THE WRONG SOLUTION
an excerpt

The courtroom looked like a typical American courtroom. The judge’s bench was an elevated expanse of polished wood. The jury box, outfitted with hard chairs, lay stage right. The witness stand on the opposite side included both a few short steps up to it and a long ramp, appropriately handicap-accessible. The only mark of the island location was the blue flag, with a latte stone and mwarmwar stenciled on it, hanging next to the red, white and blue stars and stripes, behind the judge’s bench.
Mark Johansen, clad in a light tee shirt, blue jeans and zories, shivered from the ultra-cold setting of the air-conditioning. His eyes skimmed over the books and papers piled up on the long tables where the attorneys sat. At one table, two men in dark blue suits leaned their heads together and whispered quietly together. At the other, a dark woman dressed in a khaki linen suit with her hair in a neat chignon, lounged gracefully, a startling contrast to the client who sat beside her, nervous, twitching, in an orange jumpsuit and shaggy hair.
Mark studied the orange jumpsuit with careful intensity. He pressed his lips together tightly and breathed in slowly, trying to find an objective focus to analyze the man accused of killing his father. Technically, one of two men allegedly involved in killing his father. The other man had been given immunity and would testify at this trial. And Mark, who was only 15 years old, already had enough experience through his school’s Mock Trial program to predict that this man would be found guilty, despite the class and skill of his expensive lawyer.
Mark felt his mother’s cold fingers close over his wrist. He didn’t look at her, but instead glanced over at the man who had just entered the courtroom and was sliding into a seat on the other side of the aisle. His chest tightened. The man was an FBI agent, one of the few who had interviewed his mother and then Mark himself in the days following the discovery of his father’s body. This agent had been cold, arrogant, and disbelieving, and Mark still disliked him. Agent Charleston Smith had done nothing to help the local police rout the informant or arrest the man in the orange jump suit. Charleston Smith had asked foolish questions about Mr. Johansen and his work, his associates, his “affairs,” implying infidelity, hinting that Mr. Johansen had been involved in illegal shenanigans at work, and questioning Mr. Johansen’s sanity, wondering if he was secretive or paranoid.
It seemed odd that he was here now. Mark assumed it was professional curiosity, but that seemed a more human characterization than Agent Smith deserved. The judge came in and Mark stood up along with everyone else. The room was filled with prospective jurors and in moments the routine of questions and excuses would start.
Mark patted his mother’s hand, removed his arm from under it, and slipped out of the courtroom. He kept his body keenly erect as he strode down the corridor. Inside the men’s room, he bolted the stall door behind him, turned and let his stomach unclench, vomiting up the light breakfast he’d forced down just an hour earlier.