14
During the third week of the trial, while Richard Keller testified against his wife, activity in the press box became frantic. The holo-artists’ fingers flew; the color journalists whispered subvocal notes, the men’s Adam’s apples working soundlessly. On a few faces Leisha saw the small, cruel smiles of small, cruel people watching pain.
Richard wore a dark suit over a black bodystretch. Leisha remembered all the light colors he’d programmed into posters and windows everywhere he’d ever lived. Sea colors, usually: green, blue, the subtle grays and creams of foam. Richard sat slumped forward in the witness box, palms flat on his knees, the courtroom light flat on skin stretched taut over broad features. His nails, she saw, were ragged, not really clean. Richard, whose passion was the sea.
Hossack said, “When did you first realize your wife had stolen Dr. Walcott’s patents and filed them under the name of Sanctuary?”
Instantly Sandaleros was on his feet. “Objection! It has been established as fact nowhere—nowhere!—that patents were stolen, or by whom!”
“Sustained,” the judge said. He looked hard at Hossack. “You know better than that, Mr. Hossack.”
“When, Mr. Keller, did your wife first tell you that Sanctuary had filed patents on research to enable Sleepers to become Sleepless?”
Richard spoke in a monotone. “The morning of August 28.”
“Six weeks after the actual filing date.”
“Yes.”
“And what was your reaction?”
“I asked her,” Richard said, his hands still flat on his knees, “who in Sanctuary had developed the patents.”
“And what did she answer?”
“She told me that we had taken them from Outside and had them back-filed in the United States Patent Office system.”
“Objection! Hearsay!”
“Overruled,” Deepford said.
“She told you, in other words,” Hossack continued, “that she was responsible for both stealing and for invasion of United States datanets.”
“Yes. She told me that.”
“Did you question her on how this alleged theft had been accomplished?”
“Yes.”
“Tell the court what she said.”
This was what the press wanted; this was what the spectators jammed knee to thigh had come for. To hear the power of Sanctuary exposed from the inside, gutted by a Sleepless who was gutting himself to do it. Leisha could taste the tension. It had a coppery, salty taste, like blood.
Richard said, “I explained to Leisha Camden once that I am not a datanet expert. I don’t know how it was accomplished. I didn’t ask. What little I do know is on record with the United States Department of Justice. If you want to hear it, play the recording. I will not repeat it.”
Judge Deepford leaned sideways over the bench. “Mr. Keller, you are under oath. Answer the question.”
“No,” Richard said.
“If you don’t answer,” the judge said, not ungently, “I’ll place you in contempt.”
Richard began to laugh. “Contempt? Place me in contempt?” He stopped laughing and raised his hands to the height of his shoulders, like a dazed boxer. His hands dropped. He let them dangle limply by his sides. No matter what was said to him, he sat unanswering, only smiling once in a while and murmuring “Contempt,” until the judge declared an hour’s recess.
When court reconvened, Deepford looked tired. Everyone but Will Sandaleros looked tired. Dismembering a man, Leisha thought numbly, was hard work.
Will Sandaleros looked on fire.
Hossack dangled a pendant by its gold chain in front of the witness. “Do you recognize this, Mr. Keller?”
“Yes.” The skin on Richard’s face looked puffy, like old dough.
“What is it?”
“It’s a micro-power controller keyed to Sanctuary’s Y-field.”
The jury stared at the pendant in Hossack’s hand. A few leaned forward. One man slowly shook his head.
The pendant was tear-shaped, of some smooth, opaque substance the green of fresh apples. According to the testimony of the surly garage attendant, he had found the thing near Dr. Herlinger’s scooter slot just moments after seeing a figure, masked and gloved, run out a side entrance. The shield on the entrance had been taken down: “So it don’t record my every little coming and going all day, you know?” the attendant said. Surveillance tape verified this testimony. Leisha hadn’t doubted it in the first place. Long experience had taught her to recognize a witness too uninterested in justice to care about perverting it.
The green pendant swung gently in Hossack’s fingers.
“Who owns this device, Mr. Keller?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Sanctuary pendants aren’t individualized in any way? With initials, or by color, or anything at all?”
“No.”
“How many exist?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is that?” Hossack said.
“I wasn’t in charge of their manufacture or distribution.”
“Who was?”
“My wife.”
“You mean the defendant, Jennifer Sharifi.”
“Yes.”
Hossack let that hang there while he consulted his notes. My wife. What, Leisha could almost hear the jury think, does it take to make a husband condemn his wife? Her fingers tightened against each other.
“Mr. Keller, you are a member of the Sanctuary Council. Why don’t you know how many of these pendants exist?”
“Because I didn’t want to know.”
If she had been Richard’s lawyer, Leisha thought, she would never have let him say that. But Richard had refused all counsel. She wondered suddenly if he had a pendant of his own. Did little Najla? Ricky?
Hossack said, “Wasn’t the reason you didn’t want to know anything about the pendants because your wife’s other activities appalled you so much?”
“Objection!” Sandaleros cried furiously. “Not only is Mr. Hossack feeding the witness prejudicial opinions, but—as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out—this entire line of evidence has not been tied directly to my client and is in fact irrelevant. Opposing counsel knows there are at least twenty other people with those pendants; he agreed to that stipulation. If Mr. Hossack thinks he can milk irrelevant circumstances for their thrill value—”
“Your Honor,” Hossack said, “we’re establishing that the link between Sanctuary and the scooter tampering is an unequivocally clear one that—”
“Objection! Do you think that even if that amulet could be shown to belong to a member of Sanctuary, that any Sleepless would be so stupid as to drop it? This is clearly a frame, and Ms. Sharifi—”
“Objection!”
“Counsel will approach the bench!”
Sandaleros made a visible effort to control himself. Hossack sailed forward, all grave mass. Deepford leaned over the bench toward them, his face rigid with anger. But he was not as angry as Sandaleros when the two lawyers returned. Leisha closed her eyes.
She knew now what to expect when Sandaleros cross-examined. She hadn’t been sure, before. Now she knew.
It wasn’t long coming. “And so you are telling this court, Mr. Keller,” Will Sandaleros began with clear disbelief, “that your motive for betraying your wife by going to Leisha Camden—”
“Move to strike,” Hossack said wearily. “ ‘Betrayal’ is clearly an inflammatory word.”
“Sustained,” the judge said.
“So you are telling this court that your motive for revealing to Leisha Camden your wife’s alleged surveillance activities and alleged theft—your motive for this was concern for her under a law that had not protected your business from being ruined by prejudice on the part of Sleepers, had not protected your friend Anthony Indivino from being murdered by Sleepers, had not—”