The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

58: The Trial (part 1)

The charge of resisting arrest was based on eye-witness testimony from two police officers. On the delivery of the third smuggled shipment, the police attempted to apprehend Will and Arturo Torrente, the criminal associate from el Nube. Will and Torrente had run from the arresting officers and escaped in Will's car.

The final charge of arson was explained simply using Will's own charging statement to police, which put him at the right location at the right time to be a prime suspect for burning down Seven. I sat lower in my seat, Charlotte gripping my hand until it hurt, while the jurors looked on. The bare facts sounded fucking sordid.

The defence lawyer's opening statement was so flimsy that I had to stop myself from laughing. It sounded like the entire defence hung on the fact that Will had voluntarily turned himself in, was very remorseful, and had cooperated with the police to the best of his ability.

She explained in sombre tones that Will had committed the crime of smuggling to pay for Mozhgan's care, and that he wasn't motivated by greed. She then mentioned how decades of being Mozhgan's care-giver had led to clinical depression, and that retribution by the government would not be suitable punishment for an invalid who had given most of his life to law-abiding behavior and care of his mother. She claimed that Will was already doing community service in the form of part-time work for the local Coast Guard. I guessed that she'd roped Will into that.

"Where did you get this lawyer from?" I whispered.

"She's the best."

I'd assumed that Charlotte had paid for top legal defence, but Will's counsel was making him sound so fucking pathetic that I had very little hope that she'd keep him out of jail.

I gaped at Charlotte when the lawyer mentioned that Will had begun weekly therapy sessions, as another example of how remorseful he was. Will didn't have the money for therapy. Charlotte gave a nod in silent confirmation that she was paying for it, her eyes swimming with tears. Exactly how messed up was Will? Had Charlotte convinced him to start taking Tryptex too?

Glad that I wasn't able to see Will sitting in the sea of heads down in the courtroom, I sent a prayer to Santa María that the shame wouldn't get to him. He needed to be strong, to stand up for himself. It hadn't helped that his whole life had been laid bare by the defence lawyer, like he was some lost cause to mock and pity. Perhaps she was counting on nothing but the jury's sympathy.

The prosecution launched into a dry and detailed exploration of the evidence against the defendant, the majority of it from Will's own interviews with the police. When it was time for Will's cross-examination by the prosecutor, the questions were on minor clarifications to the timeline and road routes of the smuggling job. It was less of a trial than reading aloud from a smuggling instruction manual.

The charge of arson was the hammer-blow to Will, and his voice began to waver as he described sneaking into Seven's lobby while the fire was raging. The piano strings embedded inside me tugged, hard, with every crest and trough of Will's voice, and I couldn't help but look up from my lap and gaze across the courtroom to where Will sat, unnervingly still, next to the defence counsel.

The sight of him tore open all the weeping wounds in my heart. He looked so ill. He was hunched over the desk in his funeral suit, his face blank, like he was dead inside. His curls had completely gone, shaky fingers scratching at what looked like a couple of weeks' regrowth of a buzz-cut, like he was still getting used to it.

Even from my spot high up in the public gallery I could see that his eyes were hollow and tired, like he hadn't slept in weeks. Neither Mozhgan's death nor his fibroma surgery had left Will as deathly pale as he looked in the courtroom that day. On the occasions that he peeked up from the microphone to answer the prosecutor, his severe haircut made his eyes look even wider.