It's Just Magic Pt. 11-12

I asked Lori to stay available, I would need her help in a few minutes. About then a deputy came into the courtroom and approached the judge who had just entered the courtroom.

After the deputy spoke to the room, "Could I see opposing counsel in my chambers?"

When we arrived in the Judge's chambers, he announced, "Assistant Procecutor Williams was in an automotive accident on his way to court. He is on the way to the hospital. He has some broken bones and cuts and such. He is expected to recover, but he will not be available for several days. We have witnesses and a jury in place. We need to proceed with this trial. Can the prosecution proceed?"

"Your Honor, this will be my first case in an actual courtroom. I believe that I am prepared to proceed with the case, but I would ask the court's indulgence if I need a little bit of extra time to gather my thoughts from time to time."

"That seems like a very modest request. Opposing counsel, are you willing to proceed on those terms?"

"Of course, Your Honor." I could hear him thinking that he had just received a gift, he would be taking on a rookie.

We returned to the courtroom and my witness was sworn in: "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? "

"I do," said the witness. I muttered my truth spell.

I asked, "Where were you between 10 PM and Midnight on the evening of March 21?"

The witness started to speak and was overcome with a bout of coughing. "I'm sorry, would you like to try that again, I don't think that anyone was able to understand that. Perhaps Asia of water would help."

I thought to Lori, "Can you give me as absolutely precise location on the woman and girls as you can? I'm going to try something that I've never done before. I'm going to teleport them from there to here."

They were sitting on a bed, all huddled together, the mom trying to calm the little girls. I planted the thought, 'I have to tell the truth,' in the witness's thoughts. Then I teleported the family into the courtroom, in front of the door where they could be seen from the witness box. It happened so quietly, just a little 'pop' and they were sitting on the floor of the courtroom.

One of the little girls noticed, "Mommy!" she exclaimed.

My witness looked up and bolted down the aisle to his family. The courtroom was immediately in chaos. The judge had to declare a recess until everyone was settled down. Then I began again.

When my witness was back in his seat and his family was seated in the front row, I thought, 'tell the truth and it will all come out OK.'

I asked, "Where were you between 10 PM and Midnight on the evening of March 21." I looked him straight in the eye and thought, 'Tell the truth."

"I was at O'Malley bar drinking."

"Did anything unusual happen while you were there?"

"This guy I know and sometimes do a little business with said that he knew someone who would give me $10,000 if I would say that I saw this other guy somewhere else. Well, that's a lot of money, so I said sure."

"Did you receive this money?"

"Yes, just as I entered the court house this morning."

"Was anything said?"

"You know what to say. And just as insurance, your wife and little girls will be staying with us for a while."

"Who gave you the money? It came from Sam Vitone."

"He gave it to you?"

"No. I had met with him a couple times to go over what I was supposed to say. He told me that one of his men would give me the money right before I went in to court."

"Do you know the person who gave you the money?"

"Tony Vitone."

"Did Tony Vitone give you anything else?"

"Yes, a picture of my family looking scared."

"Do you have that picture now?"

He pulled out an envelope filled with money and removed a photograph. "This is it."

"Judge, could this be placed in an evidence bag?"

A deputy came over with an evidence bag and instructed the witness to put the picture inside.

"So, let me be clear, you were nowhere near the fire on March 21 of this year, correct?"

"That's right."

"And Sam Vitone met with you, told you to tell a lie here on the stand, and promised to pay you $10,000 to do so, correct?"

"Right."

"And you never saw Isaac Kronberg anywhere near that location?"

"Neither with nor without a gas can. I don't think that I have ever seen him in person except during the police lineup."

"But you picked him out of a police lineup?"

"Sam Vitone had given me a picture of him, actually several pictures, and told me to identify him."

"And you did at the police station, right?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't here, why?"

"I was going to, but I couldn't get the words out. And then my family was safe, and I just couldn't lie for the man who had put my family in danger."

"No further questions, Your Honor."

"Counselor?"

"No questions, Your Honor. The defense would move for a directed verdict, Your Honor."

"The People have no objection, Your Honor."

"This court finds Isaac Kronberg not guilty in the matter before the court. Mr. Kronberg, see the bailiff to finalize your release."

The defense lawyer stepped over to me and said, "Patrick Smithfield is not going to be happy with what you just did."

"Your client was not guilty. My witness was going to commit perjury and I was convinced of that. I am not going to let perjured testimony send am innocent man to jail. Now I need to talk to the Sherriff, excuse me."

I asked my witness to accompany me to the Sherriff's office where they filed a complaint about kidnapping and I recommended an investigation into witness tampering.

The defense Counselor was right, my Prosecutor was not happy with what I had done. "You took a slam-dunk conviction and turned it into an acquittal. What were you thinking?"

"That it is wrong to suborne perjury. That it is wrong to knowingly send an innocent man to prison. That it's wrong to allow someone to kidnap a witness's family to intimidate him to lie under oath."

"You need to get your head out of your ass and see the real world. All that other stuff is just law school wishful thinking."

I new right then that Smithfield and I would cross swords again. I began making a point of listening to Patrick's thoughts.

'Now what an I going to tell Sam? That idealistic fool has pointed the Sherriff at him. But he knows where his bread is buttered. I'll talk to him, and maybe we can make this all go away.' Patrick Smithfield, County Prosecutor, was thinking.

Over the coming weeks and months I heard other things that greatly concerned me. I discussed this with Lori. Obviously we didn't need the money, so we would be OK if he fired me. But I didn't want an amoral jerk as the County Prosecutor. It sounded like he was pulling procecutions for big donors and possible big donors, maybe even railroading other people to jail for crimes that couldn't be ignored.

With Lori's Postcognition, she could see things that happened but that she wasn't present for. She started following Patrick Smithfield, working her way backwards. She saw him receive huge payoffs from wealthy people to redirect investigations toward others. Smithfield and Sherriff Park worked together to find and convict plausible targets who were not those wealthy contributors. Some of the money went into their campaign funds, some went directly into their own pockets.

What was I going to do with the information? Nothing we had would be admissible in court. How could I get evidence? Lori suggested a possibility. I have the ability to time travel, although I haven't used it very much. And I have the ability to teleport. Could I travel back to the place and time of some of these 'transactions' then teleport into the place of the meeting and record it? Or take pictures of the pile of money, or the checks, or something?

We practiced on several simple things, going back in time to take pictures and make sound recordings. Everything seemed to work. So I did it; I teleported into the next room when some of these meetings were occurring and I made sound recordings of the conversations, including some very damning dialog. When they were gone, I teleported into the room to take pictures of documents and money and such. Most of that was stored in locked drawers or his safe, but I could teleport the stuff out, take a picture, and teleport it back where it came from.

At a political event I saw a young, aggressive reporter who I thought would be a bulldog with a story like this, and I planted a suggestion that she should investigate the Prosecutor. I then anonymously sent her a packet of pictures and sound recordings. Soon she had stories on the front page of the local paper and the TV.

I also placed a mental suggestion that she should interview several of the staff, and she had heard several.people refer to Smithfield's comments about right and wrong, and quoted him for her articles. "County Prosecutor says: There's no place for right and wrong here. Everything we do is about convicting people."

Lori found several more crimes that innocent people were convicted of while the rich perpetrators paid there way free. I recovered recordings and images of agreements (yes, a few of them actually put their illegal plans in writing), as well as pictures of checks and cash. All of these eventually found their way into the reporter's hands.

The election for County Prosecutor was coming up in a few months and several of my colleagues encouraged me to run. Lori was pregnant and due to deliver our first daughter soon, but she wanted me to run saying, "If you run, you win." But she wouldn't tell me if that was her future sight of just her support for me.

I did, both run and win. My campaign would not accept any donation over $100. All of the politicians said that I couldn't win that way, but I said that the Procecutor could not owe favors to anyone.

From the start I told the staff, "Everything is about Right and Wrong here. Yes, there are still difficult decisions to make and we will make them. If there is any question in your mind about whether a person should be procecuted, I want you to bring it to me along with your recommendation. Then we will make the decision together. I will not leave you hanging out on a limb by yourself. We will make the tough calls together and I will stand by our decision.

"Never lie to me. I will know, and it won't be good. If you make an honest mistake, it will be a learning experience. Try to hide it, and it will come out and be far worse.

"You all know that I have not been out of law school very long, and I have limited courtroom experience. I may to choose to ride second chair on many cases, letting you who are more experienced in the courtroom take the lead. Do not be concerned about that; I am not trying to set you up, just strengthen my experience. And I like to have looked the accused in the eye when we are prosecuting him.

"We stand for the County and the People. We stand for Justice. Our job is not to put someone in jail when a crime has been committed; our job is to make sure Justice is done. If the wrong person is accused, then we need to push back until the perpetrator has been brought to trial.

"Sometimes this will take a lot more effort. Sometimes the Sherriff will insist that he has the right person. But our job is to do justice, and see that only those guilty of the crime are sent to jail. My predecessor got that confused; we will not. That is the last time we will discuss him.

"Questions?.... Good, let's go do the work of the people."

Over the next months our office cleared more cases and reduced the backlog of cases for the office and the County Courts. I would often accompany the Procecutor to an interview with the accused. I would know if he was lying, and whether he was guilty. Sometimes I would learn that he was trying to protect the actual guilty person. And we would delay while we investigated the actual perpetrator. We would make tough but fair plea offers to the guilty ones, and I would often place a suggested that the offer was a good deal and they should take it. Over 98% of cases going to trial resulted in convictions with far more severe penalties than the plea deal would have been. Local defense attorneys saw the pattern and guided their clients accordingly.

The next year a second daughter arrived on the scene. Lori's Enhanced Hearing and Precognition came in extremely handy. She was still scanning the future of the stock market and numerous companies and managing our portfolio which had doubled in value. We still found time and energy to make love nearly every day, and occasionally more than once.

A third daughter had made her appearance before it was time for me to run for re-election. It was not a very difficult campaign, although we took the entire family to numerous events, because I was running unopposed.

We had created pendants for each of the girls with their birthstone in the middle. Each stone contained a protection charm and a location spell. They were protected from mortal harm and we could always find them. Every parent wishes that they could have such a pendant.