The Downhill Line

The courtroom was packed and stuffy, and I narrowly avoided getting elbowed in the face by a fellow observer as they craned their neck to look around.

Yawning a little, I wondered again if it was worth it being here. One day, somebody would review footage from the CCTV cameras outside courts, or find some visitor log or something.

They'd catch me in the act, watching, or sitting outside every courtroom with a case I'd played a hand in.

Then I'd be screwed, or would I? Was what I did technically legal?

Please, I already knew the answer to that. If anyone ever got a clue about what I did, I'd be joining some of my victims in jail. 

I glared at the overexcited observer next to me, even though it just bounced off the back of his head as he looked around.

Was this his first time in a courtroom or something? He clearly found everything fascinating: the depressing architecture, the sullen-looking defendant, the Crown attorney, and her assistant or whatever muttering something at their table two rows ahead of us.

Finally, the judge entered, and Day 3 of Week 6 of the trial began.

My muscles tensed up as things kicked off, and I squirmed in my seat, trying to loosen my shoulders.

Overexcited observer narrowed his eyes at me, not so discreetly telling me off.

I made a face back at him and launched into my sort of calming trial routine. Going through the facts, my role, the preferred outcome, and the sucky outcomes.

The accused was Gregory Allender, whose father had helped him cover up the murder of his fiancee.

The fiancee in question, Marcine Nichols, had been murdered by drug overdose, which Gregory tried to make look like an accident.

Unfortunately for Gregory, two things went wrong here.

Firstly, the overdose failed. His fiancee was a barely reformed party girl. Meaning she had an impressive resistance to the drugs he tried to inject into her.

Secondly, after he finished throttling her, his father stumbled upon him. Instead of-

Wait, what the hell is going on?

Oh. The Prosecutor was just calling an expert witness to the stand.

I let go of the breath I'd been holding, returning to my coiled up, not even remotely relaxed, default state.

Okay, so instead of turning his murdering, cheating, incredibly bored son in, his dad called a friend.

Yay parenting? 

That friend called a shadier friend. The kind you call when you need to dispose of a fiancee's body the right way.

The kind of shady friend that manufactures some Instagram story with a picture of the city's downtown buildings to conceal the deceased's whereabouts. 

The kind of shady friend that ices the girl's rapidly deteriorating body then drives her body into the less wealthy side of downtown, throws a few broken pieces of jewelry to the ground, and scrubs her nails carefully to remove the DNA of her murderous fiancee.

Instead, some random bits of jacket fluff and dirt are carefully added in between acrylic nails with a toothpick.

The girl's now thawed body is found by a homeless man. Her time of death is weird, but the ME can safely say it happened sometime after her Instagram story.

Police officers sigh, irritated, that another drugged-up rich girl stumbled around the wrong part of town and got mugged.

Gregory Allender's family is devastated. They pay newspapers to write articles about how loving Gregory and Marcine were and deliver polished homages to a life cut tragically short.

And Gregory gets to move on.

My fingers dig into the flesh of my palm as the manicured defense attorney starts a vicious cross-examination.

And Gregory would have gotten to move on. If I didn't hack into people's computers every day.

All it took was one lucky hack into the computer of a notorious 'shady friend' a drunk law student told me about. You couldn't prove anything, he slurred, fumbling to hold my gloved hand, but everyone knew he made problems disappear.

So I hacked him, followed the money, and began piecing things together slowly. It was months of work, painstakingly poring over bank statements, credit card records, phone locations from cell towers.

It meant that I made some educated leaps while scavenging through Marcine Nichols' buried Facebook account. It meant that I went to the scene of the crime, and hacked CCTV cameras, only to find out that the cameras were installed two weeks too late. Nothing to show for the wasted petrol or hope.

My work involved the craziest hours on the planet, nights bleeding into days, accumulating into weeks of sleep-deprived hunting until I caught mistakes. 

Shady friend, or Steven "Stevie" Waters, got caught in a selfie an Instagrammer took at a cafe.

His car's license plate got caught at two intersections near the scene of the crime. Slowly, things fell into place once I figured out what I was looking for.

Then all it took was mailing a very heavy package to the D.A.'s office, and a crime that seemed a little odd got reopened.

I sighed a breath of relief as the Prosecutor scored a slam dunk with some inconsistencies of some statements.

Then the judge called for a break but I stayed where I was, my legs too wobbly to even consider going anywhere.

Nobody appreciated how painful it was to just wait. Hope the D.A.'s office was putting together the evidence and conclusions I had reached in the months that followed.

Waiting ate away at you. I waited with bated breath, already starting new hacks and 'missions' until the curtain rose and charges were filed.

I was still waiting now, taking a heart-wrenching two-week pause on a mysteriously disappeared child's case, so that I could get to the Downhill Line.

It was a funny term my dad and I coined. It meant the point at which your goals look like their gonna happen, it's all going to flawlessly click into place like a ball rolling downhill.

My phone buzzed and I shot out of my seat, even in the empty courtroom, terrified that I'd get yelled at for having a phone.

"Yes?" I asked tersely the minute I was out.

"Where are you? I have the information you're looking for, the DNA samples from the birth parents." Carlos' coffee roughened drawl came onto the phone.

"Shit. I've got jury duty." I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a mix of feverish and manic. "Okay, knock on Door 445,"

Carlos scoffed, unimpressed. "Did you say 4-oh-5?"

I huffed. "Don't be an ass, four-four-five. It's on the right."

"My right, or yours?"

"Carlos..." I warned, gritting my teeth together hard enough to crack one.

"A'ight, a'ight. I knocked."

Deep breaths: in and out. "Give the package to Eunice, say it's from me-"

"Eunice says hi." Carlos interrupted, his voice smug.

I resisted the overwhelming urge to scream. "That's...fucking brilliant, would you please just say it's from me and get lost?"

"Okay, I said it's from me, and I told Eunice to get lost." Before I could get kicked out of the building for yelling, Carlos quickly continued. "Don't lose your head, uh? I gave the package to the little ol' lady, have fun hacking the CIA."

"I'm not-" I protested, but he was already gone. I stuffed my phone back in my pocket, fuming a little.

Treasonously hacking the CIA would pay better than my current, nonexistent salary. Nobody wanted to pay some weirdo hunkered down in the basement to dig up hidden crimes or solve cold cases.

If I started advertising my skill set, maybe somebody who I'd helped put away would find me.

It wasn't worth it, I told myself when I reentered the courtroom. I could put up with shitty assistants like Carlos, put up with the weight of my parents' disappointment, get no recognition.

My blood pressure spiked as the case got into deeper and deeper waters. The D.A. had uncovered stuff even I hadn't and definitely had enough to convict shady friend.

My heart froze while calculating my preferred outcome because I really just wanted this asshole put away. I couldn't even deal with the sucky outcome.

Murdering Son's dad was also in trouble now. Apparently, his bank account was successfully linked to the case.

Murdering Son was on the stand. I leaned forward in my seat, wishing the pulse in my head would shut up so I could focus.

Murdering Son started screaming about his fiancee.

I gasped with the rest of the room. The Downhill Line.

After seeing the evidence a hundred times. After seeing the crime play out in my head a hundred times, after being in versions of this courtroom a hundred times.

Nothing beats the sheer beauty of seeing that point. That downhill roll, that point of no return.

The Prosecutor's eyes sparkled with victory. I tried to wordlessly throw my sheer and utter gratitude at her with just my eyes.

Eyes like her's, swaddled with eye bags just barely concealed under a layer of makeup.

This was what I lived for. This was the beauty, the rush, everything all at once.

And God, that look on the Defendant's face? That terrified twitch of the defense attorney's jaw? The silence that swelled in the courtroom?

All of it was priceless, overwhelmingly beautiful, and worth every second of dealing with Carlos.

I got out of my seat, grinning as I pushed past the courtroom doors. That beauty lets me know I'm a good person.

And that's all I need to see, hundreds of times.