07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

“Call 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.
“I’m Matt—well, obviously,” Matt said.
“Is this your girl, Carolyn?” Gwen was whispering, showing a picture of the old
Caroline at some dance, wearing stilts, and with tanned legs that went up and up to almost meet
before a miniskirt took over, black and lacy. She had on a white blouse so tight at the bust that it
hardly seemed able to contain her natural assets. Her makeup was exactly the opposite of subtle.
“Her name’s Caroline and she’s never been my girl, but that’s her—the real her,” Matt
whispered. “Before Klaus came and did something to her boyfriend, Tyler Smallwood. But I have to
tell you what happened when she found out she was pregnant—”
She’d gone nuts, was what had happened. No one knew where Tyler was—dead after the
final fight against Klaus, turned into a full wolf in hiding; whatever. So Caroline had tried to pin it on
Matt—until Shinichi appeared and became her boyfriend.
But Shinichi and Misao were playing a cruel joke on her, pretending that Shinichi would
marry her. It was after she realized that Shinichi didn’t care at all that Caroline had gone totally
ballistic, and had really tried to make Matt fit the gaping hole in her life. Matt did his best to explain
this to Gwen so she could explain it to the jury, until the judge’s voice interrupted him.
“We will dispense with opening arguments,” said Judge Holloway, “since the hour is so
late. Will the prosecution call its first witness?”
“Wait! Objection!” Matt shouted, ignoring Gwen’s tugging at his arm and her hissing:
“You can’t object to the judge’s rulings!”
“And the judge can’t do this to me,” Matt said, twitching his T-shirt back from between
her fingers. “I haven’t even had a chance to meet with my public defender yet!”
“Maybe you should have accepted a public defender earlier,” replied the judge, sipping
from a glass of water. He suddenly thrust his head at Matt and snapped, “Eh?”
“That’s ridiculous,” cried Matt. “You wouldn’t give me my phone call to get a lawyer!”
“Did he ever ask for a phone call?” Judge Holloway snapped, his eyes traveling around
the room.
The two officers who had beat Matt up solemnly shook their heads. At this, the bailiff,
whom Matt suddenly recognized as the guy who’d kept him in the jury room for around four hours,
began wagging his head back and forth in the negative. They all three wagged, almost in unison.
“Then you forfeited that right by not asking for it,” the judge snapped. It seemed to be his
only way of speaking. “You can’t demand it in the middle of a trial. Now, as I was saying—”
“I object!” Matt shouted even louder. “They’re all lying! Look at your own tapes of them
interrogating me. All I kept saying—”
“Counselor,” the judge snarled at Gwen, “control your client or you will be held in
contempt of court!”
“You have to shut up,” Gwen hissed at Matt.
“You can’t make me shut up! You can’t have this trial while you’re breaking all the
rules!”
“Shut your trap!” The judge belted out the words at a surprising volume. He then added,
“The next person to make a remark without my express permission shall be held in contempt of court
to the tune of a night in jail and five hundred dollars.”
He paused to look around to see if this had sunk in. “Now,” he said. “Prosecution, call