Story code: ST-001027
Part 2: The Sixty-Second Window
The door swung violently inward, hitting the wall stopper with a loud, wooden crack that made Arthur jump entirely out of his seat. Assistant District Attorney Victor Helms strode into the cramped office, bringing a blast of frigid courthouse hallway air with him. Behind the impeccably dressed prosecutor stood two massive court officers, their hands resting casually on their utility belts, immediately blocking the only exit.
Helms didn’t even acknowledge Chloe’s presence. His dark eyes locked entirely on Marcus.
“Are we done here, Marcus?” Helms asked, his voice smooth, polished, and utterly devoid of patience. “Because Judge Carter is waiting, and I have a dozen other cases today. If the boy isn’t signing, we’re taking the offer off the table right now. I’ll file the superseding indictment upstairs. Armed robbery, conspiracy, gang enhancements. He’ll be remanded to County without bail, and I’ll ask for twenty-five years.”
Chloe pushed herself forward, refusing to be walled off any longer. “He is not signing it, Victor. We have undeniable proof of his innocence. We have a concrete alibi.”
Helms slowly turned his head, looking at Chloe as if she were a mild, unexpected nuisance. He didn’t look threatened by her claim. He looked profoundly amused. He turned his attention back to the towering public defender.
“You didn’t explain the reality of the situation to your junior associate, Marcus?” Helms asked, a cruel smirk playing at the edge of his mouth.
“She is mistaken,” Marcus said. His voice was a gravelly bark, but Chloe could see the thick sweat beading on his forehead, catching the slanted afternoon light. “My associate is overworked. She thought she had something, but the lead didn’t pan out. She is off this case.”
“I have the network logs!” Chloe yelled, her voice echoing off the dingy walls. “Marcus just deleted-”
Marcus’s heavy hand shot out, grabbing Chloe by the upper arm with bone-bruising force. He jerked her backward, putting his massive frame entirely between her and the prosecutor. “One more word, Chloe,” Marcus hissed, his eyes wide and uncharacteristically terrified, “and I will have the officers remove you.”
Helms stepped closer to Arthur, looming over the trembling young man. “Listen to your lawyer, Arthur. He’s a smart man. He knows how the system works. You walk into that courtroom for trial, they’re going to eat you alive. Five years. You’re young. You’ll be out in three. You can start over. But if you let this girl waste my time today, I promise you, you will rot in a six-by-eight cell until your hair goes gray.”
“I didn’t do it,” Arthur whispered, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes and tracking through the dust on his cheeks. His oversized gray sweater swallowed his shaking frame. “I swear to God, I wasn’t there.”
“Nobody is, kid,” Helms said dryly. He tapped the glass of his gold watch. “Sixty seconds, Marcus. Then I walk out that door, and the deal is dead.”
Marcus leaned his weight onto the desk, dipping down directly into Arthur’s face. The veteran attorney looked absolutely wretched. His jaw trembled with suppressed emotion. “Sign it, Arthur,” Marcus pleaded, his voice cracking into a desperate, wet whisper. “I am begging you. As God is my witness, this is the only way you survive the week. Sign the paper.”
Arthur let out a ragged sob, his chest heaving as the panic attack fully consumed him. His trembling hand gripped the heavy metal pen. The tip hovered over the signature line. He looked up at Chloe, his eyes begging for a miracle she no longer possessed.
“Arthur, no!” Chloe lunged forward, but Marcus threw out his arm, clotheslining her back against the metal filing cabinet.
Arthur dragged the pen across the paper, leaving a jagged, barely legible scrawl of his name. He dropped the pen as if the metal had suddenly turned red-hot.
Helms snatched the paper instantly, inspecting the signature with a satisfied nod. He folded it neatly and slipped it into the breast pocket of his tailored suit. “Smart move. Officers, cuff him. Transport him directly to central holding.”
The two court officers stepped forward, hauling Arthur out of the leather chair and wrenching his arms behind his back with practiced brutality. The ratcheting click of the metal handcuffs sounded like gunshots in the quiet room.
“Chloe!” Arthur cried out as they shoved him toward the door. “Chloe, you promised! You said you could fix this!”
“I will!” she screamed after him, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. “I swear, Arthur, I won’t stop!”
The officers muscled him out into the hallway. Helms lingered in the doorway for a fraction of a second. The smugness vanished from the ADA’s face, replaced by a cold, hollow warning. “Control your associate, Marcus,” Helms murmured. “Before she gets herself hurt.”
The door pulled shut with a heavy thud.
Silence slammed back into the room, broken only by the rattling air conditioner. Marcus collapsed into his desk chair, burying his face in his large, scarred hands. He let out a long, shuddering breath, looking ten years older than he had that morning.
Chloe stood frozen, staring at the man who had mentored her for two years. “What did they give you?” she asked, her voice dropping to a toxic whisper. “Are they paying you? Blackmailing you? What could possibly be worth throwing an innocent nineteen-year-old boy into a cage?”
Marcus didn’t lift his head. “You are fired, Chloe. Leave your badge on the desk and get out.”
“I am going straight to the presiding judge,” she snarled, grabbing her closed laptop. “I will testify under oath that I pulled the security footage, that it proved his innocence, and that you manually deleted the file. I will destroy your career.”
Marcus finally looked up. The profound, haunting grief in his eyes made her stomach drop. “If you breathe a word of this to a judge, Arthur will be murdered in central holding before the sun goes down. And they won’t stop with him. They’ll go to his mother’s house next.”
Chloe scoffed, though her hands were shaking. “You expect me to believe that? He’s innocent!”
“Innocence has nothing to do with this,” Marcus whispered, his voice entirely devoid of hope. “Go home. Lock your doors. Forget you ever worked here. For your own sake.”
Chloe refused to accept his cowardly retreat. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the office, marching blindly down the dingy courthouse hallways and out into the suffocating heat of the employee parking garage. Her mind raced. Marcus thought he had deleted the only copy, and he was right that the bodega owner had wiped the server. But when Chloe had pulled the raw data, she hadn’t just downloaded it to her laptop. She had transferred a compressed copy to the encrypted flash drive currently sitting on her keychain.
She reached her battered sedan, sliding into the driver’s seat and aggressively locking the doors. She pulled the keychain from the ignition, her fingers brushing the small metal rectangle. She still had the proof. She could still save Arthur.
She pulled out her cell phone, pulling up the contact for the state ethics hotline. Her thumb hovered over the call button.
Before she could press it, her phone vibrated violently in her palm. An unknown number was calling.
Chloe hesitated, then pressed accept, raising the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Your boss made a very difficult deal today to keep everyone breathing,” a mechanically distorted voice said through the speaker. “If you make that call, the deal is revoked.”
Chloe’s blood ran cold. “Who is this?”
“Look up, Chloe.”
She slowly raised her eyes. A massive, black SUV with heavily tinted windows had just pulled out from behind a concrete pillar. It rolled forward silently, stopping diagonally across the garage lane, completely blocking her car into the parking space.