Chapter 30
Thinking Hard Time
TRE
“Richard White,” a man’s voice calls from the door. I open my eyes, but otherwise don’t respond, seated on the bench running the length of the holding cell with my head resting on the concrete wall behind me. It’s Deputy Wasserman, although I don’t see Kevin. “Get up. Your lawyer’s here.”
I raise one eyebrow but comply. A small grunt escapes my lips as I stand, joints stiff from trying to nap away the morning sitting upright.
They woke me up hours ago, but there are no windows in the drunk tank—and they took my watch along with all my other possessions when they booked me—so I don’t know exactly when. Or what time it is now.
“Let’s go,” Wasserman orders as I stretch my arms overhead. I glance at the corner. The guy they brought in last night is still passed out on the bench with his arm draped across his face. They don’t care if he sleeps.
Wasserman cuffs my hands in front of me, then lets me out and leads me to a small, windowless room with a square table. After a few moments, the man from last week’s town hall enters, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase.
Without glancing at the deputy, he reaches back and shuts the door.
“Mr. White, pleasure to meet you. Sorry for the delay.” He extends his hand.
I shake it, awkwardly wagging my other beside it in the handcuffs. “I saw you the other night.”
“Nick Trowbridge. Yes. My first Kalomish town hall. I wanted to shake the tree a bit, so to speak. See what I could get them to say in public.”
“And you’re a lawyer?”
“Yes. Environmental law mainly, which is how I got involved in all this. I work in Portland but was recently hired to help with your town’s legal suits against Henley and Montank.
When you were so publicly arrested, multiple people reached out.
They told me you’re a strong voice in opposing these developments. ”
Ah, that tracks.
After the deputies finished booking me yesterday, I was left alone in the holding cell.
I had as much access to the pay phone as I wanted, but without my phone, I only knew a couple of numbers.
I called who I could—including Ewan, although everyone at his outfitter was on the river all day—but had to leave messages asking them to call a lawyer for me.
Law offices aren’t usually open on Sundays, so I knew I’d be waiting.
The courts also aren’t in session on the weekend, meaning I haven’t been arraigned yet.
Sheriff Morris timed his big arrest deliberately.
“Well, thanks for coming. How long until you can get me out?”
“Okay, good news and bad news there. Your arraignment is set for this morning, so we’ll get to argue for your release very soon. The bad news is we only have a few minutes right now to prep.”
Morris was probably hoping I wouldn’t be able to arrange a lawyer so quickly.
“I have the list of charges here. It looks like they want to charge you with three different sets of crimes spanning multiple occasions. Don’t tell me about what happened and what didn’t. There’ll be time to work on all of that later. I assume you intend to plead ‘not guilty’?”
“Yeah, of course. They don’t even—” I begin, but Nick holds up a hand to stop me.
“I’m sorry. I will absolutely listen to your side of the story, but we have almost no time before the deputies transport you to the county courthouse.”
“They’re trying me here?” I ask incredulously.
“This isn’t the trial. Your arraignment is just a pretrial hearing where they inform you of the charges, make sure you have a lawyer, and set your bail.
The trial won’t happen for weeks, or more likely months, but it seems like they want to handle it locally, yeah.
I haven’t had time to look into everything since I spent most of the morning driving out here.
“At a guess, I’d say maybe Henley and Montank don’t have the same pull in Salem as they do here.
It’s also possible the district attorney is jumping the gun because the sheriff wants the glory and the council wants to show that everything is safe for the big developers.
I’ve read a summary of the evidence that led them to arrest you.
It’s flimsy. The closest things they have to incriminating are a lack of alibis for the middle of the night and some evidence that you were on a bike near the houses that got destroyed a few days prior to that incident. ”
Three loud knocks sound on the door, then it swings open.
“Time to go, White,” Deputy Wasserman says.
I look to Nick, who nods. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse. Don’t talk to anyone.”
I shift in the uncomfortable wooden chair in the waiting room.
The clock on the wall tells me it’s ten-thirty.
It was the first thing to let me know the time today when I arrived just after nine.
The only other people in here have been the officer standing by the door and two other men waiting for the courtroom, the last of whom was escorted out fifteen minutes ago.
I haven’t seen Nick Trowbridge, no matter how many times I’ve complained.
An older man dressed like the door guard enters and calls my name. Those aren’t deputy uniforms. I guess they’re bailiffs.
I stand and follow him down a hallway until he leads me through a small door.
We enter the courtroom with my attorney sitting at one table, a pair of lawyers conversing at another, and the judge already seated, watching me.
The gallery is empty except for the man from Henley and Montank who came to the diner when Kevin first wanted me for questioning.
Nick stands as I join him. “We only have a minute. These are the charges they’re planning to bring against you.
” He points to an open folder on the desk.
There are a handful of papers, and on top, under a court letterhead, is a list of crimes: arson, destruction of property, trespassing, possession of a destructive device, unauthorized use of a vehicle, criminal mischief, and animal abuse.
“The judge will start things off. He’ll read the charges and ask how you plead.
You answer, but only say, ‘Not guilty, Your Honor.’ Nothing more, understand?
This isn’t the trial. This isn’t the time to explain or blame someone else.
‘Not guilty,’ then you let me do the talking from there. Any questions?”
“Yeah, actually. There’s nothing on here about terrorism, but these are all about the projects from Henley and Montank. Are there more coming?”
“What? No, there are no terrorism charges. That would automatically be a federal case, and the FBI would be running everything. Despite Councilman Nammier’s grandstanding, neither the council nor the sheriff’s department has legally expressed anything as terrorism, and none of these charges stem from the ATF investigation. ”
The judge clears his throat.
Nick glances at him and then back at me. “Anything else?”
I shake my head.
“Remember ‘Not guilty’ then say nothing.”
He turns to face the judge, who asks, “Are we ready to begin, counselors?”
“We are, Your Honor,” Nick replies.
“Yes, Your Honor,” the older of the two lawyers, a woman who looks to be in her fifties, stands and answers.
The judge goes through a formal introduction of the case in a monotone pattern that makes me think he’s done this so many times he could recite it in his sleep. After reading the list of charges, he asks, “How do you plead?”
“Not guilty, Your Honor.”
“On the issue of bail, do the people have a recommendation?” the judge asks, looking at the woman who was introduced as the district attorney.
“We request that the defendant be held without bail. He has aggressively demonstrated his opposition to the affected projects, and the crimes are increasing in violence. If he is released, the threat to the people is unacceptably high.”
“Your Honor, the people have not provided any substantiation for their claims of my client’s involvement in these alleged crimes,” Nick states. “Their supposed evidence does not meet the threshold to validate these charges, and the case should be dismissed.”
“Save it for the evidentiary hearing, Mr. Trowbridge.”
“Furthermore, Your Honor, my client is a pillar of the community and has no criminal history. He owns and operates a local business and is active in local politics. He poses no threat and is not a flight risk. Unless the people can demonstrate how he is a danger, we request he be released on his own recognizance.”
The judge looks at the district attorney again.
“Your Honor, in addition to his publicly stated goal of making the victims of these crimes flee the state, there is evidence of his presence near the scene of the latest crime in a timeline that indicates responsibility.”
“We request—” Nick begins before the judge interrupts.
“I’ve heard enough, counselors. Given the scale of the damage and the likelihood of further criminal activity, I have determined that the defendant poses a continued threat to the safety of the community. He is to be remanded into custody without bail.”
Nick looks frustrated, but the DA has a solid poker face. The judge glances behind us before shuffling papers, and I look back to see the Henley and Montank suit smirking at me.
Nick rushes to reassure me as the bailiff approaches. “Don’t worry, there’s still plenty I can do to get you out. I’ll work on that and meet you at the jail soon.”
A loud clanging echoes down the hall, wresting my attention away from the thoughts looping in my head.
I look at the door while my cellmate sits up on his bed.
“Dinner time,” he explains, the first words either of us has spoken.
He doesn’t get up, so I follow his example and remain on my bed.
I’ve been sitting here since I got processed into the jail.
They kept me in a more secure waiting room for inmates at the courthouse for hours until some sheriff’s deputies herded a group of us onto a small bus and drove us to the county jail.
The last time I saw a clock, it was nearly five, just before they led me to my cell.
Almost the entire day has been spent sitting around, and with nothing to do, I’ve been stewing over my stupid mistake.
If I hadn’t gone out there on my own, I lament for the thousandth time.
After Fiona and I finished prepping at her secret lair on Monday night, I got worried.
On our first job, I was certain I knew the trailer’s lock and the site security procedure, but I got both wrong.
Thankfully, Fiona was clever enough to get us in through the window, because otherwise we would have been screwed by my not being thorough.
We had to get the houses done in one shot. The plan was based around the town hall. We wouldn’t get a second chance.
I was worried enough that at midnight I dressed in black and rode my bike down back roads to the state park trail I recommended we use.
Nobody was out that late, and I made it to Highland Estates in about two hours.
I scouted the yards of both houses to make sure there weren’t any motion-sensor lights and the doors looked the same as on my drive-by visit.
It took less than half an hour. I followed a different path home, figuring I could check a backup option and reduce the chance of being seen where Fiona and I would travel the next night. I even made it home with enough time to take a nap before work.
Everything seemed to go perfectly, but there must have been a trail cam along that second path.
If the sheriff had footage of both of us in ski masks from Tuesday night, that’s what he’d be focusing on.
And he wouldn’t have been able to identify me.
But I was on my bike in the woods while not committing a crime, so I wasn’t wearing one.
Now I’ve proven Fiona’s fears about me being sloppy right all along.
I hope she knows I meant what I said. I accepted that I’d face the consequences of my actions before I went up Bridal Mountain.
I won’t drag her into this. Our working together was all my idea anyway.
Plastic thunks down inside the cell, and my eyes refocus to see a pair of bored guards walking by, shoving baggies of food through the bars on either side of the hallway.
My cellmate walks over and grabs his first, his beige shirt and pants hanging as loosely on him as mine do on me.
My stomach rumbles, and I suddenly realize I haven’t eaten today.
The deputies didn’t give me anything for breakfast before they rushed me off to court, and I was sitting in courthouse waiting rooms the rest of the time. I’d been too preoccupied to notice.
When I pick mine up, I’m not sure what I’m seeing at first. A handful of apple slices are smashed on the outside of a sandwich that looks like a few slices of bologna and some approximation of cheese on white bread.
“Hey man, is this a normal dinner?” I ask. I expected the food wasn’t going to be good, but in TV shows and movies you always see guys going through cafeteria lines.
He’s halfway through his sandwich. He swallows and pauses long enough to answer. “Yeah. It’s always shit.”
I nod, and we return to our respective meals. It’s not good, but I’m hungry, and I may as well get used to this.
Despite my new lawyer’s assurances, I know the system is rigged. I just have to ride this out until the trial. If they’re going to do everything locally because they think they have control, I will happily take my chances with a jury.
The sound of urine hitting the aluminum toilet bowl in the far corner breaks my train of thought as my cellmate relieves himself.
Well, this is my life now, I realize.