Hardesty used both of her hands to claw at the one wrapped around her neck, without success. Two of the court officers deployed their tasers almost simultaneously, striking Harris in both his back and upper chest, but this also failed to persuade him to loosen his grip on the attorney. Surprisingly, he seemed almost indifferent to the electricity running through his body, a slight stiffening of his muscles the only visible indicator that he even noticed.
Most of the crowd was in near-hysterics as Harris maintained his grasp on his lawyer's throat, and the chaos only grew when Danny Belmont stepped forward and leveled his pistol at Harris' forehead. "Let go of her, Harris. I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to."
The former detective glanced up only briefly, before returning his attention to his victim. "You're so full of shit that they should be able to smell you in Pasadena, Belmont," he sneered. "You'd like nothing better than to pull that trigger, and we both know it, so either do it or don't, but don't fucking lie about it."
The room went silent, almost as though someone had flipped an invisible switch, as Danny inclined his head to the former detective and acknowledged, "Yeah, you're right. To be totally honest, I've had dreams about doing even worse than that to you if I ever got the chance. As far as I'm concerned, you're nothing but a waste of oxygen, and if somebody offered me the chance to push the needle on you, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But there's one thing that separates someone like me, or probably anyone else in this room, from some thing like you."
"Oh, and what might that be, Saint Daniel?"
"The fact that I actually think about other people's feelings. Thanks to you, the little Maldonado girl had to watch her grandmother's house burn to the ground with her grandma and uncle still in it, and I'd be willing to bet that you haven't lost a single second of sleep over it. Now, on the other hand, I'm gonna feel pretty damn bad if I have to put you down with most of your family watching it happen. I'll do it if you force the issue, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel like shit about it later."
Harris flinched at the reference to his family, and his fingers loosened momentarily, allowing his attorney to draw in a breath of air before he tightened his grip once again. The deputies were working to eject the expended probes from their tasers as Danny calmly continued to aim his gun at Harris, when a voice came clearly from the back of the room, saying, "You can't have it both ways, Keith. Either you care enough about us to try to protect Tyler from that barracuda sitting next to you, or you're so indifferent to our feelings that you have no problem forcing us all to watch you murder someone in cold blood. So it's time to pick one or the other."
His hand fell away from Hardesty's throat, and he spun around to see Martin wheeling himself down the aisle toward the barrier that separated the spectators from the rest of the courtroom. The elderly gentleman stopped at the gate, making no effort to move any closer to the man he had thought of as his son for nearly four decades, merely fixing him with a calm, level stare.
"And why would you worry about her questioning him anyway?" he demanded. "Do you really think she could do anything worse to those boys, or to any of us, for that matter, than you already have? Do you really think that they're ever going to forget finding that poor woman in your basement, or actually seeing what you're capable of doing to people?"
Harris began to rise from his chair, and Danny quickly moved to restrain him, along with his partner, as the deputies rushed in to move the attorney out of his reach. They wheeled her, still in her chair, toward the swinging gate as the others wrestled the former detective onto the table, fastening handcuffs onto his wrists before unfastening the shackle affixing his wrist to the table. He writhed against the wooden surface, attempting to throw them off of him, and finally managed to raise his head enough to turn back toward Martin, who was still gazing mournfully at him, ignoring Lee's and Tyler's entreaties to return to them.
"Just answer one question honestly for me, Keith," he said sadly, "I've been turning my brain inside out trying to find an answer, and I just need to know, for my own peace of mind: Was it something I did wrong that turned you into what I see now? Did I fail as a father somehow?"
"NO!"
The word fairly exploded from Harris' lips as he strained against his captors, trying to stand. "You were the best dad any kid could've asked for, all we ever wanted to do was to make you proud of us! Why is it so wrong for me to not want other people to have to go through what we did? To try to take some of the pushers and whores off the streets where they can't do any more harm to innocent people?"
"You mean innocent people like the families who have to grieve for their loved ones that you decided you had the right to kill?" Martin fired back. "Like that poor young girl who had to see the way you left her mother, who was supposed to be your friend? Or the people who will spend the rest of their lives carrying the scars from your car bomb? Or the young lady sitting behind you, who lost her leg, and almost her life, because you felt like you had something to prove? If you truly wanted to protect innocent people from the 'pushers and whores', as you so eloquently call them, all you needed to do was do your job! Or, if that wasn't enough, try to work yourself into a position where you could change the laws, become Governor, or maybe run for Congress. But instead, you decided that you had the right to decide whether they lived or died."
By this time, tears were trickling down the old man's cheeks, and his voice cracked as he continued. "And you didn't just kill these people, Keith, you tortured them! You savaged them, and then you dumped them like garbage for someone else to find. And since that was hardly necessary to take them off the streets, I can only conclude that you must have enjoyed it, which makes you no better than the ones you hold in such contempt. So tell us, Keith, how does it feel to know that you've become the thing you claim to despise the most?"
Keith Harris went still, his expression one of shock and despair as the only father he had ever known once again turned away from him, wheeling himself back to join Lee and Tyler, both of whom were openly weeping. He offered no further resistance as the officers wrestled his bulk up from the table and hustled him back through the door which led to the prisoner transport exit.
Judge Pearce, who had been pounding his gavel on the bench for several minutes in a futile attempt to restore order to the room, finally managed to regain everyone's attention by placing two fingers in his mouth and emitting a sharp, piercing whistle. "All right, everyone quiet!" he shouted. "Order in the court!" Once everyone was giving him their full attention, he gazed out over the room, shaking his head in exasperation. "All right, everyone, given the unexpected turn of events that has taken place, we obviously can't continue with the proceedings, so I'm dismissing everyone until nine AM tomorrow morning. Court is adjourned."
The reporters were the first ones out of the room, virtually stampeding through the doors in hopes that they would be the first to bring the news to the waiting public. Everyone else filed out more slowly, still rather stunned by what had occurred. Briar, Ashley, Wiley, and Cody were among the last to leave, and as they made their way to the parking garage, Ashley said, "I'd be just about willing to bet that things end up getting put off longer than just tomorrow, because I'm pretty certain that he's gonna have to find a new lawyer after this."
Briar rolled her eyes at his words and snorted, "Babe, once the media gets wind of this, that'll prolly require an act of God to accomplish. I doubt that any attorney in their right mind would touch him with a bargepole after what happened to Hardesty in there. Granted, the woman's a sleazy, obnoxious harpy, but even she didn't deserve that."
They finally reached their level in the garage, and as they separated to get into their respective vehicles, Briar glanced up as she opened the door, and made a statement that the men would later have cause to recall quite vividly: "And hopefully this will convince the judge that he shouldn't be allowed any degree of freedom, no matter how small. Because I guarantee you that if he gets the slightest opportunity, Keith Harris is going to kill someone else."
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Later that night, after the guards has called for lights out, Harris sat on the edge of his bunk, repeatedly replaying the conversation with his father in his head. One sentence in particular insisted on ricocheting around his brain like a pinball, refusing to allow him to rest:
"How does it feel to know that you've become the thing you claim to despise the most?"
Hearing these words from the man who had cared for and raised him from a toddler made them difficult to ignore, and he realized that he was feeling something that he had put aside for so long that he had nearly forgotten it...
Doubt.
Was there a chance that Martin, and everyone else he had previously dismissed, were right? Was he no better than the scum he had worked so hard to eliminate from society, nothing more than a common criminal? That couldn't be true...
Could it?
Suddenly, a passage from a book he had read in college sprang to the forefront of his mind, and the implications nearly sucked the air from his lungs, and caused him to re-evaluate a plan that he had considered, then discarded, right after his arrest. At that time, he had been confident that he would be able to convince the jury of the necessity of his actions, but he had, finally, come to the realization that this wasn't going to happen. Whether he believed he was right or not, there was no way anyone else would ever accept that conclusion. They would ultimately decide that he should spend the rest of his life in this cell, or another just like it, and that he refused to accept.
"I'm getting the fuck out of this place," he muttered. "Time for Plan C."
With his decision made, he stood up from the bed and began moving quietly about the cell, gathering the items he needed. He had spent countless hours over the months of his incarceration familiarizing himself with every nook and cranny of the small, cramped cell, and he had discovered several weaknesses that he now intended to utilize to his own advantage.
He first attacked the loosened bolts holding one leg of the bed to the frame, freeing it after several minutes of struggle, slicing several fingers in the process. He then carried it to the far wall, using it to widen a crack he had discovered in the mortar between two of the cinderblocks that made up the walls of the jailhouse. Then, once he had it firmly inserted into the crack, he moved back to the bed, retrieved a notebook and a Sharpie marker from under the mattress, dashing off several words before laying them on his pillow.
Then, as he returned to the strip of metal that he had wedged into the wall, another idea caused him to pause for a moment before deciding on one extra touch, a statement to whomever happened to be the first to discover his escape. Once he had taken care of this last order of business, he turned his attention back to the metal bunk leg.
And, within a space of minutes, Keith Harris made his escape.
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"Okay, everybody, rise and shine! Breakfast in twenty minutes, so haul your asses out of bed!" Sheldon Green shouted as he moved through the halls of the jail. Through the bars, the guard could see the inmates began rolling out of their beds, grumbling as he interrupted their slumber.
Spotting his co-worker Freddie at the other end of the hall, he motioned to indicate that he was heading to the secure unit, to make sure that the ex-detective serial killer who was being housed there until his sentencing was awake and ready to eat, since he had to be back in court in just over two hours. Freddie nodded, and Sheldon turned the corner, making his way toward the heavy steel door at the end of the passage.
Using his baton to rap on the door, he called, "Up and at 'em, Harris. Your grub will be here any time now, and then you need to get ready for your next command performance." Normally, he received a terse, yet definitive response to his wake-up call, but this time he was met by silence, so he rapped again. "Outta bed, Sleeping Beauty! If I don't get an answer by the time I count three, I'm comin' in to wake you up myself! One... Two... Three!"
By this time, the lack of response was starting to make him uneasy, so he scrambled his passkey off of the ring, inserting it into the door and turning it, while simultaneously entering his entry code on the keypad with the other hand. He turned the handle and pulled open the door, grumbling, "Come on and get your ass up, Harris! You've got another busy day to..."
His words trailed off as his mind attempted to process the unexpected sight that greeted him as he entered the cell. "Oh, jeez, you gotta be shittin' me here!" he wheezed. "Oh, fuckaroon, this cannot be happening!"
Practically teleporting himself back into the hall, Sheldon grabbed his radio, thumbing the button and practically screaming, "Freddie! Freddie, are you there?"
"Damn, Shel, you don't have to scream at me!" Freddie replied. "You trying to bust my eardrum or something? What's got your boxers in a bunch, anyway?"
"Dude, we need the warden down here in 3A, we have a situation," he shouted. "Prob'ly the Chief while you're at it. Hell, maybe even the Mayor!"
"What the fuck are you babbling about?" Freddie's voice questioned through the speaker. "I'm on my way down, and I'm sending Duane for the boss. Just hang 'til I get there."
But neither Freddie or Duane were expecting Sheldon's next statement, which stopped both of them in their tracks:
"Better have him call Doc Arrington while you're at it, cause we've got a body here."