The Shooter

frail, was standing outside the courthouse as the wind whipped her short grey hair around her face. The time and date were stamped at the bottom, showing the filming had taken place five weeks prior.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Chapman. Can you describe what’s happened for you today?” DiMarco’s voice coaxed from outside the camera shot. The woman, perhaps for dramatic effect, reached up and dabbed a tissue in the corner of her eye and began to speak.
“I’ve witnessed a travesty of justice. My daughter’s rapist has walked free. Did you hear that? My daughter’s rapist has walked free. That’s not justice. How can that be justice? How can that even happen?” Her voice became angry. “I’ll tell you why it happened—because the lawyer, a scumbag named Larry Fittler, outsmarted the prosecution. That’s all it was. Larry Fittler had evidence, real evidence, thrown out on a technicality. That evidence proved the CEO of her company raped her. It proved it, and the lawyer had the evidence thrown out on a technicality! Technicalities shouldn’t matter when you’re a criminal. This isn’t fair. The whole system isn’t fair. How can this happen? How can a rapist walk free? Money shouldn’t buy results!”
“How does that make you feel? The fact that this man could hire an expensive, and well-connected, lawyer to walk him out the doors?”
“I’m furious. I’m furious because the system has failed us. It’s failed you, it’s failed me, and most of all, it’s failed my daughter. This man, this disgusting man, walked free, all because he had the money to hire the best lawyer. All because he could afford the most ruthless lawyer in town.” Her teeth ground together. “I tell you, without that lawyer, my daughter would’ve seen justice delivered, but that lawyer brainwashed the judge. Used his jargon and skewed facts to have the evidence thrown out. What he’s done is worse than being a criminal. Mr. Fittler knows the truth, he knows what really happened, and yet he still helped that man walk out of those doors! He’s made it impossible to tell the innocent from the criminals. This needs to be stopped!”
The woman’s anger broke, and she began to weep softly. The camera swept around to Jonathon DiMarco, his hair slicked back.
“Mr. Larry Fittler, the defense lawyer, has a reputation in this city for being good at his job. He’s allowed that right. But should the ability of a lawyer determine whether a person walks free? Should how much a client can pay result in a better outcome? Of course not!” DiMarco held a piece of paper with a line graph on it up to the camera. “The result of this is twofold. Firstly, this means that there are violent, terrifying men who rape your daughters walking the streets. These lawyers have put your family in danger by allowing these criminals to leave court without punishment. The real criminals should be locked up for the time they deserve. Rapists. Murderers. Felons. Why are we letting those who do not understand right from wrong have a say on their own punishment? Is this justice? Do we, the citizens of Chicago, want to sit idly by while our streets become overwhelmed, overrun, with violent murderers, rapists, and burglars, while the innocent sit in prison cells for crimes they didn’t commit, too scared to go to trial and have their innocence proclaimed?! Now is the time for us to make a stand. People of Chicago, stand with me! Stand for justice!”
The camera moved away from DiMarco, framing the courthouse, and slowly zooming out before the clip ended.
“That was intense.” I commented as the video finished. “There was a lot of anger in that take.”
“Are these all…?” Casey scrolled down the page. “These are all videos about the failures of defense lawyers. And there are so many. All of them, slandering the names of lawyers in our city.”
“And I bet if we take the time to look, we’ll find the names of some of our victims too. DiMarco is an intelligent person, but he’s also an angry, angry man.”
Casey pressed on different clips, listening to the beginning of them, getting the feel and then shutting them down and moving on to the next. Many were filmed outside the courthouses, some in people’s living rooms, others on street corners. The furious tone was consistent throughout each clip, and in one clip, DiMarco was seen throwing a vase across his living room.
“There’s so much rage hidden behind a frightening amount of control.” I came to stand behind Casey, watching each of the videos. “There must be at least fifty videos on this site.”
Casey clicked on the last clip on the first page and a young man, no older than twenty-five, appeared on the screen and began talking. The man shivered in the cold, with a scarf wrapped tight around his neck, sitting outside at a café. He brought a steaming coffee to his lips just before he started talking.
Casey reached out and pointed at the screen, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to catch it.
“Is that…?” I squinted at the screen. “Is he sitting outside of…?”
“Professor Coffee café? Directly across the road from Anthony Waltz’s penthouse? Yeah, he is.” Casey took a moment to absorb the information and her eyes narrowed, determined. “And would you look at the date? Is anyone here shocked to see it’s the night that Anthony Waltz died? Only hours before Anthony Waltz ‘shuffled off his mortal coil.’”
“We need to go back further with the security footage at Waltz’s apartment. We only looked an hour before the murder time frame. We need to go back and look again. I think we’re just about to prove that Jonathon ‘I Kill Fluffy Bunnies’ DiMarco was loitering around the scene in question. Along with—who is this guy?”
“Shut up and listen and we’ll find out,” Casey nudged me.
“My name is Matthew Wilkerson.” The