Ends and Beginnings : Part V
Back in Boston that afternoon, Wes sat and listened as his father kept on digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself. By the time that they had all returned to the court after lunch, all of the news channels were saying the same thing; Randall Montgomery Junior had wanted his half-brother dead - all the more shocking when they considered that only a few weeks ago, he had been claiming that the young man in question was actually his son. There were certainly many more journalists trying to squeeze their way into the public gallery that afternoon, all of them hoping that Randy would say something that made him sound even more certifiable. They were not to be totally disappointed.
As Wes and Finn sat with the group of five people that could now see him, they listened in shock, but not surprise, as he moved on to direct his attack to his other brother, Albert. He was branded a traitor, a coward and a fool - and yet also somehow the architect of the entire fraud scheme, if Randy was to be believed. Randy stated that it had been all Albert's idea to burn down the restaurant in Providence; his suggestion that they should defraud the generations of people that trusted the Montgomery family name; even his suggestion that they should force all of those young women to have abortions, one after the other. It was of course a stupid line of defence, given that all the evidence had already exonerated Albert of any blame or complicity, there was a whole body of evidence which showed that he had been the victim of his elder brother's abuse for years, and the fact that he had confessed to being the sole mastermind only that morning... Still Randy persisted in the claim that all of that evidence was lies, and that everyone was conspiring against him, making him a scapegoat for their actions. The day in court ended with the judge, who had been shaking his head for much of the afternoon, instructing the lawyers to have their closing statements prepared for the following day. He also made it quite clear that Randy would not be allowed to say anymore. He had to protect the interests of justice, and he had already said more than enough to incriminate himself ten times over.
After the trial, Gabriel invited everyone to join himself and Mitch for dinner at his place. Michelle declined, as she had promised to spend the evening with her mother, and Finn also excused himself, wanting to head back just in case there was an emergency and he was needed. Wes, however, was only too happy to agree to head to the nice little place that Gabriel had in town; a part of an older house, where Mitch was now his roommate. It was decided that pizza would be ordered, and whilst they awaited its arrival, Wes found himself answering question after question about his new 'life' in heaven. He shared it all; the joys and the sadness. He told them how work and pleasure seemed to mix, and how wonderful it was to be able to fly. He promised them all that if they stayed out of trouble, they would all experience it one day, and would all be able to walk through the corridors of that heavenly Dalton, many miles away. They all came to only one conclusion; however long it took, however much they suffered in the meantime, it would all be worth it to be able to join the ranks of the Warblers in heaven. When Kurt and Blaine arrived later that evening, the happiness of the four former Warblers was complete; the knowledge that they had angels looking out for them was comforting indeed.
Thursday came, and with it different things for everyone. Whilst some where heading to there final exams in Princeton and Washington, Mike was to be found packing up his belongings in boxes in his room in the short time that he had that morning before he had to head over to the Lincoln Center to be formally introduced as the newest member of the corps du ballet, both to his fellow dancers and the media. There would be a photo shoot, and to that end, he had arranged to call in at his usual barber on the way, and would take a change of clothes with him. He had realised as he had made the appointment that it might be the last time that he went there, as he would be faced with a long journey back from Manhattan if he chose to still go there. He knew that the move would be worth it though, and he kept that thought in his head as he packed his clothes neatly away into his case. He would have a new space to rehearse in after all, and it was almost perfect…
In the kitchen, Nick was sorting through all of the utensils, deciding which he would not need over the next few days, and packing them away in a box with care. There was so much that needed to be done, and so little time to do it in. They had contacted movers, and they were due to call for a quick assessment of the scale of the job later that morning. Getting them in without their neighbours across the landing seeing them would be a logistical challenge, but vital if they did not want to face too many awkward questions. He had discussed the subject with Mike and Jeff that morning, and they had resolved that the best course of action was to go for half lie, half truth. They would admit that they were moving, and had found a new place. They would however say that it was in the Bronx, which given what they knew about their budget seemed much more likely than the West Village. The hard part would be in sustaining that lie in the face of the intense questioning they would get from Santana…
As for Jeff, he was at work, putting in a double shift at the Spotlight to cover for Mike having to go and meet the people, so to speak. It was proving difficult as Elliott kept smiling broadly at him; he had even winked on one occasion, and as a result, people were starting to get suspicious about what they were up to. He knew that the easiest thing to do would be to just come out with the truth, but he had promised Nick and himself that he would say nothing until Saturday. His only hope was that Artie would not come in, because then the tension of having two people smiling at him would likely make him crack and blurt it all out to everyone around. He just kept himself busy, glad that amongst most of the customers in the Spotlight he was just their happy waiter, and not the creator of this year's standout artwork at Columbia.
He had been worried that after his photo had appeared on the cover of the Arts section of the Times on Sunday that people would start to recognise him, and that he would be disrupted by people wanting to congratulate him, or asking for autographs, or for advice. He also did not want any further commissions at the moment. He had a fashion spread that he had to complete for Vogue, and the last of his illustrations for the latest title from the children's author he worked for to ink up and send to them and the publishers for approval. At least soon he would have his own quiet studio to work in; he would have time to work and experiment without watching the clock so he could clear the table for a meal, or to let Nick spread out his text books. The thought of that studio kept him content as he served, wiped tables and from time to time sang his heart out on stage. Life had suddenly come very good for Jeff, and for the first time in many years, all of his demons seemed finally to be under control or vanquished.
In Boston, Wes returned to court with his entourage to witness the two lawyers summing up the case as they saw it for the benefit of both the judge and jury. The defence had elected to go first, and made an attempt to pull on the heartstrings by pointing out that Randy had been left damaged and traumatised by the early death of his beloved mother, and the speed at which his father had remarried in the aftermath. He had been tormented by it, felt guilty that it had occurred, and had gone off the rails in a spectacular fashion; he was just another rich kid, spoilt by his upbringing, that just did not fit into the mould that had been created for him. His brother and then his half-brother had stolen all of the love that he should have been given, and so he had acted up for attention. He was therefore not to blame for the acts that he had committed; they were down to the actions of others towards him.
The prosecution was not slow to respond to those claims in their speech after the defence had rested. They pointed to the fact that despite all of Randy's claims, there was ample evidence that he had carried out all that he had been accused of, and much, much more. The documents that his brother had provided to the police showed that he was guilty, and not the other way round as he had indicated; his stepmother had also provided ample evidence of his guilt, and even his father had admitted his son had done terrible things. What was most shocking though were the statements that he had made about his late half-brother, and the fact that he was trying to push all the blame on to an innocent party, who could not even defend themselves in court. Innocents like all of those aborted children - and the woman that had come forward might only be the tip of the iceberg there. In short, the prosecution stated that Randy Montgomery was guilty of destroying the lives of all of those around him, and that he merited whatever sentence the judge chose to meet out for him.
The judge's summing up to the jury was short and succinct. He reminded them of the duty that they had to ensure that justice was meted out to all those whose lives had been destroyed by the actions of Randy, and that included the members of his own family. He believed that had it not been for the actions of the son, then the story of the once revered and respected Montgomery family would not have ended this way, with the respectable father's reputation and life destroyed; his younger brother in exile somewhere, and his half-brother dead, having gone to the grave thinking that none of his immediate family loved or cared about him, including his own mother. He could not say that to the jury however, so he kept the thoughts to himself. Had it come up in the course of the evidence, it would have been a different story. All the twelve citizens in the box knew was that both Albert and Wes had had their lives blighted by the actions of their elder sibling, and he had to leave the full extent of the damage out.
His instructions given, the jury was sent out to consider its verdict and to take lunch, even though it was still early in the day. As for Randy, he was taken back to his holding cell, with a smirk on his face for the first time in days. Seeing that instantly made Wes worried. He had seen his father look so depressed the last three days and now, on the day he was likely to be sentenced, he was smirking. Why was he so smug and cheerful on the day he would be sent down for decades? Wes gave Finn a look, and as his friend made a distraction, Wes slipped away. It was time he paid his father a little visit…
He had not seen inside the holding cell before, and what he saw surprised him. He had expected it to be cramped and small, but instead it had a lofty ceiling, high walls of smooth concrete with a tiny window near the top of the one outside wall. The furnishing was sparse; a bench, a fold down shelf, and a lavatory. Wes could not imagine spending even five minutes in here on his own without feeling despair. Yet as the door was opened, his father entered with the same sickening grin on his face, and that had Wes wondering. What had Randy done? What did he know? His first thought was that he had discovered where Albert was hiding out, and that his uncle was at risk. After all, Randy had known the identity of the young woman that he loved above all other, and it would not have been too hard to track her down. That was the problem in these days of boundless technology; there was no longer anywhere that you could really hide…
That thought left his mind as he saw his father check the door, and squint through the spy hole. Once he was sure that there was no-one watching, he headed over to the fold down shelf, and the newspapers that sat there. He had been receiving them every day, and by now, no-one paid any heed. He reached for one in particular. One that was still wrapped up in a cylindrical fashion. He took it, shook it, and then carefully tipped it over. That was when Wes saw it; concealed inside was a small cellphone. Someone in the court had been compromised, and had placed it in there for him to find at this juncture. Randy was not stupid enough to talk on it, Wes realised, but he could quite easily send a text message. That was exactly what he began to do, his fingers moving quickly. In a flash Wes was standing right behind him, reading over his shoulder. What he saw chilled him to the bone. His father was sending a message to someone on the outside, informing them that tonight was the night that the Lau's restaurant needed to burn. He wanted to know that on his first morning in prison, his stepmother's family had lost everything - and that if they happened to still be inside when the inferno engulfed the place, so much the better. He continued to type, indicating another place he wanted to burn. As his father's fingers typed the word Dalton, Wes knew he had to act..
He had to do something to prevent the loss of the family business and of his school; he could not allow his father to continue breaking the law. However, he was also constrained in his actions; he knew too well the rule which stated that an angel could not intervene in something if it would change the course of events that had already been planned. He wished that he knew whether the fires had to go ahead or not. Much as he would hate to see either break out, if it was written in the book upstairs, he could not act. By the same token though, how could he face Michelle if her family was destroyed? How could he comfort his boys after their spiritual home had burned down? How would they react if it happened, and then they found out that he could have prevented it?
At that moment, Wes heard the sound of a key in the lock; Randy did too, and the phone was stuffed back into the newspaper hurriedly, the message left unsent. As the guard came in with Randy's lunch, Wes pleaded that they would notice the phone, now not so nearly well hidden in the paper, or that even better, it would begin to ring and alert the authorities. It was then that he heard a voice that he had not expected. "I've done a check for you, Wes. This is not on the plan; it is an unknown quantity. As such, you are free to do whatever you wish to stop this heinous crime." With Elizabeth's voice still ringing in his ears, Wes thought quickly and knew what he had to do. He could not trip up the guard, as to him he was not corporeal. He could not make the phone ring, as he did not have the number, and had no way of discovering it. In any case, he had no access to a phone. He could do one thing. Randy had not placed the paper back on the shelf where the guard was placing the lunch tray, but thrown it on the floor, at the far end of the bench. He could pick it up, and then take it with him out of the cell. The guard had his back turned to him, as did his father. He swooped down, grabbed it, and left the cell for the empty one next door. He could have left it there, but then his father would not be caught and could try the trick again someday. No, Wes had to do something that would anger his father, and alert the authorities to his scheme at the same time…
Randy had waited impatiently for the guard to leave; he was not hungry for the prison slop, and he only had a few more minutes to get the message conveyed. Hearing that the restaurant had burned would be a delight; if that benighted school that Wes had attended burned too, so much the better. The guard gone, he ignored the food, and spun round to discover that the newspaper had vanished. He was puzzled and disturbed at once. The guard had not been into that corner, so he could not have taken it…
It was then that he felt the draught, as if someone had switched on a ceiling fan. He looked up - and froze in horror. High above him, held right up at the ceiling some ten feet above his head, was that crucial tool in his plans. It was hovering up there, held up by some invisible force…
Randy did not scare easily, but he knew there was only one explanation as to how the phone was levitating; it was not the latest tool from the people at Apple… He knew what it had to be, but it was illogical. Yet it was the only possibility… It was his dead son that was holding his phone aloft high above him. "Put it down on the table right now Wes. I swear that I will not send that text if you just set it down," he hissed, barely audible.
Naturally, Wes did not believe for one second that if he did set it down, his father would not instantly press send. So instead he teasingly let the phone hover down lower to let his father know that he was there, and that he was actually complying with his wishes… And then he chucked it up in the air, taking great pleasure in hearing it crack against the ceiling, and then fall, before Randy could even react, and smash on the floor into smithereens…
Randy roared in anger as he heard the sound of a chair being scraped back along the floor in the corridor outside, alerted by the smashing noise. As he heard the sound of booted feet striding along towards the door, he turned his face to the ceiling, and snarled "They will still all pay for this when I get out, Wesley. Your mother, your family, your school and your precious little boyfriend! I mean it was the bad enough that you existed, but for it to turn out that you were a fag too… Just wait, all of them will pay for messing with me! That restaurant may not burn tonight, but my good friend Zach will see that it does soon enough!"
"And what restaurant would that be, pray tell, Mr Montgomery?" came a voice from the doorway, where the open door now showed two police officers standing there with the guard. "Would that happen to be the Lau family restaurant, where we found a Mr Zachary Bantam loitering in the parking lot about half an hour ago? He sang like a canary, told us all about your scheme, and even gave us the names of your little helper here in the court, and your friend in Ohio. He will be picked up shortly, and as for the young lady here, she is already in custody. We were already on the way here to search for that phone, but thankfully we don't have to now. So, I take it that you were just ranting at your dead half-brother over the shattered remains of the phone? You will, of course, have to be charged for this, but at a later date. It should be open and shut; after all, we just witnessed your confession, and I am sure that the sim card from that broken phone will have stored any messages you may have sent, or even typed up as drafts, along with any calls you've made. I take it that she smuggled it in here in that rolled up newspaper?"
Randy spun round to see that the newspaper had reappeared in the room. He had been so busy yelling at the ceiling, where he expected Wes to be, that he had not noticed that having dropped the phone, Wes had made his way back to the cell next door, and brought the paper back. He could only stare in disbelief as one of the cops came in, picked up the paper, and then gathered up the bits of phone from the concrete floor. He was still standing in shock when they left, and the door was once more slammed shut behind them. Then he snapped, and in a fit of rage, he grabbed for the tray of food that had been left for him, and hurled it at the wall; he did not know it, but he narrowly missed Wes in the process. The meatloaf and vegetables slipped quickly off the wall, but the thick gravy remained, staining the wall. Randy screamed in anger, but the sound was swiftly cut off when he noticed writing appearing in the gravy stain; a finger being traced through it to leave words in a neat, methodical cursive script. When it was finished, he screamed again, but this time in horror; the words 'No, you will pay, daddy' were the final straw. It let him know that Wes was there, that it had all been him. He opened his mouth to scream again, but it died in his throat as suddenly a smear of gravy was drawn down his cheek by an unseen hand… It was that that made him pass out…
Wes returned to his friends, who were now sitting in a quiet corner of the court restaurant, drinking coffee. Finn had managed to convince them that he had needed to head back to heaven for a little while, but they had all started to wonder how much longer he would be. The moment that he reappeared, they were all over him, anxious to fill him in on the latest news that they had heard. It was left to Michelle to tell him what the others already knew. "So mom called me, Birdy. It seems that some creep was scoping out the restaurant. She noticed him sitting in his truck in the lot, just watching, and she was suspicious, so she called 911. The moment the patrol car pulled into the lot, he tried to drive off, which made them all the more suspicious. It turned out when they examined his truck that he a huge quantity of gas in cans in the back, along with rags and accelerants - they think that he was going to try and set the place on fire! Mom was horrified, naturally; Dad is just plain livid, and wants this…"
"Zachary Bantam," said Wes coolly, as he realised his cousin was searching for his name.
"Yeah, that's right…" Michelle stopped, then stared at him. "Ok, so how did you know that? Did you know that he was going to come?"
"No, I just had the opportunity to overhear the cops when they caught up with Randy just now. He was the one behind Mr Bantam's thwarted attempt…"
There was silence, and then with a sigh of disappointment, Gabriel said "So I suppose you know all about the arrested court official too then?"
"Uh huh. It might also have been little old me that was clumsy enough to drop Randy's smuggled in cellphone from a great height in a complete accident…" Wes suddenly realised that Mitch and Connor were staring at his right hand. He looked down, and saw that there was still meatloaf gravy on his finger. He tutted, and then sucked his finger clean. "Hmmm… The meatloaf gravy here is not as good as the one at the Spotlight. Too much salt I think…"
As the others at the table just looked at him in confusion, two guards walked past their table, talking animatedly about how Montgomery had just lost it again, and had thrown his lunch tray against the wall, wasting a perfectly good portion of meatloaf. Not only was there now a gravy stain on the wall, but he had smeared some on his face. They had found him passed out on the floor of the cell, but when he came round, he had started to rant about the writing on the wall in the gravy. That proved he had flipped, as there was nothing there but solid gravy, making a huge brown stain…
Suddenly, Wes felt five pairs of eyes staring at him; could see five mouths opened in shock. As for the sixth pair of eyes, they were twinkling, and the mouth there was grinning. "You did, didn't you?" said Finn, suppressing the urge to high five his fellow angel.
"Me? Well, Elizabeth did say that it was okay. I have to admit that it was very satisfying to watch him squirm," replied Wes nonchalantly.
"Yeah, it was much the same for us when we did it to Hunter," said Finn with a wink.
"Alright, avenging angels!" said Mitch, "Firstly, what did you do to Hunter, out of interest. More importantly, what did you write in the gravy, Wes?" When Wes told them what he had written, the five mortals looked at each other, then smiled. After all, they could not have chosen better words themselves…