Poetic Justice

      Andrea J. Johnson

      The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Copyright © 2020 by Andrea J. Johnson

      Cover and jacket design by Mimi Bark

      ISBN 978-1-951709-08-2

      eISBN: 978-1-951709-33-4

      Library of Congress Control Number: tk

      First edition September 2020 by Agora Books

      An imprint of Polis Books, LLC

      221 River St., 9th Fl., #9070

      Hoboken, NJ

      PolisBooks.com

      “Vox audita perit, litera scripta manet.”

      The spoken word perishes, the written word remains.

      CHAPTER 1

      I hadn’t seen Langley Dean in ten years.

      When we’d last spoken, she’d pushed me into the pool while I was wearing Bickerton High’s Scrappy the Seabird mascot uniform. The useless velvet wings and doughy web-footed moon boots wilted under the weight of the water and dragged me below the surface faster than a battleship anchor.

      Sometimes I dreamt about the valiant escape that might have happened if I hadn’t been strapped into the helmeted shoulder harness that held the Seabird’s head on. That clownish costume with its gratuitous layers of felt and silk was my temporary tomb. If EMTs hadn’t been onsite for the homecoming football game, I would have died.

      And yet, I didn’t recognize Langley until after the trial fell apart.

      Maybe the self-protective portion of my brain didn’t want to dredge up the past. Maybe time had turned the svelte beauty into a paunchy broad who lived in a troubled world lightyears from my own. Maybe I was simply too far away.

      What I knew for sure was when her trial began, I sat a full courtroom’s length apart from her and her defense counsel. My stenography station was a tiny Formica table located at the base of a raised platform reserved for witnesses. All my focus was on the grizzled jury clerk who stood in the gap between us. He droned through felony drug charges and asked a series of questions meant to determine if anyone had previous knowledge of the case or any prejudice that could lead to bias against the defendant.

      Those standard little voir dire inquiries should have been a red flag.

      The truth of the matter was my job as the trial’s stenographer was to listen, not analyze. As far as I was concerned, at that point, she was just another face in the long line of hardened criminals I’d seen in my five years as a court reporter in the Trident County Superior Courthouse, where the residents of Bickerton, Delaware, tried their most heinous crimes.

      “Victoria?” The judge called from her elevated position at the front of the courtroom. “Excuse me, Ms. Justice, do you need a break before we continue with opening statements?”

      “No, ma’am.” My words emerged as a whisper.

      The other aspect of my job was to be seen, not heard, but I appreciated Ms.—I mean Judge—Freddie’s concern for my well-being. Writing a word-for-word account of the proceedings was no small task.

      “Call out the time when you do.” She switched her focus to the recently selected jury. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Mulligan versus the State of Delaware. My name is Frederica Scott Wannamaker. I’ll be presiding over the case. We ask that you give the attorneys your undivided attention.”

      The jurors’ eyes grew wide as she spoke. I’d have found it amusing if I hadn’t seen it a million times. Civilians expected a Law & Order episode come to life, but they’d soon experience the mundane reality of small-town justice. No cutthroat attorneys tricking witnesses into confessing. No camera flashes from the rabid media. No distraught family members begging for the judge’s mercy.

      Like ninety-five percent of our drug cases, the gallery sat empty—except for the state chemist, who quietly occupied the front row, and a state trooper, who I assumed was the arresting officer. He sat in the back with his arm draped over the pew, while he drummed an impatient rhythm against the oak. The light thumpity-thump echoed into the recently restored rafters designed to mimic the courthouse’s original antebellum-era architecture.

      I smoothed the collar of my gray pantsuit as the jury rose for their oath. Showtime. A crackle of static underscored their call and response as the bailiff used her shoulder mic to radio the criminal unit for Ms. Freddie’s trial clerk. The prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Spencer James Stevenson—a recent Vanderbilt grad who apparently bathed in a bottle of Drakkar Noir cologne—strutted over to the podium, where he’d address the jury for opening statements.

      He straightened his Armani tie and gave me a wink. Stevenson couldn’t have been more than a decade older than my twenty-five years, but he was too cocky to take seriously. He was being playful and overconfident for the jury’s benefit, not mine.

      I stared at the attorney’s big, baldhead and prayed my dark eyes remained impassive. The job required neutrality at all times—Stevenson knew that—and I refused to cosign on his good-ol’-boy-doing-the-will-of-the-people act. Granted, Delaware wasn’t southern, but our seaside hamlet clung to all of The South’s worst tendencies—and he loved to wield those values in his favor.

      I placed my hands on the steno machine’s keys and stiffened my petite frame to emphasize a commitment to impartiality. All I was willing to give Stevenson was a curt nod as a signal to begin his opening remarks. The movement also caused a bushy crop of brown ringlets to fall across my eyes and obscure his smarmy face from view. Perfect. All distractions cleared away to make room for the words that flowed through my fingers.

      After the attorneys finished their opening statements, Ms. Freddie said, “You may call your first witness, Mr. Stevenson.”

      “Your Honor, the State calls Corporal Ashton North of the Delaware State Police.”

      A split second after the corporal, a hulking figure in dress blues, marched forward to recite the oath, the attorney fired off a round of questions about the cop’s qualifications. Dang. Stevenson was fast, but I was faster.

      My steno machine, a pentagon-shaped apparatus no larger than a child’s lunchbox and just as light, held twenty-two unmarked keys that allowed me to write well over 240 words per minute. The excessive speed lulled me into a trance for the first half-hour, but as the testimony found its groove, my awareness blossomed.

      “What happened once you established probable cause to search the defendant’s vehicle?” asked Stevenson.

      “I seized a brick of suspicious powder from the front passenger seat,” Corporal North replied in a hoarse bass. “This led to a full-vehicle search, whereupon I opened the trunk to find scales, baggies, three cell phones, and five thousand dollars in cash. I identified the powdered substance as cocaine.”

      “Once you had all those items in your possession, what did you do?”

      “I placed the items in separate evidence envelopes provided by the Delaware State Police and labeled each with the defendant’s name, a description, and the complaint number. I used blue evidence tape to seal the envelopes and signed my name on those seals.”

      The corporal responded with authority but tossed anxious glances my way prior to each answer—like he was unsure whether to talk to me as the record taker or to the attorney. A giggle formed in my throat as his lashes fluttered and his bright blue eyes ping-ponged between the prosecutor and me. I stared at the stenograph machine to keep the laughter at bay.

      Blocks of shorthand welcomed me from the miniature screen above the steno keyboard. Denoted by a collection of letters read from left to right, all of the words were in a language of briefs, AKA