Special Needs

Chapter 75: The Verdict

Judge Stoneridge called the court to order after a brief recess. "Theodore Blake, will you please take the witness stand?" Theodore proceeded to the box. Then the judge called Nathan to ask any last questions he might have.

"Mr. Blake," He nodded towards Theodore. "After Anne woke up from her coma, why did you tell her that Harry was dead?"

He hung his head to make it look like he felt shame for what he had done, but I knew him better than that. He wasn't capable of shame. "I hated her," he admitted. "She ruined my family and she was alive while my father was dead. I just wanted her out of my life. I wanted her to be dead." The jury gasped at his candor.

"If you wanted her to be dead, why didn't you just kill her?" Nathan asked.

"I'm not a murderer," Theodore seethed.

"But you did kill Mary Lemke, the woman you supposedly loved," Nathan pressed.

"It wasn't quite that simple," Theodore said. "I thought she loved me. But when she wouldn't help me raise Harry, I knew she felt differently. It was hard for me to let her go."

My blood chilled as he spoke. Even now, his words and his thinking were twisted. Of course,  Mary had wanted the best for Harry, and that would have been to be reunited with Anne. But Theodore could only see it from his own selfish and distorted perspective, that it would affect him adversely if Mary uncovered the truth.

He continued, "She was going to leave me and betray me. I couldn't let that happen. I didn't think about it, I was just so hurt and angry, so I killed her. Waters was wrong." His voice cracked and he pretended to wipe away a tear. That sick fucker. "I do have a conscience and every day, I wish I could take back what I did to Mary. I didn't mean to kill her, I just...I just panicked."

"But then after you killed her, you enlisted Henry Waters to help you cover up the evidence, rather than doing the decent thing and turning yourself in."

"What would you have done?" Theodore growled. "I killed the woman I loved. In her sleep. Do you think they were going to let me off easy?"

"That was close to fifteen years ago," Nathan answered. "If you had turned yourself in and gone to prison, possibly on a second degree murder charge, you'd be close to finished by now. And maybe with good behavior, you could have gotten out on parole already, but now look at you." He turned to the judge. "No further questions, your honor."

Klinefeld stood to ask his last few questions. "Theodore, how did you feel the day your father died?"

"Empty. Like everything good in my life had just been sucked away. He raised me and trained me by his side. I was devastated."

"There must have been some part of you that felt it was an injustice that Anne and Harry survived while your father perished," Klinefeld suggested.

"Objection," Nathan said.

"Overruled," the judge replied.

Theodore answered. "Of course I did. They weren't family to me. Why did it have to be my father?"  Again with the fake tears. I hated Theodore with my life.

"What was your mindset when Anne awoke from her coma?" Samuel asked.

"It was three months after my father had died. I was trying to run the business and the household and find people to help me take care of a baby, for God's sake. I was beside myself with angst and grief and I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months. I wasn't thinking straight at all."

"Wouldn't it have been easier to just tell Anne the truth?" Klinefeld asked and Theodore gave him a venomous look that told me he didn't expect the question.