“One night we were walking after dinner by a building that had burned to the ground that day near to where we were staying,” Krista continued. “We had heard that they had found bodies in the building. We were crossing this small alley-like street when we heard a woman call out for help, a western woman, not a local, because she was calling for help in English, not Brazilian. I went charging into the alley and — I’m supposed to call him hero?”
“Just for now,” Mr. Smithers said, smiling.
“Well, hero followed after me,” Krista explained. “I saw this woman pinned down on the ground by a big guy and another one holding her hands and arms above her head. Then I heard a voice in the shadows say just hurry up and then kill her and get me that braid. That’s our proof for Quinn. At the same time, hero came flying by me and kicked the big guy in the back of the neck and knocked him off of the woman, then went for the guy holding her arms. I saw the guy who had talked step out of the shadows and he had a gun in his hand. There was a big knife on the ground in front of me. I picked it up and stabbed at him and his gun went off. The other guy wriggled loose from hero and ran away. The woman, well, it was Susan, looked in a pretty bad way. Her dress was pretty much gone and she had bruises. Hero picked her up and carried her back to our place.”
“What about the man with the gun?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“He was on the ground with the knife in his back,” Krista replied. “We learned the next day that he and the big one were found there, dead.”
“What happened next?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Well, we found out that hero had gotten cut pretty bad,” Krista replied. “Just missed making him a eunuch. Some friends brought a doctor to stitch him up. Susan was pretty freaked out and she could barely walk. We understood when she explained who Quinn was. What a piece of shit you are!” she flared out at him. “She’s your mother! David was your father!”
“Miss Hill, please control yourself,” Judge Crenshaw admonished her.
“What happened next?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“We just hung out, waiting for hero and Susan to get better,” Krista replied. “We realized that Susan wasn’t going to be safe there. We knew that we had to get her away.”
“Why did you feel obligated to help her any further than you already had?” Mr. Smithers asked. “Why didn’t you take her to the police or the American embassy?”
“Well, our friends in Manaus, Brazilians, told us that the police were corrupt,” Krista replied. “We talked about the American embassy, Susan wanted to go there, but in the end she decided that she didn’t want to be in any witness protection program. And as to why we wanted to help Susan, it’s just that Susan, well, Susan is like the kind of a person, a woman, that you only dream about meeting in life. I’d do anything for Susan.”
“Including lie?” Mr. Jordan interjected.
“Mr. Jordan!” Judge Crenshaw said. “You are out of line.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but this staged parade of impossible tales of daring-do and altruism, it’s just a bit much,” Mr. Jordan said snidely. “It simply strains credulity.”
“The last time I checked, Mr. Jordan, that was my job, to decide on the credibility or lack thereof and what weight to attach or not to the issues at hand, or am I mistaken?” Judge Crenshaw replied.
“You are indeed correct, Your Honor, and I apologize if you felt that I was inferring otherwise,” Mr. Jordan replied.
“What happened next, Miss Hill?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Let’s see, well, we heard that the third guy, the one whose arm hero mangled, had fallen into the river trying to get away from friends of our friends and that he had been eaten by the piranhas and caimans,” Krista replied. “Hero figured that we needed to leave right away, so we chartered a jet and flew to the Caymans and stayed there for a couple of weeks, a week on Grand Cayman, then a week on Cayman Brac. That’s where we learned that they had identified the remains in the building fire and that David, Susan’s husband, was one of them. So, we chartered another jet and left the Caymans and went to Bora Bora for a couple of weeks.”
“Why only a couple of weeks?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Hero paid off the airport security head honcho to let us know if anyone asked about us,” Krista replied. “He told them that it was about an angry husband. We’d been there a couple of weeks when the security honcho showed up to tell us that someone had asked about Susan. He even had a picture of the guy, but none of us had ever seen him before. So we left Bora Bora and went to Oman.”
“Why Oman?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Hero picked the places,” Krista replied. “He liked out of the way places. Oman’s about as out of the way as it gets.”
“Did anything eventful happen in Oman?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“It was the most eventful place I’ve ever been,” Krista replied. “This fabulously wealthy sheikh who lived in tents in the desert gave us sanctuary, they call it. He gave us the protection of his tribe. We lived with them, in tents, shared their way of life wandering down the coast with the sea on one side and the desert on the other. It’s still the single-most incredible experience of my life.”
“How long were you there?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“About a month,” Krista replied. “Then this sorry piece of shit’s minions caught up to us, sort of.”
“Miss Hill,” Judge Crenshaw said, exasperated.
“The guy who had followed us to Bora Bora was seen by the sheikh’s people in Salalah,” Krista continued. “We had his photo and sheikh had put out the word. The sheikh’s people grabbed the guy and brought him to the sheikh. He told the sheikh about his partner and they got him, too.”
“Then what happened?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“The sheikh convinced them to spill the beans about what they were doing,” Krista replied. “That’s when we learned that asshole over there was offering $5 million for Susan’s braid as proof that she was dead.”
“Did these men just volunteer this information?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Hardly,” Krista replied, laughing. “He had to convince them. Sheikh Hakeem is the most convincing man I’ve ever met. He is the last man on this planet that I’d want to piss off.”
“Were you witness to the convincing of either of these two men?” Mr. Smithers asked.