I Died to End Their Lie novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Stand

The courtroom was full by nine, and half the people in it were holding phones.

The story had gone up on every local news site overnight.

A rich man's son had died in a pig shed, and the father had sent him there.

I floated above the gallery rail.

Dad sat in the front row in a gray suit that hung loose on him now.

Mom sat beside him with her hair hanging over her face.

The farmer and his wife were brought in through a side door in county orange.

The farmer walked with his chin up.

His wife kept her eyes on the floor.

"All rise," the clerk said.

The judge was a gray-haired woman with a flat voice.

The district attorney stood.

"Your Honor, the state charges both defendants with unlawful imprisonment and with causing the death of a nineteen-year-old man in their care."

"In our care?" the farmer said loudly.

"You will wait," his lawyer muttered.

"Sit," the judge said.

The farmer sat.

The DA called the farmer's wife first.

She was a thin woman with cracked hands, and she held the edge of the witness box with both of them.

"Ma'am, tell the court what happened on Tuesday."

"He fell in the pig yard," she said. "Feeding. Four days he'd been working with no food."

"Whose decision was it to withhold food?"

She looked at her husband.

"His," she said.

"Shut your mouth," the farmer hissed from the table.

"Order," the judge said.

"Go on, ma'am."

The woman's chin shook.

"He was bleeding from his nose and his gums. He begged to go to a hospital."

"How many times?"

"Three, in the yard and in the kitchen. Then he called his father and said he was going to die."

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