"You've made your point," he said.
"Are you finished with this witness?"
Tommy shook his head.
"Not quite."
He walked over to the prosecution's table and picked up the knife.
"Now, Lieutenant Murphy, were you, or anyone else in the barracks room, in the habit of sharing meals with Lieutenant Scott?"
"No."
"In every other room, people share foodstuffs and take turns doing the cooking, correct?"
"It seems that way."
"But Scott was excluded?"
"He didn't seem to want to be a part " "Oh, of course. He'd rather starve on his own, all by himself."
Murphy glared again, and Tommy continued.
"So he ate alone. I presume he fixed his own meals, as well."
"Yes."
"So you really wouldn't know for sure what knife he might have used at any given point to prepare his meals, would you?"
"He had a penknife. I saw him use it."
"Did you always watch him fix his meals?"
"No."
"So you really have no idea whether or not he might have used this homemade blade, on any occasion, do you?"
"No."
With the blade still in his hand, Tommy walked over to the defense table. Hugh reached down by his feet and handed Tommy a small parcel.
Tommy put the knife down, and then took the parcel over to the witness.
"You are an expert on meats, lieutenant. After all, your family owns a meat-packing business. Lucky for you, I guess. I would hate to have to have you rely on your own wits to get ahead…"
"Objection," Townsend yelled.
"Lieutenant Hart insults the witness!"
"Lieutenant," Colonel MacNamara said coldly, "I'm warning you. Do not persist along this road."
"Right, colonel," Tommy said briskly.
"I would surely hate to insult anyone…"
He sneered at Lieutenant Murphy, who eyed him with an ill-disguised fury of his own.
"Now, lieutenant, be so kind as to identify this for us."
Murphy reluctantly reached out and took the parcel from Tommy Hart. He swiftly unwrapped it and grimaced.
"German blood sausage," he said.
"Everyone's seen this before. Standard issue from the Krauts."
"Would you eat this?"
"No one I know in the entire camp eats it. People'd rather starve."
"Would you, the expert on meats and meat processing, eat this?"
"No."
"What goes into this sausage, lieutenant?"
Murphy scowled again.
"Hard to say. The sausage we make back in the States is thick, solid, and carefully prepared.
Sanitary. No one gets sick off of what we fix and send to market. This stuff, well, who knows? Lots of pig's blood and other types of waste matter, loosely packed in sheaths of intestines.
You wouldn't want to know what could be in there."
The sausage was almost gelatinous. It was a deep brown-black color, tinged with red. It gave off a foul odor.
Tommy took the parcel and removed the sausage, holding it up for the audience to recognize. There was some uncomfortable laughter of recognition in the crowd.
Then Tommy moved back to the defense table. He picked up the homemade blade, then seized one of his precious white sheets of notepaper from the desk. Before the prosecution caught on to what he was doing. Tommy wrapped the paper around the handle of the knife, covering the cloth that was already stained. He held the blade up, theatrically, as Walker Townsend jumped up and shouted out "Objection!" once again. Tommy ignored the word, and ignored the sudden gaveling from the tribunal's table. Instead, he took the knife and swiftly plunged it down hard across the thick middle of the sausage, cutting it in half. Then he chopped at the sausage twice more, making certain that the paper-wrapped handle creased the mess of false meat. The room seemed to fill with an exaggerated pungent smell of waste, and the kriegies closest to the defense table groaned as the smell struck them.
Tommy ignored the objections flooding from the prosecution, and paced directly in front of Lieutenant Murphy. He raised his own voice above all the other noise, and silenced the room with his question: "What do you see on the paper, lieutenant? The paper around the handle?"
Murphy paused, then shrugged.
"It looks like blood," he said.
"Specks of blood."
"About the same amount of blood that mars the cloth and which the prosecution claims with no supporting evidence whatsoever belongs to Trader Vic!"
Stepping back from the witness. Tommy shouted, "No further questions."
He took the knife and unwrapped the paper from the handle, holding it above his head so that the entire courtroom could see the splatter marks. Tommy then walked over to Walker Townsend and handed the paper to the prosecutor, who shook his head from side to side. The knife, however, he jabbed by the point into the tabletop, leaving it vibrating like a tuning fork in the once again silent courtroom.
Chapter Thirteen
Tommy spotted Fritz Number One counting the adjacent formation of kriegies at the following morning's Appell. He kept the lean ferret locked in his sight throughout the assembly, ignoring the light rain that fell from dark gray skies, staining the brown leather of his flight jacket with streaks of black dampness. When Major Clark saluted Oberst Von Reiter and saw the usual nod from Colonel MacNamara, and then spun sharply and bellowed out the dismissal, Tommy surged through the melee of fliers, pushing his way directly to where Fritz and some of the other ferrets were gathered at the edge of the exercise yard, smoking and divvying up the day's assignments. The German looked up as Tommy approached, frowned, and immediately stepped away from the others.
Tommy stopped, a few feet away, and beckoned to the ferret, cocking a single finger with exaggeration like some impatient and harsh schoolteacher overseeing a laggardly student. Fritz Number One looked about nervously for an instant, then took a few quick strides to Tommy's side.
"What is it, Mr. Hart?" he asked swiftly.
"I have many duties to perform this morning."
"Sure you do," Tommy replied.
"What, there's some spot that needs to be inspected for the ten millionth time? You need to be sneaking around somewhere urgently?
Come on, Fritz. You know the only show in town today is Scott's trial."
"I still have my duties, Mr. Hart. We all do. Even with the trial."
Tommy shrugged in an overstated, disbelieving fashion.