Yes, I probably should have known better.
I am, after all, an adult and probably half way through this wild trip more commonly known as "my life." But every once in a while....yeah, every once in a while you just have to roll the dice and play the cards you are stuck with.
This was one of those times.
It started out innocently enough, a common cliché of the tall, dark, handsome stranger that offered me his seat on the small bench by the hostess station of a nearly packed restaurant. Strangely enough, I normally wouldn't have accepted, after all, I am perfectly capable of standing upright, but two things happened that day that caused me to need that seat.
Firstly, it was a court day and standing in front of a judge and jurors meant a suit and heels. I had dressed in my favorite navy blue (blue inspires trust, or so I have been told) two piece skirt and jacket combo and when I went to slip on my comfortable "on your feet for six hours" shoes, I noticed a small slice in the dark blue leather near the sole. Now, perhaps no one else would have seen it but I knew it was there all the same and being preoccupied with my shoe and the precarious condition thereof was not a situation I could afford. I was forced into my backup shoes, you know the ones, not really practical for everyday use but you hang on to them just the same.
I found the nearly new pair of platform four inch heels which gave a nice boost to my small, 5'1" frame and slipped them over my hose. I walked around the bedroom several times to make sure there were no long forgotten pinches or jabs as a walked and after several minutes decided that they would indeed, do. And in truth, they were fine and would have worked out perfectly if not for the second thing that happened that day.
As I already said, it was a court day although I left out the particulars of the case. It just so happened that it was a criminal trial, a pretty much run of the mill Burglary case, or so I thought.
Casey Dunham was a nut job.
Okay, so maybe a shoe fetish in itself does not on its own, send him into that particular classification but the fact that he broke into a house, stole a pair of the owner's black heels and jerked off into them after stripping naked in her kitchen while watching Wheel of Fortune, does, in my book, give him a first class ticket to Crazyville.
I have to give Casey credit however. He did try to apologize to the very pale and shocked Mrs. Turner but apparently when she saw the size of his post erectile John Thomas, she fled her Better Homes and Gardens granite and ceramic tile kitchen and ran screaming to her neighbor who not only called 911 but pulled his Smith and Wesson out of his nightstand and nearly shot the now half dressed Casey as he tried to flee the scene of the crime.
The trial was proceeding through the morning hours without a glitch. The cops and detectives had testified, the crime lab geek had given sworn testimony that the DNA of the slimy fluid found inside and outside of Mrs. Turner's shoes did in fact belong to the one and only Mr. Dunham and my last witness, Mrs. Turner herself was on the stand. She recounted her day up and through her arrival home and the discovery of Casey in her kitchen, where she found him trying to get off one more good shot in her black Nine West pumps before calling it a night.
There is a saying in the legal world, "Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to," and I am pretty careful about following that little bit of wisdom but sometimes people just go off on their own and then you have it, chaos.
I didn't ask Mrs. Thomas about Casey's penis, exactly. I simply asked her to tell us what she saw when she stepped into the kitchen on that cold November evening. And before you ask, yes, we had gone over her statement and testimony beforehand but apparently seeing Mr. Dunham again and being back in the same room with him was a little too much for the woman.
Now, when this case goes to the appellate court, which I can guarantee you that it will, I will get a copy of the transcript and I will be able to read exactly what the flustered Mrs. Turner said at that particular moment but for now it is somewhat of a blur. I can tell you it was something to the effect of "you should have seen the size of that thing."
I am guessing that Casey had been squirming in this seat for some time, a little scared and a little agitated, his public defender attorney not having a whole lot to work with had remained fairly quiet all morning, and it had all come to a head for the poor man, no pun intended.
My eyes had gone instinctively from Mrs. Turner to the jurors when she gave that statement, I wanted to see their reaction and Mr. Dunham was, for the moment, out of my eyesight. I was actually looking at Ms. Harris, a twenty-something mom (and juror that morning) when I saw her eyes get quite large and heard the words, "Oh my God," come from her mouth, clear as day. There was a ruckus behind me but before I could turn around completely I was surrounded by a very large pair of arms that pulled me down and back towards the Judge's bench.
I looked up and found the deep, dark brown eyes of Detective Michael Garcia, the lead detective on my Dunham case. I hadn't met him before, as he normally worked the drug cases for the County and I stayed away from those as much as I could.
The man simply engulfed me.
At nearly a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, I was completely at his mercy. I couldn't speak, the wind had been knocked out of me but the sight of the black service revolver in his hand was enough to keep me quiet anyway.
He told me to stay down and I would have done so even if it was not for his full weight pressing me tightly into the cold hardwood floor of the courtroom. I could smell his cologne on his jacket, Fierce, I believed, but it was his personal scent that was intoxicating and made my head spin as adrenaline surged through his veins.
His brown eyes suddenly darkened and I followed the direction they were looking in.
At first I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing, the scene was one of panic, people were scrambling and someone was yelling for an ambulance.
There was blood, quite a bit of it from what I could tell and I followed the trail across the defense table to the source of the red stream.
Casey Dunham was nude.
Well, partially nude I should say. His white shirt, black jacket and black tie were still intact although the fabric was slowly darkening.
I should mention that Casey is a tall man, 6'5" I would say, and standing up, his hips came a good bit above the cheap wooden table. His gray pants had disappeared and if he had been wearing underwear they were long gone as well. On the table in front of him, a pen stood erect in the table and a fountain of blood flowed upwards from the ballpoint. It took me a moment to see what the cause of the fountain was and after I saw, I wished I hadn't looked.
Mr. Dunham had stabbed his, what seemed to be, very large penis with a blue Bic pen and from my view point it appeared as if he was bleeding to death.
I stared for a moment and then turned my head into the chest of the Detective and closed my eyes.
In my ten years as a prosecutor I thought I had seen it all, but even for me, this was too much. I tried to block the image out of my mind but it was simply impossible. My mind replayed the vision out in a constant rewind, over and over in my brain until I wished only for a stop button to give me a moment's peace.
In what seemed like forever, Detective Garcia finally loosened his hold on me slightly and helped me up to my feet. He didn't release his grip from my waist right away and I felt the strength in his hands and arms as he held me, incredible strength actually, and for a fleeting second I wondered how those hands would feel against my bare skin.
The hoo-rah was nearly over, at least the frantic part anyway. Casey was being loaded onto a stretcher, but the color of red was still everywhere, a large puddle on the fake wood table, a smaller puddle on the hardwood floor beneath.
I asked no one in particular if he was going to be alright and I heard someone say, "Unfortunately." I noticed the Judge was gone as he had been corralled outside immediately when all hell broke loose. The jurors were also missing from the near vacant courtroom, returned to the jury room for safe keeping until the crazy had been removed.
There was going to be a mistrial declared, I could already hear the arguments coming, but at that point, I really could have cared less. I was shaken mostly and somewhat pissed off that all my work in the last few weeks preparing for this trial had just gone down the shitter but what I really wanted, was a drink.
I watched as they wheeled the still bleeding and restrained Mr. Dunham out of the rear of the courtroom and took my first steps toward the prosecutors table. It was then I felt the first stab of pain to my right ankle.
It was sharp and I almost buckled but I was able to lean on the table for support while I caught my breath. I looked down, half expecting to see something poking through the skin but saw merely my ankle, a little swollen maybe, or it could have been my imagination but it hurt like hell just the same.
I applied a little pressure to it once again, just to see, and realized, yes, the pain was still there. Not as bad as it could have been I suppose, just a light sprain caused by a quick movement in a pair of high heels. I'd be alright but I wanted a drink and some company so after dropping my case file back at the office, I headed off to find both.
I arrived at Angelo's about 5:30 and the parking was scarce already. Now, as good as it was, this was a Tuesday night in February and I was quite surprised to find it so busy. It was a popular hang out with law enforcement, attorneys and judges most of the time but this was a little out of the ordinary.
It might be important to say I nearly left at this point, it gives me an out I guess, that things happen for a reason and staying when I probably would have normally left gives me an excuse to say I was meant to be there.
I walked in and it was pretty packed. I wasn't pleased to say the least, a line at the hostess station and no place to sit with a sore ankle to boot. Celia the regular hostess was there and she waved to let me know she had seen me.
I too, was a regular at Angelo's, the food was great, the drinks weren't watered down and I could usually find a companion for dinner. I found a place against the wall to lean a little and give my ankle a rest when I heard a deep voice behind me ask if I would like a seat.
I turned around and found myself looking at Detective Garcia once more. I had nearly forgotten about him after the scuffle in the courtroom for he had disappeared along with the defendant.
There was an empty spot on a bench that he had occupied only a moment before and when I saw a teenage boy heading for the spot, I said thank you and quickly planted myself down.
I gave the kid a grin and chuckled when I saw the sour look on his face when he saw his chance to sit down and play games on his iPhone while he waited for his dinner disappear before his eyes.
Detective Garcia noticed my snide enjoyment of robbing the little bastard of his seat and laughed out loud.
"You're cruel."
