Chapter 4
As our sedan pulls up on next to the sidewalk in front of the old, ornate court building, I feel the intense impulse to stretch my legs.
What’s the time? I can’t tell. I seem to have left my tablet at home. Tom opens the door on his side—the next to the wide, newly-paved sidewalk—and exits, holding the door open for me as I scoot over to his side of the car and get out along with him.
There are already people walking in, and a plethora of onlookers crowding around the door to the courthouse. Security officers have split the crowd and make a path from the car to the courthouse entrance for us to walk down. As soon as our car leaves, people try to push through the opening left by the sedan, which is now speeding down the road, through the congested city streets. The security officers have to block the open space, and it becomes seemingly more difficult for them to hold the crowd back. There are about a dozen officers, maybe more—my focus is on sticking next to Tom and getting through those doors before we’re both trampled on.
It’s nothing but buzz and difficulty breathing. In the few moments that I spend in the open, I hear more noise than I probably ever have at one time in my life. News reporters asking questions, photographers trying to beat the crowd to get a good shot of my perplexed face, pushing their microphones and cameras into me, regardless of what everybody—every single person probably within miles of a computer or TV or this wretched, noisy place—knows what I’m about to go through.
I won’t get into details just yet. Let me simply say that I’m not walking a red carpet.
We’ve finally made it within the shelter of the courthouse, and luckily so, because the crowd has managed to beat the security officers back to the doors, only a moment before they are closed behind us.
“Shit, that wasn’t fun.” Says Tom, stealing my exact thoughts.
“Yeah.” I say between a breath. “No, actually.”
High ceilings, tall, crystal windows, and white marble floors that reflect my image, are the first things I see upon entering the place. This is no second-rate courthouse for petty theft and the like... this is a sophisticated place of business, retribution, and condemnation. This is where the crime lords, traitors, and conspirators go to face their judgements.
This is no place for high ceilings decorated in expensive art or marble floors. It’s a place for criminals to face consequences of their deeds. It’s place that should be anything but beautifully adorned in the comforts of wealth and luxury. Perhaps it’s a statement: even the dirtiest rich men will die as rich men. It’s all a symbol of what our world is really about.
“Okay, Wes.” Tom says, calmly. “Everything will be fine. Just keep cool, stay collected. Let me do the talking. You will get your turn to speak, don’t try and rush things.”
I hear the same re-assurances that everything will be okay over and over.
“Just be calm.”
“We won’t lose, the odds are stacked for us a mile high.”
“We can’t lose. Unless the judge, jury, and the whole lot of them have gone absolutely insane, we can’t lose.”
“I’ve got your back in there.”
Breathe in, breathe out. That’s all I have to know for the next hour or so, if things so well, that is. Perhaps longer if they don’t.
The judge begins the trial of Thatcher verses Aspen. We’re in a large room with dark, wood paneled walls and marble floor. The jury sits on a landing behind us a few metres above the floor. The landing splits in the middle to create a hallway from the courtroom entrance to the courtroom centre, a large circle where at one end, we stand, and at the opposite end, stands the judge on a high seat. The seat stands, also, on a high landing where at each end a curved staircase sits leading upwards to the platform. Above us, a tall dome arches to the sky.
