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CHAPTER FIVE
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I decided to go back to the Bay Area, and to stay with my sister Leslie’s family.
On the way I stopped at Lake Isabella. That’s where the Chuck Richard’s opera-tion is. Chuck, I’ve told you, owns the company there that bears his name, and where I’d taken my Guide School course seven years before. And he was the person I was looking for. I recognized him right away, too, but I had to remind him who I was. Even then he only vaguely remembered me, though, but he remembered my classmates better: the ones who’d stayed there that summer, while I’d gone off to Europe. Anyway I inquired about my prospects for guiding again for the summer (after my Grand Canyon gig), and he said there was a chance. That was the same thing his secretary had said on the phone, but Chuck was more specific: there was a real chance, was what he meant. It didn’t matter though, because by that night I was feeling restless, and I blew out of that town too.
The next day my car broke down north of Bakersfield. I called AAA, and the driver came and towed me to a garage in the nearest town. That town was Wasco: a little agricultural blip upon the map.
The garage there was run by Mexican’s. That didn’t concern me, but the fact that they didn’t seem to have a lot of experience with Subarus did. That inconvenienced me a lot, because it took two days to fix it. Meanwhile I had to hang around the town.
The first night I stayed in a hotel. But the second night, attempting to save money, the mechanics let me sleep in a van behind their shop. I chuckled that they let me do that. It was as though I were an immigrant myself!
On the third day the repair was finished, so I paid for it and left. But only sometime later I noticed something strange, on the inside of my car. It was a new recess that had been punched out in my dashboard. There was a new little built-in shelf, that is, to the left side of the steering wheel. Really. Apparently it had been there all along– but hidden by a piece of plastic, and I had never noticed it! Nor had the previous owner, I guess. Anyway it made a perfect receptacle for my cell phone, and after that I always kept it there. I’m telling you about this detail for a reason– but it will have to wait.
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Back in the Oakland hills, I stayed with Leslie and Jeff and their daughter– my niece. Chelsea was twelve years old, then, and the apple of my eye.
I say “back in” Oakland, because I’ve spent a great deal of time in their home over the years, availing myself of their boundless generosity. It was there that I had spent several weeks of my recuperation from the Guillain-Barre’. I have always felt welcome there, and at the drop of a hat.
This time I went there because I needed to touch home plate again, so to speak– but also because I had three weeks of down time before my Grand Canyon trip, and I needed somewhere to go in the interim. Yes that’s right. I remember now.
By pledging to get the charge so substantially reduced, Clayton had truly had put my mind at ease. Thus, it seemed that that butterfly had truly shown me the truth: that this saga would turn out all right for me. Sure– I would be out almost $10,000, but from that I could recover: poorer, but wiser– one would hope. But my life could go on, and it could start on the river, three weeks from that time!
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Within days I heard from Clayton. He told me that the Prosecutor had not yet decided what he was going to charge. I didn’t understand that because I thought he’d already made his charge. So I learned my first lesson about this prosecution business: that charges can be added and subtracted by the Prosecutor after the arrest. Basically, it is the Prosecutor who decides what to charge anyway– after some review. So what Mark Fisher had arrested me for was by no means binding. I suppose that shouldn’t have surprised me, but I’d never had occasion to think about it before. Cops can obviously change the charges too, before the Prosecutor gets involved. I say obviously because Mark Fisher had dropped that Child kidnapping charge and put forcible sexual abuse in its place before the Prosecutor had been involved. But now there could be further modifications.
Clayton clarified that the prosecutor hadn’t decided whether he was going to charge the Forcible Sexual Abuse– henceforth to be known as FSA– as a first degree or a second-degree felony. That struck me as odd too, for it seemed to me– even in my ignorance– that any specific charge would already be categorized in severity by law: that FSA would already be in either one felony category or the other. So I realized this business is very different than I thought.
A few days later I heard from Clayton again. He had driven up to Kanab and met with Eric Lind. Eric Lind was the Kane County Attorney, and it was he who would prosecute my case. And Clayton reported that Eric Lind had decided to charge it as a second degree felony after all. I knew nothing about the Prosecutor then, but hearing that, I imagined that Eric Lind must be a reasonable man.
In addition, though, Clayton divulged, the Prosecutor was adding a second charge, called Unlawful Detention. That was a “b misdemeanor”, he explained, which is considered pretty minor. And that didn’t sound too bad either. Clayton said he wouldn’t even charge me more money to defend it! That was good news too.
But beyond that, it wasn’t going as Clayton had hoped it would. For Lind would not play ball. He was refusing to offer a plea-bargain for a misdemeanor, which I gathered would be normal. “It pisses me off”, Clayton said. Perhaps with time he’d come down on his offer, though– Clayton indicated– but for the moment, he was only offering a plea to a third degree. Felony, that is. That felony was called Attempted Kidnapping(?).
So I was looking at a felony after all! Ouch! The prospect was alarming. I had never been in trouble in my whole life.
Clayton said the prosecutor would stipulate “no prison”, however. He meant that Eric Lind would agree to ask the Judge not to give me any prison time. And he said that Judges usually respect the Prosecutor’s request. “But he might toss you in jail for a little while”, Clayton added. He tried to make it sound like jail was no big deal, though: like it would be a colorful chapter for my autobiography, or something.
But he didn’t say that I should take the deal. That’s because he thought I had a good shot at beating the rap.
Nor was I at all inclined to take the deal anyway: it was very early in the game. And it would be a waiting game, I deduced. With time, the Prosecutor would offer a better deal. He’d no doubt offer a misdemeanor eventually. Besides, taking the plea would have meant walking right into a felony conviction: choosing it, without having a trial. That meant giving up without a fight– and there was just no way I’d do that! But if the Prosecutor did not come down, then that meant Clayton’s original selling point– that he’d get this charge way down– was bullshit.
Finally, Clayton told me he’d handle the Arraignment for me, such that I need not be present for that. That was good, because it would save me a long trip.
Anyway, I think it was after that discussion that I got really nervous.
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I read the all the pertinent statutes, but nothing seemed amiss. I mean that nothing struck me as especially out of place. I didn’t know what in particular I should be looking for anyway… things like Constitutional issues, inherent contradictions, or absurdities, I mean. Hell: all this was new terrain. I didn’t know what to look for.
Then I read the text of the Child Kidnapping (CK) statute, which clarified the elements of that long forgotten charge: the one I had originally been arrested for. I was still wondered why they had dropped that, you see, only to put the Unlawful Detention (UD) charge in its place. Well there I found the answer: it was that the “age of consent” is fourteen, in Utah, for being “taken anywhere”. Aha! So only by taking someone younger than fourteen somewhere– “anywhere”– would I have needed parental consent. No wonder that charge hadn’t stuck!
The CK law is an example of a strict liability law. Strict Liability means it does not matter whether the accused– the “actor”, as they like to say in legal lingo— is aware of the particular fact that is being considered. For example, if an adult transports a child under the age of fourteen– anywhere– without parental consent– but does not realize the child is younger than fourteen– it does not matter at all. There is “strict liability” on that point.
When Fisher had arrested me, he’d said the age of consent was “eighteen”. I told you that. I also said that even then I’d thought that was a really stupid law. Well now I saw that I was right: that my common sense had been vindicated, by the actual wording of that law. And for what he’d nabbed me for, his recitation of the law wasn’t even close.
Of course, that didn’t explain whether Mark Fisher had believed his claim himself. If he was just mistaken, it begs the question of what he would have charged me with if he’d known what the actual statute was. He had arrested me on a strict liability offense. But if he’d known the actual statute, he would have had to both ascertain her age and ascertain whether she was with my of her own consent. Or he would have had to make a judgment about her capacity to give that consent.
But he never asked Corissa if she was with me by consent. Nor could he have ascertained her inability to give that consent– except by relying upon his preformed opinion. Yes, he knew Corissa: but the surprise she’d shown upon greeting him suggested they had not seen each other for along time…
Which proves nothing, of course– but it left me wondering whether arresting me for the strict-liability CK had freed him from some important obligations. At least in his own mind.
That brought me back to her claim that I was her “friend”. That statement struck me as a declaration of consent. So if he’d known the actual statute, would he have heard that and then arrested me anyway? But more than that: even without having heard that—statement, I think one might rightly wonder whether– had Mark Fisher known the actual law– he would have arrested me at all
So the whole thing stank, and to my understanding it was a false arrest. What was more, they realized it was a false arrest, I figured. So Prosecution was screwing me to cover their mistake.
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Soon after that call from Clayton, the shock of it all enveloped me. A cloud of anxiety closed around me, and I became unable to indulge my simplest pleasures. I could not read a book with any kind of focus. I could not watch a TV show, and follow what went on. I could not do my daily crossword puzzles anymore. The only past-time I could indulge with focus was electronic solitaire. So I spent countless late night hours playing that, on their downstairs computer.
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Back in Oakland, I called Melissa and asked if I could see her. She was stunned to learn that I was back in town. I’d sent her a letter, just a couple days after my Dirty Devil River hike– which was just a couple days before my arrest. In that I told her about the birds and snakes and frogs who had been so welcoming on that trip. But that was she last that she had heard from me. Then, suddenly I was back– so of course she wondered why.
We sat together in the park across the street from her apartment. The view from there was magnificent– and celebrated in a million postcards. There I asked her what the worst thing that could have happened to me was. Her answer was that it would be that I had died. “No, it was worse than that”, I said. Then I told her my story. My shameful story, that is. I could have died just telling her.
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But I would not be deterred from my river trip. I knew that setting would revitalize me, and I deserved the damn thing too. Besides, it might be one of my final tastes of unencumbered freedom, for a while.
So after two weeks at Leslie’s house, I placed a call to Walker, to confirm that I was coming o the trip. We were still on! So a few days before that big event, I drove back to Fredonia, and Kanab.
I arrived on Tuesday for my Thursday rendezvous(?) with Walker. The first thing I did was to go down to the Willow Creek, where I immediately encountered Michael. He asked me how things were going with my case, and I told him it wasn’t going well. Then he let me in on what sounded like a little secret:
“The Prosecutor is an idiot.” He sneered. I was very encouraged.
“Really?”, I asked: “Eric Lind is an idiot?”.
But he seemed stunned by my question, for he looked at me with big eyes “That’s who’s prosecuting you”, he asked: “Eric Lind?”.
I told him that it was. He looked momentarily uncomfortable and looked away. Then he looked back at me and announced with a wave of the hand: ”Oh, he’s an idiot too”. I was relieved anew.
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The next day I got a message on my cell phone. It was from Dave McKay, the owner of CRT. He told me I couldn’t go on the river trip after all: something about his wife wanting to go in my place. Some last minute snafu. Some bullshit, to my ears. Well I was incensed, and so I called him back. And when I talked to him in person he said that it was his daughter who was the problem. He couldn’t get his story straight. But the underlying fact seemed clear: he had heard about my “problem”, and he didn’t want me to come. I earnestly pled, but it was to no avail. Then I chewed him out. I was livid. After all, I argued, I had accepted the job three weeks before, and I had confirmed it a few days ago… and I had driven all the way from Oakland– having arranged a whole month of my life around this trip… Moreover, I went on, we had an oral contract, for an exchange of services… I didn’t know if any of that was legally correct, but I tried it anyway. But he would not budge. He did, however, pledge to make it up to me later. So that was that. It was no use arguing.
I calmed down before the conversation had ended, though, figuring that my cause was pretty well lost. I even told him that I would probably head back up to Jackson. Well he said that I should look up an old friend of his there, who owned the “Rent-a-Raft”. His name was Rod Lewis. He said that Rod might offer me a job.
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I decided that those next three weeks would be grand anyway– like the canyon I wouldn’t be seeing: that I would have a stellar time of it– whatever I should do. So I did.
First I went to Springdale, Utah, at the gates of Zion National Park. I’d been there many times. At the coffee house there I met some very cool people, and so I was off to a good start. I lingered there for several days.
One of the people I met there was a great lady named Patsy. I felt comfortable with her very quickly, so (even though Clayton had told me not to tell anybody) I told her my story. More or less my story, I mean. I left the couple most damning details out. Well she was very sympathetic to my plight. It turned out that she had even been the mayor of a little Utah town, in the greater Kanab area. So I wondered if she might know someone– or something– that might help my cause.
She didn’t know anyone, but she did know something, because she told me about something called a “Plea in Abeyance”. I had never heard of it until then. She explained how it worked. The Prosecutors has to agree to it, of course, but if he does, then an accused person can enter into a plea which hovers over them for a while but then simply goes away. There are conditions and stuff that must be met, but it is only by fucking up the terms that the person actually gets convicted. In other words, it’s a conditional plea to an offense for which the defendant never gets convicted. And I was very encouraged by that! How glad I was to have met Patsy.
From Springdale, I moved on to Park City.
In Park City I stayed with another ex-housemate, from the winter I had lived there. His name was Erik DeBruijn: a Dutch national who’d been living in the states for years. He was a Physical therapist, and very intelligent. And he’d been trying to establish a permanent U.S. Residency- but had been thwarted at every turn. By this time his luck may have been changing, though, for he had an American fiancé, named Megan. So it seemed that he would finally get his wish.
Erik was the friend I had in common with Bob Skinner– the guide at GCE who had tried to bring me aboard- until the owner pulled the plug.
I stayed with Erik and Megan in Park City for several days. It was a good visit. They wanted me to stay for longer but I was itching to move on.
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Then I went back to Jackson. I arrived on the third day of July– creeping along with a long back-up of traffic. Lots of other people were rolling in to town for the holiday too– and most of them were from Utah, it seemed.
Anyway, just a dozen miles shy of Jackson I pulled off the road to use my cell phone, in a place called Hoback Junction. And as I sat in my car there I happened to look to my left where by chance I saw the Rent-a-Raft establishment: that was Rod Lewises place, that Dave McKay told me about.
“What the hell”, I said to myself, as I parked and went on in. Within a minute I met Rod Lewis. I introduced myself, and said that Dave McKay said hi.
“How is the old bastard?”, Rod asked. I gathered that it had been a very long time.
Even though he was very busy, later that afternoon Rod drove me upstream and put me in the river in an inflatable boat. He wanted me to get a look at that part of the river, he said, so he could use me for some future endeavor. To make a long story short, I started working there the following day! And three weeks quickly turned into two months
It is the people we meet who make such experiences worthwhile- and memorable. And my co-workers did exactly that. They were Kara, Linda, Dean, and Preacher Dave. They included Rod’s family members too: his brother Dave (another Dave) and his wife Judy, from Redding California, as well as his aged parents, Walt and Betty. That Walt was an old curmudgeon, too- full of piss and vinegar, and shouting all the time. My purpose her is just to give them all a mention.
Anyway, that Lewis clan owned a chunk of land there, in Hoback Junction, along the Snake River. That was where we all stayed at night, in assorted tents and trailers. Everybody except for Rod, that is- who kept an apartment in Jackson itself. His parents stayed in a very nice trailer behind the main building. I stayed in another, smaller trailer, a bit further away. I cleaned it up fairly nicely, and ran an extension cord out to it.
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The Rent-a-Raft was established to provide an alternative to enlisting professional guide services for floating down the river. The idea was that instead of spending a lot of money for those expensive services, it was a lot cheaper for people to rent all the equip-ment themselves and act as their own guides. Hence the name. In other words, it was a do-it-yourself affair. It was sometimes a chaotic affair too- and especially for big groups. But since the savings was exponential, we attracted lots of big groups.
Anyway we rented boats of all types and sizes, ranging from a one-man hard shell kayak to a sixteen man inflatable beast. In the mornings, when the hoards came, we’d scramble to make sure the boats were properly pumped up and equipped, and properly strapped onto the tops of their cars- or trailers. It was also crucial to make sure that all our guests had a life preserver and signed a liability waiver. So it was a high energy affair.
So equipped, our customers would drive the boats down to the Snake river, float down even farther, and presumably have another car downstream to ferry them on back. People had a blast doing that. And we had fun doing it too!
Sometimes in the evenings, after work, Kara, Preacher Dave, and I would take the rafts and kayaks out and float down that river too. There were some respectable rapids there, with names like Lunch Counter and Big Kahuna, and that was the best part of the job. Playing chess with Kara at night was the second best part.
I made a friend out of one of our customers, named Dan Winterfeld. Dan and I were both still amateur kayakers, so we went out on the river together and practiced our rolls a couple times! What a blast! The first time we succeeded in rolling our respective crafts, we marveled. It seemed so easy then that we thought that we had cheated!
And speaking of new friends, Patsy from Springdale came for a visit while I was staying there. She brought along some other fiends from Springdale too. I got them a good deal on a boat, of course, and later I visited them in their campsite near there.
So life went on. I had friends and I had a good job. I was paid a decent wage, I had a place to live, and I got my lunches provided for free. And when I thought of some project I to do- as I often did- I was always set free to do it. I’m an “ideas guy”, I like to say, and I had a lot of good ideas: like erecting an enormous canvas tarp to shield us from the sun.
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Walt liked me, and he praised me frequently. Good old Walt: always taking the crew into town to buy us breakfast. Anyway, one time when I was talking with Walt, I happened to mention Dave McKay. Well he lit up at that, because he knew him! I hadn’t expected that. I told him about the trip that Dave had taken away from me, and Walt huffed and resolved to call him about that. Then later he did exactly that, while I stood there beside him. But it still didn’t get me on the river. Dave McKay was still full of shit.
There was a dark side to all this camaraderie, though: for there was a lot of bick-ering within the Lewis camp. Interfamily stuff. But it got so bad that Dave and Judy Lew-is got pissed off and packed their trailer up and left.
A few weeks later, I left too, but under peaceful circumstances. I left feeling grateful for the experience, and especially grateful to have met Rod.
No, Rod is not my story either. But his story bears at least a brief repeating:
Rod moved to Jackson when he was just nineteen. That was after he’d been diagnosed with cancer, and had been given eighteen months to live. So he wanted to be in a place of his choosing, where he could die in peace. And since he was dying anyway, he didn’t much mind going into debt- so he started a rafting company. And he accumulated a bunch of land. And then he forgot to die.
Much of this story I heard from his brother, so I’m not sure it’s exactly the way that Rod would have told it. But according to Dave, at some point during his illness Rod went into a church in Los Angeles– the church of Katherine Kuhlman– and prayed for a miraculous cure. At that, Rod had felt a jolt of electricity surge through his body, and was immediately cured. That had been 33 years before.
In the intervening years, he’d become obese, though. And he swore a blue streak. But in his heart he was a very good man. He was still single too, after all these years, though he’d been engaged one time. This part he told me himself. The problem was that he was a Baptist, or something, and the woman he fell in love with had been of a different faith– a Catholic, like me. So on that basis he decided that it just could not work out. That made me very sad.
That’s enough on Rod Lewis and that gang though. But I am not done with the town of Jackson yet. I have impressions still to share.
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I had been through Jackson several times over the years. The first time was in ’77, on a trip I’ve mentioned before. At that time Jackson was still quite rustic. The next time I went through was in the summer of 1991, and already the town had had changed. It was losing that rustic quality, it seemed, and being transformed by big money. I went through a couple more times after that, before landing there during that summer of 2003– the one of which I speak. And by then its transformation had been more or less complete: It had lost all of its charm– it seemed to me. It had lost its quaintness.
There was an upside to that transformation, though. It was that there were lots of restaurants and coffee houses and stuff- and tons of art galleries. It had gone upscale, in other words– but far too much for me. It had a recreation center with a hot tub, though, and that was all right with me.
I had a favorite coffee house there- of course. That was Shades Cafe. I tried to get together with one of the young women who worked there, too– but it didn’t work out, and never mind anyway. And there was a Catholic church in town, which was something I required. In fact, an expensive new was just completed while I was there. I even went to the first mass held there. Finally, an art center was under construction then. That seemed like a very good thing.
But let me complete the tone I’ve set here, about my impressions of Jackson, Wyoming. It’s that the place was not for me. In the end, I didn’t really want to live there. After going to the Prelim I would not come back. Not for the winter anyway
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While I was in Jackson I kept in touch with Clayton by telephone. There he told me about another claim made by the Prosecution. It was that while we’d been together, Corissa had sustained a couple scratches. I was stunned. That they would even claim such a thing disturbed and frightened me. Mark Fisher had mentioned them in the jailhouse, but they had not been mentioned again and I was sure she had not sustained any such thing. So that they dredged that claim up again surprised me. It shouldn’t have, though– after that claim about her mental abilities. But I was incensed and outraged too- and I suspected foul play. I thought My God: They’ve actually scratched her– so their zeal will not abate! Clayton said that the prosecution had photographed the scratches, and would include them in the Discovery Package.
I asked him where the “scratches” were. But he said only that there was a scratch upon her belly. I noted that he said “it”: so it was “a” scratch. Hmmm. I swore I didn’t know anything about it. Nor could I imagine how she’d possible gotten a scratch while with me. I don’t know if he believed me, though. But it was funny how the “scratches” had become a single scratch.
“Maybe she just got them rolling around back there”, he said. He meant rolling around in the back of the car. But that time he’d said “them” again– meaning in the plural. So I wondered if he was testing me! If so, what was he testing me for? Was he trying to find out whether I had scratched her, whether I’d scratched her more than once, or whether we had indeed “rolled around back there”?
I had never said that we had “rolled around” back there. I hadn’t even said we’d been “back there” at all. Nor had I denied it either- because he had not asked me, and I had told him very little. At that point I didn’t tell him anything he had not asked. I didn’t understand how much he really wanted to know.
He asked me again if I’d ever been arrested. I guess he thought if he kept asking that that something new would be revealed: that perhaps some prior situation would eventually come out. Maybe I’d say “Except for that one time”, or something like that. But I said no again.
And he asked if I’d ever been caught in “this sort of situation” before. He meant, of course, some liaison with some under-aged girl. I insisted I had not. Finally, he rephrased his question. He asked if I‘d ever been in a situation like this in which I “should have gotten caught”. But the answer was still no. “I have never been anywhere near to a situation like this before”, I told him truthfully.
While we were on the subject of arrests, I told him that I didn’t think I should have been arrested at all. For by then I’d learned about something called “——– Laws” Those are laws that allow Law Enforcement personnel to detain a suspect without actually arresting him- under “reasonable suspicion” that he has been involved in a crime. I argued that those laws had made my arrest unnecessary then. I said that he could have merely detained me, while he investigated what went on. After all, all Mark Fisher saw before he arrested me was the two of us walking up the hill. We were hand in hand, it’s true– but that was not a crime.
And I said that slamming me on the car had been utterly uncalled for too: since I had put up no resistance.
Furthermore, I contested, Mark arrested me for a law that did not apply anyway– since the girl was not under fourteen at the time. And finally, I maintained, even if Fisher had had the statute right, he still would have been wrong- because of the girl’s age. I went on and on. I wanted him to agree that many things had been fishy: that they’d done a lot of important things wrong. And I wanted him to agree that I had a case against them for False Arrest and Unnecessary Force.
But my arguments fell on deaf ears. He said all those things were “allowed”. He meant law enforcement was permitted to do all those things.
Then he asked me what a 45-year old man and a young handicapped girl could possibly have in common. That didn’t seem at all the point to me, but that concern became a theme he harped on, as time went by. I never got what he was driving at, though. I understood, of course, that he was saying that many people would not accept that our liaison was for any other reason than for sex. But I didn’t see how that issue transformed the circumstances at hand. In other words, I wondered, would a jury think a touch was not a touch if we’d had lots more in common?
And he asked me where we were going, as we ventured up the hill. So I explained that too: that Corissa told me that she’d been raped- and that I’d wanted to learn more…
But that only registered a muffle, from Clayton. His reaction frustrated me too, because I wanted him to understand that my reasons had been good. I wanted him to see that it showed I was a caring person. But he insisted that the whole matter wasn’t important anyway. Where we were going was not an element of the case anyway. Besides, he said, my good intentions there would surely count for nothing.
In other words, I pondered, whether we had something in common was an important aspect of the case, but why we were going up the hill was not?
Perhaps he didn’t believe me anyway. Or perhaps good defense Attorneys are just careful about such things. About believing their clients, I mean. I think I’ve already said that. That’s ironic, though, because I never lied to Clayton about a thing. But he could not have known that.
I remember one more thing, from that conversation. He said that he was all for me in fighting this thing. He also expressed his grievance with the Prosecutor again too– about his most ungenerous deal. “It pisses me off’, he said, using the exact words he’d used the first time he had said it. “But don’t worry, Royce”, he said: “I won’t roll you on a felony”. His words were full of fatherly assurance, as he said that- and I felt comforted.
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I officially turned down Eric Lind’s deal. That meant that we would have to go to court, for a Preliminary Hearing. And that court date would be in late September.
I left Jackson in the middle of August, before the season was complete, so I’d have plenty of time to prepare.
I had not seen Keith Virostko the whole time I’d been back there. The truth of the matter was that I felt ashamed. He was still confused about me calling myself Royce, too- and after all those years- with me suddenly having a new name and an indictment- I sup-pose he was… suspicious, too.
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CHAPTER SIX
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After leaving Jackson I had five weeks to prepare for the Preliminary Hearing. So I had time to spare. So instead of going southwest, to California, I drove due north, into Montana. I hung out in Missoula briefly, but I was too impatient to see anything else. Montana had not been my destination anyway– it was Washington I wanted to see. My Grandmother lived in Seattle, in an assisted living home, and I wanted to visit her.
September 1st was to be her 100th birthday, and I thought I should be there. She had dementia, though, so it was doubtful she would even know me. The dementia was relatively new. Until she was 95 she had been sharp as a tack, and I had kept in touch with her. After the dementia we stopped talking, and I hadn’t seen her for a couple years. But I held a vain hope that though she’d forgotten everybody else, that she would still remember me.
Unfortunately, my vain hopes were dashed to pieces when I visited her. Not only did she not know me, but when she looked at me she said; “There’s something funny about you”. I didn’t know what that meant. Maybe she merely meant I looked familiar, but it sounded more like an indictment. I thought she was sensing something awful, and my stomach clenched in fear. I didn’t stay there long either– there just wasn’t any point.
I did not stop to see my friends Bret and Rosaleen in Portland, on my way back south, and I never told them I’d been so close by. Sorry Bret and Rosaleen. But I wanted to get out of that area– and I couldn’t excuse any more delays. Or perhaps the truth was that I was too ashamed to see them too. Yes: in retrospect, that seems more to be the case. I haven’t mentioned them before but you will be meeting them later in this account.
As I drove down to California, I also stopped to call an old man, who had retired to Coos bay. He was the father of an old friend, who I had known for thirty years. For some reason we talked about Wallace Stegner. But I didn’t tell him about my trouble, either. It seemed easier to confess it to strangers. I wish I’d stopped in to see him, though, rather than just call. But I had not taken the coastal route. I was in too much of a hurry.
In Redding, California, I stayed a night with Dave and Judy Lewis, who had left Jackson in a huff a week before me. Then I went to Oakland, to prepare for the big event.
********************************************************
When I got back to Oakland the Discovery Packet was waiting. It was dated July 31st. The Prosecutor had sent it to my Attorney who’d sent copies of it to me. But it didn’t include the all-important video-cassette. It turned out that Clayton had received a copy of that, but that it was unusable. It seemed our Mr. Lind had sent us a blank one.
The Discovery Packet was filled with legal papers. My stomach lurched severely as I opened it.
It started with a Table of Contents– so everything appeared very official. And that table of contents listed twelve enclosed items. So I read that first. Scanning down the list, all the items seemed clear. Until I got to item 9, That was the “CVSA Log”. But I would find out what that was soon enough.
For the moment, my eyes were riveted on item number10. That item was the Medical Report. And beside those words, on that Contents page, were a pair of other words. They were encased in parentheses, and they said “suspected rape”! My stomach plunged, and my whole body crawled.
I went to that one first, terrified and indignant.
But wait! For let us take these things in order here:
First was the Kanab Police Department Offense Report. It was basically a synopsis, and presumably written by Mark Fisher. In it he explained who had initially called him, and why. Well it was the librarian, it seems. It also described where else he had searched for us, before finding us behind the tower. And it admitted that Corissa had cried “rape”. It also said that at the water tower Corissa had told him I’d tried to put my hands down her pants. It claimed he’d arrested me for Unlawful Detention, and it described the brief conversation we had had, when I told him I’d like to meet her mother.
Finally, it said that at an interview with “DCSF”, later that same day, that I had touched her in inappropriate ways.
It did not, unfortunately, claim that Corissa had defended me as her friend. Damn!
I wondered why he’d thought it necessary to highlight where else he had searched for us first, though. I wondered if he had done that to create the impression that he hadn’t all along known where we were– and I considered that just for having emphasized that search, that he was really betraying that he had.
Next came the “Vehicle Inventory Form”. That was exactly what it sounds like- from when they inspected my car. It listed almost everything that had been in my car– which was quite a lot of stuff.
But it had included something that I never had in there. That was fishing equipment. I hadn’t fished in years, and didn’t even own such stuff. In addition, the inventory omitted an item, which I thought was quite important. It was a condom! Did that mean that they had never looked in the side pocket of my shaving kit, then? For I could have had marijuana in there, for all they knew.
So it struck me as a sloppy search.
Third was the Officer’s Daily Log. It was a single page formality, of no use to me.
Then followed the “PC Statement. That’s a “Statement of Probable Cause for a Warrantless Arrest”.
Item number 5 was some photographs. And those made my heart skip a beat: for two of them are of Corissa- holding up her shirt. Her belly displayed what I guess was supposedly a scratch. OH MY GOD! So they really were hell-bent to get me– and they really had manufactured a scratch! But the photograph was really pretty poor, and it was impossible to make out a scratch. There was a big mark there, though but I thought that was the scar I had already observed. And there was another mark upon that picture too– but I couldn’t tell if it was a scratch, or just blemish in the paper.
The other eight pictures were pretty useless: pictures of the water towers, and the access road around the lower one. But aha! Something conspicuous was missing from that pile of photographs– because there was no picture of my car, in there: no photograph of my vehicle, all piled with stuff! And I thought that a very strange omission!
The next item in the Packet was called a “Property Invoice and Receipt”. But that was not at all what I expected. For it was a sparse single page, and it had but one important declaration. That was the term “R KIT- SEALED”. My God, the Rape kit! And what the hell would that yield?
Dickie Robinson’s Statement followed that. Dickie was the Librarian that Corissa had stopped to speak with, before following me to my car. But I hadn’t known her name until that very moment.
Again, her statement was but a single page. She said that “Royce” had signed in at 9:05, and Corissa at 9:35. She said that I had signed out at 9:50, and Corissa at 10:10. (And isn’t that interesting! We had left there just half a minute apart- yet out sign-outs suggested it had been fifteen minutes!) And she said that before she left the library, Corissa had said to her “This man likes me as a girlfriend”. She also said she thought Corissa had made that up!
She revealed she’d been distracted, at that point, and so ignored Corissa. But a moment later, she watched us leaving together, from her office window. She felt suspicious and tried to find Corissa’s mother’s phone number. But when she called her work they said she had already left. Then another of the other Librarian’s got upset about the situation, and had called the Police.
That struck me as odd, too: that her mother couldn’t be found, I mean– an hour and a half before she should be coming to get Corissa. She had left her “hydrocepahic” daughter alone in the library– in a town she was putatively only in “to work!”
The CVSA Log is also called a “Statistic Sheet” It’s really an official form that goes with the lie-detector. Yes, that’s right: Corissa had been given a lie-detector test. So the CVSA gave me a record of the nine questions they had asked her, and reproduced the responses of the bunch of squiggly graphs. Like I’d even know how to read them! But I was scared to death.
I read all the questions, which were followed by her response:
1) Is your name Corissa Mumford? Yes
2) Is the color of the wall brown? Yes
3) Is today Wednesday? Yes
4) Did Royce take you in his car behind the old cement water tower? Yes
5) Is this the month of June Yes
6) Did Royce touch your breasts? Yes
7) Are we in the city of Kanab? Yes
Do you like chocolate? No
9) Am I wearing a watch? Yes.
But that last response was lightly crossed out, and No was written beside it.
And now, my friends, we come at last to that Medical report.
I saw that it was prepared in the Kane County Hospital, on the day I was arrested. It was no surprise, of course, that Corissa had been taken in for a medical exam. Indeed, I would have been more surprised if they had not done that. But I was also struck by the fact that the report very stupidly included the address at which she lived. I thought that was negligent, to tell a “criminal” where his “victim” lived!
But beyond that, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the damned thing. It was written in Medicalese, and indecipherable at that– and what was not indecipherable was blurred by having been copied.
But it did appear that they’d performed a litany of tests: blood samples; pubic combings; fingernail scrapings, and spermatozoa smears. OH SHIT! But it did not make any claims regarding any of those- about having found anything, that is.
Above all that there was an illustration of a vagina- and that I understood! And the Doctor– or the clinician who had conducted that test- had written “Normal” under the illustration there. It said “no e/o trauma”, too– and I was sure that that was good!
There were a couple things that did concern me, though, outside of that immense realm of what I couldn’t know. One was that under the word “vulva” was hand-written something about a gelatinous secretion. I could make out the word “collected” too. Could that mean they had collected some my fluid? Unh!
The other problem appeared under the “Staff Interview” box, where were claimed three more disturbing things. One followed the word “Harm”, and said “Attempted Molestation”. Another was after “Status Before Assault”, where the Interviewer had written “Not sexually active” Finally, after “Assailant Penetration’, someone had written “none”. But that word was crossed off too, and “fingers” was written in its place.
But who had changed that word, and why? And how, from that, did someone come up with “suspected rape”? Again I thought I smelled some rotten fish.
Then one more thing struck me, as I studied that report. It was that no mention had been made of any scratches! Or none that I could tell.
Item number nine in this litany is a Bail Bond report. Forget about that, though, for it’s irrelevant here.
Finally we come to number ten: the “Defendant Criminal History Report”. And there they had me dead to rights. My sordid and seamy past was at last exposed. Yes, they knew about the citation I had gotten in Jackson, almost two years before– when I was driving without insurance! They also learned the amazing fact that to drive legally I must wear corrective lenses!
There were a few more sheets of paper in that Discovery packet– but none of which were formally identified. They had just been tossed inside there, with the rest.
They included some illustrations of male and female bodies– on which Corissa (presumably) had written the body parts. Her hand-writing was terrible, too, but her parts were in the right place. There was also a sheet of paper on which she’d written the names of her family member. It also was a mess.
Finally, there was a piece of paper from Mark Fisher, with his estimate of how long Corissa and I had been away from the Library, before I was arrested. That estimate was that we’d been away for only fourteen minutes! Wow! It had seemed like twenty to me. I remembered that John Hummel had asked me how long we’d been away too. So I
thought that interesting that he had asked! Had he asked that on behalf of Mark Fisher?
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There’s so much I don’t remember clearly, through all this: events I grapple with, to try to make cohere. But it’s mostly the chronology that I have my concerns about, for the specifics are unimpeachable: they’re things I couldn’t forget about in a million years.
Like how supportive Melissa was through all of this. Being back in touch with her, I leaned heavily upon her during this ordeal. And even though by this time she was seeing someone else, that circumstance didn’t prevent her from being a great friend to me. She rubbed my back and held me and cooked me lovely meals. She comforted and coached me. And through it all, she was the only person who ever saw me cry.
“My God, Melissa”, I sputtered. “I’ve ruined my life”. I was inconsolable.
She too was worried about me. She saw that I was half insane then, and that I wasn’t sure I could go on. One time she even asked me: “You wouldn’t do anything to yourself without saying goodbye, would you?”. I promised I would not.
I also remember when I finally told Leslie and Jeff the humiliating details. I waited weeks to tell them exactly what I was dealing with. They knew I’d been arrested, of course, and they knew what the charges were– but I hadn’t told them any more than that. Finally Melissa bucked me up to do that, because I’d kept putting the task off.
So I called them from Melissa’s place and asked if we could meet. Yes, I already lived with them, it’s true, and I saw them daily, so that call was really just a formality. It was more a notification, really– that I was ready to talk.
I remember the manner in which I told them too, and even where we were, when at last I summoned up the courage. We were downstairs in their family room. They sat on the sofa there, and I sat on the bureau. I could’ve cried. I assured them I hadn’t had sex with the girl, though. And I stressed that she hadn’t claimed that either. I explained that the charges were about “touching”. And I told about the touching she had claimed.
I remember something Jeff said then too, when he asked about the penalty. For when I told him, he looked incredulous, and blurted, “Five years– for a breast?” He laughed, and I somehow laughed too. I was genuinely amused, despite my dark torment.
I’ve been sternly taken to task, by one of my readers, for that last half paragraph. He thought I was making too much light of this– inasmuch as what actually occurred was obviously so much more egregious than just the touching of a breast. I see his point, but I think his criticism missed what that exchange was really about. But since he missed it, then so might you. And I don’t want to lose you.
It was intended as an ironic commentary on draconian laws. The point was that the Utah law really did allow for up to five years in prison for the touching- and not just the fondling– or grabbing– of a minor’s breast- and that includes touching even through the clothes…and the specific and more serious circumstances of my situation took nothing away from that draconian statute. The point of our exchange was that these laws are extremely severe.
I said to them that whatever happened, I needed to be sure that I’d always have a place to go. I meant that I wanted to know that they’d always let me return there, even if I went to prison first. And God bless Jeff, who beat Leslie to the punch. “Of course you will”, he said.
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Alone with Leslie, on another day, I told her about the deal I’d been offered. Leslie had worked in a Prosecutor’s office early in her career, and had even prosecuted some minor cases there. So she knew a little bit about all this stuff. And she thought I should take the deal. She thought that anything I could do in lieu of risking prison was the best move. “But I’d be a felon”, I cried.
She said that if I came back to California it was unlikely that anyone would ever check my record: that life could go on as usual. But that seemed wrong to me. It’s easy to check things like that on the Internet, I reasoned. And if you’re a felon in one state you’re a felon in them all. So I was not convinced. To me a felony conviction meant that my life would be ruined.
Anyway, I told Leslie and Jeff first. Later on, I told my brother Mark. My parents still don’t know. I was too ashamed to tell them. I was afraid I’d crush their hearts.
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Scratches on her belly, huh? Or “a” scratch, in any event. I kept thinking about that. And I was sure that it was foul play! Who had done it, though? And when, exactly, had they done it? The only thing I could be sure about was why they had done it: it was to screw me, obviously! For with those scratches this whole episode could be portrayed as a violent one. They could say that I had terrorized the girl!
The “when” question was partly evident too– since I couldn’t remember any mention being made of the scratches on the medical report. It meant the perpetrators had been careless– because they should have thought of making the scratches sooner. So I figured that her mother Cora had done it…The problem was that she wouldn’t have had had access to Corissa until after she arrived to the hospital, right?… Yeah: she arrived at the library to find her daughter gone, because she’d already been taken to the hospital… Yeah, that had to be it… And afterward, in righteous indignation– not realizing her gaff– she’d scratched her own daughter… yeah: she said “We’ll get this bastard, Corissa”. She probably even said “I’m sorry that I have to do this”… So mom had scratched her own child… But it was “for the best”, I’m sure she had decided.
Or had Corissa done it herself? Hmmm. Yeah: maybe those scratches would lend credence to her own story– if indeed, she had transformed her story into one of force. After all, she had been afraid of getting into trouble. …
I never could believe she had done that herself though. So I stayed with Cora.
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But who knew what– about that– and at what point did they know it? I was thinking about the Cop, and also about Eric Lind. Mark Fisher had interviewed Corissa after she left the Hospital, and not a word about a scratch– or scratches– was said on the cassette. And though the blemished photos of the supposed scratch were included in Discovery, not a word of claim had been made on their behalf. Hmmm. I smelled a rat!
Perhaps they’d included those photos for mere intimidation value? That’s it! For if they made no claim then they’d have nothing to retract. I saw how those sleazy dogs worked! And if they made no claim about them, then they wouldn’t have to zealously investigate them either. Oh, the diseased sons-of-bitches. And the evil mother too.
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I reviewed my memories more times than I can say. I replayed them obsessively. And sometimes that obsession would yield important things. More information, I mean: new realizations.
One thing that emerged from this self-investigation was that I still could not re-member having seen Corissa’s breasts. I remembered her unfastening her bra, though– but not actually taking her shirt off. But then, one does not just unfasten her bra and leave it hanging there. And I don’t remember seeing the bra hang, either– nor believe that outcome even likely. It’s just that I don’t remember what she did with it from there. Not that it mattered, in the sense that I wouldn’t even have to see her breasts to touch them. Nor would she have even had to have her bra off, for that matter. I could have touched them through her clothing. But I don’t remember doing that either.
A more fruitful line of inquiry concerned that scar I had seen on Corissa’s stomach, behind the water tower. I remembered wondering as I saw it whether there were other scars there too– but higher up on her belly. It seemed to me that after six operations that there would be other scars upon her belly too. And lo and behold, the answer came to me. I realized that if I had seen Corissa without her shirt on, that I would have had the answer to that question at the time! I mean that if that had happened– if she had really taken off her shirt– that I wouldn’t have had to wonder whether there were other scars– because I’d already know! Man! I felt excited by that revelation– and I also felt set free. It didn’t prove that I hadn’t touched her breasts, but it did suggest she had never removed her shirt! In other words, since I had not even seen enough of her belly to answer my question about the scars, then I had to be right about never having seen her breasts!
Uh oh: but why would I have even seen that scar at all– if it was hidden beneath her shirt? Well the answer was that it was barely hidden there: that a small hiking up of her shirt would have been enough to expose it! And she had exposed a lot of belly!
But wait again– because even those photos didn’t reveal other scars, “higher up” Wow! Aha!: that is true too– but again, had I seen her chest and noted their dearth I still would have ceased wondering if there were others. Said one other way, if there were no other scars, then seeing her chest would have freed me from wondering if there were others. Conversely, if there were other scars and I had seen them, then I would have similarly stopped wondering too. Either way I would have had my answer. Ergo, I did not see her chest.
So it didn’t matter– to that question- what some photos taken later might show. Besides, we didn’t know what those photos supposedly showed the presence or the absence of anyway– they were too poor.
But why, I deeply pondered, would I have remembered all that other stuff, but forgotten about seeing – or touching– her breasts? And my answer disturbed me anew. It was because touching the breasts was the thing I was implicated for on the lie-detector test…That was why! Subconsciously I’d had to forget about them– so that I could deny having touched them! That way the only thing they asserted real evidence for I could truthfully deny!
Ah shit– wait again: because I didn’t recall seeing her breasts even before I knew about the lie-detector test! I already knew I’d been accused of touching her in three places– and I did remember both those other touches. The more egregious touches, that is– that they hadn’t ask her about! And I had no idea which of those touches they might ask about on a lie-detector test. Hell: I didn’t even know they’d ask her to take one.
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I couldn’t understand why Mark Fisher had arrested me at all. I told you that. I wasn’t sure he had probable cause, I mean. All he knew was that Corissa had left the library with me, gone somewhere with me in my car, and was ascending a hill hand-in-hand with me when he found us. Why would that have been probable cause, by a correct standard of law? I mean, once he’d realized his standard for arrest had been incorrect, didn’t that nullify his probable cause? And what excuse did he have for slamming a non-resisting arrestee against a car, by any standard? Even if he’d suspected something illegal had occurred, wasn’t he compelled to ascertain that before he arrested me? I couldn’t believe a mistaken understanding of the law by him excused his behavior.
Clayton was unimpressed with that appeal, however. He swept my pleas aside. “You won’t get anywhere with that”, he said. He assured me that Mark Fisher’s behavior was permissible. He said it was “allowed”.
************************************************************
I thought about that lie-detector test a lot too. Of course, there I was handicapped by not knowing how to read it. But the questions themselves struck me as haphazard: as just hastily put together. For some of the questions there spoke to things a person who hadn’t been there at the time of the test wouldn’t know the answers to anyway. Like what color the walls were. Like whether the administrator was wearing a watch. Like whether Corissa did indeed like chocolate.
But above those concerns weighed the glaring omission that I already mentioned. And I thought I had a point on them there. You see, my research had revealed two things. One is that prosecution has an obligation to furnish what is called “ongoing discovery”. Second, and towards that end, it is incumbent upon them to probe for what is called exculpatory evidence! In other words, anything they find that might ameliorate or contradict their claims must be explored and passed on to the defense, whether their findings there be beneficial or damning– for any of us.
Thus, I reasoned, by not asking her about her most egregious claims, they had failed to probe for that evidence. If they had pursued those and found corroboration for their own position there, that would have been very good for them. But they hadn’t probed for the evidence that would most inflame a jury: the things that is, that for lack of evidence would be beneficial to me. Things like touching her butt and vagina.
That was why they hadn’t bothered to do that. If they had asked those things, and hadn’t gotten the response they wanted, they would have had to tell us that! And that suggested that they really were afraid of her answers– and of what they might imply!
I also assumed that the “pressure graph” (the squiggly lines) that corresponded to that particular question had furnished them with the answer they had sought: that is, that her answer recorded there had confirmed I’d touched her breast. If it hadn’t done that, then instead of sending it alone to us, they would have asked some other questions– regarding the other claims she’d made.
After prosecution claimed Corissa was incompetent a new wrinkle occurred to me. That was that that test couldn’t even necessarily be interpreted to show that I had touched her breast. After all, from that perspective, the lie-detector result would only con-firm that she thought I’d touched her breast! And if she was truly incompetent, would she even understand what a lie is– such that her answers would reliably indicate anything?
I realized then that the “incompetence” claim was a two-way street.
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I could have claimed that as an incompetent, Corissa’s response to the test were unreliable. But it didn’t seem like it would help me very much to agree that she was in-competent. In my heart I didn’t believe it for a moment anyway. But strategically, it was a bad move. What were we going to say: that Corissa was too “out of it” to know whether I’d touched her breast? Uh uh! If we did that then the whole question of consent would be conceded too, you see. Then if a jury thought I’d touched her in any inappropriate way my guilt would be assured– and I would be guilty at the felony level…and if she were an “incompetent” then I’d have to convince jury I went for a hike with someone who was utterly “out of it”– for some inexplicable reason– and never touched her at all. So no, it would not be a very good strategy– the complication of the rape kit notwithstanding.
My strategy had to be to count on her capacity to consent.
Resolving that, though, didn’t temper my indignation about the omissions the other side had made. But maybe I could still discover something useful– to hang them with. So I examined the graph that corresponded to breast question, and compared it with the other graphs. And wouldn’t I love to tell you that I discovered something stunning there. But I didn’t. The whole thing was just too abstruse for me.
********************************************************
I shared my reservations about the lie-detector test with Clayton, but he was unimpressed. First of all he told me that the lie-detector test was “inadmissible” anyway. I’d always thought that was the case, too, but until then I was not sure. Then he said that a claim to having touched her breast was sufficient for them to build their case around– and that securing that, they would not have asked her any more. But he had utterly missed my point. “Aren’t they also supposed to check out evidence that might be beneficial to me too?” I asked “They don’t care about your rights” he snorted. Then he assured me the way they’d conducted the test was “allowed”.
But they hadn’t even attempted to establish whether touching her breast had been inadvertent….Maybe it had happened… oooh…when I jumped in beside her to grab the key away!
********************************************************
So the lie-detector test– like the arrest and the brutalization that preceded it– was “allowed”. Allowed: I came to hate that word. It was what Clayton uttered in response to everything Prosecution had done that struck me as suspicious and underhanded behavior. Each time I had wanted him to share my indignation, or to light up with the recognition that something I identified was truly illegal, all he said was that it is “allowed”
“Allowed”. Everything was “allowed”– so my outrage was futile. Every goddam scheming thing the prosecution did was “allowed”. Eventually that word came to sum up how I came to see the process itself: it is a Prosecutor’s game, in which all manner of evildoing by the D.A. is “allowed”; every trumping up of charges, every manufacturing of evidence, every failure to investigate exculpatory evidence, every manner of subornation and subterfuge– is “allowed”.
But that wasn’t all the “every”s, in my complaint: for every time I got off the phone with Clayton I was a mental mess. That was because every new installment of circum-stance through all of this: every development; every disclosure, every legal rule and every claim– seemed to go against me.
***************************************************
I couldn’t come to terms with the timing of the whole thing– and with the metaphysical preordination that seemed implied by it all: by the fact that I had done what I needed to do to take care of myself, in leaving Utah when I did; by the way that I was lured back to Utah, anyway, to meet my fate; by my rejection at the river company, and the suicidal musings that triggered; by my earlier than usual visit to the library– with my unusual choice of parking space– and on through the arrival of Corissa herself– as if on some sort of paranormal cue. It was as though the cosmos themselves had aligned all those factors with me in mind. To me it defied coincidence enough to necessarily invoke those spiritual dimensions– in my interpretation– and the conclusion to be drawn from it all was that God just did not care for me.
Clayton definitely didn’t want to hear any of that either.
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The Preliminary Hearing was set for September 26th, in Kanab. Unlike the Arraignment, though, my presence there was required. Clayton said the Hearing would last about forty-five minutes. At first I had wanted to testify at it, but he said that that would be foolish: it’s a “rubber-stamp” anyway, he said– for whatever the Prosecutor is charging. He insisted that testifying there would not assist my cause. In fact, he told me I wouldn’t have to do anything at all- except sit there and be quiet.
I made an appointment to meet with Clayton again, a few days before the Prelim. We had to compare notes, of course, and to make sure we were on the same page. And since there was still a great deal to say, so in those few weeks before I left Oakland again, I wrote Clayton a very long letter. I wrote it in one long interrupted sitting of nearly eleven hours. It letter was a combination of several things: assertions, hypotheticals, analyses, grievances, and impressions. I faxed it to him before I left for St. George.
***************************************************
Clayton had moved his office to a different building since I had hired him, in June, and I got lost in St. George, trying to find the new place. I arrived 20 minutes late for my appointment, so we were both upset when I arrived. I hate being late.
We sat down in another formal chamber there. It was dark and restrained too, like the first one had been. There we discussed some aspects of the case we had not discussed before. He said he was impressed by my letter: impressed that I had thought so long and hard, that is. It is very encouraging, he said, to have a client so committed– and so involved.
He informed me that Corissa did not have to testify at all, at the Preliminary Hearing. I was surprised to hear that: that the “rubber stamp” aspect of it extended even that far. But Eric Lind had let Clayton know that he intended to put Corissa on the stand anyway. Apparently he wanted to see what sort of witness she would make. So I was relieved and hopeful about that too.
Then I presented him with a list of questions I’d prepared: they were suggested questions really, since I figured he had a better grasp of the fine points than I– that he was better versed in the procedures and the tactics, I mean, such that he might not deem it wise to ask all of my questions, for some reason or other. I also figured he’d generated others of his own. That was correct, because looking at my list he nodded, and said that those were very close to the ones he had come up with too. Then I felt even more encouraged– that we were on the same page!
After all this time, though, I no longer know exactly what those questions were. But I can guess what most of them were:
Did Corissa defend me as her friend as she came down from the hill?
Did Fisher arrest me for Child kidnapping, and slam my head down on the car?
Was Corissa’s cry of rape indeed a false one?
Was the medical report improperly altered?
Did Corissa ask me if she could drive my car?
Did Mark Fisher photograph the back of my car? If not, why not?
Did Corissa notice my fishing equipment?
Did I run up the hill in advance of Corissa?
Did I ask Corissa if he boyfriend was in the service?
Why was Mark Fisher looking in the back of my car?
Nothing new was revealed at that meeting, however, regarding the prosecution. They had not come in with a more reasonable deal, I mean– as we had hoped they would.
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Before I left Clayton told me a little story about the former Assistant Prosecutor, in Kanab. Until then I had not even realized that Eric Lind had had an assistant. And as it turned out, he didn’t have one– anymore. It turns out that that Assistant had had a problem with methamphetamines, Clayton revealed– and he had finally killed himself.
I was disgusted by that circumstance. It suggested that the Prosecutor’s office was just a den of iniquity: as a hiding place for scumbags and lowlifes– and that Eric Lind had sacrificed all moral ground, in presiding over such a scene. I shook my head and steeled myself against any further pretensions to piety, from that camp. I’d seen enough of Prosecutor’s evil by then– and at that point I’d heard enough of it as well.
Gee: imagine that: the Assistant Prosecutor had been a law-breaker too!
“He called me up one time”, Clayton added, still talking about the drugged assistant. “And he left a message on my phone”. He adjusted his posture as he went on: “And he was yelling and screaming at me– it was the most unprofessional thing I’d ever heard.” I wasn’t even sure why Clayton was revealing that to me then. But as I said, it left a sure impression, of unseemly behavior in those ranks. And maybe that was exactly his point! Maybe what he meant was that I should prepare for more.
Then I went to Kanab again, early, to face up to my fate.
