Short Story Challenge Week #1 Results!

Alright readers! Today is the day.

Just as a reminder, for this weeks short story challenge the criteria I had to follow was:

Hero – lawyer
Villain – firefighter
Setting – after a disaster in a small town
Theme – perception
Genre – thriller

This was my first ever attempt at writing a short story, and I’ve gotta admit, it was challenging.

I’ve never written in any genre outside of MG/YA Fantasy myself, so I was met with the obstacle of maturing my writing to fit the story. It was an inspiring experience, and so much fun to explore.

I honestly wish I could have spent more time in the world of my short story. I would have loved to properly flesh out the mystery, giving life to a proper thriller.

Anyways, without further ado, I present to you my short story: The Bakers Daughter

***

“I need to be replaced as counsel; I can no longer represent my client.”

After a long career as a defense attorney in the small island town of Prince Edward County, Jonathan Banks would find himself not remembered for his tireless efforts to see the innocent found ‘not guilty’. He would not be remembered for the time he proved the mayor innocent of embezzlement, or the time he championed the local school principal against false claims of indecency of his person.

No, these highlights of his career; his proudest moments, would not be what defined him after his assured disbarment.

Instead, Jonathan would be remembered for his fourteen words, spoken at half past ten in the morning on a sunny February afternoon. He would be remembered for the day he walked out on his client while court was in session.

The client in question, without a doubt in his mind, was guilty beyond redemption. The client in question also happened to be the local fire chief; a town hero.

 

*** 10 months earlier ***

 

Prince Edward County, a small island town nestled on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was an altogether peaceful community. It was the type of place where neighbors would greet you with a warm smile, and where people still remembered the days where helping each other was second nature before helping yourself.

It was a town free of scandal and filled with community pride; a pride that had been shaken to its core in the past year.

The seasons had always taken their fair share of the town, but in the rainy seasons of May a year earlier, the town was pushed further than it had found itself ever before.

The rainwater had fed the lake like a starved sponge, and the ensuing floods brought the people to their knees.

Citizens were scrambling to survive. Shopkeepers and neighbors alike worked together to barricade their doors. Sandbags in numbers unimaginable towered higher than the people building them. Some sought to help, many chose to escape, abandoning their belongings entirely as if to be swallowed by Poseidon himself.

In the wake of it all, Prince Edward Country Fire and Rescue stood as an immovable force against the onslaught of mother nature. And at their helm stood the venerable Chief Montgomery Moffatt.

Chief Moffatt was a stern man who was well credited among the community as the sort that never swayed when he set his mind to it; never shirking away from his duties or responsibilities. This in turn proved to shape his entire career, never compromising on his duties. Whether it be an elderly individual in a burning building, or a kitten trapped in a tree, he treated all in need with impugnable equality.

So why then did he find himself before a judge and jury? And more importantly, why would his own council abandon him?

It all began on a Monday morning.

Among the thrall of people coming and going of the police station, quietly sitting in a chair in the front lobby, sat eight-year-old Haitian, Lucy Badette.

She was both small for her age and keeping to herself. Were it not for Jerome Wallace she might have gone altogether unnoticed.

The older man had come in himself to deliver his wife’s lunch for the afternoon when the young girl had caught his eye. Something about the way her clothes didn’t match, and her hair was left unkempt troubled him.

“Little miss?” he asked, “are you here all by yourself?”

Lucy stared at the older man, her lips sealed.

Her silence reassuring his suspicions, Jerome pressed her further. “Is everything okay, little miss?”

The child, at last receiving attention, finally broke and threw herself into a fit of tears, her cries echoing throughout the corners of the office. As she clung to Jerome’s shirt, her tears soaking through the fabric, she let out a single sentence. One that reverberated throughout the town nearly as powerfully as the flood itself.

“The fireman killed my mommy and daddy!”

 

*** morning of present day ***

 

Sitting together alone in his small office, Jonathan Banks had come to hate this particular case.

He and Chief Moffatt had known each other a long time, going back to their first meeting in junior kindergarten more than fifty years earlier. They weren’t friends by any conventional definition of the word, but as they’d crossed paths throughout the course of their respected careers they’d come to have a mutual appreciation for each other.

Finding himself forced to defend Montgomery didn’t bother him. In fact, he was proud to have been chosen to champion the hero of the town. What left a bitter taste in his mouth, however, was knowing that in doing so he was forced to go before an eight-year-old girl and openly call her a liar.

“You know what I’m going to do at the end of the day, Jonathan?”

“What’s that Monty?”

“I’m going to go home, park my arse in my recliner, and enjoy a cold one.” he proudly explained. “For justice!”

“Amen.”

In truth, Jonathan didn’t drink. He preferred to spend his evenings of late listening to music while working on a thousand-piece puzzle he’d recently purchased together with his wife. It was of a tiger in the wild, and the stripes were proving to be especially difficult to piece together. But he was at work now, and thoughts of his quiet evening needed to be put aside. He’d learn long ago that to get the best out of his clients required making himself feel relatable to them.

“I tell you what though, I’m ready to put this bullshit behind me.”

The bullshit in question that he was accused of involved theft, and worse, second degree murder.

Lucy Badette maintained that Chief Moffatt broke into the Badette’s bakery late at night demanding that they hand over the sandbags they painstakingly filled and used to protect their store. She insisted that when they refused, he’d forced them into a closet, threatening them with his fire axe. Thereafter locking them in he helped himself to the sandbags. But with the flood waters being directed back into the store, without a means to escape, the small closet steadily filled and her parents drowned as a result.

There were a few problems with her story though that were easily exploited. First, if she knew that they were locked in, why hadn’t tried saving them? Why hadn’t she gone for help? Second, although the cause of death was declared as drowning, there was no evidence to suggest they were ever locked in the closet. Certainly, it was unusual that the two weren’t able to save themselves, but with so many similar losses at the time it was widely accepted that the flood just got the better of them.

He wasn’t sure why the little girl insisted, when asked who she thought was responsible, that chief Moffatt was the culprit. Or why she insisted that they were murdered for that matter, but those were not questions he needed to concern himself with. All that mattered was that Monty was innocent, and that it was his job to prove it.

“Well, once we get through today you can put this whole mess behind you.”

“Damn straight I will. I’ve got more important things to do than listen to the lies of some damned monkey child.”

It was a well-kept secret that the fire chief was a racist man. In fact, he doubted if anyone outside himself even knew. But putting aside his racists beliefs, he wasn’t going to subscribe to the theory that his personal opinions would cloud his judgement when it came to his work. He was as stalwart a man as they ever made them after all.

“Be careful what you say, Monty.”

“Yea, yea. I’m just tired of all this bullshit, you know?”

They both were. After today, he might just take a holiday. He couldn’t remember the last time he and his wife had gone away. Maybe he’d take her out west to visit the grandchildren out in Victoria.

“I would like to know how she came up with this elaborate story though. It seems a bit stretched, even for a child.” Jonathan voiced.

“Who knows. She certainly wasn’t in there with her parents in any case.”

No, certainly not, or she would have drowned as well. But it still bothered him.

“Or was she?” he thought to himself aloud.

There was no evidence to suggest the child was in the store with them at the time of the drowning, but there was also no evidence to explain where she was otherwise. Many had taken shelter together all over the town in churches, community centers, and even schools. It was very easy to lose track of a person at the time.

“She was not.” Chief Moffatt repeated.

What?

“I’m sorry?”

“She was not there.” he repeated a third time.

“I never said she was, Monty. I was just thinking, at her age and size there were probably a myriad of places she could have hid herself. But as I’ve explained before, if she was there they’d have found something to support her claims by now. Don’t worry.”

“She was not there!” he shouted.

It was then, staring into his maddened eyes, that things fell into place.

Lucy was small enough to hide just about anywhere. Maybe chief Moffatt did break into the bakery. Maybe, in his desperation for more sandbags, he did threaten the Badette’s. Maybe he did force and lock the Badette’s into the closet when they refused to cooperate. And maybe, hidden somewhere among one of the many barrels of flour, there was a young girl, barely eight years old, watching it all unfold.

Maybe Chief Montgomery Moffatt was guilty.

 

*** present ***

 

“I need to be replaced as counsel; I can no longer represent my client.”

His words echoed throughout his memory as vividly as they had echoed through the courtroom.

He had no doubt in his mind now that Chief Moffatt was guilty. He also had no doubt in his mind that his actions would have him disbarred. But he didn’t care. He’d been mulling over retirement for some time now, and he knew his wife wouldn’t object to having him around the house more. Yes, now was as good a time as any to retire.

As for Chief Moffatt, with all the evidence to support his innocence, Jonathan didn’t have any power to stop the vindicating verdict from coming down. He knew that he could have walked into the courthouse that morning, done absolutely nothing, and Montgomery would have walked away a free man.

But Jonathan Banks had spent his entire career defending the falsely accused. He decided early on that he would champion those who were being wronged by the system; that he would be the voice of support for the innocent among the guilty.

Montgomery Moffatt was not among these people.

No. The only power that he had to see justice found this day was to recuse himself from the case. And he knew in doing so that he would be sending a clear message to the judge, jury, and people of Prince Edward County.

Montgomery Moffatt, their fire chief, their friend, and their hero, was guilty of murder.

The chief wasn’t wrong about one thing though. Justice would be found this day. Justice for Lucy Badette, the eight-year-old Haitian girl who stood up for herself against the hero that would have her life ruined.

As for himself, as he left the courthouse, traipsing past the journalists and reporters, he had a singular thought in mind. He was going to go home, turn on his music, and work on his puzzle.

The End

Adam Guillemette

 

 

 

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Dream – Imagine – Create

A.