“Well what do you know about this case anyway?”
“Dana, I am a member of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, TTIC. I know about the terrorist attack, and your client’s involvement in it. He might actually be innocent.”
“Why would you stick your neck out to help me?”
“Dana, I have my reasons, but I might be able to help you out.”
What followed was a somewhat disjointed story of how the terrorist attack on the Colorado River had unfolded. She soon realized that what Turbee had was inside information. Dana began to take notes, asking the occasional question.
After an hour the noise level outside the witness room began to rise, and she knew that people were beginning to arrive for court that day. She had to end the call.
“Are you watching the trial in real time?” she asked.
“A lot of it I am,” Turbee replied.
“You can continue to feed me questions if you like,” she said. “But I need to go. Court will be starting up in a couple of minutes and I need to get ready.”
With that she hung up. A quiver of excitement coursed through her.
Later that day Dana was winding down on her cross-examination of one of the lead RCMP investigators. Corporal Gray had been on the stand for more than three days, and Dana had not made a dent in her evidence or credibility. Gray smiled and played the jury perfectly and handled all questions not objected to with deft skill and experience. The more Dana asked, the worse it became. Thoughts of med school were again playing in her mind when her third computer began to act up again. The little troglodyte, Lord Shatterer of Deathrot, reappeared. This time a suggested question appeared below the caricature.
“Ask her if she knows what TTIC is,” came scrolling across the screen.
Dana shrugged. At this point she had nothing to lose. Turbee did seem to know what he was talking about. “Could you tell the court what TTIC is, please?” she asked.
“Objection, relevance.”
“Tell the judge relevance is coming,” said the next screen message.
Dana remembered the formula from law school. “If the court will grant me a little indulgence, I will show relevance,” she said.
“Well, just get to it,” said the judge.
“It stands for the Terrorist Threat Integration Center,” Corporal Gray responded.
Dana looked at the computer screen. The next question appeared to make sense.
“Could you tell the court about TTIC’s involvement in this case?” she asked.
Sheff objected on relevance, but was overruled. Judge Mordecai was curious.
“They were the American intelligence agency that was tracking the route of the stolen Semtex that ultimately was used in the Colorado terrorist attack,” she said.
Now where? Dana thought. Here she was, on a murder conspiracy case where 20,000 people died, with an international television audience watching, and she didn’t have a clue where she was going or what to ask next. She looked at her screen, waiting for the next question, but none was forthcoming. Dana, of course, had no way of knowing that on the other side of the continent, in the dazzling high-tech TTIC control room, Turbee, who was watching the trial on one screen and was leading Dana along on another, had just spilled a cup of coffee over his keyboard, shorting out some of the microcircuitry. He grabbed a handful of tissues and attempted to mop up the resultant swamp.
Turbee typed in another question. In Vancouver, the consequences of the spill manifested itself inside the courtroom. Dana was “umming” and clearing her throat and flipping through her notes, notes that had nothing to do with the present issue, trying desperately to look fully in control of everything. There was a blinking cursor below the Martian but not much else.
“Ms. Wittenberg, we’re all waiting,” said Judge Mordecai impatiently. “You’re so far out from what’s relevant you might as well be in a different courtroom, and you’re now ‘umming’ us all to death. Please move along.”
“Come back home, Little Puppy,” whispered McGhee, just loud enough for everyone at the counsel table to hear. There were the usual snickers from the prosecution side of the table. Dana took her third computer and shook it, hoping somehow to nudge the electrons in cyberspace to hurry up. Magically, the next question appeared, sort of.
“Did TTIC h# any c ncer 3ns ab&$t the reliabi*(y of the em# lam ssag4e h#rd driv(( belo*ing t in&viduals who were vo&ved the a ack?”
There were now two problems. Dana had to figure out what the question was, and Turbee, being a mathematician, knew nothing about the laws of evidence in Canada.
“Well, Ms. Wittenberg?” Mordecai’s voice was up a few notes and a few decibels.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” said Dana, still flipping through her notes and trying to look professional. “Did TTIC have cancer . . .” She stopped there, trying to figure out the rest.
“Cancer?” thundered the judge. “A spy agency having cancer? Have you fallen off the ledge of sanity, Ms. Wittenberg? Are you bucking for a mistrial? Again?” Most everyone in the courtroom began to laugh. Again. The four prosecutors guffawed. Archambault leaned over and said in a stage whisper that pretty much everyone heard, “Are you sure you didn’t mean leprosy, Little Puppy?”
More laughs. Meanwhile, in the TTIC control room, Turbee had unplugged the defective keyboard and plugged in a new one. He retyped the question. Much to Dana’s relief, a sensible question appeared on the screen. Without pausing to think, as that would have been futile at this point, Dana read out the question: “Did TTIC have concerns about the reliability of the emails and text messages found on the hard drives of the computers of the individuals who were involved in the Colorado attack?”
Sheff was on his feet, but before he could say, “Objection,” His Lordship was on it. “Wittenberg, what kind of stupid question is that? That calls for hearsay, speculation, and agencies do not have ‘concerns.’ People have concerns. And I’m not even going to talk about relevance. Move
