Kevin's mask of seriousness fractured.
He could feel it, Sarah's words had cut the web he had woven so carefully around the jury. The contempt and suspicion on the faces of the twelve citizens were evaporating, replaced by empathetic understanding.
The air in his lungs felt scarce.
'I'm losing'
He took a deep breath, forcing his brain to reorganize.
He needed to attack again, he needed to find another crack, to be more aggressive.
However, Sarah didn't even give him time to blink.
"Your Honor," she said, centering all her attention on the judge. "The prosecution has an urgent motion. We request permission to introduce new testimonial evidence and call to the stand a witness who was not on the initial list."
"What?!"
Kevin jumped to his feet, almost knocking over his chair.
"Objection, Your Honor! This is inadmissible!" he roared, losing his smoothness to become strident. "This is a violation of discovery rules! The prosecution is obligated to reveal its witness list in advance. Bringing a surprise witness in the middle of the trial is a textbook procedural ambush! It is prejudicial to the defense and violates my client's due process!"
Beside him, Lloyd's face paled, but he tried to compose himself quickly, blindly trusting in Kevin's ability to block this.
But in the face of Kevin's fury, Sarah remained immovable.
She waited for him to finish shouting, and then addressed the judge calmly.
"Your Honor, I understand Attorney Lomax's frustration and deeply respect the procedure, however, this is an exceptional circumstance. This witness was not maliciously withheld. She approached my legal team during the recess this morning. Upon hearing Barbara's testimony, she finally gathered the courage to break her silence."
Pausing, she turned slightly to look at the jury.
"Her testimony is critical and has direct relevance. It not only corroborates the facts, but will demonstrate that the defendant's behavior, Mr. Gettys, is not an isolated incident nor a misunderstanding."
"This testimony will establish a pattern of predatory, systematic, and continuous conduct toward minors under his guardianship. The probative value to discover the truth outweighs any procedural inconvenience."
!
A murmur ran through the place.
Upon hearing this, Kevin turned his head sharply toward Lloyd with furious eyes.
'What else did you hide from me, you damn son of a bitch!?'
Lloyd's face had lost all trace of blood while his eyes darted from side to side, dodging Kevin's accusing gaze, and his lips trembled without saying a single word.
Upon seeing that reaction, Kevin's soul sank into the abyss.
Sarah wasn't lying.
The judge, a veteran man who had seen it all, noticed the exchange and his expression became grave.
He looked deeply at the pale Lloyd, then at the shaken Kevin, and finally toward Sarah.
"..."
He weighed the decision for a few eternal seconds.
Bang
The gavel struck the wood with a definitive sound.
"Objection overruled," he ruled with a severe voice. "Given the circumstances of the discovery of the evidence, the court will allow the testimony in the interest of justice. Bailiff, bring in the witness."
The sound of the gavel echoed in Kevin's ears like the tolling of a funeral bell.
He slumped into his chair without strength.
Under the expectant gaze of the whole room, the side door opened.
A girl entered accompanied by the bailiff. She was wearing jeans and a simple white T-shirt.
She seemed to be the same age as Barbara, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. She had brown hair cut to chin length and her face was covered in freckles, but she was so pale that the freckles looked like dark spots on a white canvas.
Her hands gripped the hem of her T-shirt so tightly that her knuckles were blue. She walked slowly, dragging her feet, carrying the invisible weight of a secret she had kept for too long.
Upon seeing her cross in front of the defendant's bench, Lloyd shrank violently in his seat as if he had seen a specter risen from his own grave.
The girl did not look at him, nor did she have the courage to lift her gaze from the floor. She simply walked to the stand, and placed her hand on the Bible to take the oath with a barely audible voice.
Once the swearing-in protocol was completed, the courtroom fell into an expectant silence.
"Please, tell the court your full name," Sarah instructed softly, positioning herself near the stand.
"M-My... my name is Emily Myers."
"Emily," Sarah nodded, transmitting calm with her gaze. "Do you recognize the man sitting in the defendant's bench, Mr. Gettys?"
Upon hearing the name, Emily's body suffered a visible spasm, as if she had been pricked, but she maintained her composure enough to nod.
"...Yes... he was my History teacher last year."
"Thank you. Now, Emily, this is difficult, but I need you to be strong," Sarah continued. "Can you tell the jury what it was that drove you to come here today and contact us with such urgency?"
Taking a deep breath, Emily slowly lifted her head and her eyes sought out Barbara, who was sitting in the front row.
"..."
Their gazes met, there were no words, only a painful connection. A silent and terrible understanding that only belongs to the survivors of the same abuser.
"I heard Barbara's testimony from the gallery..." Her voice was gaining strength, driven by an anger that had been repressed for too long. "A-And I realized that I couldn't stay silent. Because... What he did to her, he did to me too!"
!
The statement dropped like a bomb in the middle of the courtroom.
The court erupted into chaos, the murmurs of the gallery turning into exclamations of astonishment. The judge had to strike his gavel violently repeatedly, demanding order.
"..."
At the defense table, Kevin's face went from pale white to an ashen gray, the color of the ashes of a burnt career.
He was finished...
His mind, which was always three steps ahead, collapsed.
His entire defense strategy had been based on a single pillar: destroying Barbara's credibility, painting her as an isolated and fanciful liar.
But the appearance of a second victim, a girl with no prior connection to the first, who narrated the same modus operandi, pulverized that defense.
It was no longer the word of a teenager against a teacher, it was a pattern of conduct.
Sarah ignored the background noise, keeping her attention fixed on her.
"Emily," she resumed when the noise died down. "Sorry to ask you this, but... Could you be more specific? What exactly did he do to you?"
"He... he always found excuses for me to stay after class. He said he needed help with homework or extra projects," tears began to well up in Emily's eyes, but she didn't stop, letting the words flow. "He got too close... he invaded my space. His hand would brush against my back, my legs, my neck... He told me I was special, that I was much more mature and intelligent than the other girls my age, that I had a talent he wanted to help grow... They were almost the exact same phrases he used with Barbara!"
"And did that escalate to something else?"
"Yes... Once, when we were alone in the office reviewing an exam, he... he hugged me from behind, pinning me against the desk," Emily sobbed, reliving the terror. "I-I got very scared, I managed to push him away and ran out of there.... But the next day, he gave me a failing grade on the exam and started telling the other teachers that I was emotionally unstable and suffered from paranoia...."
Every word of the testimony struck Kevin's chest.
The corroboration was perfect... lethally perfect.
The manipulation, the isolation, the use of intellectual flattery, and finally the academic retaliation.
The jury members, who minutes before had looked at Barbara with doubt, now looked at Lloyd with open hostility, a mixture of anger and disgust that no legal rhetoric could reverse.
However, Sarah wasn't finished.
She wanted to ensure that not even the ashes remained.
"Your Honor," she announced after finishing with the witness, taking a folder. "The prosecution presents one last piece of physical evidence for corroboration. This recording was provided anonymously by a former student who is too afraid to testify in person due to retaliation, but who managed to document one of her 'private tutorials'."
She held up a small black recorder.
"..."
Everyone, from the jury to the judge, leaned forward.
Sarah pressed the play button.
Despite the static hiss of the processed audio, the girl's voice was a scared whisper, but Lloyd Gettys' voice was heard with nauseating clarity.
["...Come on, don't be shy. You are a very intelligent girl, Ashley, you should know what you have to do to ensure those good grades... I just want to help you unlock your potential. You know I've always had a special fondness for you... Don't get so tense, it's just a little hug. It represents the encouragement and affection of a teacher toward his favorite student, nothing more..."]
Click
The recording ended, leaving behind a deathly silence.
If Emily's testimony had been a hammer, the recording was a dagger driven directly into the heart of the defense.
There was no possible interpretation.
Kevin gave up.
He stopped thinking, stopped planning objections, stopped looking for legal exits. He sat there, staring into the void, stunned, unable to gather the strength even to stand up.
He felt like he was drowning.
He had lost...
And the worst part was not the legal defeat, it was the moral defeat. He had lost in the most humiliating way possible: by his own arrogant blindness.
To protect his immaculate record of victories, he had decided to dance with the Devil, he had sold his soul for an acquittal.
But "victory," that cruel mistress he had idolized, had betrayed him.
After demanding that he sacrifice every last ounce of his conscience, she had abandoned him naked in front of the truth.
He saw Sarah walk back to her table with her head held high, she didn't even bother to look at him.
Beside him, reality finally crushed Lloyd.
The "good teacher" crumbled. Terror distorted his face and, in an act of desperation, he clung to his lawyer's arm tightly, digging his nails in.
"Kevin! Do something! Save me!" he howled, forgetting decorum, whispering in shouts. "You have to save me! You promised me you would win! I paid you a fortune! You said you would win!"
With a violent movement, Kevin shook his arm to free himself from Lloyd's grip, as if an insect had landed on him.
He looked at the twisted and sweaty face of the man he had tried to defend, and a wave of nausea, a hundred times more intense than the one he felt in the bathroom, rose from his stomach to his throat.
He lowered his head slowly, looking at his own empty hands.
Those hands, which were once the symbol of his glory and his talent, now seemed strange to him. They were covered in a filth that he knew could never be washed away.
He had chosen victory at any price. But in the end... victory had chosen the truth.
________
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