Midnight

Matt, please; I beg you, don’t let them do this to you!

Sometimes it’s true that discretion is the better part of valor.

They hold all the cards and we’re walking blindfolded in the dark…"

She had gotten surprisingly worked up about it, mixing her metaphors and al , Matt thought dejectedly. But it’s not exactly as if I volunteered for this. And I bet they know those boards are pretty flimsy and if I break out, I’l be chased from here to who-knows-where. And if I stay put at least I’l get to tel the truth.

For a very long time nothing happened. Matt could tel from the sun through the cracks in the boards that it was afternoon. A man came in and offered a visit to the bathroom and a Coke. Matt accepted both, but also demanded an attorney and his phone cal .

"You’l have an attorney,"the man grumbled at him as Matt came out of the bathroom. "One’l be appointed for you."

"I don’t want that. I want a real attorney. One that I pick."

The man looked disgusted. "Kid like you can’t have any money. You’l take the attorney appointed to you."

"My mom has money. She’d want me to have the attorney we hire, not some kid out of law school."

"Aw,"the man said, "how sweet. You want Mommy to take care of you. And her al the way out in Clydesdale by now, I bet, with the black lady doctor."

Matt froze.

Shut back in the jury room he tried frantical y to think. How did they know where his mom and Dr. Alpert had gone? He tried the sound of "black lady doctor" on his tongue and found it tasted bad, sort of old-time-ish and just plain bad. If the doctor had been Caucasian and male, it would’ve sounded sil y to say "…gone with the white man doctor." Sort of like an old Tarzan film.

A great anger was rising in Matt. And along with it a great fear. Words slithered around his mind: surveillance and spying and conspiracy and cover-up. And outwitted.

He guessed it was after five o’clock, after everybody who normal y worked at court had left, that they took him to the interrogation room.

They were just playing, he figured, the two officers who tried to talk to him in a cramped little room with a video camera in one corner of the wal , perfectly obvious even though it was smal .

They took turns, one yel ing at him that he might as well confess everything, the other acting sympathetic and saying things like, "Things just got out of hand, right? We have a picture of the hickey she gave you. She was hot stuff, right?"Wink, wink. "I understand. But then she started to give you mixed signals…"

Matt reached his snapping point. "No, we were not on a date, no, she did not give me a hickey, and when I tel Mr.

Forbes you cal ed Caroline hot stuff, winkey winkey, he’s gonna get you fired, mister. And I’ve heard of mixed signals, but I’ve never seen them. I can hear ‘no’as well as you can, and I figure one ‘no’means ‘no’!"

After that they beat him up a little bit. Matt was surprised, but considering the way he had just threatened and sassed them, not too surprised.

And then they seemed to give up on him, leaving him alone in the interrogation room, which, unlike the jury room, had no windows. Matt said over and over, for the benefit of the video camera, "I’m innocent and I’m being denied my phone cal and my attorney. I’m innocent…"

At last they came and got him. He was hustled between the good and bad cops into a completely empty courtroom. No, not empty, he realized. In the first row were a few reporters, one or two with sketchbooks ready.

When Matt saw that, just like a real trial, and imagined the pictures they’d sketch – just like he’d seen on TV, the lead in his stomach turned into a fluttering feeling of panic.

But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it, to get the story out?

He was led to an empty table. There was another table, with several well-dressed men, al with piles of papers in front of them.

But the thing that held Matt’s attention at that table was Caroline. He didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a dove gray cotton dress. Gray! With no jewelry on at all, and subtle makeup. The only color was in her hair – a brazen auburn. It looked like her old hair, not the brindled color it had been when she was starting to become a werewolf. Had she learned to control her form at last? That was bad news. Very bad.

And final y, with an air of walking on eggshel s, in came the jury. They had to know how irregular this was, but they kept coming in, just twelve of them, just enough to fil the jury seats.

Matt suddenly realized that there was a judge sitting at the desk high above him. Had he been there al along? No…

"Al rise for Justice Thomas Hol oway,"boomed a bailiff. Matt stood and wondered if the trial was real y going to start without his lawyer. But before everyone could sit, there was a crash of opening doors, and a tal bundle of papers on legs hurried into the courtroom, became a woman in her early twenties, and dumped the papers on the table beside him.

"Gwen Sawicki here – present,"the young woman gasped.

Judge Hol oway’s neck shot out like a tortoise’s, to bring her into his realm of sight. "You have been appointed on behalf of the defense?"

"If it pleases Your Honor, yes, Your Honor – al of thirty minutes ago. I had no idea we had gone to night sessions, Your Honor."

"Don’t you be pert with me!"Judge Hol oway snapped. As he went on to al ow the prosecution attorneys to introduce themselves, Matt pondered on the word "pert."It was another of those words, he thought, that was never used toward males. A pert man was a joke. While a pert girl or woman sounded just fine. But why?

"Cal me Gwen,"a voice whispered beside him, and Matt looked to see a girl with brown eyes and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she looked honest and straightforward, which made her the prettiest thing in the room.