But now my neighbors were howling for my blood.
It seems a family, the Beardsleys, had been found butchered in their own home, right down to their baby girl and the family pets – and Stagger Bay’s finest had me pegged for it.
They treated me like a monster from the git go; like I was something other than human, a demon from the outer void none of them cared to contemplate at length.
Gratuitous cavity searches while a coed peanut gallery of COs make snide remarks and directorial suggestions? No big deal.
But I’ll tell you this much as well: I fell down a whole bunch of times at the station during all the interrogations, and I was equally clumsy every time the cops had any sort of one-on-one time with me.
Still, that was okay too. Sometimes pain is the only proof you have that you’re still alive and close to copasetic. Besides, the cops must have figured they had a real wackadoo on their hands; I could understand them being a bit perturbed.
At my arraignment the prosecutor made a big deal about how I’d spent my tender years in the California Youth Authority. I’ll be the first to admit I was atrociously violent back then. Between my juvenile rap sheet and coming up in the CYA’s gladiator schools for a goodly portion of my most testosterone-drenched years, my record seemed to have laid a taint on me in the eyes of society and the Man.
The prosecutor even pointed out that my dad had been executed for Murder One his own self, one of the last to experience the joys of the gas chamber. My dickless excuse for a lawyer roused himself for the first and only time in the trial over that comment, objecting to it as immaterial and having it stricken from the records. I guess my genealogy wasn’t seen as necessary to complete my damnation.
I wanted to speak my piece throughout but was never given the chance. My Public Pretender felt it wouldn’t help my case any, putting me on the stand and exposing me to cross.
The entire proceedings had an efficiency I found impressive, despite me being the main course as it were. It moved right along like a greased chute sliding me into the toilet to be flushed away neatly and swept from polite sight.
Throughout the trial they made a lot out of my supposed emotional numbness; my ‘flattening of affect’ and stoic lack of response to the whole sordid affair. Of course I wasn’t numb. But whenever the rage and pain threatened to overflow, I pushed it down into that black hole in my heart I’d used to dispose of unwelcome emotions as a kid on the streets of Oakland.
I was damned if I was going to give these fuckers any little show, even to save my life. East Bay Pride, right?
When they showed the crime scene photos, however; when I saw just what had been done to those poor people, and especially what was done to the baby… I had to look away, engulfed in a spasm of empathy for what their last moments must have been like.
“See,” the prosecutor said, stabbing his plump finger at me as I averted my gaze from the photos, my face screwed up in an effort at self control. “See. He can’t even look at what he did.”
When the semen they found inside Mrs. Beardsley and the baby matched my blood type, that was one nail in my coffin. But when they introduced my old Buck knife into evidence, with my fingerprints on it as well as all the victims’ blood, my heart sank deep and final.
It didn’t matter the knife had gone missing from my garage the week before; I knew that was all she wrote. Someone had laid a rock-solid frame on me.
When I went up for sentencing, sitting in the back of a cruiser with my hands shackled behind my back and leg irons hobbling my feet, wearing orange coveralls and a stud-heavy Mark-3/A bulletproof vest, I looked out at the passing streets of my adopted home town, I figured for the last time. The Stagger Bay skyline didn’t appear welcoming anymore.
Those Mayberry-style homes seemed to hint goblin smiles at my predicament. The American Dream they represented had proven unattainable to the likes of me and mine, more than apparently.
Outside the courthouse a big crowd awaited. I recognized a lot of the faces – men and women we’d had nodding acquaintance with over the years; guys I’d shot pool or played holdem against, or shared a beer with at my favorite watering hole the Sugar Shack. But my neighbors looked alien to me now; I was no longer one of them. I cringed away from dwelling on what all this must be doing to Sam and Angela.
A phalanx of cops surrounded me and bulled us through the crowd to the courthouse entrance as fast as I could shuffle along. The leg irons cramped my stride down to a hobble, rather than the enthusiastic River Dance I so desperately wanted to entertain the onlookers with.
One of the bystanders I recognized was Bill, my barber. I’d lost track of how many times I’d gotten my hair cut in his shop, looking at all the boar’s heads and antler racks mounted on his dark, nicotine-stained wood-panel walls.
His place was filled with old detective and girlie magazines, and I’d pet Bill’s shedding mangy old bird dog while waiting to get my ears lowered, listening to Bill talk about hunting and fishing; feeling like I was part of something traditional, even considering taking him up on his invitations to join him sometime. Since I’d never pointed a gun at anything with more than two legs before in my life, Bill’s style of survivalism would have definitely been a new experience for me.
As I made hopeful eye contact with Bill on my way into the courthouse, my one-time barber hawked up a loogie and sent it my way like a gift; the fluid dripped down my cheek as I looked away from him to face my front all exclusive-like. I tried hard not to hear the words the people shrieked, but enough more spittle and other substances got past the surrounding cops that I was quite the sight and smell by the time we got inside.
The bailiff watched me close as he let me go through the motions of cleaning up a bit in the bathroom. Like I was going to drown myself by sticking my head down the toilet bowl.
And then we were in the courtroom.
I was first on the docket – apparently a man convicted of home invasion, multiple murder, torture, and sex crimes against children and dumb animals deserved special attention, especially in a backwater town like Stagger Bay.
The judge looked down from on high, posing for the local reporters haunting the peanut gallery I figured. She cut quite a theatrical presence; I was in awe of her authority all right.
“Do you have anything to say before sentence is passed?” she asked.
I jangled my shackles. “Would it help if I said I’m innocent? The real killer is still out there, Your Honor. I don’t know why I was chosen for this, but Stagger Bay will be just as dangerous after you put me away.”
She was silent for a moment, perhaps even weighing my words. “A jury of your peers has convicted you of rape and murder, with multiple special circumstances. The prosecutor has asked for the death penalty.”
Mister Prosecutor stood there somberly as if he wasn’t gloating inside, as if he didn’t smell the kind of blood in the water here that would feed him to satiety if he ever made a run for DA.
“The evidence, though convincing, is still somewhat circumstantial,” the judge said, her tone making it sound like she’d just swallowed a stanky old bug. “Therefore, I am not imposing the death sentence.” She paused once more, as if waiting for me to thank her.
I raised my gaze to find her staring right back at me in loathing. “I believe you did do it, and that there isn’t a circle in hell low enough for the likes of you. Therefore, I am sentencing you to life without the possibility of parole. I hope you come to beg God’s forgiveness – but I’m unsure if I would even wish him to grant it.”
Then, with a haughty swish of robes, she was gone. I was flanked tight by a couple of deputies, but I managed to turn my head and look at the spectators as the packed courtroom gave out with a guttural growl of satisfaction.
Neither Angela nor Sam was there; I hadn’t seen nor heard from either of them since my arrest. The only love I got was seeing my big brother Karl sitting as close behind me as he could manage on those painful-to-the-ass hardwood benches, just as he’d sat through every day of my short trial.
Right then he looked pretty grim. But he pasted a smile on his face and raised his fist in solidarity, silently urging me to take it like a man.
My shackles prevented me from returning the salute as my entourage of cops reprised our shuffling course through the gauntlet of spittle, insults, and threats.
I was on my way to natural life in the Slams.
