Judgment Day

I can’t tell you how much I hate arrogant people.  What really stinks, of course, is when arrogance accompanies possession of a firearm then when you add a badge to that arrogance you’re just asking for trouble.  If you don’t believe me, ask Deputy Anna Myers.  Oh, wait, you can’t ask her, she’s dead.  To tell you the truth, I really don’t care that she’s dead.  She got what she deserved.  She wasn’t exactly the world’s most honorable cop.  In fact, she was downright dirty and it was a matter of time before her world came crashing down around her.  I encountered her when she was assigned to work the courts as a bailiff.  It was a cool October morning when I walked into a courtroom with my client.  My client was there to fight a red-light camera ticket.  Just as my client was about to be called before the judge I dropped my pen on the floor.  I bent down to pick it up and Deputy Myers took this opportunity to eject me from the room.  Now I grant you that a judge in a courtroom is one of the last remaining dictatorial monarchies in the United States, but for the bailiff to eject me from a court room over a stupid pen…well, that’s going way beyond absurd.

Now, like I said, Deputy Myers is dead but rest assured that I had nothing to do with her demise.  I’ve always been of the opinion that true revenge belongs to God, but sometimes, he allows you to watch.  You may be thinking that wanting revenge on an idiot deputy over something as stupid as throwing someone out of a courtroom is rather petty on my part, and you’re right, it is – but there is something to be said for being allowed to watch a stupid person get what’s coming to her.

The day she threw me out of the courtroom there was another person in that room as well who was also there to fight a traffic ticket.  He wasn’t nearly as well dressed as most of the rest of us in that room.  I knew that he wasn’t someone I wanted to invest time in getting to know.  But when everyone had been through the ringer with the judge, he came waddling out of the room and walked straight up to me.

“Hey, mac, I saw that self-righteous bailiff throw you out of the courtroom.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “she apparently didn’t think too highly of me dropping a pen on the floor, huh?”  I hoped that would be the end of the story.  But he kept on talking.

“How would you like to see something bad happen to her?”

“Uh, no.  I’m good.  She was the idiot, I did nothing wrong.”

“Exactly,” the man said, “you did nothing wrong.  She treated you like a spot of dog mess on her shoe.  You didn’t deserve to have that happen.  No one deserves to be treated like that – even by the likes of her.”

“Listen, I appreciate that you want to help me out, but as an officer of the court, I can’t let you do that.  I can’t be tied to anything bad that happens to anybody.”

“That’s the beauty of all of this.  You don’t need to know anything.  Culpable deniability – I’ll take the heat and the wrap, you get your revenge on a cop who thinks she’s better than you.”

“No!” I restated firmly and loudly enough that others might hear it.  The echo of my voice in the hallway made me look around.  I realized there was no one around to hear.  It hadn’t dawned on me that the hallway was empty.  I began to wonder how long it had been that way.  It didn’t matter.  I wasn’t about to be party to anything no matter how much a part of me desperately wanted to choke that deputy.  My partner in conversation simply looked at me with no expression on his face.  He leaned a little closer to me and whispered,

“If you change your mind, I’ll be at the corner of Palmdale Road and Amargosa Road there’s a little restaurant there.  We can talk.”

“I won’t be there.” I said to him.  The truth of the matter is I really wasn’t interested and I didn’t bother to show up either.  But it’s amazing how something like this comes back to haunt you.

The date for my client’s appearance before the judge was three weeks away.  In that time I procured every piece of case law, prior case ruling and everything else I could find on these red light cameras.  I was going to help my client beat this thing because I don’t believe cities ought to have the right to utilize such surveillance methods on drivers and I was going to do my part to make sure they became so ineffective they would be taken down permanently.

My client and I walked into the courtroom and sure enough, there stood the same deputy from before.  I had resolved in my mind that I wasn’t going to say one single word until spoken to.  The man who had offered to help me out was also in the room.  He did not acknowledge my presence – I was grateful for that, but I couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of my eye.  He made no moves and he did nothing out of the ordinary.  I started to think that maybe I had dreamed the whole thing, but I wasn’t sure.  But what happened next was beyond anything I’d ever seen before.

The bailiff called the man up to the table to address the judge.  In most of these kinds of trials, there are no juries.  It’s just you, the cop and the judge.  I’ve seen these kinds of things drag on for hours as defendants go through all kinds of logic to get out of a speeding ticket.  In the end, though, most of them end up paying the fine and walking out.  Of course the cop who wrote the ticket also walks out of the room with a smug, arrogant smile on his face because no matter what most people try, they’re not lawyers and they don’t know how to defend themselves against traffic tickets.  Most could be beat if the person would just do a little research on the Internet nowadays, but people hope the judge will feel sorry for them and let them go.  Not likely to happen and rarely does it ever.  I can think of only one time I saw someone beat a red light ticket and didn’t have to say a word in her defense.  Her ticket got thrown out because the photograph taken by the camera didn’t show enough of the driver’s face for anyone to be certain it was her.  Judging by her reaction, I don’t think that defendant thought about that as she was getting ready to face the judge.  But I digress.

The man calmly walked up to the table and stood before the judge.  The bailiff raised her hand and demanded the man do the same.  He did and allowed himself to be sworn in.  But before the bailiff lowered her hand, the look on her face turned to complete horror.  The judge looked at her and said, “bailiff, can we move forward?”

The woman replied, “Your honor, I can’t move my hand!”

The judge looked at the defendant and said, “Are you doing something to my bailiff?”

“No your honor.” He said calmly.  “What would make you think I was doin’ something to her?”

Suddenly, the bailiff turned around and faced the judge.  Her hand began to slowly reach for the gun on her hip.  She pulled it from its holster and pointed it at the judge.  “Your honor,” she said in a voice that didn’t seem to be hers, “you will dismiss every case on your docket right now and drop all charges against everyone in this room or I will personally see to it that you never walk out of here.”

“Deputy Myers!” the judge shouted.  “Put down your weapon now!”

We all watched as the bailiff moved her hand and pulled the trigger of her gun.  The plaster rendition of the state seal hanging on the wall behind the judge shattered into several pieces and fell to the floor.  I couldn’t see it for myself, but I believe the judge messed himself pretty well at that moment.  The deputy repeated her order and without any further hesitation, he handed the stack of folders to the clerk and instructed her to begin processing them as cases dismissed.  Of course discharging a firearm inside a courthouse isn’t going to go completely unnoticed.  As you might expect, six or seven deputies burst through the door of the court room.  All of them had their guns pointed at the deputy.  She didn’t turn around.  Everyone in the room was on the floor.  Most of the women in the room were crying.  The man who approached me was still standing calmly next to the bailiff.  From where I was, I could see her face.  It had gone from sheer terror to one of pleading.  Tears were beginning to roll down her face and she was clearly crying.  It was also obvious that something was controlling her and it wasn’t her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered through the tears.  Suddenly without any warning, she quickly turned the gun, pointed it at her temple and pulled the trigger.  I watched shocked at what I had just seen.  It was like a train wreck – too horrible to look away but too horrible to watch.  It was as if everything went into slow motion.  As soon as she pulled the trigger, I knew she was dead.  I watched her body begin to fall to the floor.  At the same time, without warning the six other deputies fired riddling her with more bullets.  It was too late when they realized she shot herself.

Hours later, after I gave my statement to the deputies making their report it was brought to light that Deputy Myers wasn’t the squeaky clean officer everyone thought.  As much as the sheriff’s department hated to admit it, she was the coordinator of a drug and human sex trafficking ring through that part of the state.  It had been going on for some time and investigators from the DEA, FBI and the sheriff’s department had been closing in on her.  Some said that she found out just that morning that she was going to be arrested that day.  Others weren’t so sure.  Some who were in the courtroom that day thought the man was somehow connected to her demise.  I was there and I don’t know for sure.  I never saw him do anything that I could consider controlling her.  I poked around the clerk’s office myself and never found the case file for the man.  I asked around if anyone remembered seeing him and no one could.  It was as if he disappeared off the face of the earth after that event.  To this day I wonder just who that man was.  Was he an angel of death?  Was he God Almighty himself come to exact punishment on someone who took advantage of the trust of others?  Or was he the devil playing out an evil plot and death was the price the deputy paid for selling her soul? Like I said, I’m not sure.  But you’ll have to excuse me, I have to go now.  An important phone call just came through.

“Hello, Mr. Serling, what can I do for you?”