Next morning, the DA called a tall thin man to the stand. The prosecutor asked him his name and occupation. He said his name was Salcedo and he worked for Homeland Security. He testified that Homeland Security had intercepted Mr. Gazowski's emails in which he made threats against the institution of the high school. These emails were sent to Ms. Cioukowsky. Cassie's lawyer leaped to her feet.
"Objection, your honor. These emails have not been introduced. What are the sources of these emails?"
The District Attorney said, "Much of this testimony is classified, your honor, under the Patriot Act and other Homeland Security legislation."
Then he explained that all of this (or most of it anyway) could be told to the judge in closed session. All three of the lawyers went up to the bench where they whispered together. Finally, they returned to their seats. The judge ruled that the emails could be entered into the testimony as he was convinced of their authenticity.
At first, it looked like the county didn't want to read the emails in court. They had the guy from Homeland Security paraphrase them. Both our lawyers objected and Salcedo had to read the emails aloud.(Later, Cassie's lawyer made Ron Gazowski read the emails to the jury. And the judge said it was fine by him. He wanted to hear Ron read his love notes out loud.)
Salcedo read: "so I will reck that place if tht's what you want becuz that's what U mean 2 me. Trust me. I know where to get bomb stuff."
The emails went on and on like that, some of them with even less grammar and spelling. Gazz threatened to shoot the principal. And also his homeroom teacher because she had just given him a failing grade in Social Studies and "I hate that bitch cause she always call on me when I ain't study." He also offered "to shoot any persons you hate and name. As since I am in for a penny in for a pound. They can only kil me 1x." In order that the whole court could enjoy Gazz's spelling and grammar they used an overhead projector to show Gaz's love notes on a screen, just like in health class.
The Homeland Security agent had a tough time making it sound threatening or sinister. It sounded like what it was: stream of consciousness of a truly inferior brain. And there he was, Star Witness for the Prosecution. People in the jury box seemed to be laughing silently. There was no way this idiot was serious. Although he may be dangerous.
They finally put Gazz himself on the stand. And the jury was not disappointed. Gazz came into the court, all six two, two hundred twenty-five pounds of him, from a special holding area. He was wearing his orange Juvee Dee jumpsuit. He looked like fresh-picked fruit from Florida. He also looked like an inmate of an institution and, being Gazz, he looked like he belonged in one. Maybe that was the point.
Gazz kept his eyes fixed on a spot in the back wall. He didn't look at me or Cassie. The District Attorney was frowning at him like he had just realized that his star witness looked untrustworthy, and much worse for wearing those prison coveralls. But heck, they're not made of money at the District Attorney's office and part of this witness's value is that he backs up the whole teen psycho killer deal so he doesn't have to look good. But did he have to look this bad?
The DA asked Gazz to explain who he was. Gazz answered them in his usual surly tone, except when he was asked to explain his relationship to us. Then he said cheerfully, "They're friends of mine."
"Good friends?"
"Yeah I guess."
The DA then asked Gazz to tell the jury a little bit about himself. Gazz gave them the agreed-upon answer: seventeen, high school student, youngest in a family of five - all of it rehearsed with the DA. Then he finished by saying, "And like they say in the papers, I'm a big football star."
The crowd laughed.
The judge hammered on his desk and told him that he better take this seriously, that people were on trial for their lives.
The DA continued. "Mr. Gazowski, do you have a particular relationship with Cassie Cioukowsky?"
"I don't know. I guess she's my girlfriend."
I said a bad word and the judge hammered on his desk again and yelled at me.
One-Way grabbed my arm. "Jesus, cut it out will you? Don't make this harder."
The DA went on. "How long has Ms. Cioukowsky been your girlfriend?"
"About a month or two, I guess."
I couldn't help giving the jurors the eye-roll.
"And you've been communicating with Ms. Cioukowsky via the Internet in emails and with your phone in the form of texts?"
"Yeah."
"I have some printed copies of emails you sent Ms. Cioukowsky over the last month. Could you read this one please?"
The DA seem to have changed his mind about reading the emails. It had gone so bad with the Homeland Security guy, he figured a dramatic reading by Gazowski would scare the jury into believing that he was the worst threat to high school since Osama bin Laden.
Gazz held the sheet of paper in both hands looking at it like he was nearsighted, which he wasn't. As if these words were a new language. He read like someone who never got out of fourth-grade remedial reading.
"'Dear Cassie, I know you don't believe me but you will. I got guns. I got explosive. Enough to take whole building down. Better not come to school on 31st. This can be whole lots of shit happening. And people going to get hurt.'"
I didn't laugh but I felt like it. I just shook my head and sighed loudly. One-way nudged me with his elbow.
"Mr. Gazowski, did you write this email?" The DA said.
"Yes I did." Gazz had picked up the form from the cops and the crime scene scientists. He was very sure he wrote it.
"And what were you referring to? When you talk of guns and explosives, what are you talking about?"
"I was talking about the school, shooting up the school. Cassie dared me to do it. She didn't think I would, so I was telling her, I was going to go to school and shoot people and set some explosives. Blow the place up."
"Why on earth would you do such a thing?"
"It's kind of hard to explain. It was like I felt like she was forcing me to do it. She was doubting that I had the balls to do it. She had me cornered. So I had to prove that I would do it."
"So you were doing this because Ms. Cioukowsky asked you to?"
"Not in so many words. But she made me feel like I had to. The way she twisted stuff."
Cassie's lawyer was on her feet. "Objection Your Honor. Is prosecution going to present any evidence? Or is it all going to be the fantasies of an overmedicated high school bully?"
That made the DA start shouting. It sounded like a reasonable description to me.
They all wrangled for a few minutes and finally the judge allowed the prosecutor to go on with his questioning. I couldn't believe it. They were all listening as Gazz spoke with his usual dumb hostile indifference.
The Prosecutor started over with Gazz and slowly got him to agree that where Cassie was concerned, he had no will of his own. He was her slave, too.
And then Cassie's lawyer took Gazz apart. It was like he was some unfortunate mental defective and she had to talk very slowly so he could understand.
"So, Mr. Gazowski, you say that Cassie's your girlfriend?"
"Yeah that's right."
"You mean that in a romantic sense, I imagine? You're not saying that she's just a friend of yours?"
"No I mean, yeah. I mean she was just a friend but I was trying to get it romantic, if you understand what I mean." He laughed and looked at the jury to see if they were getting the joke. They got it all right but they didn't think it was funny. If they had daughters, Gazz was making them sick to their stomachs. "My kid goes to High School with something like that?"
Cassie's lawyer said, "So just to be clear. You never dated Cassie? You never went on a date together?
"No."
"And she gave you no indication that she wanted a relationship with you?"
"I wouldn't say that. She gave me lots of indications."
"What were they? These indications?"
"It was like looks and things like that. You know. You can tell when the girl wants to get it on with you."
"Oh? And how is that?"
Gazz looked at Cassie's lawyer (who besides being really smart, was very pretty) and smirked at her, as if to say, "Kind of like you're doing right now, Miss Lawyer." The whole jury looked away, embarrassed and disgusted.
It was then, when Gazz turned his eyes back from the jury they came to fall on mine. And very softly but slow so he could read my lips, I said:
"Asshole."
And the judge saw it and hammered on his desk and Gazz jumped up and shouted a lot of bad words at me, so the judge started hammering his desk in that direction. And the DA was wringing his hands and pleading with the judge to do something about me before I dragged the entire society down to my level.
But the judge just banged away on his poor desk until everybody shut up and then he nodded at the court reporter who read back the last thing that was said before Anarchy.
Cassie's lawyer stared at Gazz, like he was a fungus in the shower stall.
"How did Cassie express her feelings about you? Did she ever say anything?"
"It was mostly looks and pauses and stuff."
"Pauses?"
"Yeah. You know, when people get quiet and sort of look at you, and things get said without talking."
"Without talking. I see. So Ms. Cioukowsky would say things to you without talking?"
Gazz squirmed in his seat. "Yeah. Kind of. I mean I could tell what she was thinking."
"I see. You could read her mind?"
The DA said, "Objection."
"Withdrawn. And did you ever express your feelings?"
"Sure."
"And did you do this with words? I mean were you talking?"
"Of course." Gazz laughed practically winking at the jury.
"Finally," she said. Everybody laughed and the judge didn't even bother to shut them up. "And how did Ms. Cioukowsky respond?"
"Well, she said... Not 'no', exactly..."
"She wasn't interested?"
"Not yet."
"But you can't point to one specific instance in which Ms. Cioukowsky expressed the slightest interest in you?"
"I guess not the way you mean."
"And Ms. Cioukowsky never explicitly promised you future sexual favor in return for any action on your part, did she?"
Gazz mumbled sullenly that he didn't need any favors on that score but, yeah, she was teasing him something awful.
"So you decided to stalk her until she gave in, is that right?"
"Objection!"
"Withdrawn. Why did you start to write her about attacking the students and teachers at school? Where did that come from?"
Gazz claimed that in personal conversations with Cassie she had dared him to do something to prove that he wasn't just all talk.
"And so you offered to blow up the school?" She said this looking at the jury with astonishment.
"It wasn't my idea," Gazz said. "She was all full of that kind of stuff. You know, like Columbine and Virginia Tech. How to kill as many people at the school as possible." He grinned. "She's a very angry chick."
Cassie meanwhile was looking anything but angry.
"Did you really have any of these guns or explosives you wrote to Ms. Cioukowsky about?"
"No. I just wanted her to think I did."
"And did she?"
"I don't know. You'll have to ask her."
"So all of these emails, all of these threats of murder and destruction, you were just kidding?"
Gazz squirmed in his chair. "I guess," he mumbled.
"You have any idea how many of these emails Ms. Cioukowsky actually opened?"
"I don't know."
"Make an estimate."
"I said I don't know."
"Are you aware that Ms. Cioukowsky blocked your email?"
"Yeah."
"So how many of these emails do you think Ms. Cioukowsky actually opened before she blocked your email?
"I don't know. A few.
"A few. How many is that?
"A few. A few is a few."
"It was two, wasn't it?"
Gazz shrugged and said "Yeah, I guess so."
"Two. And in those two emails, did you ever write anything about bombing the school or shooting people?"
"I don't think so."
"So as far as we know Miss Cioukowsky had no knowledge of your threats of violence. We only have your word for it."
The DA objected. Gazz shrugged again.
Cassie's lawyer looked at him. Her expression said, 'Poor pitiful monkey, so deluded as to imagine that this beautiful girl would have any interest in you.'
Then she said, "No further questions, Your Honor."
She walked back to her seat, looking like a fashion model in her perfect suit. And everyone could see that here was a woman that didn't belong in our little crappy town. She was from another, better place where people were wiser and more intelligent and knew better than we did. Here is a woman with better clothes and a better brain and she must know what the truth is. Gazz was a liar and, whatever we were, Cassie and I had no part in his love struck terrorist delusions.
One-Way Goff had enough sense not to meddle with a better lawyer's work and so he asked a couple of simple questions that underlined what Cassie's lawyer had done and then he sat down.
The DA got another chance to talk. He asked Gazz whether he and I had been competing for Cassie's attention. Wasn't it true that Cassie had been playing us off, one against the other?
Gazz nodded violently. I could tell that he and the DA had talked about this. "Yes. We were competing. She was doing that. Playing us one against the other, making us jealous." That 'playing us one against the other,' that wasn't Gazz talking. The DA fed him that line. He was still trying to make his Teenage Femme Fatale story fly. But every time he did the jury looked over at Cassie sitting, legs modestly pressed together, and the story crashed right there. She just didn't look the part. It's hard to get people to disbelieve their own eyes.
They finally gave up and the court cops bundled Gazz out a side door where I could see Juvee personnel putting him back in shackles. And the Republic was safe once more. I don't know what happened to Gazz. Maybe they let him go for his cooperation. Or maybe he's in Guantanamo, his "cooperation" having been of a really inferior quality. I'd wish him luck but I don't care. I never liked the guy.
The Prosecutor then called a girl from school. She was somebody I didn't know. Her name was Robin and she was one of those people you never notice until they're suddenly in court saying you're a homicidal maniac and she was always real scared of you. They had her testifying that she saw Gazz and I one afternoon after school, fighting over Cassie. And it made her, yes, "Real scared."
Neither of our lawyers chose to question her much, though One-Way asked what she meant by "fighting"? Did she mean actual blows were struck or just shouting?
The girl said neither one. That Gazz and I were "just really intense and close to each other and it looked like they might fight. And I was scared. Real scared."
"But nothing actually happened, correct?"
"No. It was just scary."
One-Way sighed and shook his head as he looked through his notes and then said "Nothing more, Your Honor." Then Robin left the stand. She waved at someone in the audience as she was leaving.
After that, the judge called it a day. You could tell he was pretty upset with the Prosecutor for introducing such weak stuff. The guy had really hurt his case by putting on Gazz and Robin on the stand. Basically his case came down to a spot of blood on my jeans.
And so, I got to go back to my cell.