“Explosives are a deadly weapon. It’s true that the way he had it wired up, it didn’t go off when it was supposed to, and the amount is marginaclass="underline" you might have lost only part of your hands and your face. But it counts under the law.”
“I did not know that one act, like taking out the battery and putting in the jack-in-the-box, could break more than one law,” I say.
“Neither do a lot of criminals,” Mr. Stacy says. “But it’s quite common. Say a perp breaks into a house while the owners are gone and steals stuff. There’s a law about unlawful entry and another law about theft.”
I did not really complain about Don manufacturing an explosive device because I did not know he was doing it. I look at Mr. Stacy; it is clear he has an answer for everything and it will not do any good to argue. It does not seem fair that so many complaints could come out of one act, but I have heard people talk about other things like this, too.
The form goes on to list what Don did in less formal language: the tires, the windshield, the theft of a vehicle battery worth $262.37, the placing of the explosive device under the hood, and the assault in the parking lot. With it all laid out in order, it looks obvious that Don did it all, that he seriously intended to hurt me, that the very first incident was a clear warning sign.
It is still hard to grasp. I know what he said, the words he used, but they do not make much sense. He is a normal man. He could talk to Marjory easily; he did talk to Marjory. Nothing stopped him from becoming friends with her, nothing but himself. It is not my fault that she liked me. It is not my fault that she met me at the fencing group; I was there first and did not know her until she came.
“I do not know why,” I say.
“What?” Mr. Stacy says.
“I do not know why he got so angry with me,” I say.
He tips his head to one side. “He told you,” he says. “And you told me what he said.”
“Yes, but it does not make sense,” I say. “I like Marjory a lot, but she is not my girlfriend. I have never taken her out. She has never taken me out. I have never done anything to hurt Don.” I do not tell Mr. Stacy that I would like to take Marjory out, because he might ask why I haven’t and I do not want to answer.
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you,” he says, “but it makes sense to me. We see lots of this kind of thing, jealousy souring into rage. You didn’t have to do anything; it was all about him, all about his insides.”
“He is normal inside,” I say.
“He’s not formally disabled, Lou, but he is not normal. Normal people do not wire explosive devices into someone’s car.”
“Do you mean he is insane?”
“That’s for a court to decide,” Mr. Stacy says. He shakes his head. “Lou, why are you trying to excuse him?”
“I’m not… I agree what he did is wrong, but having a chip put in his brain to make him someone else—”
He rolls his eyes. “Lou, I wish you people — I mean people who aren’t in criminal justice — would understand about the PPD. It is not making him into someone else. It is making him Don without the compulsion to harm people who annoy him in any way. That way we don’t have to keep him locked up for years because he’s likely to do it again — he just won’t do it again. To anyone. It’s a lot more humane than what we used to do, lock people like this up for years with other vicious men in an environment that only made them worse. This doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t make him into a robot; he can live a normal life… He just can’t commit violent crimes. It’s the only thing we’ve found that works, other than the death penalty, which I will agree is a bit extreme for what he did to you.”
“I still don’t like it,” I say. “I would not want anyone putting a chip in my brain.”
“There are legitimate medical uses,” he says. I know that; I know about people with intractable seizures or Parkinsonism or spinal cord injuries: specific chips and bypasses have been developed for them, and that is a good thing. But this I am not sure of.
Still, it is the law. There is nothing in the form that is untrue. Don did these things. I called the police about them, except the last one, which they witnessed. There is a line at the bottom of the form, between the body of the text and the line for my signature, and there is a line of text that says that I swear everything in the statement is true. It is true as far as I know, and that will have to be enough. I sign on the line, date it, and hand it to the police officer.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “Now the DA wants to meet you and she will explain what happens next.”
The district attorney is a middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair mixed with gray. The nameplate on her desk says: ASS’T DA BEATRICE HUNSTON. She has skin the color of gingerbread. Her office is bigger than mine at work and has shelves all around it with books. They are old, tan with black and red squares on the spines. They do not look as if anyone ever read them, and I wonder if they are real. There is a data plate on her desktop, and the light from it makes the underside of her chin a funny color, even though from my side the desktop looks plain black.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Mr. Arrendale,” she says. “You were quite lucky. I understand you’ve signed the complaint against Mr. Donald Poiteau, is that right?”
Yes, I say.
“Well, let me explain what happens next. The law says that Mr. Poiteau is entitled to a jury trial if he wants one. We have ample evidence that he is the person involved in all the incidents, and we are sure that evidence will stand up in court. But most likely his legal adviser will tell him to accept a plea. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I say. I know she wants to tell me.
“If he does not use up state resources by demanding a trial, it will reduce the amount of time he must serve, down to that required for implantation and adaptation of the PPD, the chip. Otherwise, if convicted, he would face a minimum of five years in detention. In the meantime, he’ll be finding out what detention is like, and I suspect he’ll agree to the plea.”
“But he might not be convicted,” I say.
The DA smiles at me. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “Not with the kind of evidence we’ve got. You don’t have to worry; he’s not going to be able to hurt you anymore.”
I am not worried. Or I was not worried until she said that. Once Don was in custody, I did not worry more about him. If he escapes, I will worry again. I am not worried now.
“If it does not come to trial, if his attorney accepts a plea bargain, then we will not need to call you in again,” she says. “We will know that in a few days. If he does demand a trial, then you will appear as a witness for the prosecution. This will mean spending time with me or someone in my office preparing your testimony and then time in court. Do you understand that?”
I understand what she is saying. What she is not saying and maybe does not know is that Mr. Crenshaw will be very angry if I miss time from work. I hope that Don and his lawyer do not insist on a trial.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. The whole procedure’s changed in the past ten years, with the availability of the PPD chip; it’s a lot more straightforward. Fewer cases going to trial. Not so much time lost by the victims and the witnesses. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Arrendale.”
The morning is almost over when I finally leave the Justice Center. Mr. Aldrin said I did not have to come in at all today, but I do not want Mr. Crenshaw to have any reason to be angry with me, so I go back to the office for the afternoon. We have another test, one of those where we are supposed to match patterns on a computer screen. We are all very fast at this and finish quickly. The other tests are easy, too, but boring. I do not work the time I missed this morning, because that was not my fault.