Trout Quintet
Page 6
I finally lost patience. “C’mon, Garrett, wake up!” I commanded. “It’s show time. Don’t you realize the next hour could decide whether you spend the next five years in prison? You’ve got to be alert. You have to be confident. Snap out of it and act like this matters to you. It does to me, even if it doesn’t to you. This is your chance, man, and you’ve got to make the most of it. C’mon!”
He looked up for a moment, then cast his eyes down and gave a long sigh. “Sorry,” he said in a weak voice. “It all just seems so useless. The deck is stacked against us. But I’ll try to do my best. I promise.”
It was hardly a ringing statement of assurance, but I could see it was all I was going to get. People were beginning to file back into the courtroom and the clock showed we had only a couple of minutes before going back into session. Judge Winship was always punctual.
Then we were under way again and I called Vernon to the stand as my first witness. He was sworn by the clerk, who asked his name and address.
“My name is Garrett Vernon,” he said, “but I have no address. Unless you mean the county jail.”
The clerk looked at the judge, shrugged, and sat down.
I moved close to the witness stand and stared at Vernon, who, despite all my urging to the contrary, was looking at the floor. After a long, pregnant silence, during which I kept staring, he finally raised his head. I gave a slight nod, trying to signal to him to keep his head up. “Mr. Vernon,” I began, “you told the clerk you don’t have an address. Can you explain?”
“Well, it’s true. I don’t have a place to live.”
“You must have someplace to stay. Where were you living prior to your arrest?”
“I was living in the back of my truck.”
“How long had that been the case?”
“Not long. Three or four nights, I guess.”
“And where did you stay before that?”
“I’d been sleeping in the back room at Ike’s Fly & Tackle Shop.”
Vernon was still looking at the floor and each of his answers had been less audible than the one before. Judge Winship finally interrupted. “Mr. Vernon, you’re going to have to speak up,” she said. “The jury can’t hear you and neither can I.”
That finally caused Vernon to look up, but only briefly. “Sorry, Your Honor.”
“You don’t have a home?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” he said, louder this time. “I did have one, but my wife divorced me. She had a better lawyer than I did, and she got the house.”
“When did that happen?”
“A couple of months before I got arrested.”
“And after that you began sleeping in the tackle shop?”
“That’s right.”
“Were you employed there?”
“Yes. Ike Harris, the owner, took pity on me and let me sleep in the back room.”
“Are you still employed there?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Ike had to close the shop. The new law put him out of business.”
“The new law? You mean the State Water Resources Protection Act?”
“Yeah. After it went into effect, business at the shop went to hell.” Realizing what he’d said, he looked up at the judge. “Excuse me, Your Honor.”
“What did you do at the shop?” I asked.
“I was a clerk. I waited on customers. And I tied flies when there were no customers.”
“You mean fishing flies?”
“Yes. We sold them at the shop.”
“How long did you work there?”
“About four years.”
“And when did the store close?”
“It closed on May 16.”
“That was just three days before you were arrested?”
“That’s right.”
“And that was when you became unemployed?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell the court exactly what happened that day?”
“Well, we—Ike and I—had sold off all the merchandise in the shop over the last couple of weeks and there was nothing left but the fixtures. Ike brought his truck to the store and I helped him load up the stuff he was taking with him.” Without realizing it, Vernon was becoming a little more animated as he told the story. “When we were finished, he came over and gave me a big hug. I think we both had tears in our eyes. ‘It’s been a good run,’ he said, and I agreed. We stood there on the sidewalk for a while and talked about some of the good fishing we’d had together. ‘What I miss most is Youngstown Lake,’ he said. ‘Remember all the great times we had there? Those great mayfly hatches? I’ll never forget that five-pound rainbow you took on a size-16 Blue Upright.’ We spent maybe fifteen minutes talking about Youngstown Lake until at last we ran out of things to say. We finally shook hands and he got in his truck and drove away.”
“What were you feeling then?”
Vernon ran his fingers through his hair. “I’d say I felt about as low as I’ve ever felt in my life,” he said. “I’d lost my wife, my house, my job, and my best friend. And I’d also lost the thing I most loved to do, what I’d been doing all my life.”
“And that was?”
“Fly fishing for trout.”
“How long have you been fly fishing, Mr. Vernon?”
“Since I was five or six years old, when my father first took me.”
“Would it be safe to say that fly fishing for trout is your great passion?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Was it something you did just for fun, or did it have a more serious meaning for you?”
Vernon paused. “Well,” he said finally, “I suppose it was just something I did for fun at first, when I was a kid. But as I grew older and learned more about the sport, and all its layers of complexity, I began to take it more and more seriously. I also discovered that it did wonders for my disposition and morale.”
“Can you explain what you mean by that?”
“Well, whenever things went wrong—like if I had a fight with my wife, or my dog ran away, or I had debts I couldn’t pay, or anything like that—I found that if I spent a day on the water, everything looked better, and I felt better. I guess it sort of recharged my batteries so that I could keep going.”
“So it was a way of healing yourself?”
“Yes. That’s a good way of putting it.”
“And on May 16,” I asked, “when you took stock of all the things that had gone wrong with your life—losing your wife, home, job, and best friend—you could no longer resort to fly fishing as a way to ease the hurt. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s about it.”
“And when Ike Harris mentioned Youngstown Lake, did that have special meaning for you?”
“It sure did. I’d been trying not to think about Youngstown Lake because it always had been my favorite place. It was where my dad took me on our first trip, the place where I really learned what fly fishing is all about. Whenever I felt down in the dumps, I knew a few hours fishing on Youngstown Lake would snap me out of it. But I knew that wasn’t an option any more. Then Ike brought it up, and… well… it was almost more than I could bear.” Vernon’s voice had grown hoarse and he wiped his eyes. “Sorry,” he said.
I stole a quick look at the jury. The bait fisherman and the fly fisherman were both leaning forward, listening raptly. Mrs. Halloran’s sour expression looked as if it had soured even more. It appeared little sympathy for Garrett Vernon would be coming from that quarter.
“So what happened after that?” I asked next.
“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Youngstown Lake, that is. I had nowhere to go, so I got in my truck and started driving around. All I could think about was the lake and how, if I could only fish it, I’d surely feel better. I didn’t have a conscious destination in mind, but I suddenly found myself on the forest road that leads out to the lake. There’s a turnaround at the end and I parked there and tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about
the lake on the other side of the trees just beyond the end of the road, so near and yet so far beyond reach because of that damned new unfair and unnecessary law!”
Now he was sitting erect in the witness chair and speaking in a firm, clear voice. It was a Garrett Vernon I’d never seen before. I thought maybe we were on a roll.
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I stayed there that night and slept in the back of my truck.”
“You didn’t go to the lake?”
“No. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next day I walked down to the lake and just stood there and looked at it for a long time. I saw trout rising and it was all I could do to turn away and go back to my truck.”
“Please continue.”
“Well, I spent the next couple of days there. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I walked down to the lake a couple more times, just stood and watched, then went back to my truck. I tried to think of other things, but it didn’t work; I just kept getting more and more depressed. I even got out my fly-tying stuff and tried to tie some flies, but that just made things worse because I knew I’d never be able to sell them or use them.”
“Go on.”
Vernon was looking at the jury now, speaking directly to them instead of me. I’d coached him to do that, but it wasn’t my coaching that was affecting him now. “I’d gotten so I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat,” he said. “All I could think of was that my life had completely fallen apart, that everything was hopeless, and the only thing I could do that might possibly make me feel a little better was against the law. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had to go fishing at Youngstown Lake. There was no other choice. Otherwise… well, I didn’t know what would happen. Finally, something snapped.”
“Something snapped?”
“Yes. It was like an electric shock or something. I felt like I was in a trance, like someone else was in control. I put on my vest, picked up my fly rod, and headed for the lake.”
“This would have been on Monday night, the nineteenth?”
“That’s right.”
“And then you got arrested.”
Vernon suddenly looked down again. “Yes,” he said in a much quieter voice.
“How did you feel about that? Did you feel as if you’d broken the law?”
“How did I feel? I guess I felt that no matter how bad things were before, they’d just gotten worse. But no, I didn’t feel as if I’d broken any law. I was doing only what I’ve always done, what I believe I have a right to do, just as any citizen has that right. I was fishing in public water, water that belongs to me, and you.” He turned to the jury. “And to all of you,” he said. The fly fisherman leaned back in his chair and nodded vigorously. The bait fisherman was smiling, too.
I thought this was a good place to stop. “No further questions,” I said, and returned to my seat.
Danning was quickly on his feet, looming over the witness, head bobbing. Vernon eyed him warily.
“Mr. Vernon, that was you we saw in the video wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you just testified that you knew it was against the law to fish in Youngstown Lake, that it was a violation of the State Water Resources Protection Act, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Were you crazy at the time?”
“Objection!” I shouted. “No foundation.”
Danning addressed the judge. “On the contrary, Your Honor, counsel spent much of his examination trying to establish that the defendant was under mental stress at the time of his arrest.”
Judge Winship looked over to see if I had anything to say about that. I was about to say I’d never used the word “crazy” as Danning had, then realized it was exactly what he wanted me to say because then I’d be torpedoing my own case. So I just shrugged and remained silent.
“The prosecutor makes a good point,” the judge said. “The objection is overruled.”
Danning had the court reporter reread the question. “Please answer the question, Mr. Vernon,” he said. “Were you crazy at the time?”
Whatever else one might think of Garrett Vernon, he wasn’t stupid. The colloquy over the objection had given him time to think of an answer. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. I couldn’t have hoped for a better response.
The answer frustrated Danning and he took a moment to regroup, then turned back to face the defendant. “But crazy or not, you admit you broke the law?”
Coming out of my chair, I objected again on grounds the prosecutor was asking my client to incriminate himself. It was pretty obvious to everyone that he was already incriminated, but he still had a constitutional right to keep from admitting it.
Danning withdrew the question before Judge Winship could rule, as I knew he would. I also knew he had asked it only so that it would stick in the minds of the jury. “No further questions of this witness,” he said, and Vernon stepped down.
“The defense calls Dr. Siegfried Schwert,” I announced, and the bailiff rose with difficulty from his chair and headed for the door. He returned leading a stout man with a florid face, grizzled salt-and-pepper beard and a similar wreath of hair. He was wearing an expensive blue pinstripe suit, a matching blue bowtie, and carried himself with dignity.
Siegfried “Ziggy” Schwert was a psychiatrist well known in the local legal community for offering “expert” testimony at cut-rate prices. His appearance also fit the popular stereotype of what a psychiatrist should look like; on the witness stand he even spoke with a vaguely German accent, which added to the stereotype, although cynics pointed out that he seemed to lose the accent whenever he finished testifying. He had testified for the defense in many criminal trials, and there were malicious rumors that he had even treated Judge Winship on one or two occasions. Nobody had the guts to ask the judge if the rumors were true, and Ziggy himself remained tight-lipped.
Ziggy was sworn, settled into the witness chair, and awaited my first question.
“Dr. Schwert,” I began, “what is your profession?”
“I am a psychiatrist,” he said, pronouncing the last word “zychiatrisht.”
Before I could say anything more, Danning was on his feet. “Your Honor, in the interests of saving time, the prosecution will stipulate to Dr. Schwert’s qualifications as an expert witness,” he said with heavy sarcasm.
I’d expected that, and so had the judge. “Mr. Calloway?” she asked.
“Thank you, counselor,” I said, nodding to Danning. “As long as members of the jury understand that Dr. Schwert is an eminent and respected member of his profession with many years of experience and a long list of academic attainments, we’ll accept the stipulation.”
Danning sat down with a look of disgust on his face.
I turned back to Schwert. “Dr. Schwert, did you have occasion to perform a psychological evaluation of Garrett Vernon, the defendant in this case?”
“Ja. I mean, yes.”
“For what reason?”
“You requested it.”
“And what did I ask you to do?”
“You asked me to try to determine Mr. Fernon’s mental shtate at the time of his arresht. Spezifically, you asked me to efaluate him und see if he vas in zuch a psychotic shtate at the time of his arresht that he vas not able to determine right from wrong, or rezist the impulses he vas feelink.”
“And did you perform such an evaluation?”
“Ja. I mean, yes. I did.”
“Please describe for the jury exactly what you did.”
“Vell, first I shpent about two hours interfiewing him, azking about his family life, his career, his marriage, his likes und dishlikes, all zat sort of thing. Next I gafe him der Rorschach Test. Then I gafe him der Minnezota Multiphasic Personality Test, der original one, not der new one. Der original one is much longer, more thorough und much better at revealing various forms of mental illness.”
“Can you tell us the results of each of these steps?”
Ziggy paused and took a swallow from a glass of water, then resumed his testimony. “After graduating he seems to have had no plans for his life exzept to fish, but his father got him a job as an apprentice pressman at the newzpaper. Mr. Fernon shpent zixteen years vorking there, though he never seemed to like his yob because it interfered with his only true passion, vhich vas fly fishink. When he vas efentually laid off, it vas almost a relief. By then he vas married to a girl he had dated in high school, but their married life vas not a very happy one, und when Mr. Fernon lost his yob at the newzpaper his vife vas not pleased. She put great pressure on him to find another yob.”
“And did he?”
“Ja. One of his fishink friends, a Mr. Harris, had a tackle shop here in town und he offered Mr. Fernon a yob as a clerk. Mr. Fernon alzo vas able to augment his modesht wage by tying fishink flies for sale in the shop. For him, it vas the best of all pozzible vorlds. But his vife vas shtill unhappy because he made so little money and shpent so much time fishing. So she divorced him. This vas a defastating blow to Mr. Fernon because he truly loved his vife, even though he freely admits dat he loves fishink more. Und as long as he had his dream yob at the tackle shop, he vas able to cope. His vife took their home in the divorce, but Mr. Harris, his employer, allowed Mr. Fernon to shleep in the back room of the shop, so dat vas okay.”