"Stuff" Happens

I know, I know. You\'re probably thinking, \"Did she die? What happened to her?\" Well, no. Last I checked, I\'m not dead. Thank God, not yet anyway. I have been dealing with health problems, which has made me unable to sit on my bum for a while. I\'m better somewhat -I can sit now- but I still have a scheduled surgery on the 21st of November to remove a boil. So don\'t be shocked if you don\'t hear from me throughout that week.

This chapter is a bit short, due to the fact that this was as much as I was able to type before my posterior started to hurt, so bear with me.

Enjoy anyway!!

--Scribbles05

Chapter X

“Hey.” Regina said as she met Austin at the police station. “I got here as soon as I could. What on earth is going on, Austin?”

“Max killed a man this afternoon.”

“What?! Who?”

“The man that raped me. His father.”

“Wait a minute. The guy that raped you was the John Cutlis guy. John is Max’s real father?”

Austin nodded. His hair was a mess from all the hours he had spent running his fingers through it. “Four hours I’ve been here and no one will let me see him.”

“Where is he?”

“The police say they still have him in questioning.” Austin sighed deeply. “Why did he do it? Why?”

“Did you know he was going to John’s place?”

“No.......But........”

“But, what?” Regina pressed.

“I remember that night of the big storm, he told me he’d hurt my boss if he put his hands on me.”

“He did? So, you think he meant to do this?” Regina whispered so no one else could hear. “You think he wanted to kill your boss?”

Austin sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair for what seemed like the billionth time that day. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Suddenly, Austin saw one of the officers that came to his house, walk out from a closed room in the far back of the station and make his way to the front desk. “Excuse me.” Austin said to the man in uniform. “Max Garner. Is he out of questioning yet?”

“Yea. We just finished talking with him.”

“Can I go see him?”

“Yeah. But you have to go sit in the visiting room and we’ll bring him to you.” He walked back down the hall.

************

Austin sat waiting in the large empty room for another hour before the door finally opened and Max walked in. The first thing he noticed were the handcuffs were still on. But he ran up to him and hugged him anyway. “Are you okay?”

“I’m holding on, considering.”

“Where are your crutches? Didn’t they give them to you?” Austin asked, pulling Max down on the metal bench to sit.

“I haven’t seen any crutches.”

“So why did it take so long with the questioning? What did they ask you?”

“It was more repetitive than anything. They’d ask me a whole bunch of questions about what happened, leave me alone for a while, come back in, ask me the same questions again, hoping I’d change something in my answers and catch me in a lie. They think I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not stupid.”

“I’m going to talk to them about bail. I want to get you out of here. I don’t want you in a jail cell until trial starts. You know how procedures go with courts. It could take months to try your case in court.”

“You could try, but I have a bad feeling that it will do no good.”

“W.....why?”

“I just murdered John Cutlis. A very important man in this city. Like he said before, he has ‘people’ everywhere. I’m starting to believe it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Let’s just say my treatment in here has been quite different from any of the others. Anyway, my bail will be outrageous, I guarantee it.”

“Maybe not, Max.”

Max shrugged, not quite certain. \"How are you doing?\"

It was Austin\'s turn to shrugg. \"I\'m hanging. I\'m just ready for all this to be over so you can come back home.\" he grabbed his lover\'s shackled hands and ran his thumb over the smooth skin. \"I had to live without you for eighteen months. Despite all that\'s been going on, that was the hardest time in my life. Not seeing your face, touching your skin, looking into your eyes, kissing your lips at any given moment, hurt like hell. It just showed me that I can\'t be without you in my life, Max. That\'s why I won\'t let you go to prison for killing a man who never had a soul to begin with. I need you here with me.\"

\"I need you too, babe. I love you.\"

\"I love you too.\" Austin lifted both chained hands on kissed them.

Suddenly, an officer walked into the cold room. “Times up, Garner.” Knowing they were given thirty minutes to speak, Austin knew only fifteen had passed before this officer burst in the room. He realized this was what Max was talking about with being ‘treated differently’.

“Gotta go.” Max told his lover.

“I’m going to help you, Max. I’ll find a good lawyer somewhere.” When he saw the ex-soldier nod his head, he leaned over and gave him a parting kiss passionately. There was a sigh coming from the officer.

“Enough of that already. Let’s move it.” He said impatiently. The two lovers finally parted ways.

Austin met up with Regina, bright and early the next morning at his house, and she came with good news. “They’re letting Max out of jail?” Austin asked, almost absurdly hopeful. Austin had asked the officers how much his bail was, and was told an outrageous 80,000 dollars -just like Max had predicted- so he figured that wasn’t the news, but he could never be too sure; he MAY had gotten SOME luck out of all this.

“No. Sorry. Not that kind of good news.” The long, black haired woman sat down in the kitchen opposite her young friend and handed him a business card.

Austin looked at it skeptically. “What’s this?”

“That’s Norris Hampton. Laura’s brother. Though he was an easy lawyer to grab, it doesn’t mean he’s a crappy lawyer. Norris is a ‘no bullshit’ type of guy. With only one loss under his belt, he’s won eleven court cases. Four of those he settled out of court.”

“Have you told him about what’s going on?”

“Everything. He’s already at the jail talking with Max.”

“Well, after you told him everything that happened, does he think we have a chance in hell of winning this?” Austin asked with hopeful hazel eyes. “Do we even have a case?”

Regina wanted to tell Austin that it was going to be easy street, but she knew better than to get his hopes too far up. *Just tell him the truth.* She thought to herself. “Lets just wait until Norris gets here. He’ll be here soon.” *Good one, Regina. Don’t tell Austin anything, just put it all on the lawyer’s shoulders.* They both sighed.

************

Norris Hampton, a tall, fair skinned, blue eyed man, wearing a dark blue suit and matching blue tie, sat with Austin and Regina in the kitchen two hours later. “How is he?” Austin asked.

“He’s doing okay.” Norris responded in his deep voice. “Looks a bit tired, but nothing serious. Says, he hasn’t been getting much sleep.” He opened his black leather briefcase and opened a large notepad. “I have here my own statement I’d gotten from Max earlier today. I also have a copy of the police’s written statement and a copy of the tape-recording he gave when he was brought in.”

“So, will I ever see Max again, or what?”

“Well, there is definitely the fact that Max was fueled on anger. To start things off, Max had been hurt and paralyzed overseas. To hear that you’ve got paraplegia and probably won’t be able to walk again is enough of a stress as is. Add on the fact that John Cutlis had been harassing you for a long period of time, proposing to have sex with you, ruin both you and Max’s name, and raping you in an alley, I can understand his anger towards the man. That’s not mentioning John is Max’s biological father. There would definitely be that understanding for his motive in the murder from the jury......”

“But?” Austin interrupted.

“But, even though they’d understand where he came from, law is law. And murder is murder. Max killed a man, and that little piece of information is enough to completely overlook that chance at settling out of court and going straight to trial.”

Austin blinked, a bit shaken by all this. “Well, could we just base our case on what you said earlier? The jury understanding? Couldn’t we go for a sympathy plea?”

Norris sat back and thought on it for a bit. “It’s possible.........but not likely we’d win it.”

Austin tossed his hands up. “Why the hell not?”

“Austin, before this case even goes to trial, Max has already got strikes against him.”

“What strikes?”

Norris started tagging them off with his fingers. “Max had one billion motives to make him want to hurt John Cutlis. He drove over there with a gun in his pocket: Intent to kill. And the simple fact that he’s gay.”

Regina looked questionably at Norris. “How does Max being gay have anything to do with it?”

“Max went over to John’s house to kill him because he verbally, mentally, and sexually abused his male lover. Now, I know that sounds like it may be harsh, but we’ve got to be realistic. There are still many people out there who are firmly against gay people. Two or three of them may just be on that jury come trial time. I may be wrong, but it’s a pretty strong chance. I’ve seen it in the court room before. Once they heard the defendant was a homosexual.......” He lightly banged his fist on the kitchen table. “Case closed.” Regina’s eyes dropped.

“So, are you saying I should give up hope?” Austin could feel the dreaded tears forming in his eyes.

“No. That’s not what I’m saying.......”

“Then what ARE you saying, Norris? Cause it sounds like to me that I’m not going to see Max again.”

Norris touched his shoulder. “No. That’s not it. I’m just giving you everything that the state’s defense team is going to use against Max. So you won’t have any surprises. That’s all that was.”

“Then give me an answer. Is Max coming home?”

“If I have anything to do with it..........Damn straight, he will.”

“What are we going to use as our offense, then?” Regina asked.

“Insanity.”

“What?” Both Austin and Regina asked.

“I know it sounds weird, but trust me, I’ve used it many times before in my other cases. I believe Regina has already told you my win : loss ratio in the courtroom.”

Austin was confused. “But how insanity?”

“Everything I mentioned before: the anger of being paralyzed, your entire ordeal with John Cutlis, him finding out how his father didn’t give a damn about him and was out to ruin his life. He snapped, Austin. Max couldn’t take it and he went crazy. Temporary insanity. What will help even more is if we found some of his ancestors that had history of being admitted somewhere or were diagnosed with temporary mental illnesses. That would be the jackpot.”

Austin started to feel a bit better. Though, he wasn’t sure if he thought that knowing Max’s family had a history of mental disabilities would be a good thing. “You’re sure this would work?”

“Without a doubt.” Norris chuckled a bit. “You want to know what’s funny about this? I wouldn’t exactly rule out that Max wasn’t actually temporarily insane.” Regina and Austin glanced at each other.

“What’s next now?” Regina asked.

“Well, Saturday morning is when we go to court for the arraignment. So, get some rest tonight, Austin. Cause we’ve got a long road ahead of us.”

It may be a bit slower in updating, but there IS more to come.

Please R & R.