Chapter Twenty-One—Linc
I had to hand it to the Denver court system: they didn’t keep us waiting. Two weeks after I won in Family Court, Sky and I were in a different kind of courtroom, waiting for the beginning of my Grand Jury hearing. She had been suspended from Clandale, pending the outcome of her trial; fortunately they’d suspended her with pay, and even more fortunately, I made enough money from the apartment building that it didn’t really matter. Sky was my wife, and I could support us both for a while. But I knew that she would hate herself if she lost her first ‘real’ job because of this.
The judge came into the courtroom, and we all rose to our feet. Carol hadn’t wanted to represent me—said she wouldn’t be caught dead practicing criminal law—but she’d referred me to a defense lawyer friend of hers, and he seemed just as sharp and shrewd as she was. I was pretty hopeful.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Judge Lance Pfefferman said after we were seated. “We’re here today to determine if there are grounds for charges to be laid against one Lincoln Hayes, in the battery of one Stephen Jennings.” He went on, and I looked around the room. Stephen was milking his broken nose for all it was worth, and I would have sworn someone had put makeup on him to make the bruising look worse.
“Shit,” Sky murmured next to me.
“What?” I took her hand in mine, and squeezed it as lightly as I could to reassure her.
“Him,” she said, pointing to a man seated in the gallery. “That’s Stephen’s boss—the head of the department.” I raised an eyebrow. The man she’d pointed out looked to be in his sixties, with graying hair, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and a no-nonsense face.
“Don’t worry about him,” I told her. “It’ll be fine.”
We sat through the preliminaries, and I kept looking at Sky’s boss, hating him in my mind. It was his fault we had to go through this. Finally, the moment I’d been waiting for came up. Sky began to sit up straighter as we both heard it coming. My lawyer—who was Sky’s too, for her charge—told the judge that Sky Hayes would be testifying.
“Sky Hayes?” The judge frowned. “I have a Sky Davis listed as a co-defendant in a collateral case.”
“Yes—obstruction of justice,” my lawyer agreed. “She is now married to the defendant in this case.”
“That will be interesting, then,” the judge remarked. “All right, let’s see what Mrs. Hayes has to say.” Sky stood and walked across the courtroom to the witness stand. I smiled at her, wanting to encourage her, as she swore her oath.
“Mrs. Hayes, I would like you to tell us what happened the day of the alleged attack on Mr. Jennings,” my lawyer said. I looked at Stephen; he wasn’t looking quite so confident. I turned my attention back onto Sky.
“The day of the alleged attack, Mr. Jennings was in my office,” Sky said. She kept her voice level, absolutely confident, and began to explain to everyone in the room. “The first day that I started working at Clandale, Stephen—Mr. Jennings—made it clear that he was interested in having a sexual relationship with me.” A ripple went through the gallery at that, and the Grand Jury—most of them women, I was glad to see—were not happy.
“Did you reciprocate his interest?”
“No, sir,” Sky replied. “I tried to make it as clear as possible to him that I found his advances inappropriate, and that I wanted him to stop.”
“And how does this relate to the day of the alleged attack?”
“When Mr. Hayes came into my office, Mr. Jennings was in the middle of attempting to coerce me into having lunch with him,” Sky said. Another ripple went through the room. “I told him, once again, that I didn’t find his behavior appropriate, and that I wanted him to stop. Mr. Hayes came into the office at that point, and saw that Mr. Jennings had grabbed me—he wanted, I think, to pull me out of my desk chair. I don’t know what he intended to do after that, and I’m glad I never found out.”
Stephen’s lawyer tried to shake Sky’s testimony, but she had the truth on her side; no matter how he tried to get her to admit to somehow encouraging Jennings to court her, Sky knew that she hadn’t. Then it was my turn, and I testified to exactly what had happened the day I’d punched Stephen in the nose, not mentioning the part about asking Sky not to tell the police who I was.
Finally, it was Stephen’s turn, and I could tell when he went up on the stand that the room was not in his favor. So could he, and he didn’t like it. He’d thought that his lawyer could intimidate Sky into some kind of confession that she had been interested in him, and he had thought his lawyer could get either Sky or me to admit to some conspiracy to cover up who I was; but we’d agreed before we’d even met with my lawyer: we weren’t even going to mention it, and we were going to stick with the story that I’d just fled.
“Mr. Jennings, did Sky Davis give you any indication at all that she reciprocated your interest in her?” I almost laughed. From that point forward I knew that no matter what else came up, it was almost a guarantee that the Grand Jury was going to side with us. Stephen’s lawyer tried to draw out some argument that Stephen hadn’t deserved to be punched, that Sky had led him on and then intended some bizarre lawsuit at her brand-new job as a cash cow, but the jury was clearly not having it.
When they came back in with their decision, less than thirty minutes after leaving the courtroom to deliberate, I knew even before the judge read it out that there wasn’t going to be some big trial.
“I’m also ready to make a ruling on the collateral case,” the judge said, after reading the decision not to indict me. “The charges against Mrs. Hayes should also be dropped, in that I have not seen any evidence other than hearsay that there was any active effort on her part to interfere with an investigation. I conclude, with the Grand Jury, that this is a case where force was used in the rightful defense of another, namely Mrs. Hayes.”
The judge adjourned the session, and I stood up and pulled Sky to me, kissing her hungrily—but trying to keep it appropriate to the venue. Neither of us was going to have to go to court again, at least not for a long time. Neither of us was going to have to deal with a trial. And none of what had happened with Jennings was going to have any impact on the custody ruling Judge Bryan had handed down.
“Ahem, Mrs. Hayes?” I let Sky go and turned around to see the man she’d pointed out to me.
“Oh—I’m so sorry, Mr. Keller,” Sky said, blushing. “I didn’t realize you were waiting to speak to me.”
“I wanted to personally apologize for the stress you must have been under these past few weeks,” Keller said. “And in light of what has come to light in regard to Stephen’s behavior, I will be filling out the paperwork for his dismissal this afternoon, as soon as I get back into the office. Of course, your suspension will be rescinded effective tomorrow. I believe we can resolve the HR issues tomorrow morning, if you’re still willing to work at Clandale.”
“I am,” Sky said. “Thank you—thank you so much.”
Keller turned to leave the courtroom and I hugged Sky tightly to me. Everything had turned out all right; and I still had another five and a half months to convince her to stay with me for good—five and a half months that wouldn’t be overshadowed by anything.
~The End for now~