CHAPTER 12: OF EVERYTHING AND MORE
GARLAND HEIGHTS, CITY HALL—NOVEMBER 14th, 1992 | MORNING
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He dug his nails into the palm of his hand and twisted his wrists further into the Drychus cuffs.
A sharp pain burned into his skin. That was all Cameron could do, all he knew to do while watching Leroy Waters give his testimony to the jury. Charles Hhaledi’s grating and holier-than-thou voice faded into obscurity, and his lawyer, Rhonda Slater, tried and failed to match his cadence. Hers was more routine, more official—but both of them might as well have been bugs. Gnats, bees, flies, both buzzing around the courtroom incessantly, obscuring Cameron’s view of Leroy with their arguments and posturing and declarations.
He knew he was guilty. He knew he was going to be condemned to Blackpool by the end of the trial. All of the theatrics leading up to it were infuriating.
Sat on the jury were people who didn’t care about him, people who didn’t know about him, his life. They only pretended to know why he did what he did, graciously accepting the prosecution's fancy words as if they were being spoon fed by the hand of their damned mothers. Cameron glanced over and saw the jury trying to remain indifferent, tight-lipped and detached, content in their role as spectators.
Leroy was called off the stands, and Cameron’s head swiveled towards him.
He dug deeper into his palms, twisted harder with his wrists.
Skin broke on his hand, sizzling beneath the Drychus cuffs. Pain on pain on pain. If he couldn’t dish it out, it had to go somewhere. Better in than out. He had to force some semblance of patience onto himself, double-down on it, and trust that it would pay off. Somehow, someway—one day.
He found himself truly tested in that final, punctuating glance from Leroy. Those assured eyes, the wrinkles he wore like a warning. A smile. The smile. Subtle, brief, and utterly wretched.
Cameron’s body moved without him telling it too, before the judge could recite her ceremonial words, before Charles or Rhonda could proceed. He stood up from his chair. It fell behind him. His chest heaved up and down. Hot air left his nostrils and his jaw locked into place. Leroy was out of view by the time his breath steadied, and it was as if there were several long seconds unaccounted for, where he froze himself in place, exhausting every ounce of restraint he had in his system.
“Order,” declared Judge Kazlauskas, dropping her gavel down. “There will be order in the court!”
Rhonda’s voice was the first thing to fill the silence following the judge's command. “Your Honor, I would like to request a brief recess to speak with my client.”
“On what grounds—” Charles was cut off by the gavel, and the judge leered at him.
“Granted. Three minutes, Ms. Slater. No more.”
“Thank you, your Honor,” said Rhonda with a nod.
Rhonda placed a hand on Cameron’s shoulder and pulled him out of his trance, guiding him down into her unoccupied seat. She took off her dense glasses, and her face creased into an expression of refined prudence; like she’d seen this before and was losing patience for it.
“Cameron,” she said in a low, practiced tone. “For your own sake, calm down.”
Cameron began to turn his head, and Rhonda snapped in front of his face. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
He stopped and directed his attention back toward her.
“I need you to listen to me, very, very carefully. I have done what I can, and argued against some of Charles' assertions. That will only get us so far. I can only get us so far. I am going to call you to the stand as an eyewitness—just like we talked about, just like we rehearsed. If my intuition is right, and it usually is, it’ll be right after that that Charles approaches me to initiate plea bargaining. Nod if you understand.”
Cameron nodded.
Rhonda placed her glasses back on her face. “Good. Now, what are you going to do?”
“Sell it,” Cameron said.
She looked pleased with that answer. Rhonda turned towards the judge. “Your Honor, my client and I are now able to proceed.”
“Let the record reflect that the court is back in session,” said Judge Kazlauskas, briefly glancing towards the clerk and the court reporter seated at the long table in front of the judge’s bench.
“Your Honor, the defence calls Cameron James Kessler to the stand."
“Will the witness please stand?” asked Judge Kazlauskas.
Cameron stood up from the chair.
“Please raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the evidence you shall give to the court in this matter shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” asked Judge Kazlauskas.
Cameron raised his right hand. “Yes.”
Judge Kazlauskas nodded to the side, where the witness stand awaited Cameron. “You may be seated.”
Upon sitting down, Rhonda was quick to make her way towards the center of the courtroom. “Mr. Kessler. In your own words, please provide the jury with a testimony of the events that transpired on October 17th.”
Sell it, she told him. Cameron felt the lump in his throat, solid as a rock and impossible to swallow. The many-headed machine of the jury waited for him to damn himself to a life behind bars. He saw how they looked at him—like some creature, controlled and guided by whatever demonic influences were inherent to him. He was a hexling first and a person second.
“Mr. Kessler?” Judge Kazlauskas rested her hands on her lap.
“We showed up at Hausser’s lot. We had a crate, found by a guy named Rosco, Rosco Squillante, who worked with us frequently—”
“Please clarify who you mean by we, Mr. Kessler,” asked Judge Kazlauskas.
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“The South End Sables. The group I ran with. The whole thing was David’s idea, David St. James, and he wanted us to try to offload the guns to Hausser to make some quick cash. He broke the locks, we went inside. Hausser’s personal guard showed up. An accursed. Theodore,” Cameron said, pausing, only to find that Rhonda’s eyes remained firmly affixed to him. So too were those of Leroy Waters, who, from his position in the public gallery, watched with passing interest, “and after that, Hausser came, along with her other guard. Guy named Martinez. David made a call, and I pulled out a gun and shot Theodore. Martinez went at it with our other associate—”
Cameron’s throat tightened.
All he could see was Leroy’s face amidst the sparsely populated public benches, and in his face, he saw Mercedes. Her big nose, her rugged cheeks, her curly brown hair. Those piercing eyes—her crowded smile, one that she rarely showed. He saw her as she was when she was alive; matter-of-fact, steadfast, with her own personal brand of carelessness that lead her to follow David into the trenches. The purple-pink glow of that trapped sprite she had with her since he’d known her, her ushanka cap that she rarely took off. Her mother’s, she once told him.
He wanted to smile in remembrance of her, but the images of the memories he wanted to keep shattered and twisted.
All he could see now was her body, her blood, and the water-soaked ushanka cap that he reached for.
“Mr. Kessler. Continue,” said Judge Kazlauskas.
“Mercedes. Her name was Mercedes Garcia. She killed Martinez. I killed Theodore. David let Hausser live, and we returned to our warehouse. And that man, the one over there,” Cameron’s tone lowered, and his voice was as dull as it was numb, “Leroy Waters. He killed her.”
“Objection,” Charles said, standing up from his table.
Rhonda panicked, but hid it well. “Your Honor.”
“Sustained,” said Judge Kazlauskas.
“Relevance. Mr. Waters is a licensed arbiter, and per both Ms. Hausser’s testimony and testimony of his own, there is sufficient documentation of his involvement in this by way of arbitration note. The rule of law grants immunity ratione materiae to all arbiters with valid licenses issued by the Minister of the Commonwealth, on the condition that the aforementioned arbitration notes are signed by those commissioning an arbiter for work.”
“He killed her in cold blood,” Cameron stated.
Rhonda’s panic was more visible on her features. She idled in place, and the longer she did, the more her anxiety settled into resignation.
Cameron’s voice strengthened. “He walked into our warehouse, and he killed her, and you—”
“Order, Mr. Kessler, or I will hold in you in contempt for court—”
“Do it! They’ve already decided,” Cameron said, gesturing forcefully towards the jury. “And so have you. See, Rhonda over there, she told me to butter you up. Said I should whine about how my mom was a fucking bludhead, how I’ve never met my dad, how entering this life—... how becoming a South End Sable was a mistake. It wasn’t. Everything I did, I did ‘cause I wanted to or 'cause I had to. And Rhonda, she said if I confessed on the stand, like I just did, that you, Judge whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is, would shave a few years off the top of my sentence. You want to know what the mistake was?"
Cameron’s eyes remained firmly planted on Leroy. "It wasn’t running with the Sables, or beating the brakes off of that fat fuck Theodore, it was letting him live.” He stood up from his seat and pointed a finger in Leroy's direction, and swiveled his head towards Judge Kazlauskas, who had already begun slamming the gavel down, barking out ‘order’ like it was the single most important word in the world.
“And that’s how it works, yeah!? He gets a license to kill, and it doesn’t matter who!? The only time he’ll ever be in a courtroom like this is to tell us all about how he did it! Who he killed, how he killed them, and why none of it fucking matters! He’ll never be where I’m sitting, accused of this, and that, and whatever else you people think I did! You want a murderer? Fine, I can be that. I am that! But so is he. And I can guarantee all of you —... and, and, and mutilated people! And you, all of you,” Cameron turned towards the jury. “You’re just fine with it, because he’s got a shiny fucking license that says he can! How in the world is that fair? How in the world is that okay!?”
“Order! Order in the court!” yelled Judge Kazlauskas, slamming her gavel down as loud as her thin wrists would allow for.
Charles, the district attorney, didn’t have any smiles or charm to share with the jury—only a dumbfounded look that he directed towards Rhonda, Cameron’s defense lawyer, who had long since returned to her table, glasses folded wearily in the hands that held her face. All of those seated in the public benches—all save for Leroy Waters—were whispering among themselves, comfortable in their shared sense of shock.
If the jury was once taciturn, they were now staggered and stupefied, too dumbfounded by Cameron’s outburst to maintain the stoicism expected of them by the courthouse.
The pair of Civic and Occult Authority constables, who had otherwise remained silent and statue-like throughout the entire trial, finally found reason to jump to attention. They closed in on Cameron, each grabbing one of his arms. In a sudden slam they pinned him against the surface of the witness stand.
“I’m guilty! Guilty of everything and more, but so is he! And he’s guilty of far, far fucking worse!”
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“All rise,” ordered Judge Kazlauskas.
The court was quiet, the silence broken only by the sound of dozens upon dozens of shuffling feet. Dress shoes and slides and heels clanked against the hardwood floor. Rhonda Slater and Charles Hhaledi were the first to stand up, followed by the jury, followed by those seated at the benches. Cameron stood at the center of the courtroom with a blackjacket to either side of him, their cast-iron grips wrapped fully around his arms.
Judge Kazlauskas held an envelope in her hand.
“On this day, November 14th, 1992, the jury finds the defendant, Cameron James Kessler, guilty on the charges of second-degree murder, trespassing, aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a firearm, and theft. The jury has also found the defendant guilty on the charge of contempt of court.”
Cameron tried to turn to face the jury, but the blackjackets forced him to look forward.
“For the charge of second-degree murder, you are hereby sentenced to 40 years at Blackpool Penitentiary.”
Judge Kazlauskas continued, eyes tracing down the envelope. “On the charges of trespassing, you are hereby sentenced to 1 year, to be served consecutively in lieu of your previous charges. On the charges of aggravated assault, you are hereby sentenced to 10 years, on the charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, 3 years, and on contempt of court, 6 months, all to be served concurrently with the aforementioned charges.”
Cameron didn’t need to do the math.
He would be spending the rest of his life at Blackpool Penitentiary. He knew it the moment he stepped into the courtroom, and he knew that the results would be the same regardless of if he’d decided to play along with Rhonda’s legal counsel. What difference would it have made, if it would have made one at all? Forty years served, with a possibility of parole?
And that prior personal testimony? Cameron gave Captain Holmes what he wanted to hear in that interrogation room, but never with the intention of reducing his sentence. He did it because if it meant that they found David, there was a chance he’d be sent to Blackpool—it would put him one step closer to crossing that name off his list. He humored Rhonda Slater because he knew that she’d give him a chance to speak his mind. A chance to share his famous last words to the people who decided his fate the second he stepped into the courtroom. A chance to see Leroy Waters.
As the black jackets hauled him down the aisle, Cameron’s focus centered on the man who stood perpendicular to the large set of doors leading into the corridors of city hall.
Leroy had one hand shuffled into the pockets of his navy blue blazer, and the other was half-way to his head.
He tipped his checked flat cap to Cameron on his way out the door.
CAMERON KESSLER
RHONDA SLATER
JUDGE Kazlauskas
CHARLES HHALEDI
LEROY WATERS
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