After Before and After

Phase 4: Chapter 67

March 15, 1993. 2:21 PM.

Jack Merridew hardly blinked between the hours of nine and noon that heavy Monday morning. The trial was progressing quickly, and Jack knew that it didn't mean all that well for his own fate. At least, it didn't seem so to the pessimistic blond boy. Currently, his attention was captured by the testimony that began this week; that against his former best friend and partner in tropical crime, Roger Conroy.

Jack and Roger were not on speaking terms when the trial shifted its focus to the latter. After hearing Roger name Jack on tape as a participant in Simon's death, and identifying him as the person who cried out that Simon was the monster, Jack knew that the relationship was severed in an unrepairable way. Jack really did believe Roger when he claimed he didn't mean anything by what he said in that interview because Roger didn't mean much by most of the unfiltered things he said. But that didn't excuse what he did, not in Jack's eyes. Whether he meant to point the finger at Jack or not, Roger Conroy could no longer be trusted.

And perhaps, Roger never really had Jack's back the way Jack had his.

The falling out made sitting in the courtroom that mid-March morning especially intense for Jack. He wondered and wondered about what the end of their friendship would mean for the case. He considered the possibility that Roger may intend to testify against Jack in an effort to pin both Simon's and Piggy's deaths on him. Roger may not have been the thinking type, but he certainly stopped to think when he was angry. That scared Jack more than he cared to admit.

Jack and the rest of the boys on trial spent that morning listening to Barnes place Roger at the scene of Simon's death, just like she did with the previous five boys. She brought back in one of the forensic examiners on the case back in 1991, one that already testified in the cases against Luke, the twins, and the two little ones ahead of Roger on the roster. Dr. Gerald Klein returned for a forth time to verify the DNA report conducted on the hunting sticks. She brought out Exhibit H6; the stick with Roger's fingerprints on it. Like the others sticks, Roger's had a tag on it with an identifying label. The weapon had a excessive amount of dried blood on it, more than most of the other sticks did. The blood climbed higher on Roger's stick than it did on the twins', which Dr. Klein pointed out was a predictor for how close to the victim Roger was when he helped to kill him, and how many jabs he got in compared to the others.

Jack could tell by Dana Barnes' smug face that the narrative was spinning exactly the way she wanted.

Reynolds objected at that time to declare that the evidence couldn't concretely put Roger at the front of the pack, nor did it prove that he was the one who inflicted the most wounds, or any of the fatal ones. Barnes and Reynolds argued for a minute or two before Judge Eldeson banged his gavel to end the nonsense and ruled in Barnes' favor. The blood evidence didn't have the weight that a non-existent video of the murder would, but it did make a relatively strong case for how exactly Roger was involved in Simon's death.

Jack felt his pulse racing in his wrists and chest as he realized that his own stick would certainly have more blood on it than Roger's. According to his lawyer, Brett, the defense intended to argue that Jack and Roger did most of the pig hunting, which compromised the blood samples on the sticks. Jack wasn't all that convinced it was a strong argument, but what did he know? He never went to law school.

By shortly after two o'clock that afternoon, Barnes finished questioning two more witnesses who helped to verify Roger's placement during Simon's death. One of them was an expert in police evidence, and presented a simulation on a TV that was rolled in that portrayed exactly how close Roger would've been to achieve the blood pattern that appeared on his stick. Barnes and her witnesses did a damn good job of placing Roger at the scene of Simon's murder, and proving how involved he was. Barnes opted to spend any more time on it considering that in his tape that was played back in February, Roger already admitted to being there as an active participant in the boy's death. He entered a plea of not guilty on the grounds of self-defense back in October of 1992, as did all the other boys except for Ralph, in regards to Simon's death.