Hello, Mr. Dove
Damian Dove knew Bruce Kane was guilty.
That wasn’t the point.
Sure, the man in custody, trembling in the dock, had carved nightmares into the world.
But today it was Damian’s job to keep him free.
That was the game.
Bruce Kane, once high school bully, now turned murderer. How the tables had flipped. Everyone who grew up in Greenmount could remember the names he called people. The punches he’d thrown.
Damian had imagined this moment in court more times than he cared to admit, and it felt better than it should have. Now that he had the opportunity to seal his fate.
If anything, it was going to be the Colt Single Action Army revolver that would put Bruce away for life.
Damian knew that it had been in Bruce’s hands the night of the murders of those two women who worked the corner in Fitzroy. The murders of the two jazz singers around the back of the Empire theatre in Greenmount, and most likely the murders of the two women who were doing nothing more than enjoying a night out at Guzzo’s restaurant in the Valley last September.
Detective Gunn had found the weapon at Bruce’s house. The moron had at least put it into a cling wrap sandwich bag with the intent, as the state claimed, to dispose of its existence. But he was sloppy on the job. Not only that, four of five of his prints were found on the grip, within the trigger case and on the remaining rounds in the chamber. Everything about that weapon pointed the finger at the Bruce Kane, and Damian Dove had found himself clutching at straws to bring him out of the quicksand.
Bruce stood with his hands folded as though in prayer. His fingers still trembled. His suit was cheap. His tie was loose and his eyes looked bloodshot. Damian had learned long ago that appearances were not lies, they were strategies. And Damian Dove did not believe in innocence. He believed in control.
The courtroom was silent. Every seat was filled with members from the Greenmount community. Lives changed by the snake in the dock. Time lost forever. Damian didn’t look at any of them. He studied the jury.
An image of the weapon in question flashed on the screens in front of the witness stand, the attending crowd, the media and the young group of jury members. Some of whom looked like they were fresh out of high school and predominantly female. The state was playing this one close to its chest. Using a female only jury in a case that involved the murder of over six women.
It was as strategic as it seemed. It was genius.
Damian folded his hands on the polished defence desk and waited.
Faces of the jury grimaced as violent images of the women’s brutalised bodies and weapons flashed over the screens, but the slit of a grin on Bruce’s face remained cold and chiselled.
“I ask you this, ladies of the jury” a representative from the state boomed, “why would someone who is innocent wrap a murder weapon in plastic cling wrap? Something you would find a loving mother doing with a sandwich for his son’s lunch, not a loaded gun.”
The words hung in the air. The feminine faces on the jury shifted. One flinched. One raised an eyebrow. The prosecution, let it linger a little longer.
Damian heard his knees click as he rose from the bench.
“Your honour, I would ask the state to refer away from rhetoric and stick to facts.”
“Facts, your honour,” the prosecutor spat. “Did the murderer in question not wrap a weapon in cling wrap? How is this not fact I ask?”
“Suspect!” Damian spat, “Not murderer, your honour, and allegedly concealed. This is nonsense.”
The judge straightened his posture in the high bench and huffed under his breath.
“May I have the stand, your honour?” Damian pleaded.
“30 seconds only, Dove.”
“Thank you,” he stood forward in front of the Jurors who were starting to all look a little uneasy. No smile came to his face. That would be a mistake. He’d learned that the hard way.
“Let me ask you this, ladies,” he said. “If Bruce Kane were this calculating serial killer the state wishes you to believe he is, this weapon wouldn’t be here.”
Damian gestured at the revolver on the screens.
“It would be destroyed. Thrown into a river, weighted with a brick. Melted down. Ladies, we’ve all read the books and seen the films. That is what careful criminals do.”
He paused to draw in a breath.
“This gun was left in his home. Out in the open. Not hidden particularly well at all. Fingerprints all over it. No gloves, no attempt to wipe them off. No sign of intelligence if you ask me?”
The silence stretched intentionally. He could hear the members of the court breathing.
“This is not the behaviour of a mastermind,” Damian continued. “A serial killer label comes with the experience of having killed multiple times. Got away with it. So, if he was one, he wouldn’t make this mistake. No, the real person we are looking for I think is a little more cool and calculated than high school bully and boof-head, Bruce Kane”
A juror rubbed their wrists.
“And I ask you to consider something else,” Damian gritted his teeth. “You were selected because the prosecution believed you would react before you thought. That emotion would do the work evidence could not. Incredibly sexist in my eyes.”
The creak of wood from a few uncomfortable feet shuffled the courtroom.
“MR. DOVE!” Judge Colin boomed.
Damian inclined his head and stepped back to the defence table. He made sure not to look at Bruce.
The courtroom was silent enough to hear the chair creak when Damian sat back down. Judge Colin’s stare lingered. Damian made sure to meet it without flinching.
The prosecution resumed, but the momentum seemed to be gone. Damian felt it. Years had taught him the signs. More allegations rose from the prosecution but nothing that could stick.
Damian noticed that the jury was no longer absorbing. They seemed to be weighing in. The note-taking on their writing pads had stopped once Damian had finished his defence.
Bruce Kane’s leg bounced beneath the witness stand. His grin vanished now. Damian still refused to look at him. He was fixated on the jury. All women! The thought of it swirled his mind.
Detective Gunn was recalled to the stand. A tall man who decided to wear his badge to court today, shirt tucked in and hair slacked back.
“Detective,” the prosecution asked, “you located the firearm at the defendant’s residence?”
“Yes.”
“And you were the one that secured it?”
“Yes.”
Damian rose to his feet again, slowly.
“Detective Gunn,” he cut in, “when you entered the residence, were you wearing gloves?”
Gunn shifted in his seat. Looked up at Judge Colin.
“I’ll allow it,” the judge said, “please answer, detective.”
“I … I believe so.”
“You believe so,” Damian echoed. “But you don’t recall clearly.”
“Listen pal,” the detective said. “I handle many scenes …”
“Detective, I will look past your attempt to court the jury with that pal comment. But this court has expected my client to answer every question here today with nothing but truth, honesty and conviction. Now, detective, if the prosecution are to use the gun as an article of evidence for their case. Then I would ask you to answer with Yes or No. Did you or did you not wear gloves when you entered the residence of Bruce Kane?”
Gunn leant forward, his mouth debated with his brain whether to say anything at all.
“No.”
A murmur scattered through the court.
Damian nodded once, as if confirming something he already knew.
“And you were the first officer to handle the weapon?”
“No.”
“So any fingerprints discovered on that firearm,” Damian pressed, “passed through your hands and many others presumably, before evidence sealing.”
“Yes.”
“And the cling wrap bag – was it sealed before or after you handled the weapon?”
Gunn opened his mouth.
“After,”
Damian let that word sit and shuffled some papers on his table.
“No further questions.”
Judge Colin shifted. The prosecution, after numerous death stares and adjustments, attempted their recovery. They brought up the chain of events. Chain of custody. Testimonials, heck even as far as stretching intent.
“… we can look at the similarities between the murders, ladies and gentlemen. The position of the bodies as seen in these images, the timing and locations …”
Damian stood and objected.
“Propensity!”
“Sustainted, Dove.”
The prosecutor rolled his eyes and returned to his seat.
A weight lifted from Damian’s shoulders. Just like that, six murders had shifted to two. The jury was instructed to disregard prior implications. To consider only the charges before. Forget what they had seen. Damian could see comprehension flicker across a few faces.
Closing arguments came later in the afternoon. The courtroom, like any living beast, was tired. Damian wanted that. That fatigue always bred uncertainty.
The prosecution ended like any textbook case would. With all of the emotion laid out. It was a good play, get the gallery tired and worn out and hit them with names, ages, and the story of how dreams were interrupted. Lay out the lives the victims, those women, would never have now. The sob story.
Damian stood last.
“Ladies of the jury,” he smirked, “this case is not about whether terrible things happened. They did. We have lives lost.”
The jury watched on with grey bags forming under some weary eyes.
“It is about whether the state has proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that Bruce Kane committed these crimes.”
He gestured to the screens that had the evidence, which were now blank.
“You were shown images today that were designed to horrify you. Ones that not even the media can release. You were told a story that felt complete. But justice is not a story, ladies. It is a process.”
His eyes moved across them slowly.
“And processes fail.”
Damian brought up the lack of gloves. Of efficient logging of evidence. The assumptions and how certainty had been rushed and become contamination.
“When the system is careless,” Damian said quietly, “it does not matter who stands accused. Today, it is Bruce Kane. Tomorrow, it could be anyone.”
He sat and after a moment, the jury retired. Damian didn’t bother make his way to the waiting room. They shifted Bruce away and Damian watched and wondered what was going through that cruel brain of his.
Eventually after a quick break, the verdict came. It was made faster than Damian had liked. He started to feel sweat build under his robes.
The room stood as the jury filed in. One woman had traded her grey bags for red puffy eyes.
The foreperson cleared her throat once Bruce Kane was ushered back into the room and forced to stand.
“On the charge of murder …”
Damian started to chew the skin on the side of his mouth. Blood leaked onto his tongue.
“ … we find the defendant not guilty.”
Bruce Kane was first to make a sound. Half a laugh and half a sob. It echoed around the room. A woman in the gallery screamed. Chairs scraped back violently and all of Greenmount began to protest. Bruce was ushered away.
Damian did not move. His mouth just hung on its hinges. Not quite processing how.
A wall of security and officers pushed back on the crowd. They yelled out for justice. For death. For anything to get Bruce put away for life. Damian stood there wondering if those shouts were meant for him too.
He did not think about the women who were dead. Couldn’t care less. Only the unsettling ease with which the truth had agreed to disappear.
Damian Dove smiled. Believed himself untouchable.
The town of Greenmount didn’t agree.
“Their blood is on your hands, Dove!” a woman screamed.
“Hope you sleep well tonight!”
“I’ll remember your name Dove, not just Bruce Kane!”
Damian had won the case, and the jury had delivered their verdict.
But the townsfolk of Greenmount clearly had a verdict of their own.
