Beyond This Point Are Monsters Read Online Free PDF

reasonable doubt that between 8:30 and 9:30 o’clock on the night of October 13,1967, Robert Osborne met his death at the hands of two or more persons . . .

CHAPTER THREE
    judge gallagher tugged impatiently at the collar of his black judicial robe. Even after fifteen years on the bench he still dreaded this moment when he walked into the courtroom and people stared up at him as if they expected the robe to endow him with magic qualities like Batman’s cape. Occasionally, when he caught a particularly anxious eye, he wanted to take time out to explain that the robe was merely a piece of cloth covering a business suit, a drip-dry shirt and an ordinary man who couldn’t perform miracles no matter how badly they were needed.
    Gallagher looked around the room, noting with sur­prise that the only empty seats were those in the jury box. To his knowledge there’d been no publicity about the hearing except the legal notices in the newspapers. Per­haps the legal notices had a larger public than he imag­ined. More likely, though, some of the people were drop-ins who had no real interest in the case: the lady shopper resting her feet between sales; the young marine who seemed to be suffering from a hangover; a small group of high school students with notebooks and clipboards; a teen-aged girl, thin as a reed, carrying a sleeping baby and wearing a blond wig and sunglasses as big as saucers.
    Some of the spectators were courtroom regulars who came for the excitement and because they had nowhere else to go. A middle-aged German woman knitted with speed and equanimity through embezzlement trials, di­vorces, armed robberies and rapes. A pair of elderly pen­sioners, one man on crutches, the other carrying a white cane, appeared even in the worst weather to sit through the dullest cases. They carried sandwiches in their pockets and at noon they would eat outside on the steps, feeding the crusts to the pigeons. To Gallagher, looking down on them from the windows of his chambers, it seemed a very good way to spend the noon hour.
    Even without years of practice it would have been easy for Gallagher to pick out the people closely connected with the case: Osborne’s wife and mother pretending to be cool in the heat of the morning; some leather-faced ranch­ers looking out of place and uneasy in their city clothes; the ex-policeman, Valenzuela, almost unrecognizable in a natty striped suit and orange tie; and sitting at the coun­sels’ table, Mrs. Osborne’s lawyer, Ford, a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered man with a ferocious temper that had cost him hundreds of dollars in contempt fines.
    â€œAre you ready, Mr. Ford?”
    â€œYes, your Honor.”
    â€œThen go ahead.”
    â€œThis is a proceeding to establish the death of Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne. In support of the allegations con­tained in the petition of Devon Suellen Osborne, I intend to submit a considerable amount of evidence. I beg the indulgence of the court in the manner of submitting this evidence.
    â€œYour Honor, the body of Robert Osborne has not been found. Under California law, death is a rebuttable pre­sumption after an absence of seven years. The presump­tion of death before this seven-year period has passed requires circumstantial evidence to show first, the fact of death, i.e., there must be enough evidence from which a reasonable conclusion can be reached that death has oc­curred; and second, that absence from any cause other than death is inconsistent with the nature of the person absent.
    â€œThe following quote is from the People versus L. Ewing Scott: Any evidence, facts or circumstances concern­ing the alleged deceased, relating to the character, long absence without communicating with friends or relatives, habits, condition, affections, attachments, prosperity and objects in life which usually control the conduct of a per­son and are the motive of such person’s actions, and the absence of