Afterlife

27

In attempts to calm the murmuring crowd, Julia Norris rose her right hand as she spoke in a clear voice saying, "Please, we won't get anywhere like this... in order to fully understand what is going on here, we must proceed with the hearing. Perhaps then the truth will be revealed." Having heard her statement, the crowd gradually died down until the hall was once again shrouded in silence. Then when everyone had regained their composure she continued saying, "Thank you. Now then, lets proceed with any witnesses or evidence that either one of you have to substantiate your claims."

Connie turned to see if Lance had anything he wished to bring to the table first, but seeing that he had yet to step up, she assumed that he either didn't have anything yet, or just wanted to see what he was up against before playing his hand. 'I guess I'll go first then,' she told herself as she stepped forward saying, "I'd like to call Luke George as my first witness."

Upon hearing the name of Connie's witness, the Commander squinted his eyes slightly in confusion. 'Why would he be the first person she'd call on,' he wondered, 'Why not just call on Sam Jones himself? Could there possibly be something important about this child that I haven't taken into consideration?'

"Proceed," Julia then said with a slight nod of the head. Due to the Commander's involvement in the case being brought into the equation, it was required that someone else take over the hearing until the matter was resolved, and since Julia was the next in rank, she was the automatic choice to do so.

Having received permission to proceed, Luke then broke away from the rest of his group, walking up to Connie and standing beside her as she pulled out the falsified report they'd collected earlier. Then, turning to face Luke, she began by asking, "Luke, you've been with Jones group for a long time now... almost as long as my own group has existed in fact. So would you say you're an important member of the group? Important enough to say, on occasion, write up the mission reports instead of Sam doing so himself?"

"Yes," Luke then replied, "I have occasionally written up the reports for him if he asked me to."

"Did you write up the report for their most previous mission?"

"I did."

Connie then turned back to face the crowd as she held the falsified report in the air saying, "According to the Commander, what I have here in my hand, is a mission report, handed in by Jones' group, which tells that Sam Jones believed Santino had murdered Dan and lied about it. Telling him it was a banished person instead." She then turned to Luke as she then asked, "Luke, would you do me a favor and tell us... is this the report you wrote?"

Luke's eyes scanned the document for a moment before he then replied, "Not even close."

"Not even close," Connie reiterated as she turned back to face the crowd, pausing for a moment before she then continued, "If the Commander had the ability to falsify this," she paused, holding up the document once more, "then what else has he falsified? How many others has he falsely accused, and falsely punished?" There was a short silence before Connie then went on a bit more saying, "And that's not all he lied about in this note. He also goes on to say, that the murder weapon, was never placed in the bag of Dan's personal items to be provided as evidence, and was most likely left in the woods, never to be seen again... but I have both witness testimony, and physical proof that this is incorrect, and if I may... I'd like to call on my next witness."

There was a short silence before Julia then replied, "As long as Lance doesn't have any questions for the current witness, then you may move on to the next."

Lance gestured that he had no questions for Luke, so Connie then turned to Luke and nodded for him to rejoin the rest of the group. Then turning back to face the crowd, she announced her next witnesses, "The next witness I have, actually happens to be two people, who I'm sure many of my fellow IPs know quite well. Jillian and Lillian Heins, the girls in charge of evidence lockup."