Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  I hustled down the stands to catch Luna at the microphone. She indicated with a firm left hand forming a stop sign, that I should wait for a minute, as she was cursing even louder under her breath. Thankfully, she covered the mike with her right hand. She then listened as an engineer in a jump suit talked about the weather report and gave her probabilities for a successful launch. Luna nodded when she heard about a one-hour launch window. It was now six eleven. The sun was getting low on the horizon.

  “Luna?” I said. “I have to leave.”

  She turned to look at me. “You go see Marley. Tell him I love him, and I really thought I’d be able to see him.” She wiped away a tear.

  “I will. I know the launch will be successful. You’ve got your family cheering for you, so you don’t need an ex-husband in the audience. Hell, I’ll probably hear it on the way down.”

  “You’ll be here in spirit,” she said.

  “Marley’s here in spirit too, for your launch,” I replied. I wanted to ask for her help with the D-Board hearing, and the breakdown docket, but thought better of it. There would be time for that later.

  The countdown clock started again as I made it to my car and wiped off the mud from my shoes. This time an announcement came over the speakers to turn off our cell phones, as the phones could interfere with the rocket’s guidance systems during the launch.

  The pounding in my head intensified as I entered my Lincoln and headed south on the windy road. It was now like a second heartbeat. Even though I was leaving, I turned off my phone. I didn’t want to be responsible for misguiding the rocket due to a text. I wondered if the psychic energy apparently passing through could mess up with a circuit on the rocket or something.

  When I touched my forehead above my left eye, it was wet. I looked at my fingers and saw blood. But this was no papercut. I checked my rearview mirror, and it looked like a radioactive spider bite that I had scratched too hard. But I didn’t remember any bites, and I didn’t remember any scratching.

  Right before the south gate, the guard indicated that I should pull to the side of the road. He pointed to an oversized military convoy coming toward the entrance. With their high-tech equipment, they were clearly here for one of the other contractors instead of broken down Dragon Moon.

  I waited on the dirt shoulder as truck after truck pulled through, and I recognized the woman in the passenger seat of the first truck. The former Colonel Herring had been on the board of Dragon Moon. Now she was in civilian clothes. Maybe she was a guest of the military.

  I now would have to drive ten miles over the speed limit to make Marley’s showcase. I scratched my forehead even harder with my nail, and blood was really starting to come out. I wiped the fluid out of my eye. It was just a bite, right?

  More trucks drove past on the narrow dirt road, some just barely missing my front door. I tried to stop my hand from scratching as I grew more and more impatient.

  Hurry up! Marley, I’m coming.

  After one final blast of thunder, the sky cleared and the “launch window” in the sky opened. I heard a cheer from the grandstand all these miles away through the guard’s radio. The launch was going to happen after all. Hopefully, I would still see the launch from the interstate once the rocket hit the air in the rear-view mirror at least. My son was more important than the launch, but I could pull over to the shoulder watch it for a second, right?

  The last of the convoy made it through. I turned on my engine and finally made it to the south gate. Officer Gardea was suspicious. “Why are you in such a hurry? You’re going to miss the launch, they’re good to go.”

  “I need to get on the interstate,” I said. “My son has a showcase at his school down in Cruces.”

  “You’re bleeding!” Gardea said, pointing to my forehead.

  So the bleeding wasn’t just inside my head. “It’s just a bite,” I said. “I’ll get a band-aid down in Cruces.”

  Gardea checked his phone. “Good to go,” he said, waving me through. “Just pull to the side if you see that last vehicle before you hit the interstate. The road is real narrow.”

  I nodded and sped through the gate on the dirt road.

  As I drove, I realized something was not “good to go” after all. The pinging in my head grew worse, and blood continued to gush from my forehead. It wasn’t just a bite. I’d have to stop at a drug store on the way, but there wasn’t a drug store until Cruces. I could still make the showcase if I went eight-five miles an hour. I could go fourteen over and it wouldn’t be reckless driving. But when had I ever been afraid of a speeding ticket, even a reckless driving ticket for going twenty miles over? I could win those cases with my eyes closed.

  It was now 6:16, but on my digital radio clock it looked like 666 in this light. I turned on the radio. Maybe there was local news coverage of the launch. Instead of news on CNN, a song came on through the stereo. Morrissey was singing that his girlfriend was in a coma and he knew it was serious. Morrissey faded out and a female voice came through my car’s speakers.

  Did my phone automatically transfer the call? Wasn’t my phone off?

  “It’s Denise!” the voice said. “You’ve got to get down here! He really needs you! He’ll listen to you. They’re going to take away his cratercross and he’s totally freaking out!”

  “Did he do the Penn & Teller trick with the cratercross?”

  “Don’t you get it? They won’t let him do his trick. It’s all gone wrong. I’ve got to go. Please hurry!”

  “On my way!”

  I wiped more blood from my eyes. The bleeding had gotten worse. I wasn’t even scratching, was I?

  I pressed on the gas and hit ninety on the muddy road. Some mud got on the windshield, but at least the Upham exit onto the interstate was in sight. Once I was on the interstate, I’d be fine. How fast could I take the Lincoln to get to the theater?

  “You need to get here now!” Denise shouted through the speaker. “He needs you! They’re going to—”

  Static.

  More static.

  I fiddled with the radio, but only heard silence.

  “Dad, save me!” Marley shouted through the speakers. I looked down, and saw that my phone was still turned off. “The trick didn’t work!”

  The sound of a gunshot came through the speakers.

  I stepped on the gas on the muddy road, until I was racing at over a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately, the final jeep from the convoy had exited the freeway and was on the dirt road. There wasn’t room for both of us. I didn’t care if it was a general and all the joint chiefs of staff, I wasn’t going to slow down. They’d have to pull over.

  I heard a rumble behind me and saw the launch through the rearview mirror. A hot wind kicked up and the ground was shaking like a nine on the Richter scale. Dust came up from the dirt road and swirled in the winds.

  And then up above me, as if directly overhead, I heard the explosion. I felt the shockwaves break my windows, and then abruptly, I lost my hearing.

  I barely saw the jeep coming toward me, and realized the driver might not be able to see me in all the dust and mud. There was a second blast, even louder than the first, as if the other booster rocket had exploded.

  The jeep now headed right for me, its lights off. We both tried to swerve, but lost control at the same moment and collided.

  “I’m sorry, Dad!” Marley’s voice came through the speakers one final time. He might have said something more, but it was drowned out by another gunshot.

  I went through the windshield and blacked out in mid-air. I didn’t feel myself hit the ground. Maybe I had left the earth, just like the rocket.

  My case number had been called on the breakdown docket.

  PART II

  OR

  Chapter 21

  Cruces Baby Cruces

  Time passed, although I wasn’t sure how much. “Promise me one th
ing, Dad,” Marley said as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the dark room.

  “What’s that?”

  “You will stay here till the end, no matter what.”

  “I promise.” I said. “As an officer of the court, cross my heart and hope to die.”

  The bailiff in the blue blazer finally turned on the courtroom lights, and after a few attempts they were all on full blast. Had I tripped over a cord or something to turn them off? I’d done it before. Once my eyes adjusted, we were in the district courtroom in Las Cruces. I sat at the table in my charcoal pin-striped suit, white monogrammed Brooks Brothers shirt, and orange Jerry Garcia tie. Marley matched me, also in a charcoal suit and white shirt, but his orange tie was askew, as usual. I straightened it for him as he mimicked being strangled like Bart Simpson in every Simpsons episode.

  I was uneasy about an orange tie right now. Orange was the color of the jail jump suits.

  I was back in my Rattlesnake Lawyer cowboy boots at least. Marley was in sneakers, his shoelaces untied. Thankfully, no one could see his shoes under the table, or could they? I pretended to drop a pencil and tied his shoes for him.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Marley whispered. “When is my mom coming? Where’s my sister and Denise? You told them about my trial, right?”

  I looked around the courtroom. Luna, Denise and Dew were nowhere to be found. What happened to Team Marley? I was about to check my phone when I realized I had lost it somewhere. Where did I put it?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they thought you were later on the docket or something. I’m sure they’re on their way.”

  “I hope so, I can’t face this alone,” Marley responded.

  “Neither can I.”

  Jane Dark sat at opposing counsel table, stylish in a red power suit, just like a congresswoman. Her long, thick black hair was tied back in a tsai, but her braids were blood red.

  Across from us she had a second table, perpendicular to the first. It was packed with exhibits, including the wooden cratercross and Marley’s Star Wars diary. There were several overstuffed banker boxes. A short female assistant in a red blazer brought more exhibits in opened cardboard banker boxes. Yet another red blazered assistant followed behind her, and then another behind her, like the brooms in Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. How many assistants with overstuffed banker boxes of evidence did they have?

  We had nothing at our table except one yellow legal pad between the two of us. Marley was scribbling on it. Underneath the table were some papers on top of a banker’s box, copies of handwritten pages. Was that Marley’s diary? It was impossible to decipher. The banker’s box was sealed by a rubber band, the tight loops looked like a Mobius strip about to break.

  “Denise and Dew too,” Marley looked at me. “Where are they? Have they given up on me?”

  “Of course not.” I didn’t know what to say. In every case that I had ever had, the mother of the defendant had shown up and sat behind our table, bawling her eyes out about her poor son being railroaded. Luna was conspicuously absent. I had no idea why. And no one else from the family was here.

  I couldn’t help but compare this matter with Chuy’s case in Albuquerque. His whole clan was there for that one. Where was our clan? Team Marley? It was a team of two, a team of one if you didn’t count him. I felt as abandoned as my son. Did I forget to give them the time and date? Never good to feel guilty before a trial.

  Shaharazad was at her court reporter station. Her hair was now back to its original long, luscious glory.

  “All rise!” the ancient bailiff in the blue blazer announced as he opened the door. Judge Most entered; his black robe might as well have come off that metallic black rocket fuselage. Even his silver hair and beard looked spun from some high-tech satellite’s solar covering. He banged his gavel and, thankfully, the prosecution assistants stopped coming in with ream after ream of evidence, at least for the moment. “Are we ready for the jury?”

  “We are,” Jane Dark replied.

  Was I? The judge looked at me with anger. I was already on thin ice with him. “I’m ready, I guess.”

  The jurors entered through the back door of the courtroom. I recognized a woman named Kimberly. Her hair blond, her eyes exotic. From her face I couldn’t tell if she was part Asian or Native American. I was happy to see another person from my past, a man who resembled Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Both had been on one of my prior juries, a victory, so maybe it was good that they were on this panel down south. None of the ten others must have made an impression during the voir dire. I rubbed my eyes, as their faces seemed to be out of focus.

  “We are here for the case of State of New Mexico v. Cruiser Arnold,” the judge said in mellifluous tones. “This is a youthful offender case, but Mr. Arnold is fourteen and will be tried as an adult. He is charged with three counts of attempted murder, and ten counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”

  I took me a second to remember that Marley’s legal name was still Cruiser Arnold. I looked at Marley. He shrugged his shoulders. His tie had come undone again. “How much time am I facing?” he asked. “Just juvenile time?”

  I did the math in my head. In New Mexico a fourteen-year old could be tried as an adult and do real time in prison. Twenty-seven years for the attempted murders, and another thirty for the aggravated assaults with deadly weapons. Could there be an additional firearm enhancement for the use of a cratercross? I wasn’t sure.

  If convicted, the sentence would be served at the serious violent offender rate of eighty-five percent. I couldn’t calculate eighty-five percent of fifty-seven years in my head, but it was probably around fifty years. The state could also violate his juvenile probation for the shoplifting, but that was the least of his worries.

  Before I could tie Marley’s tie yet again, the judge banged his gavel. “Madam Prosecutor, you may begin with your opening statement.”

  Jane Dark went to the podium and faced the jurors as if they were children sitting at a campfire. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. When you send your children to school, you want them to be safe. Caldera Academy is a prestigious high school right here in Dona Ana County, located in the foothills of the Organ Mountains just up US 70. Many of you are parents, and you expect that, even more so, when you send your child to a school like Caldera Academy, they will be safe—safe from harm from the outside world, and most especially, safe from their fellow students. The school’s cheer is Beware o’ Caldera. On September 22, they needed to beware of Cruiser Arnold, the defendant in this case.”

  She pointed directly at Marley, and he winced. I instinctively turned my shoulder to accept her gaze, blocking him from her wrath.

  “It was the night of the Caldera Academy Freshmen Showcase,” she continued. “It was late in the afternoon, the dress rehearsal. Caldera is not a big school, with a big budget. Everyone, regardless of talent, gets to participate. This rehearsal would be the last and only chance to see what the kids had in store for their classmates before taking the stage that night.

  “At the dress rehearsal, some students sang. Some danced or even juggled. One student tried to do all three at the same time. By the time his turn came to audition, Mr. Arnold wanted to do a so-called ‘magic trick’ with a device called a ‘cratercross’ and a deck of cards. He had seen a similar trick done by the famed magicians Penn & Teller, and they did their version of the card trick with a gun. The difference between them and Mr. Arnold, is that people like Penn & Teller are trained professionals. The audience doesn’t worry about dying at the end of a Penn & Teller card trick.”

  Jane Dark picked up the wooden cratercross on her table, the table across from us. Thankfully, it wasn’t loaded with arrows. The wooden cratercross was bigger, more solid than I envisioned. The wood looked like iron, the metal must be gold or bronze. There were even some bloodstains near the base. She struggled to hold it up, and some jurors gasped. The bailiff had
to help her put it back on the table, but he ripped the fabric on his blazer in the process.

  If she wanted to show that the device was dangerous, she succeeded with that little stunt.

  “Fortunately, Dean Damon Korn was there in the auditorium. When Mr. Arnold pulled out his cratercross and asked for a volunteer, the dean realized this was no mere trick, this was deadly serious. Dean Korn immediately told Marley to stop and approached the stage.

  “Before Dean Korn could wrestle the device away from the boy, the young man deliberately fired the cratercross device into the audience. Thankfully, no one was killed or injured. This was no accident, as counsel will no doubt argue in his opening. No accident, but the defendant’s deliberate attempt to murder two educators and a student. Had young Mr. Arnold been a better shot, there would be three counts of murder, first degree murder.

  “The testimony will show that the defendant then pointed the weapon at ten people in the audience, students there to audition for a talent show. The defendant said that he would kill each and every one of them. That alone is aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Ten times. The defendant, still holding the deadly cratercross, then fled the auditorium. It was there in the courtyard that he was subdued by Pat Chino, the head of security at Caldera. The defendant was subdued before he could carry out his horrific plan at the freshmen girl’s dorms where the freshmen girls would have been sitting ducks.”

  “Denise was there,” Marley whispered. “She knows it’s a big lie!”

  I scanned the courtroom. Still no Denise.

  Dark kept going. “I understand that because of the New Mexico Supreme Court’s mandated courthouse renovations and tech upgrades, we will be moving around to different courthouses across the state as each courthouse receives its upgrades. Think of me as your tour guide to the evidence and testimony the state will present. First you will hear from Dean Korn. He will tell you about the boy’s continual bad behavior and disobedience. Mr. Arnold clearly intended to kill Dean Korn and the students at the final rehearsal. He intended to kill them from the moment he began to make the cratercross and plot the trick. Dean Korn was there when the darts went off, and when Mr. Arnold pointed the weapon at the crowd with death on his mind.”