Extra Innings - 24. Chapter 23

I walked down the hallway as the two officers turned around. It was the first two officers from the hospital, Sergeant Peters and Detective Stevens. They looked grim, but that must be something all police officers learn in training because I’d never seen a cop look particularly happy before. They relaxed visibly when they realized it was me and that I wasn’t running away.

“Devin, we were looking for you. Glad we could finally find you.”

It’s not like they wasted much effort ‘looking’ for me. Anyone could have realized I had games today, and that I would be at the stadium.

“Sure, no problem.” I replied. “What can I do for you? Is this about my attack?”

Sergeant Peters smiled and nodded.

“As a matter of fact, it is. We’ve arraigned the people we think attacked you. The trial is going to start tomorrow, we need you to testify.”

Tomorrow?!

“Tomorrow? I have games tomorrow.”

Detective Stevens interrupted.

“Yes, we thought you might. This has already been discussed with your coach, he knows you won’t be there tomorrow. We’ll be picking you up from here at 11am. Make sure you’re ready, and it would be best if you were well-groomed for the testimony.”

The two officers left and I stood outside my room, shocked. I was thrilled that they had caught the guys, but I hated the idea of having to miss anymore baseball. The idea of being in a courtroom and having to face them, explaining to people how they attacked me on campus… it wasn’t something I was thrilled about having to do.

I went inside and saw Vincente there, sitting at his desk waiting for me.

“They talked to you too, I take it.” Vincente said.

“Yep. You have to come in tomorrow as well?”

“Yeah. They’re taking me in the afternoon. I heard outside you’re leaving in the morning? I guess they want your testimony earlier in the day because you’re the actual victim and I’m just some guy who saw it later.”

I wish I could have gone in later, at least then I could have played the first game tomorrow…

I thought about it a bit more and considered that at least it would be over sooner, and there’d be a better chance of getting a conviction if I was able to provide better testimony. I grabbed the formal clothes that Bryce bought me and laid them out on my chair for me to change into tomorrow. It was still early in the day, but both of us had a lot to think about, so Vincente and I packed it in and fell asleep early.

I’d set my cellphone alarm for 9am, thinking that would give me enough time to get myself ready for the trial. Instead I was surprised to see the two officers arriving at 9:30, even though they wanted to take me at 11.

“Come on, we’ll take you for breakfast, make sure you’re all ready to go.”

I dressed quickly, noting that Vincente wasn’t thrilled about the extra early wake up when he didn’t think he had to be awake until later. I had to admit I was a bit surprised too. Something must have changed from last night for them to change their plans and pick me up so much earlier. I didn’t think that this was based on some need to make sure I was okay either, since they had seen for the past little while that I wasn’t too upset by what happened. At least, not in public.

The police put me into the back of their cruiser and we drove off campus to get something to eat. The courthouse wasn’t that far away from campus, I could have walked it if I really wanted to, but the officers seemed particularly concerned that I wouldn’t show up. I was worried that this meant I was more important to the case than I had let myself believe, and that they really needed my testimony to put these guys away. I thought they said that other people had come forward about these guys, so why were they acting like I was some superstar witness for them?

We pulled into a smaller, seedy looking diner and the cops walked over to a booth without being shown where to go. They sat on one side and I sat on the empty side, and we looked over the menus for a couple of minutes. I wasn’t feeling hungry all of a sudden, I was getting worried about the case and the presence of the cops so much earlier than I had been expecting them wasn’t helping my confidence at all.

After the waitress came to take our orders, the two officers started talking to me again.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re okay to be giving your testimony, and you remember exactly what happened? This isn’t going to be like in the hospital where you were only telling it to us, this is going to be court and you have to make sure you’ve got it exactly right.” Detective Stevens said.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax before responding. Stevens seemed even more stressed out than I was, and I wondered how long she’d been a police officer if she was still this worried about trials that she was involved in.

“Yes, I’m ready. I’m not exactly going to forget what it felt like to be attacked, and I’m reasonably sure that I can put together a timeline of when these two guys started attacking me, and what happened after. It isn’t something that you tend to forget, detective.” I replied frostily, hoping that it was made clear that I didn’t need or appreciate the babying.

The officers nodded and we returned to silently waiting for our food to arrive. The more I thought about the case, the more worried I had become. It wasn’t common to have a sergeant continue working a simple assault case, was it? It should have been a pretty easy case to get a conviction on, and yet I was still working with someone who’d already been promoted once, instead of a couple of junior cops who needed some experience and an easy case to get them more relaxed on the force.

When the food arrived, I looked at the waffles and I didn’t want to have them anymore, but I knew I had to eat something to keep my strength up for the testimony, since I had no idea when I’d actually be testifying, even though they had picked me up early. I didn’t know anything about trials, but there were always delays of some kind, and it’s not like anyone told me beforehand what time I should expect to take the stand.

We finished eating quickly, and the officers insisted that they cover the cost of my breakfast, since they’d taken me away from what I had originally planned to get for myself. We drove back to the courthouse and they escorted me in.

This was the first time I’d ever been in a courthouse. I was surprised at how large it was, especially once you got inside the building. Sergeant Peters and Detective Stevens brought me to a waiting from just outside one of the smaller courtrooms. I wouldn’t be able to see or hear any of the trial, and when it was my turn to testify someone from the Sheriff’s department would come to get me.

The waiting was killing me. I had no idea what to expect, and even though I knew what happened and could give my testimony, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the defense attorneys, and that’s what scared me. Leaving me alone in this room wasn’t doing anything to calm my nerves either. All I could think about was how many times I’d had to tell people what had happened, and hopefully this would be the last time and I could put it behind me.

I wasn’t allowed to keep any electronics on me, security had confiscated them at the entrance to the courthouse, but there was a clock on the wall to give me some idea of how long I’d been waiting. I t was now 1pm, so I’d been waiting nearly two hours already, and it seemed like there wasn’t much of a chance that they’d be calling me anytime soon. 1pm… we’d be partway through the second game by now. I wished more than anything that I was in the bullpen right now with the rest of the pitching staff, instead of being in court to testify in my assault case.

I wonder if Bryce or any of the guys missed me yet, or even if any of them knew why I wasn’t there for today’s double-header. The detectives assured me that they’d told Coach Finnegan last night, but I had no way of knowing whether he’d told anyone else. He probably hadn’t, so the team probably thought I was skipping out because I didn’t get enough playing time yesterday. Great, just another problem to deal with tomorrow.

Hopefully the boys would be able to play well and keep our winning streak alive without me. Maybe if I was able to get my testimony over with quickly, I could make it in time to watch the last bits of the second game. Probably not though, the game would likely be over by the time I got back, and I didn’t want to sit in the stands anyways. I’d done enough of that while injured, and never wanted to do that again.

After another 20 minutes, I heard a knock on the door and one of the deputies let himself in.

“They’re ready for you.”

The deputy led me into the witness box, and I was surprised to see there was no jury for the trial. I thought every criminal trial had a jury, like on all the crime shows. I guess that wasn’t true either, but that was okay by me, I didn’t want a whole bunch of strangers hearing what happened to me anyways.

I hadn’t met the prosecutor or any of the other lawyers involved in the case, but now that I was in court, everyone was visible and I could see everyone in the courtroom clearly from the witness stand. I was lucky that the prosecutor was directly in front of me, but if I looked to my right, I could see the defence.

The two guys who attacked me were seated at the defense table as well. I hadn’t expected to see them for some reason, and my breath caught in my throat when I realized that they were here as well. I wasn’t going to let them get under my skin. They couldn’t do anything other than glare at me, and they’d already done worse. I tried not to think about the fact that they were here, and focused on looking right at the prosecutors who were going to be leading the case for me and the other potential victims.

Once I had taken my oaths, the prosecutors came forward and asked me questions about what happened. I tried to be as thorough as possible to show that I wasn’t making up my story. I thought that the more thorough I was, the more it would show that I was thinking about what happened and was telling the truth.

When the prosecutors finished with me, the defence lawyer stood up and started picking apart everything I said. He made it sound like the things I said were contradicting each other, and every time I tried to interrupt or clarify, he’d cut me off and make it impossible for the judge to hear what I was trying to say. I was feeling frustrated, and wished I could lash out at the guy. I took a chance and looked at the two guys who attacked me. They looked smug, like they knew I was going to break and they’d go free because I was looking like a liar.

I tried to be more forceful during the cross-examination, but it was hard to keep up with the defence lawyer, and he didn’t feel like trying to make things easy for me. Once he was done I looked up at the judge, hoping he’d give me another chance to explain myself again.

“You may step down.” The judge said.

I was escorted back into the waiting room, and moments later both officers were in the waiting room with me.

“You did well. There’s nothing else you can do for the trail, do you want a ride back to campus?” Sergeant Peters asked.

“No, I’m okay.” I replied. “I’m going to walk back, it’s still early, and I want to see if I can get to the stadium, it’ll be a madhouse trying to get there in a car right now.”

I went back to the front reception area of the courthouse to collect my phone, keys and wallet from the security up front. When I checked my phone, I saw a half dozen phone calls and text messages from Bryce. All of them were asking me to call him right away. It was only 2pm, my part of the testimony had only been around half an hour in total.

At least Bryce was worried about me. I could still make it for the game, but what would be the point of going for the last couple innings? I’ll find him later on.

I walked back to campus and went to the dining hall to grab a late lunch. One of these days I was going to have a proper meal schedule, but I had no idea when that would be. Soon, hopefully.

As I was sitting down to start eating my lunch, I saw Bryce walk in. He froze when he saw me, and then ran over. Pulling me up, he hugged me and then pulled away, an angry look on his face.

“Where the hell were you? You didn’t answer any of my calls or texts. No one knew where you were, and we even sent someone to your room and you weren’t there. No one was there. Jeez, you’re not making friends on the team with this flaky behaviour. We get it, you’re pissed that you didn’t get to play much this weekend, but the team still relies on you to be there. We all deserve better than that.”

Confident that he was done ranting at me, I sat back down and ate a few bites of my burger.

“Coach knew exactly where I was the whole day Bryce. I’ve been in court. Testifying in trial against the guys who attacked me. I haven’t even been connected to my phone for most of the day. I wasn’t going to text you in the middle of a game, and I’ll thank you to help explain to the team where I was, since no one sounds like they will believe me if I say it.”

Bryce quieted down and looked at me.

“I’m sorry Devin, I didn’t know. No one knew anything about this being the trial day. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you, and I honestly only found out last night after our games, I hadn’t been thinking about that as something to be talking to people about.”

We ate the rest of our late lunches in silence. I was thinking about what it was going to be like to go back to the team again, now that they thought that I was only into myself and stopped showing up because I didn’t get any game time.

Once we were finished, we walked back towards my dorm. I didn’t think Vincente would be there, and even if he was he’d probably take the hint and go for a walk or something. Bryce carried his baseball gear with him and we carried on in silence.

“So, how did the games go today?” I ventured carefully.

“What a waste, I’m amazed they took as long as they did, the way they were rolling right along through us. I swear the only reason the games are over is because they got tired of scoring on us and couldn’t keep running the bases anymore. We could have used you pitching today, no one was getting it done and we almost ran out of pitchers who could even throw for us.”

I winced, not realizing that Boise State was going to run up the score on us that badly. That meant our playoff dreams were close to over, as there was no way that we were going to be able to catch anyone now that we’d lost both games today. Even if the other teams we were trying to catch had bad weekends, we needed to do a lot more than break even if we were going to make it, and there was only a couple weeks of games left. We weren’t mathematically eliminated yet, but absolutely everything had to break our way over the final two weekends.

We were lucky, as we were opening the door to my dorm room, Vincente was on his way out. He had his tennis bag with him so it looked like he was going to go practice on his own, which was perfect timing. Bryce and I would have the room to ourselves. Before Vincente left I called out to him.

“Hey, everything alright? You got back pretty quickly from the trial, did things look like they were going well?”

“Come on man, you know we can’t talk about it. Besides, I’m not a lawyer, I wouldn’t know if things were going well or not. You need to relax. Stay here with your man, I’m leaving anyways.”

Vincente closed the door behind us. Bryce threw his stuff on top of my unopened baseball bag, and then we both flopped down on my bed. Bryce curled up behind me and suddenly we were spooning on the bed. I was comforted by the feel of his hands on my hair, stroking my hair and pulling me close to his body.

“You didn’t say how it went, do you think everything is going to work out?” Bryce asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The trial. You haven’t said a word about the testimony or anything else. I know you probably can’t say too much because it’s a trial and all that, but… are you okay?”

Am I okay? I won’t be okay until I hear that there’s been a guilty verdict.

“Yeah. I guess so. Why wouldn’t I be? I testified, and the defense tried to make me look like a loser. I’m glad it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do except wait for the verdict.”

“Any idea when that’s going to be, babe?”

What’s with ‘babe’?

I shook my head. “I didn’t think to ask. I’m sure the officers will let me know once it’s all over. It shouldn’t take too long, it’s not supposed to be a long trial, I don’t think. Probably not more than a couple of days or so before I find out.”

Bryce’s hand reached up to caress the inside of my ear, and he rearranged himself so he was pressed against my back. The warmth of his body was starting to make me uncomfortable, so I tried to wriggle away and give myself some more room. He responded by pulling me closer, and instead all I managed to do was turn my body so I was facing him instead of away from him.

Bryce tried to push his hand under my body to wrap around me, so I lifted my chest up and he was able to push his right arm under and around me. I rested my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his chest on my head. I closed my eyes and let myself relax into his grasp.

This is nice. I never had this with Alex. He always wanted to be the one that was curling into me. Maybe I needed this, and that’s why it didn’t work with him.

“You know they’re going to get them, right? Prosecutors train for years before they become lawyers. The guys who attacked you aren’t going to be coming back.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.

“Yeah, I know. Still can be worried about it, can’t I?”

“Of course you can. But it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

I knew he couldn’t really promise me anything of the sort, but it was nice of him to say it and I felt comforted that he took the time to say it anyways.

I raised my head up, moving towards him. As he got closer, I closed my eyes and let myself feel all of him. The softness I was rewarded with caused me to moan into his appreciative mouth. His hand moved to the back of my head, pulling me closer as he slid his tongue into my now open mouth. I lightly sucked on the invading muscle and licked along his tongue.

As quickly as we’d begun, we pulled apart. We both seemed to sense that today wasn’t the right day to do anything more. A few minutes later, Bryce got up and gathered his belongings. I walked him to the door of my dorm and hugged him, letting my head rest on his chest again and letting him rub my back and squeeze my ass gently. I could feel the blood flowing, but this wasn’t what I wanted right now. I backed away and smiled apologetically at Bryce. He nodded and smiled back, understanding completely.

As he closed the door behind him, I sat back down on my bed. I had testified in court today. I faced the two men who attacked me and I told the truth. Nothing else I could do. Now it was time for justice to be done, and for me to focus on myself.

I fell asleep early that night, but found myself waking up throughout the night. Instead of pleasant dreams about baseball or Bryce, my dreams were filled with Sean, Parker and blood.