Chapter 15

The municipal court building was a renovated warehouse on the east side of Geneva, away from the beautiful center of the city. Only civil court judges worked in the building. Without criminals or the need for a jail, security consisted of two guards at the front entrance, looking bored. Standing behind a table, they asked everyone to open their bags and they stuck a stick inside and swirled it around once looking for small weapons, knives and such.

Handguns in urban areas had been banned for forty years by this time and seriously restricted in the rural districts. The guards carried nasty looking weapons though.

Jeremy imagined that he could smell blood in the air. He knew it was magical thinking to believe that the sunny day in the midst of the cold season confirmed his chosen moment for revenge, but the morning sun was a glorious sight.

He walked in the door with a brief nod to the guard on his right just to be polite. He carried his portable digital with a shoulder strap and stuck his scanning wand on top of the case like it belonged. Just as he had explained two days ago, he carried a large sized manila envelop in his other hand.

Recognizing the self-mutilating fantasies of revenge and obsession for what they were doing to him, Jeremy steeled his resolve. He stepped through security with a tight grin on his face. Awareness of the kernel of madness in his plans for day sparked the smile in spite of the tension. In fact, he embraced the mania of the moment with the zeal of a pious convert. The cool, rational scientist was left at the door behind him and the wronged husband and father stepped through the metal detector, waiting to begin his part.

The only crowd in the large lobby was gathered at the Officer of the Court desk. The cases of the day and their room assignments were posted on a projection wall next to the desk. Case 85302 — Hamilton — was assigned to Room 312.

Walking down the hallway, Jeremy was pleased to see that the walls were cheaply made although floors were not particularly clean despite the early morning hour. Clean floors were easier to scan; they didn't leave patterns of dirt that the program replicated. Hopefully upstairs was cleaner. He followed the corridor to the end and turned left only to turn right again after twenty paces. The back elevators were on his left and the rear staircase was on his right.

If Leandra and the fates cooperated, the next two hours would be for naught. Upstairs the hallway was narrower, but quiet. The layout looked the same. First he located the courtroom in the front corridor. Curious, he poked his head inside and saw three rows of chairs on either side separated by a rail from the three tables and large chair at the front of the room. Jeremy surmised the large chair was for witnesses.

Suppressing a peculiar desire to run his hand across the wood of the big chair, Jeremy returned to his task. Between the back elevators and the courtroom was one storage closet housing stacked chairs, folded tables, a floor cleaner, and few other odds and ends. Jeremy set to work.

He had no idea how many "employees" of the Outfit were in the building with him today. In truth, he didn't want to think about it. Jeremy narrowed his focus to his task, blocking out any other thoughts.

At 9:30, his telecomm beeped once. Stepping out into the hallway, Jeremy noticed a young man in a maintenance uniform standing in front of the elevator. He nodded slightly to the man and walked away from the closet door, going around the corner. When Jeremy returned exactly two minutes later, a new sign was on the door — Waiting Room.

Jeremy stopped for just a moment in front of the designated courtroom where the court was now in session, hearing the first case. The hallway had a couple dozen people milling outside of various rooms. Some were talking into telecoms while others were pacing or engaged in serious conversation. Everyone appeared too wrapped up in their own personal concerns to notice anything out of the ordinary.

A young woman with light brown hair and an older bald man turned the corner, walking towards Jeremy from the front staircase. Jeremy's heart did a flip. Annabella, his little girl, was blossoming into a beautiful young lady. Her face shone with light as if an aura surrounded her entire body. How much she had grown in two years. Annabella was coming into her womanhood and she carried herself with poise. He tried to keep the pain off of his face by attempting to make his shoelaces look interesting.

She walked passed him without a glance and the spell was broken. In its place, the urge to reach out and strangle the little bitch rose up his thoughts with a vengeance. The words of her testimony at his trial in her little girl voice rang in his ears, "He took his penis..." A headache suddenly threatened.

A second beep sounded on his telecom. Jeremy walked swiftly towards the back, passing his daughter in front of the designated courtroom. He came to a halt near the back elevators, waiting and hoping. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Six people piled out into the hallway, one of them was Leandra.

Plan A had failed. Other people had gotten on the elevator with her. Jeremy let out a ragged breath, stared at the floor and let the woman and her assistant pass him. Leandra was outrageously overdressed for the building and the area. Her hair was done in a large billowy do that was probably a decade too young for her. The shoes looked painfully elegant and Jeremy hoped they hurt like hell. Tempting as it was to put out a foot and trip her, he held himself in check.

After she passed, he realized she hadn't noticed him, just like Annabella. Last night he had worried but those reservations dissipated now. He was Enrique De Luca, and Jeremy Hamilton was well and truly dead. This cunt wouldn't see it coming.

Emma passed him while speaking with another man.

Leandra turned the corner. Looking at his watch he counted off 125 seconds until the yelling began.

"You fucking bitch! What the hell is she doing here?" a certain young woman yelled.

"You spiteful little brat!" Leandra screeched back. Then she added a few more words that weren't appropriate for a public corridor, shrieking over her daughter's voice.

Jeremy had locked the door to the courtroom, leaving the two women to confront each other in the hallway while the 9:00 hearing in 312 continued unmolested. He walked to the corner nearest the new waiting room with the back elevators still in his view. He caught sight of Emma, wearing an official looking I.D. around her neck, coming the other way escorting Leandra with a calming voice explaining that surely the dear woman didn't want to be thrown out of the building and wouldn't she like to wait in a quiet room until the proceedings began.

They went into the waiting room, but not before Emma shot him a warning look not to follow. Jeremy heard two soft thuds and then silence. He counted to twenty before he walked into the room. Emma had Leandra's skirt up over her ass and her lace panties scrunched up over one cheek. Jeremy had a moment's delight at the accumulation of cellulite around his former wife's thighs and butt. Then he saw the needle and turned away. Leandra's assistant didn't look bad laid out on the floor, but no one had pulled up her skirt.

"This one works for Hightower," the man in the maintenance suit said. Jeremy never saw him enter, so he concluded that the operative must have been waiting in the room for some time. The maintenance man was fishing through Leandra's assistant's purse and fingering a small black device. "We had hoped to be done with them."

Stepping over the bodies, Jeremy retrieved his portable digital and set the bot program to deconstruct. The maintenance man and Emma had Leandra and her assistant sitting in chairs before Jeremy tapped the last key. Emma gave him a silent command with her finger and he scooted out the door.

Several minutes later, two befuddled adults were escorted out into a fairly quiet hallway. The immediate area in front of Room 312 was empty. As soon as the yelling had started, the plan had predicted that an officer of the court would come to investigate and unlock the door. The officer had.

Jeremy walked past Room 312 and went down to 306. With a hand on the door, he watched Leandra continue down the hallway, rubbing her butt with puzzlement. Emma ushered them in the door and shut it behind them. With a nod to Jeremy, she took off her badge and walked past him to the front steps, skipping the elevators in favor of the stairs.

The time read 9:55am and Emma's part was done. No more action of any sort was necessary, and Jeremy was free to sit and watch the proceedings. Jeremy paced the long front corridor past all of the small courtrooms.

Emma had pitched a final fit as they walked from the tram but Jeremy had held fast to his determination. Now he was waiting for the 9:00 trial to depart from the room so that he could slip into the back row of chairs without much notice. Nothing was going to hold him back for hearing Leandra's confession.

Something unexpected developed. Two police officers came up the stairs with grim faces and walked down to Room 312. The first officer looked at his watch, wondering aloud, "what's the delay?" The second one opened the door and stuck his head inside. He reported that the woman was crying and the judge was still lecturing her.

"I guess she didn't get what she wanted," the first one said as he leaned against the wall. He readjusted his rifle so that it rested against his waist. To Jeremy the automatic looked sinister and out of place. The weapon would have looked downright homey in Lagos, where weapons were everywhere. Yet even in Lagos, the automatic rifle would have stood out as menacingly lethal.

His musings evaporated as the door opened and a woman openly weeping walked out into the corridor with her attorney guiding her steps. She had a sagging face with a garish dye job on top of her head. The door was still open when two men around the same age stepped out with equally grim faces.

"Serves her right," one said to the other. The other man, who was carrying a briefcase, shrugged, but said nothing.

Jeremy stepped forward from his position holding up the wall on the other side.

"Are you going in?" he asked the officers showing far more confidence than he felt.

"Naw," said the first officer. "We got a report that the complainant got into a shouting match with a witness for the other side. If they start to scratch each other's eyeballs out, then we'll come in and break them up."

"Are you involved in this one?" the second officer asked Jeremy.

"Let me see. The heiress to the Hamilton fortune and her daughter, who wants to cut all ties to mommy. I'm thinking of selling a two minute dish on the 7:00 celeb news unless the fireworks out here continue inside, which means a full four minute parade."

"Hell of a way to make a living," the second officer with the chipped tooth said.

"No pictures," the first officer warned.

"Yeah, isn't that a loss," Jeremy said. As he finished speaking, he heard the sound of many feet on the hard floor. The real press had arrived and they were making a beeline for the door. Rudely the twelve or fifteen men and women pushed Jeremy to the side and charged in to get seats.

"The red line tram from the Central Station went down for 45 minutes this morning. I bet the backup from the delay is going to take the rest of the morning to disperse. They must be steaming," the first officer said.

"Damn, they're going to get the best seats," Jeremy said, scooting through the door.

Jeremy got slight laughs out of both of the guards as he slipped inside. As far as he was concerned, he was satisfied with their acceptance of his explanation. The niggling worry that their careful planning hadn't predicted the officers' placement in the hallway was just another calculated risk among many that Jeremy dismissed.

He found a seat on the back row. Out of the thirty-six chairs in the gallery, Jeremy counted only five empty seats after he sat down. While he was glad to hide among a large number of watchers, he was a surprised by the actual number of interested people in the visitor's gallery.

Up front, an officer in a blue shirt was calling out the next case. He ran through the case number, the names of the attorneys, the witnesses who had registered, and lastly, the complainant. The room was oddly bright at the front and somewhat dull back in the spectator seats. Worse, the chairs were old and the cushioning had been compressed in strategic places. Jeremy squirmed a bit, trying to get comfortable.

The judge read a synopsis of the first hearing and her preliminary findings. She turned to the attorney on her right and asked him if the Swiss State had a statement. The man stood up and began to speak. His monotone was painful and his roundabout use of language left Jeremy wondering if he was developing another headache.

Then the plaintiff's attorney had to speak. He was quick and to the point, giving Jeremy hope for his daughter. "Hope?" Jeremy asked himself, remembering that he was supposed to despise this child. He consoled himself for his sentimental weakness arguing to himself that the only reason he was rooting for his daughter was to bring down Leandra.

Jeremy was confused. In fact his right hand was shaking in his pocket as love and hate for Annabella clashed in his thoughts. Emma had cautioned him months ago to reassess his daughter's role at his rape trial and he had never taken the time. The truth was he had avoided the subject deliberately and purged it from his thoughts. Watching her from behind, sitting mere meters away, he couldn't ignore her now.

He loved her; in his heart of hearts he loved Annabella. He abhorred what she did. Her testimony murdered him. It didn't matter that he had been resurrected, her words brought down the guillotine's blade. Yet, he loved her, his eldest child.

His attention returned to the hearing. The child psychiatrist made his presentation and both attorneys tore into him, one at a time. The psychiatrist went from earnest to bored to angry as Jeremy watched. The judge finally called a halt to the shenanigans and admonished the two gentlemen at the tables to act with respect to the witness and to their profession.

Jeremy looked around at the reporters who were busy scribbling down the verbal exchanges with glee. They were acting like vultures at a road kill party he decided — enjoying the free meat.

Finally the main attraction came as the government attorney called Ms. Leandra Hamilton to the stand. She stood up a bit woozily and walked from the first chair in the gallery through the little gate to the front of the courtroom. Acting a bit unsteady on her fashionable heels, she stepped carefully and deliberately to the witness chair.

Jeremy was sweating.

The government attorney asked her routine questions like her name and relation to the plaintiff. Leandra answered simply and straightforwardly, although there was something a bit odd about her affect, a forceful earnestness. She was acting as if she wanted to give the best possible answers.

No, she didn't want her daughter to break all ties. Yes, she provided for her daughter. Yes, she was a good mother in her eyes. The simple questions ended and the state's attorney retired to his table.