The Last Day of Freedom Page 3

Before his trial, Tristan sponged himself clean, combed his matted hair, and dressed in a worn suit that the detention center had loaned him. He still could not take a full shower, for fear of soaking the bandages that covered his left cheek. He stared at himself for a long time in the mirror before summoning up the resolve to face his trial. His eyes were bloodshot from the sleepless night, and his un-bandaged cheek looked sunken and pasty.

  He was looking more like a criminal by the day.

  Mr. Morrison greeted him at the reception desk, along with a police officer he didn’t recognize. She gave him a sharp nod and accepted a cup of coffee from the receptionist before leading Tristan and his public defender to a dusty police car.

  The court was already bustling with people by the time they pulled up to the curb. He quickly learned his case was the second to be heard that day, though the first was a minor infraction.

  “You ready?” Mr. Morrison asked, handing Tristan’s files to a man in a black suit.

  Tristan swallowed. No sound came out when he tried to speak. He didn’t know if he could face the court.

  At last the doors opened and the jurors spilled out. Mr. Morrison and the police officer escorted Tristan into the almost-empty room, which he recognized from TV police dramas. He had never been in a genuine courtroom before. He would stand behind a wooden rail, Mr. Morrison explained, and the judge would sit at the desk raised slightly above the room. The jury was to Tristan’s left, and the audience was at the back of the room. Witnesses would be called to the platform behind the judge, and Mr. Morrison would call “objection” if the evidence strayed into irrelevant or unfounded statements.

  Dazed, Tristan tried to nod at all the right times; Mr. Morrison’s words were not quite registering. The heating unit in the room was buzzing softly, and the sound filled his head.

  Too soon, the judge and jury filed in and assumed their positions. Among the audience were two police officers—Tristan couldn’t be certain, but he thought they were the men who had cut him out of his seatbelt on the night of the crash—and his parents. Tristan hurriedly turned away from his parents. He didn’t want to see the disappointment and hatred that was sure to be written across their faces. To his surprise, they were sitting together, though he had not looked long enough to see whether they were conversing.

  In a blur, the judge introduced Tristan to the jury and explained the proceedings.

  “We have called upon this jury to examine the evidence and decide whether you are guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of four separate crimes: vehicular manslaughter, arson, theft, and driving without a license. Would the first witness please step forward?”

  It was his neighbor, Mrs. Hughes. Tristan had never spoken to her outside of the few occasions when his parents had invited her over for a neighborhood potluck, and these had all been years ago, before the divorce. Mrs. Hughes was a retired accountant, and her husband owned a lawn-care business that kept them fairly well-off. Tristan wished desperately that he had taken the time to acquaint himself with his neighbors. If he had, they might be testifying in his favor rather than bringing evidence against him.

  “Where were you on the night of April the twenty-first, Mrs. Hughes?”

  She cleared her throat. Though her hair was gray and her face lined, she had a powerful demeanor. “My husband and I were given free tickets to the opera, and we left after an early dinner—just before six—to join our neighbors for the evening. We left the car in the driveway. Nothing was out of place when we departed. I don’t remember checking to see whether the car was locked, but I am not usually forgetful. Tristan must have broken—”

  “Objection!” Mr. Morrison said swiftly. Tristan had been seconds away from saying, “No, I didn’t,” but his defender had beaten him to it.

  “Objection sustained,” the judge said. “What did you observe when you returned from the opera?”

  Mrs. Hughes blinked and quickly picked up her account once more. “We were dropped off just after ten o’clock. I commented to my husband that I smelled something odd, though at the time I believed someone had just burned their toast in the house next door. It was stormy, and when we turned into our driveway I noticed that our oak tree had fallen across the front yard. My husband asked me what I had done with my car, which I had left just where the tree had fallen. I looked in the garage, but only his car was there. I looked down the street, wondering if someone had moved it, but it was nowhere to be found. That was when I dialed the police to report its theft.”

  “Thank you,” the judge said. “Could the next witness please step forward?”

  Tristan’s stomach churned as the two police officers who had found him at the scene of the crash stepped forward. He wasn’t ready to hear the details. Marcus’s death had been gnawing at his chest like a cancer; he was afraid to examine it, afraid he would lose his mind with grief. He felt so filthy with guilt that he had not even been able to cry for his brother. If he started now…

  The police officers did not look at Tristan, instead settling their gaze somewhere around the middle of the room.

  “Please explain the call-out you received on the evening of April twenty-first.”

  The mustached police officer spoke first, thumbs in his pockets. “We were patrolling just outside the limits of Valley City when we received an anonymous report of an accident on I-94. It was shortly after eight. We headed over to the scene of the crash and alerted the ambulance to follow us.”

  “Describe what you found,” the judge said.

  Tristan held his breath as the second police officer began. “We found a silver Buick rolled on its side in a deep ditch. We were able to open the driver’s door, and from there we cut out two boys.”

  “Is this one of them?” the judge asked, gesturing at Tristan.

  “Yes. He was the driver,” the second policeman said. His voice was steady and confident; clearly he had been doing this for years. “The driver appeared unconscious, though he roused temporarily. We cut his seatbelt and lifted him free of the car, noticing as we did that his face had sustained damage on the left side. We also noticed that the windshield had cracked and scattered.”

  Tristan sat on his sweaty hands, vaguely impressed at the way the policemen described everything without inference or opinion. Related this way, the crash sounded very dry and clinical. Their account did nothing to convey the terror or confusion at the scene.

  “When we lifted the second boy from the car, we felt for his pulse and found none. We waited for the ambulance to arrive and assisted in transferring this boy and the passenger into the back of the ambulance. Then we returned to the police station to write up a report of the accident.”

  “Thank you,” the judge said. Bobbing their heads in deference, the two police officers resumed their seats. “And our final witness, the lead firefighter who responded to Mr. Fairholm’s report of smoke rising from his house. Can you please describe the damage sustained by the house at 176 Lincoln Court?”

  “The fire was nearly out when we arrived,” the firefighter said. Though he was wearing a button-up shirt and tie, Tristan could have guessed him to be a firefighter even without the uniform from his muscular stature. “It was raining, which must’ve gotten the flames right down. There was a hole in the roof near the front of the house, but the rest looks like it’ll be fine. The fire seems to have started in the kitchen, just behind the stove. Not obviously arson, y’know. Could have just been a frayed electrical circuit. Anyway, we got in and saw a big puddle of what looked like blood on the floor—”

  “Objection,” Mr. Morrison said.

  “Objection sustained,” the judge said. “Please do not make inferences. Describe only what you saw.”

  The firefighter let out a breath through his teeth. “Right. Well, we saw something red on the floor, so I sent my team in back to see if anyone was injured. But when we looked closer, it was just some toma
to soup that someone had spilled.”

  A small measure of fear left Tristan. They weren’t trying to frame him; the firefighters might as well have been called as witnesses in his defense.

  “Did you find anyone home at the time?”

  “Nope, not a living soul. Mr. Fairholm said he’d searched for his sons before we got there, but he didn’t find them. We couldn’t figure out what had happened until the police station called to say one of the boys had just been taken to the hospital.”

  “Thank you. And now, Mr. Morrison will present Tristan Fairholm’s defense.”

  As the firefighter resumed his seat, Mr. Morrison turned to give Tristan an encouraging smile.

  “The jury will find it difficult to prove the allegations of arson beyond reasonable doubt,” Mr. Morrison said. “No other witnesses were present at the time of the fire, so its origin could either be accidental or deliberate. Lacking video footage from the scene, we cannot prove the circumstances either way. However, our first witness will testify that Tristan Fairholm took proper measures to deal with the fire as soon as he discovered it. Please step forward and introduce yourself.”

  A small, sour-faced young man shuffled onto the witness stand. “I was on duty at the police services department when we received a 911 call from 176 Lincoln Court. A boy’s voice said there had been an earthquake and a fire on his property. I dismissed his claims as a prank, because there had been no reports of an earthquake, not even a minor one, from anywhere in the state. We had responded to three prank calls earlier that week, and one had prevented us from responding to a more serious call-out.”

  Mr. Morrison nodded. “We can therefore verify that Tristan Fairholm or his brother took the initiative to dial 911 upon discovery of the fire. May I venture a suggestion?”

  “Proceed,” the judge said.

  “It is possible that the boy who called 911 had become confused in his panic and did in fact believe an earthquake had recently occurred.”

  “It is certainly possible,” the judge said. “Do you have any further witnesses to call forward?”

  “I would like to question Mrs. Hughes.”

  Tristan’s neighbor stepped forward, chin high.

  “Mrs. Hughes, when you returned home, was the door to your house locked?”

  “Yes,” she said at once.

  “And were there any signs of a forced entry?”

  “No.”

  “Does Tristan Fairholm or any member of his family have access to a key for your house?”

  Mrs. Hughes thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No. I don’t believe we have ever given them a copy of the key.”

  “Thank you.”

  As Mrs. Hughes returned to her seat, Mr. Morrison turned to the jury. “While it is true that Tristan Fairholm was found in the driver’s seat of a stolen car, it is possible that he did not commit theft with any sort of deliberation. He may have simply panicked at the fire and, failing to reach help, fled the scene in the easiest way he could find. Again, we cannot prove that Tristan Fairholm found a key waiting in the unlocked door of Mrs. Hughes’s car, but we also cannot prove that he forced entry into her house to obtain the key.”

  Unsure what he was allowed to do, Tristan nodded vigorously. Mr. Morrison was brilliant.

  “Do you have any further witnesses?” the judge asked.

  “Not at present,” Mr. Morrison said.

  “In that case, the jury may convene to discuss the evidence provided.” He rose and opened a side door in the courtroom, through which the twelve jurors proceeded with much shuffling and yawning. One of the jurors was pimply and red-faced; he couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Tristan hoped he might be sympathetic.

  The time that followed was interminable. Tristan remained in his box at the center of the room, trying to concentrate on Mr. Morrison’s whispered advice and encouragement. His parents caught his eye at one point, but Tristan could not tell from their grim expressions whether they were angry or worried. Tristan kicked his foot nervously against the rail of his box, wondering what was being said about him in the next room over. They didn’t think he had murdered his brother deliberately, did they?

  After what felt like hours, the jurors knocked on the door and returned to the courtroom. They had with them a slip of paper, from which they read off questions for the witnesses and Mr. Morrison. Then they returned to their side room to confer once again.

  The second time, Tristan slumped against the rail and said, “What happens if I just plead guilty?”

  “I would advise you against doing so at this point,” Mr. Morrison said. “The jury cannot yet accuse you of arson, and I hope I’ve given them some reason to doubt the charges of theft. If you wait to hear their decision, you can plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and driving without a license, which are much less serious charges alone than accompanied by the other two.”

  Tristan was beginning to wonder if the jury had decided to keep him waiting on purpose just to scare him into a confession when the door opened and admitted them once again.

  “We can’t come to a decision,” said the motherly woman who had assumed leadership of the jury. “We are certain beyond reasonable doubt that Tristan is guilty of vehicular manslaughter and driving without a license, but we would like to see more evidence before we decide on the other two convictions.”

  “You are certain the jury cannot reach an agreement on the matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Thank you for your time. You are dismissed.”

  Once the jury had filed out of the courtroom, the judge turned to Tristan for the first time. “We will have to schedule a factfinding hearing in the juvenile court, followed by a second trial. Your defender will keep you informed of the schedule.”

  And with that, Tristan was returned to the temporary detention center to wait and worry.

  Chapter 4