Deacon stirred in the chair at the sound of his mother's sobs, then yanked his hood up and curled back into a ball. An action figure of a zombie riding a skateboard, its body poised and lively despite being rotted almost to the bone, tumbled out of his backpack and clattered onto the floor. Emmit stared at its grinning face for a long time as Kelly cried it out, soaking his hospital gown with hot tears.
"So this is what I gotta do to make you miss me," he said sarcastically. "Take a bullet while committing armed robbery?"
"I should shoot you myself, but then... then I'd miss you more than I already do," she replied, and then leaned in to kiss him again. This time she didn't stop, and neither did Emmit.
For that night, there was no impending trial, no threat of imprisonment, no more worries about death or Deacon Mills finding himself caught in the cruel limbo of a hostile divorce. Emmit and Kelly Mills settled their differences in the best way possible, and as Emmit helped her out of her jeans, he only had two things to be worried about: Deacon waking up, and his elevated heart rate alerting the nurse.
Chapter 14: Through the Valley
Emmit had been throughly terrified as he was wheeled into the courtroom and parked behind the shiny wooden table, staring up at the mile high bench and the bulldog of a judge who sat behind it. After six months of healing and physical therapy, he had been more than capable of walking. But his court appointed lawyer (who was a lanky and somehow mortician-like man named Danforth Bentley) had suggested the wheelchair, to maybe inspire sympathy from the jury. The presiding judge, however, the honorable William Hughes Newland III, was not known for his mercy.
Judge Newland had looked like a gargoyle hovering behind the bench, his snow-white hair slicked back into a Dracula style hairdo and his black robes stretched over a hunched back and broad shoulders. His eyebrows, permanently stuck in an expression of angry concentration, were bushy and busy having private parties separate from one another. His eyes were coal black, and as they had peered over the various documents laid before him, his jowls had swung and jiggled with the bird-like movements of his head, threatening to make Emmit giggle despite his nervousness. When he felt like he couldn't control it, he had forced himself to think of the time he had spent on the other side. Any hint of a smile immediately died on his lips.
I have literally fought the living dead, Emmit had thought to himself, pouring a glass of water he didn't want and fidgeting with his glasses. I have killed people who were going to eat me. Why should I be afraid of this old man?
But the first time the gavel had rapped against its wooden block, echoing across the socially distanced and safely masked courtroom, Emmit had jumped off of the wheelchair seat like a frog on a hot plate.
He had sat quietly with his hands folded over a blank legal pad and a pen, watching the lady prosecutor storming back and forth like a caged animal. Her red hair flew, and her smart little heels clicked and clacked. He had never cared to remember her name after listening to her describe him as an out-of-control bank robber with an itchy trigger finger. Mr. Bentley had laughed and smirked at her ridiculous character judgments, putting on a nice show for Judge Newland.
Hank O' Brien, the overzealous security guard who had shot Emmit, had taken the stand first. Although he kept his beady eyes trained on Emmit with every word he said, he testified honestly; although he had decided to use lethal force, he had never actually seen the gun. He claimed he had believed whole-heartedly that Emmit was moving to draw on him and had fired in self-defense. Even to Emmit, it didn’t sound unreasonable.
Betsy Shaw, the traumatized bank teller, had also been called to testify against him. To Emmit's shock, she had seemed to be on his side. Of course she had cried, destroying her makeup once again, but she told the disinterested-looking jury that Emmit had seemed just as terrified as she was, and that she, too, never saw a gun. Emmit had been carrying, but technically, he had never pointed it at anyone at all.
The EMS team of James Bopp and Kate Jaques, who had responded to the crime scene (and ultimately saved Emmit from his sentence in Hell), both testified that they had been the ones to remove the gun from Emmit's waist band. James Bopp had still seemed as shaky as he had been in the ambulance as he approached the witness both, but he was loosened as he told the irate prosecutor that he had inspected the gun personally and found it to be unloaded, the bullets themselves stashed in one of Emmit’s cargo short pockets. Dan Bentley, who had spent most of the trial drumming on his briefcase with a pencil and pen, tapped out a quick drumroll and leaned over to whisper in Emmit's ear.
"Their witnesses did more for us than they did for them," he said pridefully, nudging Emmit's arm and winking as if sharing a juicy secret.
When Judge Newland had called for all to rise for the jury to read their verdict, Dan had stood and rested his hand on Emmit's shoulder to make sure his wheelchair gimmick stayed afloat. Emmit had clenched his hands together in his lap and closed his eyes, waiting for them to decide his fate. Again, he had felt like he was caught in a time warp where the clock moved so slowly that it was almost rotating backwards. In the end, he had been found
