"Defend Me, Attorney." (Law Series #1)

PART SIX: THE CLASH

Silence.

A really, deafening silence.

I opened my mouth, yet, nothing came out. I felt my heart pounding hard, my mind in absolute uncertainty, and my tears flowing like a river.

"You see, you had it wrong this time, Courtney," Traise said, despite the smile he gave, pain can also be seen through it. "That's what happened, and you're defending a criminal."

I was utterly speechless. I was at a loss for words to speak; my mind still can't absorb things.

"I've been telling you I'm guilty, ayaw n'yo kasi maniwala," he said. "You fought for me with just the thought of I can't commit such horrendous crime, but I just did."

"You…" finally, I said. "You're making up stories..."

He smirked. "I'm not. You know, drop your overly angelic image of me on you. I'm no longer the same friend you had."

"Hindi mo nga magawang ipakulong tatay mo," I said, in between my tears. "Yet you'll tell me you killed him? You poisoned him?"

"I did. Apparently, I just did."

I cleared my throat. "If he died because of the poison, an autopsy could've detected it."

"But is there even an autopsy happened?"

BANG.

My eyes grew bigger.

He smiled in pain. "My dad got buried without doing an autopsy."

"How could that happen?" I insisted. "Case such as this needs an autopsy to be done!"

"May I ask you?” he said. "Why do we do autopsies?"

I blinked. "It is being used if there's a sudden death that the caused is cannot readily recognizable or certified by a physician."

"And what the poison was?" he asked.

"An aconite..." I said, in a state of absolute vagueness.

"That's it," he said. "Aconite cannot be traced by simple tests. It attacks the victim in the blink of an eye. It can also be traced not by a mere autopsy, but a deep and extensive autopsy, which they didn't do because their focus was on the stab. I was caught in the scene with a knife on hand, and my dad had multiples stabs, they assumed it was that."

Then he smiled bitterly. "My dad was that genius for coming up with that poison. If he successfully did it, mom might have been buried six feet below the ground now and I'm devastated, thinking she just died because of cardiac arrest or paralysis while my dad's still acting as if he had changed while he was busy spending my mom's insurance with his mistress."

"But..." I said. "The prosecution stated his cause of death. It... It means they have a record! They... they may have it!"

"Stop it," he said. "The prosecution doesn't have a record. They invented it out of wrongly perceived fact," he said and smiled. "You were fooled, the defense was fooled."

My jaw dropped and I can't think of anything to say.

"Wait!" I said out of nowhere. "Every criminal case needs a thorough autopsy for a record. Every community does. It's being done by...by..."

I then closed my mouth as I was being stupefied by a sudden realization.

"By a coroner," he continued, smiling, "…an official who investigates suspicious deaths and conducts a mandatory autopsy. And who's our coroner?"

My tears fell.

No…

He smiled, bitter as before.