07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

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 wall, perfectly obvious even though it was small.
They took turns, one yelling 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 tell Mr. Forbes you called 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 call 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,
all 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 finally, with an air of walking on eggshells, in came the jury. They had to know how
irregular this was, but they kept coming in, just twelve of them, just enough to fill the jury seats.
Matt suddenly realized that there was a judge sitting at the desk high above him. Had he
been there all along? No…
“All rise for Justice Thomas Holloway,” boomed a bailiff. Matt stood and wondered if
the trial was really going to start without his lawyer. But before everyone could sit, there was a crash
of opening doors, and a tall 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 Holloway’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—all of thirty minutes ago. I had no idea we
had gone to night sessions, Your Honor.”
“Don’t you be pert with me!” Judge Holloway snapped. As he went on to allow 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?