One Step Ahead

Doubt

      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.