Poetic Justice. Andrea J. Johnson
Ashton North sat motionless, his eyes and nose scrunched in confusion. He clutched the empty evidence envelope to his chest and did not appear to breathe. On the table in front of him sat a two-pound bag of C&H Pure Cane Powdered Confectioner’s Sugar that was still in the original packaging, complete with the $2.08 price tag courtesy of our local Redner’s Supermarket.
Something had definitely gone awry.
Soon nervous laughter trickled from the jury, but the cackle from the defendant made my lungs clench.
I remembered that sound from school. That was the last sound I’d heard before my head sank below the surface of Bickerton High’s pool. Anxiety, like shards of chilled glass, ripped through my chest. I lifted my head and locked stares with the face that had been the ominous backdrop to an otherwise routine trial.
Harriston slipped on his loafers and hopped up. “Your Honor, a bag of powdered sugar is not sufficient evidence. I move the charges against Langley Dean Mulligan be dismissed on all counts.”
In that moment, everything blurred. Langley Dean. She was The Lovely Lady D when we clashed our senior year of high school. What once was a pale, auburn-haired ingénue with thin pink lips, upturned nose, and fiendish eyes so cold they registered as silver, was now a pudgy, sunburned woman with crow’s-feet and a bad orange dye-job. The Lovely Lady D was barely recognizable, but her affect lingered.
I took a deep breath and parted my lips to ask for a break, but five sharp raps of the gavel against the solid oak of Ms. Freddie’s massive desk created a thick smacking sound that called the room to order. She rose. Her stocky frame radiated the authority of a colossus. Coarse black strands tumbled out of her bun, and the double strand of pearls around her neck rattled out a warning.
“I’d like to see the attorneys at sidebar.” She pointed the gavel at me. “You, too, Victoria.”
Langley’s head turned and an uncomfortable flash of recognition bounced between us. Her eyes tracked my movements as if she couldn’t believe I was real.
Oh, no. Not here. Not at work.
I closed my laptop and grabbed the steno machine by its tripod so I could walk across the well of the courtroom to the judge’s position on the bench. I could feel Langley’s icy gaze follow me as I climbed the steps of the rostrum to the sanctity of Ms. Freddie’s gigantic platform. I couldn’t afford to succumb to Langley’s intimidation tactics. I had a job to do.
Besides, she’d be out of sight the moment I took my place on the bench. Thank goodness. My heart settled. For the first time in my career, I was happy to be at sidebar—until Stevenson’s frat boy cologne invaded my nostrils.
Scratch that. Sidebars sucked.
The environment wasn’t conducive to creating a verbatim record. Ms. Freddie occupied a chair the size of a recliner, while I sat on a footstool to her right. The attorneys stood on the steps to the bench and leaned over my head to speak with her. We were all huddled so close, I could smell of stale coffee on Harriston’s breath.
Everyone radiated tension, especially once the white noise surrounded us. The bailiff switched on the annoying static to protect our confidential conversation from the jurors’ ears—a little detail that reduced my cognition by fifty percent. To make up the difference, I stared at each person’s lips as they spoke.
The process was like watching mimes act out a scene between an umpire and an unruly baseball manager. Stevenson was, of course, the manager as he flailed his arms and insisted Corporal North possessed sufficient authority to vouch for the narcotics. He even demanded we put the state chemist on the stand to verify the report, since the docket had her testifying anyway. Harriston disagreed and took the role of umpire. He remained cool and dignified as he campaigned to dismiss the felony drug charges.
I tried to keep up, but my thoughts clouded over with the memory of Langley’s eyes. The way the silver glinted as she’d lured me from the locker room toward the school pool. She had told me to put on the mascot costume early so we could get a yearbook photo. I could barely see out of the mini eyehole ridiculously positioned under Scrappy the Seabird’s beak. I didn’t realize she’d led me to the edge. A swift kick in the gut and down I went.
“Enough!”
The judge held up her palm to cut both attorneys off mid-rant. She leaned away from our huddle and signaled the bailiff to take the jurors to the jury room. As soon as they were gone, Ms. Freddie switched off the white noise and motioned for Harriston to proceed.
“Your Honor, loss or destruction of evidence by the prosecution deprives the defendant due process and runs contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment.” Harriston swept his arm toward the witness stand, where Corporal North still sat. “Chain of custody law requires the State authenticate the evidence and eliminate the possibility of misidentification.”
“That statute doesn’t require I authenticate evidence to a degree of absolute certainty,” Stevenson’s voice grew frantic, “just a reasonable probability. The lab report gives us that.”
“Wrong. How can the State prove the authenticity of a substance if the evidence in the envelope doesn’t match the description on the report?” Harriston flashed his veneers at the judge and swooped in for the kill. “Mr. Stevenson has failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that my client was in possession of narcotics on the day in question. Even if the chemist’s report reveals a controlled substance, the door is open for the jury to infer tampering or false arrest. At the very least, we have a gap in the chain of custody.”
The universe clearly loved screwing with me. Did he just imply Langley might have legal grounds for getting away with another crime? Tears formed at the thought, and my hands shook with rage. No one had believed what she’d done to me. Why should anything have changed?
“I call B.S.” Corporal North burst to life on the witness stand, and everyone jumped at the sound of his fierce rebuttal. “Are you implying I don’t know how to do my job?”
“Corporal, calm down,” said Ms. Freddie. “No one has drawn a conclusion. What we need to do first is clarify the chain of custody.” She turned her attention to the deputy attorney general. Her broad facial features twisted into a dark mask of disgust. “Mr. Stevenson, you have to overcome the presumption of innocence. Where do the drugs go after they are tested and the lab report completed?”
“I can answer that.” Corporal North raised a hand and reached for her arm, even though he was out of range. He looked desperate and frustrated, and I wanted to let him know he wasn’t the only collateral damage in this case. “Typically, our evidence sergeant retrieves the tested substances from the CSL and stores them at the troop until trial. In this case, the envelope never returned. Our people received word the lab did an internal audit, and the evidence transfer was put on hold. So, everything stayed at the CSL until this morning.”
“I appreciate your candor, Corporal.” Ms. Freddie then raised her voice to prompt the bailiff. “Could we get the chemist, Phyllis Dodd, up here at sidebar?” When Phyllis was absorbed into our circle, the judge started her examination. “Tell us why your office held this evidence.”
Phyllis, a freckled-face brunette, who was slim, trim, and oh-so prim, spoke as if the answer was obvious. “As the person fiscally and administratively responsible for the lab, I do random inspections to ensure everyone follows procedure and our documentation matches the inventory. This deters theft and dry-labbing. We held the prosecution’s evidence for such an audit. Everything cleared.”
“Dry-labbing?” I asked. My mind was so preoccupied, I was afraid I’d misunderstood. I hadn’t heard the term before, and I certainly didn’t know how to spell it on my steno machine.
“Yes. Recording results for substances that were never tested.” Phyllis bowed her head and smoothed the lines of her French twist in a nervous way that alerted me to my mistake in highlighting her lab’s possible weakness.
“Your Honor,” Harriston pounced, “I think she’s essentially admitting knowledge of suspicious activity at the lab,