Chapter 15 - The Prosecutor's Maneuver
The criminal investigation was consolidated in the Violence Against Women Court Number Three in Madrid. The investigating judge agreed to combine the proceedings for the battery, continuous domestic violence, unauthorized wiretapping, and socioeconomic crimes into a single abbreviated procedure.
Trevor was summoned again to testify as an investigated party for all the charges.
The atmosphere in the courthouse was tense. Malcolm Harlan didn't attend in person, but he sent his own legal team to monitor his son's testimony.
Rebecca waited in a dedicated victims' room with Officer Ortiz. Through the translucent window of the door, she saw Trevor arrive. He wore a dark coat, walked stiffly, and his face looked gaunt. The media pressure and the unstoppable advance of the judicial investigation had begun to crack his invulnerable facade.
The testimony lasted three hours.
Trevor invoked his right to only answer questions posed by his own attorney, refusing to answer the prosecutor or Maya Chen.
He claimed the audio recordings had been doctored by experts hired by Richard Vale's group. He maintained that the money transferred to Luxembourg was for legitimate investments agreed upon verbally with Rebecca, and stated that the wound to his wife's lip and the broken tooth occurred when he tried to grab her phone during one of her "hysterical episodes."
However, the prosecutor had one final piece of evidence prepared.
"With the Court's permission," Prosecutor Nia Brooks said, "we request that the investigated party be shown the forensic report from the Scientific Police Laboratory regarding the recording device found inside the wall of the minor's bedroom."
The prosecutor unfolded a document displaying the voice spectrographic analysis.
"The experts categorically ratify that the audio track captured on the night of the incident presents no cuts, alterations, or digital insertions of any kind. The voice that says 'Look what you made me do' twenty-one seconds before Mr. Richard Vale knocked on the door undoubtedly belongs to the defendant."
Trevor stared at the document on the table. His lawyer tried to intervene to lodge a formal objection, but he cut her off, raising a hand.
His eyes were locked on the police expert's signature.
"I was stressed," Trevor suddenly blurted out, breaking the strategy of silence his lawyer had laid out for him.
"Trevor, do not answer," his lawyer warned quickly.
"I was stressed!" he repeated, raising his voice in the small interrogation room. "She wouldn't stop pressuring me about the accounts. Her father looked down his nose at me every time he came over for dinner. I just wanted to keep the family afloat."
"Are you maintaining that the assault was accidental?" the investigating judge asked, fixing her gaze on him.
Trevor swallowed hard. The rage he had kept bottled up for months seemed to boil over in his features for a split second.
"She knew exactly which buttons to push to make me lose control. She did it on purpose. She knew her father was on his way and she provoked the argument so he would walk in at that exact moment."
The judge took notes silently on her computer screen.
That spontaneous outburst definitively destroyed the accidental collision defense. Trevor had just implicitly admitted to the assault, once again trying to shift the blame onto the victim.
At the end of the hearing, the judge raised Trevor's bail for maintaining his provisional liberty to two hundred thousand euros and expressly warned him that he would be remanded into pretrial detention if there was any new attempt to communicate directly or indirectly with Rebecca or any witnesses in the case.
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When he walked out of the courtroom, Trevor passed just a few feet from the room where Rebecca was waiting. Their eyes met through the one-way glass.
He couldn't see her, but Rebecca saw him. And for the first time in four years, she didn't feel fear. She felt pity for the man who had preferred to destroy his own family rather than face his own shortcomings.
