waiting for him at the door, her eyes serious, her arms folded across her chest and her shoulders hunched slightly as if she were cold.
"Sabby, what's wrong?" he asked, setting down his briefcase and putting his hands on her shoulders.
"I think we need to change the phone number again," she said.
Those crank calls, he thought. "What happened?"
"About ten minutes ago, the phone rang. I thought it was you calling, or a customer I was expecting to call back, but... there was a man's voice on the other end of the line."
Declan slid his hands from her shoulders down to her arms. "What did he say?"
She bit her lip. "He... he asked if that 'tin... hugger' was there, or if I was messing with some lover-Mecha while you were gone."
Her arms loosened then and she clung to him.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"I hung up. It was all I could do."
"Does Cecie know?"
"No. She's been upstairs in her room, working on her homework. She's got enough worries on her hands right now," Sabrina replied.
He felt his stomach tighten at that. "Why, what happened?"
Sabrina sighed. "Reporters were at the school, looking for her. Sister Rose, her homeroom teacher called me. I went there right away and took her home.... But I think they followed us."
Declan ground his teeth, angered. "Dammit," he muttered. "I think we'd better take her out of school for a while."
"I think we should have done that a little sooner," Sabrina said. She let him go and reached for a newspaper lying on the telephone table. She held it out to him without looking at it.
The pages had been folded back to an item under "Local News".
"DA Martin's Daughter Involved in School Fight."
"Oh God, no!" he muttered, throwing down the paper. They could publish what they wanted about him, but why her?
Sabrina had divined his thoughts. "Don't worry," she said. "I sent an email to the editor, setting the story right."
Why did I ever agree to this case, Declan thought.
To Be Continued....
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Tensions on all fronts begin to mount as Declan presents his next two witnesses...
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "The Animatrix: Second Renaissence, Part I", its characters, concepts, imagery or other indicia which belong to the Wachowski Brothers, RedPill Productions, Warner Brothers, et al. Nor do I own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: Another delayed chapter, I'm afraid! Part of the problem was the way this chapter wrote itself. One scene came out in fragments and I had to figure out how to put them together; writing is a lot like making a movie, some times you just can't create the scenes consequetively from start to finish, much as you'd like to. I actually have two different ending scenes for this already drafted (one ending for the fanfic version, the other for the straight robot novel version).
* * * * * * * *
Chapter Six -- Witness for Prosecution
The phone in the kitchen rang while they were having breakfast. Sabrina got up to answer it, thinking out loud that it might be one of her customers calling with a complaint or a request.
Declan, who was standing and reading the newspaper while he waited for his toast to pop up, reached for it. "Let me take it," he said, and picked up the phone.
On the other end of the line he heard nothing for a moment. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing just offline.
"Metal-lover," a male voice muttered. Then the line cut out.
Declan set the receiver back on the phone.
"Now who was that?" Sabrina asked.
Declan's toast popped up. "Someone must have been angry with their employer and they were too unfocussed to dial the phone right," he said. But he could tell by the look in his wife's eyes that she suspected something.
* * * * * * * *
"Hey, Declan," Wilson called out, sticking his head around the open door of Declan's office.
Declan looked up from reading over his snail mail. "Hey, what?"
"I got some good news and some bad news about those emails you been gettin'."
Declan pushed back his chair. "All right, let's hear it."
"Well, the good news is, I traced it to an online account. The bad news is, it seems to be an anonymous account, like someone made up a phony name and address to disguise him-herself."
"All right, were you able to trace the IP address?"
"Yeah, I scanned that next: they're coming from a public access computer at the library in Amherst, which brings us back to square one... almost. I'm gonna check with the library's access log, see who was on what computer when. That might give me a better lead."
"I suspect they might have figured out that we're scanning them: I stopped getting emails, but I've started getting crank calls. At home."
"Uh oh, those can be worse."
"I know. They called this morning during breakfast."
"Ouch! Well, I got a friend who could trace the call for you," Wilson said. "Did they say anything that might clue you in?"
"The first call, all I got was a lot of heavy breathing, but the one this morning... someone grumbled 'Metal-lover' and hung up. This isn't the first time I've gotten threats before."
"Does Sabrina know about this? the emails, the calls?"
"I keep it from her. I don't want her and Cecie to worry about me. They got enough trouble right now: the media has been buzzing our house."
"Oh yeah, I saw that on the news. 'The Executive District Attorney and his family were unavailible for comment'," Wilson said in a mock news-anchor voice.
"I've gone on media black-out; Sabrina doesn't watch much TV anyway, so we don't mind."
"Good idea, but I'm afraid you're gonna feel the ill-effects anyway," Wilson warned.
"I'm prepared for it," Declan said.
"Oh yeah, that kid-reporter who keeps writing about you: Sweets or something."
"You mean Sweitz? He's a good young man, just tells it as he hears it, plain and simple."
"Only this case ain't so simple," Wilson said.
"No," Declan replied, agreeing.
* * * * * * * *
"So when you examined the defendent, did you find anything unusual about him?" Declan asked his second witness, Zeke Castleroux, one of the Cybertronics technicians who'd been on the collection crew at the Varritecks' house.
Castleroux pushed his glassed further up the bridge of his lean nose. "We were unable to run a complete scan on the subject, but I had the logs from a scan just four months before the incident. They showed nothing unusual. For a unit as old as this and near complete obsolesence."
"Did you scan his memory cube?"
"No, we didn't get a chance to do this, and it isn't usually done during deactivations particularly when the unit is to be deactivated for mechanical reasons, unless the owner or contractor requests it. According to the owner-contractors, the unit was fully functional but maintaining him had become burdensome since replacement parts for this model are no longer in production."
"So, what exactly happened when the defendant entered the Varritecks' living room?"
"We, the crew and I, were preparing to restraint chair in order to transport the unit, when Mr. Varriteck entered with the B1 unit. He asked the unit why it had taken it so long to finish raking the yard; the unit replied that it detected a faulty actuator in it's left hip, which made walking difficult for it. Mr Varriteck explained to the crew that he had tried to obtain an new actuator but was unable to do so. Mrs. Varriteck asked if the newer models of serving men ever had this kind of trouble and how easy was it to obtain replacement parts. We replied that the actuators on newer units were considerably smaller and much more standardized."
"And what was the defendant's reaction to this discussion?"
"The unit was unresponsive, not in a sense that it was unfunctional, but in a sense that it was clearly process the words being said about it. In fact, it asked Mr Varriteck what was going on and why there was a technical crew in the house since he had only had a service inspection four months before. At that point, Mr. Varriteck asked if the crew could step outside for a moment while he explained the situation to the unit. We thought it was an odd request, but we needed to bring in another box of equipment from our transport."
"And what did you do after that?"
Castleroux adjusted his glasses again. "Mr. Varriteck had said that he and his wife would step outside and tell us when the unit was ready. Fifteen minutes passed, but no one came out. We were just about to go up to the house, when the Varritecks' son Damon drove into the yard. He let us into the house using his passkey, since the house's alarm system was armed. We entered by way of the front entryway, stepping through the dining room into the living room where we had left the Varritecks... We found the restraint chair mangled..." Castleroux paused and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. "And over by the couch, we saw the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Varriteck."
"Is it possible that the defendant could have done this? Are there any other instances where another droid of the same make killed or injured anyone?"
"No. The B1 series has been consistently reliable and blameless. There was one instance when a B1 unit fled from its owners home, when the owner tried to have it deactivated, but no B1 unit has ever harmed an Orga before this incident."
"Do you think the defendant could have killed the Varritecks?"
Ms. Te had been quiet through the proceedings, but now she spoke up. "Objection: relevance and speculation!"
"Overruled. Please rephrase the question, Mr. Martin," Judge Wendell ordered.
"Considering the Three Laws prompts that are part of all robots basic programming, is it possible for a B1 unit to override these prompts and harm a human?"
There, he thought, that should hold Ms. Te, although he had to admit to himself that the question was as jargon-heavy as Castleroux's answers.
Castleroux hitched his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "That's a rather peculiar question, but it does have some bearing on this case. To put it colloquially, some older androids as they near obsolescence, not jus the B1 series but other models as well, have been known to... get funny."
"Could you please elaborate on this?"
"Gladly. Most artilects are capable of learning in an intellectual sense: they can memorize recipes or newspaper items verbatim from reading them through one time. But a few seem to learn behavioral prompts from the Orga families and individuals they associate with. Granted, these can be programmed into an artilect, and they are standard on all Mechas in order to make them seem more human. But they were not programmed into most older models, and certainly not service droids like the B1 series, which were intended solely to be general workers, albeit with a variety of servic options. You once found B1 units in everything from hotel service to sanitation to construction crews.
"But there have been reports of B1 units, the few that are extant and still serve as household help, manifesting... emotions. Not just emotional emulation, such as you find standard on Mechas, but proto-emotional responses. We have a report of a B1 unit owned by a Brazillian family living in Chicago which showed genuine distress over the terrorist attacks in Brazil City last year -- the family that owned this unit had friends and relatives there. A manager of a family-owned restaurant in Colorado Springs reports that a B1 unit that worked in the kitchen showed genuine joy when the manager's granddaughter was born."
"But how does this relate to the present case?" Judge Wendell asked.
"I am just getting to that, your honor," Castleroux replied. The tech paused, collecting his thoughts. "Getting back to the case of the B1 unit that ran away from its owners: that one manifested distress at being told of its impending deactivation and literally ran from the house. When Rogue Retrieval picked it up several hours later, it tried to run away again and even tried to fight off the Retrieval agents."
"Nothing further," Declan said. This guy's so thorough, will Ms. Te have anything to ask him? he wondered.
But as he thought this and settled himself in his seat, Ms Te rose from her bench and appraoched the witness stand.
"Returning to what happened at the Varriteck house the day of the incident, did you see anyone approach the house? Anyone who looked suspicious?"
"No, we saw no one."
"You were at the front of the house. Is it possible someone could have entered from the rear entrance?"
"It is possible that someone could have approached from the rear, but they would have been unable to enter."
"And why is that?"
"The droid would have prevented them from entering. It is equipped with a direct interface with the alarm system on the house, and the house was armed at that point."
"If someone had tried to enter the house, what would have happened?"
"If it was an intruder, the droid would have notified the police via a self-contained cellular link, and it would have approached the intruder and put them out. That is why serving men are equipped with high strength regulators."
"Now, getting back to what you said... You say some B1 units have manifested emotional responses?" she asked.
"Yes, we have dozens of these incidents documented. Dr. Allen Hobby himself has taken an interest in them as part of his research toward developing self-motivated reasoning parameters."
"Have any B1 units taken drastic measures to defend themselves when they were attacked or threatened?"
Castleroux wagged his head. "There have been a few cases, but they aren't coming to mind. ...No, there was one case. B1-51-TH grabbed the arm of its owner when the man was about to beat his wife, a thing he unfortunately was in the habit of doing. The man hit the unit in the face, breaking an optical receiver; the unit responded by pinning the man's hands to a wall while the man's wife called the police."
"Have any B1 units -- or any other droids or Mechas for that matter -- ever claimed self-defense if they harmed an Orga?"
"No. No other B1 unit has ever resorted to such extreme measures to protect its existence."
At that point, a courtroom page entered, approached the balliff and conferred with him in an undertone for a moment. The balliff approached Declan. "There's a phone call for you from St. John Bosco Catholic High School. You want to take it, Mr. Martin?"
"Yes, just give me a moment to request a recess."
"Nothing further," Ms. Te said, turning away from the witness. Even in his distracted state of mind, Declan could hardly help noticing the note of irritation in his voice.
"Prosecution requests a recess for personal matters," Declan said.
"In which case, this court is adjourned untill tomorrow at nine a.m.," Judge Wendell announced.
* * * * * * * *
Declan had the call patched through to his cellphone; the school principal, Sister Teresia Benedict was on the line.
"I hate to disturb you while you're working, Mr. Martin, since I know you're in the middle of a very important case, but Cecie's gotten into some trouble."
The sound of that made his stomach cringe. "What kind of trouble?"
"She got into a fight with two boys. She claims she was acting in self-defense. Could you please come to the school to help us sort this out?"
"Court's adjourned for the day; I'll be right over," Declan said.
As he hung up, he caught sight of Glynnis waiting for him several paces away.
"Trouble at home?" she asked.
"No, it's at Cecie's school. She got into a fight, but she's claiming she was defending herself."
A humorless smirk passed over Glynnis's face. "How much you wanna bet it has something to do with this case?"
"I'd take you up on it, but I'm not a betting man," Declan replied, heading out and hailing a cab.
* * * * * * * *
He found Cecie in the principal's office, sitting on a plain wooden chair, her hair mussed and dirty, her eyes blazing. A bruise showed on her neck and the pits of someone's teeth dented the skin of her wrist.
"What happened?" Declan asked.
"She got into a fight with two boys," Sister Imelda, the principal, explained. "She dislocated the arm of one and knocked the other unconscious."
"What do you have to say for yourself, young woman?" Declan asked his daughter.
Cecie looked up at him out of the corner of her eye then raised her head. "You gonna cross-examine me?"
"Just tell me what happened."
She breathed audibly, an annoyed sound. "It was the Murphree twins, you know, the pair that got kept back twice?"
He knew the Murphree twins well: their father had been caught selling firearms without a license and the family was known to have ties with the Irish Mob in Cambridge. "So what did they do?"
She pushed her hair out of her face. "First they were just pushing me around when I was coming back from gym class. I tried to avoid them, but they grabbed me and backed me into a corner. Tim tried to choke me, but I punched him in the temples and knocked him out. So Ted tried to punch me in the face, so I grabbed his arm and twisted it."
Both techniques Cecie had learned in the self-defense classes Declan had enrolled Cecie in last year, when she passed through her menarche. It was the least he could do to give her a sense of security and he'd hoped she never had to use it.
"At least you stopped them from doing worse things to you," he said. He took her by the shoulder and lead her out.
Self defense....
* * * * * * * *
"You seem quiet," Sabrina said as she and Declan washed the dishes much later, after supper, while Cecie was upstairs finishing her homework. "Does it have anything to do with the trial or with Cecie's trouble at school?"
He wiped a plate dry in slow, easy circles. "It's a little of both," he admitted. "She acted in self-defense. I saw the Murphree boys myself: I doubt their injuries were self-inflicted, nor were Cecies' bruises."
"Deck, we're talking about our daughter," she cut in, looking him in the eye.
He set the plate in the drying rack and leaned the heels of his hands on the sink ledge. "I questioned the Murphrees about what happened. Turns out they were teasing her about this case I've taken... They evaded the question, but Cecie tells me they asked if I mess around with lover-Mechas, that's how the fight escalated. But she was acting in self-defense... just like the defendant in the case that started all this trouble for us."
Sabrina blotted her hands dry and took Declan by the shoulders, turning him to face her. "But that droid is different from our daughter. She has a soul; she has emotions. You know how aggressive she can be."
"But they both have minds and logic. They can both choose to defend themselves or to find some other means to escape. They both could have chosen othe options. Only in this case her conditioning and her personality caused her to choose differently."
Conditioning... Was there something in B1-66-ER that caused the droid to make the choice it had made? He would have to pursue that, but now was certainly not the time...
* * * * * * * *
"How would you describe your parents' relationship toward B1-66-ER?" Declan asked.
Damon Varriteck shrugged his shoulders. "How do you describe your relationship to your vacuum cleaner or to your garbage disposal or your telephone? He was a machine. He cleaned the house, washed the dishes, kept the yard clear of leaves and the lawn mowed. He did those million and one things that eat up our precious time."
"So he was a labor-saving device," Declan said.
"Objection: rephrase as a question," Ms. Te called out.
Declan turned his statement over in his head. "Was he ever more than a mere labor-saving device?"
Rolling his eyes, Damon emitted a low sigh of barely veiled annoyance. "He was just a beat-up machine that scrubbed the toilet. God, it cost more to maintain him than it would to pay full wages to an Orga servant. That thing belonged in a museum, not working in someone's house!"
"Does this mean you viewed the defendant as a machine, not as an individual?"
"Yes. My dad really hated it when the MIT Bill went through when I was a kid and he had to start paying that thing wages."
"Did your father resent the defendant?"
"He couldn't stand hearing that thing creaking around the house and he hated having to scrounge around on E-Bay for replacement parts. I was going to help them out when they bought the new model my mother wanted."
"How did your father treat the defendant?"
"What do you mean?"
"Was your father a strict employer, or did he try to establish some rapport with the defendant?"
"It's pretty hard to treat something like that as if it were part of the family. I mean, look at it: it's got a face that would stop a clock. It's not even a face!"
B1-66-ER raised its face, turning toward the witness stand. Declan thought he saw something like confusion in the way the droid tilted its head.
"Excuse me, Mr. Varriteck, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury," Hammurabi spoke up. "But may I make a suggestion?"
"You may," Judge Wendell said.
"I sense that he is becoming stressed, and though his emotions after the tragedy that befell his family are understandable, they may be tainting his testimony and his ability to present it."
"Listen, whatever you have to say, machine-voice, I'm not interested!" Damon cried.
"I think Juror 12 has a good point. This court will recess for thirty minutes. During this time, Mr. Varriteck, I strongly suggest that you find some non-chemical way to relieve your obvious distress. We are well aware that you are still grieving the deaths of your parents, but your grief is hurting yourself and your case," Judge Wendell announced. "Court recessed. Mr. Martin, I'll see you in my chambers."
Damon looked annoyed. Ms. Te's brow constricted with worry. Declan himself had had reservations about admitting Damon as a witness, but he had been there the day of the murder and he knew what had led up to that day. He followed the balliff and Judge Wendell into the judge's chambers.
Judge Wendell unbuttoned the top of her black robes, uncovering the neck of a soft pink silk blouse. "I'm concerned, Mr. Martin: your witness is becoming incendiary and his statements may taint the jury."
"He's an angry young man who lost his parents," Declan said. "But he was there when the bodies of his parents were found and when the police took the droid into custody. He has some idea of what happened."
"But his anger is poisoning his testimony," Judge Wendell pointed out.
"Please, give me a few moments with him. Maybe I can convince him to cut back on the inflammatory words."
She refastened the neck of her robes. "All right, but if he can't calm down, his testimony is void." The look in Judge Wendell's eye brooked no objection.
Declan caught up with Damon in the men's room, where he found the young man drying his face on a paper towel.
"Are you all right, Damon?" he asked.
"I'll pull through, it isn't easy, though," the younger man replied.
"I can imagine. ...I hate to put it this way, but your anger is messing up your testimony and it may get stricken from the record."
"Look, I'm doing my best out there. If you think this is easy for me, you're wrong," Damon snapped.
"I understand. It's not easy for me, handling cases like this day in and day out."
"Just do your job. Just put that thing where it belongs."
"Like I've told you, I'm only presenting the State's side of the case. What ultimately happens to the droid is for the jury to decide. But in order for them to do that, they have to know as much of what happened and why as we can piece together. As much as you know. Just the facts."
Damon listened, breathing deeply, his nostrils flared a little. Then they relaxed. "All right. I think I can handle this."
"I hope you can. I'm almost finished with you. But next you'll have to answer defense's questions. And Ms. Te has ties with the CRF. She's going to try everything she can to make you angry, so it looks like your parents may have been to blame for what happened."
"She should know better! She wasn't there. She saw the tape from the security camera, just like everyone else."
"She knows that. But she's a lawyer. She'll do everything she can to keep her client from ending up behind bars or being dismantled."
"That's what he deserves, dammit!"
Declan paused, drawing in a long breath to clear his head, letting the air circulate through his nasal passages and deep down into his chest and upper abdomen. He let the air out slowly between his lips. "Damon, what would you do if an Orga had killed your family?"
Damon shrugged. "Put him on trial."
"And what if he plead that he acted in self-defense?"
"He'd have to give proof: it's not like my parents were trying to beat him to death and he had to fight them off."
"That's true..."
"Listen: are you working for or against me, because right now you sound like you feel sorry for that thing."
"I'm only trying to figure out what happened, why B1-66-ER acted as he did." Declan looked at his watch. Their time was almost up. "Now... we have to go back in there. I want you to try to remain calm. If you feel yourself getting excited, I want you to stop and breathe in deeply, hold the breath for five counts and then let it out, count to ten, whatever it takes to help you keep your cool."
Damon nodded. "I'll try that."
They went out together, returning to the courtroom.
* * * * * * * *
"Were you present when your parents decided to have the defendant shut down?" Declan asked.
"Yes, he discussed it with my mother and I at the dinner table about a month before ... the incident," Damon replied.
"Was the defendant present?"
"No, he was washing dishes the way he always did while we were eating."
"Was there anyway the defendant could have overheard your conversation?"
"No, there's a sunroom and a short hallway in between the kitchen and the dining room. He has good hearing, but I doubt he could have heard us from that distance."
"Where were you on the afternoon of the incident?"
"I'd gone out for the day. I had a business appointment with a client, a woman from Orleans Amusments about a design for a half-grav rollercoaster. After that, I went straight home, about three that afternoon."
"Did you know your parents were going to have the defendant deactivated that day?"
"Yes, I was going home to help them if they needed it, but I got stuck in traffic on I 90: a truck rolled over and there was a traffic jam on the Pike, so I was late getting home."
"And when you got home, what did you find?"
"I met the service crew from Cybertronics, waiting on our driveway. They told me they had stepped outside for a little while, when my father asked them to give him a minute to explain the situation to B1. but they'd heard nothing since. They told me they'd been out there for fifteen minutes. I had a passkey, so I bypassed the security system and let them in, by the front door."
"And what did you find inside the house?"
Damon licked his lips. His breath caught in his throat. He looked away for a moment, then turned back. "It was too quiet. I didn't hear any voices or anything. I asked the crew where they'd last been. They told me they'd been in the living room..." Damon paused. "So we went there.... and that's when we found my parents' bodies... lying there... there was blood all over the place..."
"What happened next?"
"I didn't know what to do. One of the crew called the police. Then I realized that... that robot must have done it, who else could be that strong? What else could have crushed my mother's head like that?"
"So when the police came, what happened?"
"While the crime scene people and the... people from the coroner's office were in the living room, the police started looking through the house. First they found blood in the drain of the bathroom sink. Then I lead them upstairs to the second floor... where we found that droid trying to sneak out by the back staircase. He tried stepping past the police, so they zapped him with some kind of electrical gun, like a stun gun for droids, they said. They told me what it was, but I don't remember the name."
"Nothing further," Declan said, stepping down.
Ms. Te stood up. "Before I begin cross-examining you, Mr. Varriteck, I just want you to know that you have my deepest sympathy. I never knew my father and my mother passed away just a year ago in a boating accident, so I know a little of what you must be going through.
"Now... What's this I ran across about your father's gambling debts?"
Damon's brow furrowed. "Hunh? What's that got to do with anything? My father's been in Gambler's Anonymous for twelve years now, ever since we nearly lost the house because of his debts. What are you getting at?"
"Does your father have any enemies? Anyone he still owes money to? Any loan sharks or anyone else who might happen to own a similar droid?"
"No. We had to declare bankruptcy, but we're better off than we were when he hit bottom. And besides that, we were the only people in the area who still had a droid that old. Everyone we know has a Mecha."
"I see. ... It occured to me, as I was preparing for this case, that someone who wanted your family dead might have planted another droid in the house, optimized with assassin skill chips."
Something rustled in the press gallery. Someone emitted a low, hyena-like hoot of laughter.
"SSSSHHHHH!" someone who decidedly sounded like Sweitz hissed. The hyena laugh stopped.
Damon rolled his eyes.
"Objection: defense is clearly offering a futile argument!"
"Sustained. Nice detail for a murder mystery, but keep to the matter at hand, Ms. Te," Judge Wendell ordered.
"Nothing further," Ms. Te replied. She turned away from the witness box, her face drawn, her eyes a little glazed.
* * * * * * * *
Once the session had adjourned for the day, Declan and Glynnis left the courthouse by way of a back entrance and headed for a small pub nearby, to escape the press. Declan ordered a glass of non-alcoholic white wine, while Glynnis asked for some water.
As they sat there at the bar, the two young reporters entered and sat down beside them. At the same moment, Declan looked up into the mirror on the wall behind the bar, and noticed a shadowy reflection of Ms. Te sitting at a table in the back.
"Hey, can y' send a bunch of drinking straws to the Asian-lady lawyer with the secretary Mecha in the back?" McGeever asked the bartender.
The tall, beefy man behind the counter looked down at McGeever. "Why? Whatcha gettin' at?"
"So she can grasp at 'em, of course!" McGeever said, making groping motions with his hands, his eye on Ms. Te's reflection.
Declan had to laugh at this, which revived his spirit almost more than the wine. Glynnis, sandwiched between Declan and McGeever, rolled her eyes and focused her attention on her glass.
McGeever eyed the side of Glynnis's head. "What, y' didn't think that's funny?"
Glynnis did not turn to McGeever as she spoke. "I'm feeling bad for her: she's trying so hard to win this case, she's hurting herself and her client."
"Hey, that's one very, very good way to put it," Frank said, fumbling in his pockets for his notebook. He found it and jotted something on the first clean page he came to. "You mind if I quote you on that?"
Glynnis smiled wanly. "You can have the quote, just don't give me credit for it. Don't even insinuate that I said it."
Frank gave her a grateful smile, a boyish blush passing over his cheeks. "Oh? Oh, thanks."
"So the case is falling into your lap, eh?" McGeever said, looking over Glynnis's shoulders at Declan.
"I wouldn't say that," Declan said. "Ms. Te has to call in her witnesses: one of them is the next door neighbor, Marvyn Kunz, but I'm not sure about the other: she made mention of calling in an expert in the field of robotics, but she said security didn't put her at liberty to give out his name.
"My goodness, who's in robotics that would require that kind of security?" Frank asked.
"Ooh, the drama continues!" McGeever said, grinning over his vodka. "A mystery star witness!"
Frank put his notebook back into his pocket. "Now, there was one thing I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Martin," he said. "I'd heard talk that that there was some... trouble at home for you."
"Actually there was," Declan said. "Because of all the news hype, my daughter was teased by some of her classmates, including two boys who tried to beat her up."
"Oh, that's terrible! Has this happened before?"
"She's had other kids tease her on account of a case I was handling before, but she goes to a Catholic high school with a very strict 'No Bullying' policy. This is the first time it's ever escalated into something like this. But I saw to it that she knows how to defend herself. When she was eleven, I put her in martial arts training to help her learn self-discipline... and how to defend herself."
"It works both ways," Frank said.
"My worst concern is that in this case, it may have backfired and she took it too far," Declan added.
"So, how are you handling this?"
"The school has a homeschool program, so if need be, we'll take her out and my wife will teach her at home until this blows over."
"Is that a good idea though? She'll be away from her friends," Glynnis said.
"Well, for one thing, she's admitted she's one of the school 'geeks', and for another thing, she told me herself she feels like she has more enemies than friends there right now," Declan said.
"Poor kid," Frank said.
Declan looked up into the mirror: he noticed some of the news crew had discreetly slipped into the back and were now talking to Ms. Te. "I know," he said.
* * * * * * * *
When he got home that night, he found Sabrina waiting for him at the door, her eyes serious, her arms folded across her chest and her shoulders hunched slightly as if she were cold.
"Sabby, what's wrong?" he asked, setting down his briefcase and putting his hands on her shoulders.
"I think we need to change the phone number again," she said.
Those crank calls, he thought. "What happened?"
"About ten minutes ago, the phone rang. I thought it was you calling, or a customer I was expecting to call back, but... there was a man's voice on the other end of the line."
Declan slid his hands from her shoulders down to her arms. "What did he say?"
She bit her lip. "He... he asked if that 'tin... hugger' was there, or if I was messing with some lover-Mecha while you were gone."
Her arms loosened then and she clung to him.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"I hung up. It was all I could do."
"Does Cecie know?"
"No. She's been upstairs in her room, working on her homework. She's got enough worries on her hands right now," Sabrina replied.
He felt his stomach tighten at that. "Why, what happened?"
Sabrina sighed. "Reporters were at the school, looking for her. Sister Rose, her homeroom teacher called me. I went there right away and took her home.... But I think they followed us."
Declan ground his teeth, angered. "Dammit," he muttered. "I think we'd better take her out of school for a while."
"I think we should have done that a little sooner," Sabrina said. She let him go and reached for a newspaper lying on the telephone table. She held it out to him without looking at it.
The pages had been folded back to an item under "Local News".
"DA Martin's Daughter Involved in School Fight."
"Oh God, no!" he muttered, throwing down the paper. They could publish what they wanted about him, but why her?
Sabrina had divined his thoughts. "Don't worry," she said. "I sent an email to the editor, setting the story right."
Why did I ever agree to this case, Declan thought.
To Be Continued....