Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  “So, the diary is not accurate when you said you wanted to kill people on page 239, but is accurate on a page that is missing, page 237, when you supposedly wrote that you were hazed?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You’re not very consistent, are you, Cruiser, or whatever you name is now.”

  Marley was now hyperventilating. He looked nervous. He looked guilty. I tried to rescue him. “Your honor, can we take a break? My client is in distress.” I wanted to add that I was in distress as well due to my bladder.

  Sir Nathaniel looked at me with that same intensity. I had to step back. “He’s in distress because he’s a little liar and we’ve caught him in his lie. That’s consciousness of guilt!”

  The judge didn’t hesitate. “The state may continue its cross-examination.” The lights flickered on and off. Was the power going off? “So Cruiser, are you lying now on the stand, or were you lying then in your diary?” he asked.

  “Neither. I’m telling the truth. They hazed me. I felt terrible, ashamed, but I didn’t want to kill anyone!”

  “Isn’t it true that when you were younger, you had a long history of bad behavior?”

  “Objection your honor. Unless he’s got convictions of felonies or crimes involving dishonesty, ‘prior bad acts’ are not admissible,” I said.

  “Your honor, we’ve already provided counsel with a list of bad behavior under 404B,” said Dark. “Counsel did not object in a timely fashion.”

  I looked down at some papers that had appeared on my table. The other side must have put them on the desk while I was talking to Marley in the small conference room. Sure enough, there was a list of prior bad incidents a mile long. Sure enough, I had stipulated to it. Some people sold their soul. I just stipulated mine away.

  Sir Nathaniel went in reverse chronological order. He started with the shoplifting, and then went through every bad thing Marley had ever done: informal referrals, to juvenile probation, suspensions from school, even getting banned from a mall in Westchester County for loitering with intent.

  Marley was silent when Sir Nathaniel asked him regarding the intent of his loitering.

  “You used to wet the bed too,” Sir Nathaniel said.

  “Objection!” I yelled.

  The judge had to think about it and had to check whether bed wetting would be a prior bad act. “Sustained,” he said at last. “The jurors are to disregard that the defendant once wet his bed at an advanced age.”

  I now really needed to go to the bathroom, but every time I thought Sir Nathaniel would stop, and I could race out, he’d keep on with yet another prior bad act. I was beyond oodgey and could barely sit still.

  “And Cruiser, you can barely tie your own shoes?” Sir Nathaniel asked.

  I risked another objection. “Relevance, cumulative. Badgering?”

  The judge looked at Sir Nathaniel. The lights flickered on and off again. “I think we’ve heard quite enough, unless you’ve got grounds to keep going.”

  Marley answered anyway. “I have poor hand-eye coordination.”

  Sir Nathaniel didn’t miss a beat. “Your honor, the fact that this boy has such poor hand-eye coordination indicates that even if he had no intention of killing anyone, he had reckless disregard for the safety of others the moment he took his home-made medieval death machine to a school rehearsal. The fact that he was going back to reload shows his specific intent.”

  The judge banged his gavel. “The witness can answer the question.”

  “I put in a safety that was on until the dean broke it. It was an accident that the cratercross went off after that, but no one got hurt. I didn’t say I was going to kill anyone, and I didn’t aim it at anyone. And, I wasn’t going to go back and kill anyone after that. I was running away. The weapon was empty, you know that. I didn’t want to be at that school any more. I don’t want to be here anymore.” He wiped away a tear.

  “If Pat Chino hadn’t subdued you, you would have killed everyone!” Sir Nathanial said. “In fact, you were trying to kill more students when Pat Chino subdued you.”

  Again with the word “subdued” instead of shot.

  “No! Denise Song was there,” Marley said, wild-eyed. “She can tell my version of the story.”

  “Who is Denise?”

  “She is my cousin and sorta like my nanny.”

  “So, Cruiser, the only witness who can back up your version of events is your cousin-slash-nanny, Denise Song, but apparently, your lawyer forgot to subpoena her? Or perhaps your cousin doesn’t want to support you as you commit perjury.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t come. You know it would be impossible for me to kill anyone.”

  “So you say, Cruiser. One final question, isn’t it true you haven’t lived up to your potential?”

  “Guilty as charged,” a voice said. I realized that I was the one answering the question under my breath.

  “I guess so,” Marley said.

  “Pass the witness.” Sir Nathaniel sat down.

  “Your honor, can we take a break before I finish up?” I asked. I was now shuffling from side to side under the table, doing the wee-wee dance, as my father called it when I was younger than Marley.

  “No,” the judge ruled. “You will finish up now, counsel! Our time is running out in this venue. The system will be shutting down momentarily. There will be no break.”

  As if on cue, the light went off. It was dark, but there was some light coming from the open windows above us.

  Marley looked at me with his puppy dog eyes, bloodshot from stress and tears. I felt a breeze in the back. Had I ripped my pants?

  “Counsel?” the judge asked before I could turn and check my pants. “We will finish this in the dark if we have to.”

  I had promised Marley I would finish this, no matter what. I now had no choice. As I hurried to the podium, trying not to embarrass myself as I wiggled, a light came on from above, as if the setting sun was poking through the skylight. I looked at the jurors and was surprised that I recognized a few of them. The man I called Gollum was in the front row. My own father was there, and my first client, Jesus Villalobos, was there as well. Inevitably, Heidi Hawk was there, too, and she was holding the urn she had made.

  “Do you need this?” she asked before the judge shushed her.

  On the other side of the judge, the wall opened out to the Sandia Mountains, which should have been too far away to see from here in Lemitar. There were a few seats by the window on that side. My mother was there, as were Dew, Luna, and most important of all, Denise. Team Marley was back!

  “Denise!” I yelled.

  “He can see us,” Denise said.

  “Denise, tell them I didn’t do it!” Marley shouted.

  I wasn’t thinking straight. I looked at Denise instead of at the judge and violated every single rule of criminal procedure. “Denise!” I said. “Please tell everybody that Marley didn’t do it!”

  There was an awkward moment of utter silence in the dim room. Denise looked right at me, slightly confused. Then she nodded.

  “Engage with him,” a baritone voice said.

  “Marley didn’t try to kill anyone,” Denise said. “I was there.”

  Then Denise started to fade out of view, and my eyes got blurry.

  “The jurors are to disregard the last statement!” the judge said. “That person in the gallery has not been sworn. We are out of time, counsel. The system is shutting down for good. You need to finish now!”

  The skylight must be closing. It was getting dark again.

  Chapter 29

  Opening the Door

  I looked around in the darkness, but my family, Team Marley, were no longer in the courtroom. Why? This would be the best part. It wasn’t only the court that was growing impatient, my bladder, my prostrate, my soul was now about to explode. I had to finish up before I wet
my pants. I turned to Marley who was still on the stand. He was shaking, just like me. Like father, like son. Did he have to go, too?

  Something felt odd in my pants. I sure didn’t want to adjust anything. I remembered what I had done in my first successful trial as a public defender so many years ago. I took off my glasses and stared at him, eye to eye. He could barely see me in the dim courtroom. That relaxed him, and he responded to the questions in a cool, calm voice.

  A flash of light came down. The skylight must have opened again. There, stuck in my yellow pad, I saw the missing page 237 from Marley’s diary, as the paper was thin and smaller than the 8 ½ by 11 of the yellow pad. I’d had it all along. I just needed to turn to the end of the yellow pad. This was indeed about faith.

  I took out the page. After a few awkward attempts, I put the page up on the projection device so it could be projected on the Mondopad. Sure enough, the page provided Marley’s version of the hazing verbatim. They really had peed and then shit on him in a grave, those bastards. I pointed to a paragraph where he talked about advising the school and being taken to the infirmary.

  “And it says here you told the school about the hazing. Did they do anything about it?”

  “They just took me to the infirmary and since Ermey worked there, he just signed the form and put in that I made it all up.”

  “So, because of the hazing, and the school’s lack of action, that’s why you wrote those words in anger on the next page, page 239?”

  “Yes. I was just angry at that moment. I didn’t really plan to kill anybody.”

  “Did you put a safety on the cratercross before you took it to the auditorium?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  I hurried back to the table and picked up the cratercross, so I could see where the safety was. “Like this?”

  “Yes. I even tested it and it was working. I was never going to fire it. It was just a trick! But, the whole thing broke when Dean Korn grabbed it.”

  “Did you put rubber balls on the tips?”

  “Yes, I did. Look on the table, you can see them.”

  I picked up the balls and introduced them into evidence. “Ms. Dark has stipulated already,” I said.

  Dark frowned, but nodded.

  “Dan!” It was Luna’s voice. “Can you hear me?’

  Another voice, that strange baritone yelled, “We’re losing him!”

  Losing who?

  It was now getting lighter up above us as if the roof itself was opening a door up to the heavens, but for some reason that didn’t seem to be a good thing.

  I would keep my promise to my son and finish this no matter what. I kept focusing on Marley.

  It was now very bright up above. What should I do now? How do I prove that every witness except my son was lying? I looked back for Team Marley, but they were gone.

  “Clear!” The baritone voice said again, like the voice of God. Where was it coming from?

  As if on cue, I felt something vibrate on my chest. It was coming from my shirt pocket. I felt a bulge. I pulled something out a phone. It wasn’t mine, it must be Marley’s phone. How did it get there?

  The key to this whole case had been on me all along. Still, I would only have one chance before the message self-destructed. I went to the projection device, and opened the message app on the phone, even though I had no idea what the message would say. I was about to click on the app when Sir Nathanial yelled, “Objection!”

  “Prior inconsistent statement,” I said, even though I had no idea whose statement was on the phone, or whether it was prior or inconsistent. “It would also be a business record exception.” I had no idea what I was doing anymore, I just had faith.

  “I’ll allow it,” the judge said. I could no longer see him. While it was light up above, the judge remained in darkness except for the light reflecting off his silver skull bolo.

  I clicked on the app, put down the phone on the flat projector device, and managed to project the message onto the Mondopad screen that was barely visible on the far wall. “Who is this message from?” I asked.

  “It’s from Dean Korn,” said Marley.

  “And what does it say?”

  “It says, ‘Remember, if anyone asks, Marley threatened to kill each and everyone one of you!’”

  The message on the Mondopad did indeed say just that. The message then vanished in a digital puff of smoke. If that’s what Snapchat did to messages, well, the school had applied it to their mass-texting. It really was a self-destructing message. They had sent it to every phone in the system, forgetting that Marley’s phone was still on the list.

  “So, Marley, there was indeed a cover-up by the Caldera Academy administration, a cover-up instigated by Dean Damon Korn?”

  “There was. Korn knew it, and he lied on the stand. They all did.”

  “Marley, do you stand by your testimony, even after that vicious cross examination, that you did not intend, did not have specific intent, to kill anyone at any time on September 22?”

  “I didn’t want to kill anyone at any time, ever.”

  The jurors were now nodding. They believed Marley, and they believed me.

  It was probably too late to get Denise on the witness list. Thankfully, she was back on the side of the room. Where had she gone? She was now standing, waving at me, trying to get my attention. No Dew, no Luna. But I sensed that Denise would be enough.

  “And your cousin over there, Denise Song,” I said. “You have personal knowledge that she would have testified that you are telling the truth?”

  For some reason, the prosecution team was so surprised by such an unlikely question that they didn’t bother to object. “The witness can answer if he has personal knowledge of what someone else would testify to,” the judge said.

  “Yes, I have personal knowledge.” Marley said. “I still communicate with her.”

  Denise nodded.

  “And what would she have said?”

  “She would have testified that I am telling the truth.”

  I looked at Denise, a spotlight seemed to be shining directly on her. “Your honor, I ask you to take judicial notice of Denise Song, who is standing over there, nodding.”

  “I take judicial notice, she is on the witness list.”

  When did I put Denise on the witness list? I must have done something right.

  The courtroom was now entirely dark except for the bright light up above with its spotlight on Denise. “And since we have only a few moments, she can testify from where she’s standing,” the judge said. “Once she’s sworn.”

  “Denise you can testify,” I said. “You’ve got to swear.”

  She looked around, and that voice of God said: “Do it, quickly.”

  She lifted her hand. “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Tell them what happened at the dress rehearsal,” I asked.

  She hesitated for a second.

  “Engage with him,” that far off voice said. “We don’t want to lose him.”

  “I was there! Marley didn’t intend to kill anyone! The cratercross had a safety. The darts had rubber balls on them. He was never going to fire them in the first place. The cratercross didn’t fire until the dean attacked Marley, and Marley didn’t threaten anyone. He ran away. I saw him drop the box of darts. They shouldn’t have—”

  The judge cut her off before Denise could say what “they” shouldn’t have done.

  “The jurors are to give the statement the evidentiary value it deserves,” the judge said dismissively. “Anything further counsel? Our time here is at an end. You may go right into your closing argument where you stand. I don’t want to declare a mistrial at this time. Sir Nathaniel, do you have a closing?”

  “Res ipsa loquitur,” Sir Nathaniel said. “Our case speaks for itself. Had the defendant not been subd
ued with extreme prejudice it would have been a blood bath. He would kill us all now if he could just get to that cratercross!"

  "You know that's impossible!" Marley shouted.

  Was this prosecutor so cocky, quoting Latin, figuring that he had already won? And what did he mean by “subdued with extreme prejudice?”

  I took a deep breath. For some reason I was doing my closing argument right up there at the podium with Marley still on the stand. Denise had vanished. The spotlight was now on Marley. Otherwise the courtroom was dark.

  There was something supernatural about all of this. What had Marley said about reasonable doubt?

  “Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my son once said that magic is reasonable doubt, and I don’t totally understand everything that has happened today. I have my reasonable doubts that the state has proven their case.”

  I looked at the jurors, but I could no longer make any of them out in the darkness.

  “I have been an ineffective lawyer, and I have been an ineffective father. I should have prepared better for this trial. I should have prepared better for my life, for his life. Please don’t hold my failures against my client, against my son.”

  “Dan!” Denise yelled.

  Someone grabbed my hand and tried to pull me away from the podium, but I pushed them away. There was one more thing. Why did subdue with extreme prejudice bother me so much? I had to know, it was a matter of life or death.

  “Let me finish!” I shouted. “I promised my son I would finish this! One more question, your honor, while my client, my son, is still on the stand.”

  “Your honor!” shouted Sir Nathaniel. “He’s turning a court of law into a nightmare.”

  “No, your honor,” I said. “I’m turning this nightmare into a court of law.”

  The lights flashed on and off, everything was blurry now.

  “I’ve finally laid the proper foundation,” I said. “Can I ask the witness, my son one final question?”

  There was silence. I needed something more. I couldn’t lay a foundation if reality itself was blinking in and out.