Fourth Person No More

by John Gastineau

  “Overruled.”

  He leaned over to Jake.

  “Young man, when either of those two lawyers says ‘objection,’ stop talking. Immediately. You don’t talk again until I tell you to. You understand that?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Say it out loud for the record.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” Secrist repeated. “Let’s make it ‘yeah, judge’ or ‘yeah, your honor’ from now on. You understand that?”

  “Yes, judge.”

  Secrist nodded to himself. He shook back the draped sleeve of his robe, so he could pick up his pen.

  “You can talk when Mr. Crandall asks his next question,” Secrist said to Jake and pointed to Crandall.

  In response to Crandall’s question, Jake said he had seen his uncle buy drugs from the Defendant on numerous occasions. Jake said he used to see the Defendant quite a bit after his uncle invited the Defendant and his then pregnant companion to live with him. The Defendant, Jake said, had been kicked out his parents’ house for knocking her up.

  “How old was his ‘companion’?” Crandall asked, seemingly indifferent to the course way Jake described the pregnancy.

  “Objection.” Reardon called. “Irrelevant.”

  “Overruled. You can answer,” Secrist said to Jake.

  “My age.”

  “And how old did you say were at the time?”

  Crandall turned to Reardon anticipating another objection—asked and answered was my bet—but Reardon knew that there is always a risk of annoying the jury by objecting too much.

  “Fourteen,” Jake said, when Crandall turned back to him. “We was in the same grade.”

  “And this girl is now the Defendant’s wife, is that correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  Crandall had walked us all the way through the mine to get to that nugget. He was already at work chipping away at the credibility of the witness most likely to provide the Defendant with an alibi.

  Uncle Donnie eventually kicked the Defendant, his lover, and their newborn child out when the Defendant refused to pay rent, either in drugs or cash, Jake said. Not long after that, the Defendant went to prison for the sale of controlled substances. When he returned, he went to live with his parents again. The lover was now his wife—they had been married in the prison so that the Defendant could have what Jake described as “a couple of sex visits”—and she and the baby had been taken in by the in-laws already.

  “When he got out, his old man put him to work on the farm,” Jake said. “But he wasn’t much on manual labor. He liked supervising better’n actual work. Said he needed somebody to help with the farm work, so he asked me. I said sure ‘cause I didn’t have no money.”

  But Jake said he wasn’t paid in cash. The Defendant gave him a room in one of the barns to stay in when he needed it and all the drugs he wanted.

  “He said he’d teach me how to be a man. He said since he’d been to prison he knew what it took.”

  “And how did he do that exactly?” Crandall asked, his eyebrows raised, his face open, receptive, and innocent as if he had not already read or heard the answer a dozen times.

  “Well,” Jake said, sighed, and ran his hand across his stubbly scalp, not knowing quite where to begin. “The first thing he did, I reckon, was work my ass off.”

  The room’s tension released in laughter. Reardon jumped to his feet to object, but Secrist singed the laughter with a napalm scowl and told Reardon to sit down.

  Jake told a tale of the Defendant working him ten, twelve hours a day at all sorts of thankless tasks on the farm. To keep him going, the Defendant fed him uppers or PCP. To help him sleep or to spark his appetite, he got grass. On weekends, they partied with LSD or PCP.

  “’Said he wanted to see my reactions to different kinds of dope so he could better serve his ‘clientele,’” Jake said. “You know, so he could recommend what kind of dope was best to use for a particular kind of high or to suit your mood.”

  He talked mostly to Wood, but here he paused to look at the jury.

  “’Serve his clientele.’ He talked like that. Them big words in that whispery voice. It was all crap, him making me out to be some kind of lab rat for his fucking cli-en-tele.”

  Reardon stood, but before he could speak, Secrist said to Jake, “Mind your language,” and pointed Reardon back to his chair.

  “Where was the Defendant when you were working on the farm?” Crandall asked quickly to get things back on track.

  “He said he was developing leads and making sales. He said he was trying to grow the business, and . . . “

  “Which business?”

  “The dope business. What other kind of business we been talking about?’ said Jake, clearly annoyed by the interruption.

  Wood stared at Jake, and Crandall pursed his lips. Jake bit his and looked at the floor.

  “He said he was trying to grow the business,” Crandall repeated to Jake. “And?”

  “And he said he was doing that so there’d be enough business for the both of us when he brought me in, like a partner or some such.”

  “Did the Defendant do anything else that you took to be part of your education in how to be a man?” Crandall asked to move on to another area.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “There was reading to do. Like I’m not too tired and strung out already.”

  “Reading,” Crandall repeated, pointing him down the path again.

  “Yeah. He gave me books to read. Said they’d help shape my thinking so I could act like a man when the time came.”

  “What books did he give you?”

  “In Cold Blood was one. Helter Skelter was ‘nother.”

  Crandall looked at the jury. The difference between the clouded expressions of three or four of the jurors who obviously knew the books and the blank expressions of the rest was stark.

  Crandall dipped his chin to his chest for a moment, then raised it.

  “Those the only two,” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I don’t read good. It takes me a while. ‘Specially when I’m wore out and fu . . . screwed up.”

  “Did you read the two books?”

  “Most of them, yeah.”

  “What’re they about?”

  “Objection,” Reardon said. “Irrelevant. Rule 402. Hearsay.”

  Reardon obviously had anticipated this part of Jake’s testimony. To avoid tipping off the jury by stating it plainly, he had cited by number the rule of evidence that relevant testimony may be excluded if its prejudicial effect to a party outweighs its probative value. I know because Janelle later pulled a copy of the state’s rules of evidence out of her saddlebag to look it up.

  It was a reasonable guess on my part that Crandall did not know exactly what Jake was going to say but Crandall nonetheless considered the risk of proceeding with the line of questions worthwhile when it became obvious the jury did not know the subject of the books. Whatever Jake was going to say obviously was significant to both men.

  “Goes to motive and bias, Judge,” Crandall said. “And, as Mr. Reardon has previously noted, those are always relevant.”

  “Overruled,” Secrist said.

  We all looked at Jake, who seemed confused. He said to Secrist, “I can talk now?”

  Secrist smiled and nodded.

  “They’re about people killing people for the hell of it.”

  Reardon rolled his eyes. Crandall gave the jurors a sidelong glance to measure their reaction, then dipped his chin into his jowls again. He apparently considered it a better answer than he had any right to expect.

  Crandall said: “Earlier you said the Defendant told you the books would help shape your thinking so you could act like a man when the time came. What did you take that to mean?”

  Jake rocked side to side as he had in his first
uncomfortable moments on the stand. He said in a soft voice, “’Sounded to me like there was going to be a damn test.”

  Without being asked, Secrist called a break for lunch. Everybody in the room knew we were down to it, and the next stretch was going to be long and almost certainly rough.

  Nobody ever found out whether the rip-off story was true, but nobody cared much either. The story served its purpose.

  Jake began the afternoon session by telling how he came to steal the shotguns he had bought the ammunition for. He said the Defendant had appeared in his room one night about 3 a.m. and showered him with acid tabs, hits of speed, PCP packets, and dime bags of grass.

  “Shit, hundreds of them.” Jake said. “He said he’d ripped off the dope guy.”

  That brought Reardon upright.

  “Objection. Hearsay. Irrelevant. Move to strike.”

  “Motive, bias, admission against interest,” Crandall said sarcastically. “How many more you gonna need, Judge?”

  It was a taste of the old Crandall; he must’ve thought things were going well.

  “A civil tongue and a respectful tone, Mr. Crandall,” Secrist said. “Overruled.”

  “Who’s the dope guy,” Crandall asked, just to rub it in a little more.

  “The guy who sold him his stuff,” Jake said in a tone that suggested he was talking to a simpleton.

  Crandall held Jake in a long, baleful gaze to rein him in. Finally, he asked, “What does the Defendant stealing from his dealer have to do with how you came to be in possession of shotguns?”

  “He told me . . .” Jake was comfortable enough on the stand now that he looked at the Defendant and stuck his chin out at him. “He told me the dope guy would kill him when he found out, and we had to protect ourselves.”

  “What is the name of the dope guy?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me. I don’t even know if he did what he said or if he just bought a bunch of stuff and dropped it on me to make him look like he was big time.”

  “But you believed him at the time, did you not?” Crandall rode in quickly.

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “He said we had to get us some guns, so we broke into some houses until we found a couple of shotguns. Or maybe I should say I broke into the damn houses, since he made me go in. He’d only scout out the places, then drive me there. Said there was less chance us getting caught if it was only one of us went in.”

  Jake turned to the jury.

  “When you’re fu . . . stoned, that kind of crap makes way more sense than it should,” he said sagely and shrugged.

  A couple of jurors stared, then looked away. They didn’t seem like the kind who would appreciate a life lesson from a kid like Jake.

  The night before Halloween, about nine, Jake said, the Defendant fed him some PCP—he called it “dust”—waited for it to kick in, then threw him a stocking cap.

  “One of ‘em that has holes for your eyes and mouth,” Jake said. “Red. His’s black. He was holding the guns. Said we’re gonna trick or treat. I said it wasn’t Halloween and anyway I was too old for that shit, and if I was, then sure as hell he was.

  “He smiled that creepy smile he puts on when you cross him and said I misunderstood. Said he heard the dope guy was on the move, coming to get him. Said the dope guy knew I was his right-hand man. The dope guy’d take me out too just to teach others you couldn’t steal from him and get away with it. We needed more guns, he said.”

  They stole Jake’s mother’s car. The Defendant told Jake they needed a car the dope guy wouldn’t recognize. Jake thought now that it was more likely the Defendant just wanted another way to pin what they were going to do on Jake.

  Not until they were in the car, driving around in the country, looking for a house to rob, did the Defendant tell him what trick or treating meant: They would only break into houses that looked occupied. If the people had guns—the treat—they’d take them and leave the occupants alone. No guns, and the occupants got the trick—they died.

  “I got to know you got the balls to pull the trigger if the dope guy shows,” Jake quoted the Defendant as saying.

  “What was your reaction to that?” Crandall asked.

  “Jittery as I was then, it seemed like a good question,” Jake said. “I was curious about it myself.”

  They drove around in the country for an hour or more. Every time Jake would point out a place he thought was a good one the Defendant waved it off.

  “I thought then he was just being careful,” Jake said. “Now? I think he was just plumb scared.”

  Jake turned to the jury.

  “I mean he hadn’t eaten any dust to buck himself up like I had.”

  The presumption of this second life lesson went over no better than the first one had. Sensing trouble Crandall stepped between the jury and Jake, then walked away to draw their attention away from each other. He parked in front of the defense table to remind everyone whom they were talking about.

  “How did the Defendant pick the place where you finally stopped?” Crandall asked.

  “I don’t know. He just finally sighed and said, ‘stop here,’ so we did.”

  “You could have stopped sooner, or you could have stopped later?”

  “Well, yeah.” Jake said uncertainly.

  “Lotty Nusbaumer’s just happened to be where the Defendant”—Crandall pointed at him—“finally managed to screw up his courage.”

  “Objection,” Reardon called. “Speculation. He can’t know what was in . . .”

  He stopped himself. The end of that sentence would have been “my client’s mind.” If Reardon had finished it, he would have admitted his client was present at Lotty’s place.

  Crandall turned to Reardon so that only Reardon and those in the gallery could see him and flashed Reardon a smirk.

  “Withdrawn,” he said.

  Reardon scowled, which was his second mistake. Crandall had harpooned him, then Reardon let himself call attention to it. I can’t remember Reardon offering another objection during Jake’s testimony after that.

  The Defendant looked at Crandall with the mildly curious, predatory gaze. Admiration or hatred could have run behind it, but how would you know?

  They pulled the car far enough up the driveway that no one on the road would see it. They backed in so that the car would be ready to go and the license plate would not be exposed to the road. The Defendant had removed the bulb from the overhead light so that it would not come on when they opened the doors. He told Jake to leave the doors open when they got out so that they wouldn’t make noise and they could get away quicker.

  “He’d thought of everything,” Jake said, with more admiration than Crandall liked. Wood cleared his throat, and Jake looked sheepish.

  The Defendant finally gave Jake one of the shotguns as they left the car. The Defendant peeked in the picture window and apparently the sight of an old woman and children made him feel better about his choice.

  “When he come back,” Jake said, “he told me, he said, ‘Looks like a trick house for sure’ and for the first time that night, he was smiling.”

  They crept up to the front door. The Defendant carefully tested the knob and found it unlocked. He stepped back and told Jake to pull down his mask.

  “’Go in, turn right,’” Jake quoted the Defendant in a husky whisper. “’Shout at them. Tell them to freeze or you’ll blow their fu . . . blow their heads off.’ He had his hand on my shoulder, and he was shaking me, trying to get me jacked up. Then he pulled me up them stairs so’s I was first and in we went.”

  Jake’s attitude became musing.

  “Them kids. They didn’t have a clue what was happening. Not a clue. The old lady did. She started to get up, and I told her sit the hell still.”

  “What happened then?” Crandall asked to
pull him out of his funk.

  “It’s hard to remember.”

  I suspect he meant it was unpleasant to remember, not that he could not remember. Crandall suspected so, too.

  “What happened then?” he asked again, more gently.

  Jake offered up bare facts. They put them on the floor and told them to shut up. The Defendant told Jake to take a look in the other rooms to make sure there was no one else in the trailer. When Jake returned, the Defendant was holding the shotgun on them and eating an apple he’d picked off the table.

  “He was eating an apple?” Crandall asked incredulously, interrupting Jake to underscore the cold-bloodedness of the act and remind the jury they had heard evidence of an eaten apple previously from one of the techs.

  Jake only nodded. The Defendant asked the old lady if she had any guns in the house, Jake said. When the old lady said no, he said, “Well, we’ll just see,” and went to look for himself. When he returned, he looked at Jake, shrugged, and shook his head.

  “Then, he said, ‘time for trick or treat.’ He put the barrel of his gun to the back of her head and told her she didn’t have the treat we were looking for so we’d have to trick her. He looked at me and he said, ‘Jake, take off your mask.’”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Even in a haze, I didn’t ‘preciate him using my name, and I sure as hell didn’t want to take off that mask. I mean, I’m standing on one side of them and he’s on the other, kind of at their feet, and that old lady and one them kids was looking over their shoulders back at me. They got big, buggy eyes. The girl, she’s wimpering.

  “’Jake,’ he said, ‘get her off. We’re going to make it real. You won’t be wearing a mask when the dope guy comes.’ I said, ‘You going to take off yours?’ and he said, ‘Sure.’ So I took her off and I stood there blinking and gulping and looking at them. Then he said, ‘You ready, Jake,” and I said, ‘Yeah, I reckon.’ And he said, ‘Do it,’ and we did it.”

  Crandall let that hang in breathless silence for a long, long time.