Ryne Pearson - Capitol Punishment

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“I’m not sure,” the woman answered, her small baby cooing softly in her arms. “The house across the street from me, well, this guy kind of stumbled out the front door and fell down. He’s just lying there on the walkway.”

“So a man collapsed. Did you hear or see anything else?” The 911 operator had already alerted the county’s fire-rescue dispatch, as well as the sheriffs department.

“No. I was just doing dishes when I noticed it. Should I go check and see if he’s all right?”

“No, ma’am. Just stay where you are. Now, do you know who the man is?”

“I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him at that house before. There’s only two of us on this road so you don’t miss folks too easily. God, I hope it’s nothing bad.”

“Don’t worry. We have a sheriffs unit rolling and fire-rescue will be there soon. Twelve-twelve Riverside, correct?”

The woman nodded to herself. “Right near Alamo.”

“Thank you. Help will be right there.”

The call, a medical emergency, warranted a code three — lights and sirens — response, but in the sparsely populated area in the north of Los Angeles County there was little to get in one’s way in any case. Eleven Adam Seven, a two-man unit out of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department Antelope Valley substation, had been given the priority call just a minute earlier. In the time since, Deputies Phillip Pearl and Danny Contreras had covered a mile and a half, leaving a low rooster tail of dust rising from the two-lane asphalt road in their wake.

“Right turn coining up,” Contreras warned his partner behind the wheel.

Pearl saw the sweep in the road and lifted his foot off the gas and began a steady push on the brake, the nose of the black and white cruiser diving for the road. “Hang on.”

A good grip on the Chevy’s door-mounted armrest kept Contreras planted firmly upright as his partner swung into the turn at thirty miles an hour. Ahead of them was a bare stretch of road with two houses coming at them fast.

“Twelve-twelve’s on the left.” Contreras undid his safety belt with his left hand and grabbed a flashlight from the charger as the cruiser pulled to a stop on the wrong side of the street.

“I’ll put us ninety-seven and get the med kit,” Pearl said.

“Gotcha. I’ll check our victim.” Contreras stepped from the car and walked a few paces to its front, where he stopped and checked his surroundings. His academy days were long behind him, but the training he’d received there, and the bullet he’d taken a few years after that, had ingrained in him a simple rule to live by: Don’t rush in. He scanned the front lawn, just greening in a wet autumn after a relentless summer, and the street side of the tan-colored house. Just as reported, lying outside the open front door was a body. From ten yards it looked about as lifeless as lifeless got, but the only way to know for sure was to get up close and personal. He’d done hundreds of body checks in his career, but had never been able to distance himself enough from the deceased to make the act just another part of his job. Maybe, though, this check would yield some sign of life. Just maybe.

Contreras trotted around a surprisingly green hedge toward the victim. Nearer the open entry door he slowed, checking the darkened interior as best he could from his position in the bright sunlight. Nothing was obviously amiss, so he knelt down and lightly pressed two fingers against the man’s neck in search of a carotid pulse. His other hand probed the body for telltale signs of trauma — blood, bruising, etc. — but found only a sticky wetness soaking the victim’s shirt. He pulled his moistened hand away and sniffed at the liquid, but it had no scent. A swipe of his hand on his uniform pants cleaned it off. His fingers stayed on the neck for a few more seconds until further searching was fruitless. They no longer had a victim…they had a body.

He started to stand to tell his younger partner not to bother with the med kit, but never made it out of his crouch.

Pearl slammed the trunk lid after removing the orange med kit, walked toward his partner and the victim, and froze near the hedge at what he saw. Contreras, who had been giving the man a quick once-over just a few seconds before, was no longer crouched at his side. Instead, the twelve-year veteran was in a heap atop the body of their victim. His face, lying sideways on the man’s chest, was a blank mask of clenched teeth and vibrating features, the eyes open, falling back into their sockets, and the mouth puffing reflexively.

The med kit hit the ground as Phil’s rover came out of its belt holder. “ELEVEN ADAM SEVEN — OFFICER DOWN! TWELVE-TWELVE RIVERSIDE!”

He vaulted the low hedge, gun coming out to cover the open door — Was there a shot? I didn’t hear anything! — and was at his partner’s side in an instant, his hands easing him off the body as he searched for some reason for the collapse. Air passed in and out of Danny Contreras in strange spurts, but it was unnatural, reflexive, like the death throes of a landed fish. Like no breathing action Pearl had ever seen or heard. He searched for some cause, some reason for his partner’s collapse. It was as if an invisible assailant had struck his partner…had struck…had—

Then Deputy Phillip Pearl knew. He was three years out of the academy, a former military policeman and veteran of the Gulf War. With just a few seconds of life remaining, the intensive training he’d received after arriving in Saudi in the fall of ‘90 came back to him. But all it brought was the realization that there was nothing to be done. He heard sirens in the distance, strange, high-pitched warbles that stretched out to long wails, then became loud snaps as violent as thunder as his brain stopped processing auditory signals in any recognizable way. He thought briefly about reaching for his rover, but couldn’t. His body would not respond to even the simplest command. Arms and legs seemed like separate entities functioning on their own.

CRACK!

He thought he felt motion, in his face or head, maybe, but couldn’t pin it down. What little of his vision that had lasted this long then faded to blackness, leaving him trapped, somehow still sensing something, his mind wandering as he tried to focus on his family, thinking of them this last time. This very last—

“All rise.”

Judge Malcolm Horner entered his ninth-floor courtroom from chambers to the sound of the marshal beckoning all in attendance to stand. The ten-year veteran of the federal judiciary walked straight to the bench without looking to the gallery, an assembled mass of litigants, press, and interested parties that filled the long, narrow courtroom in the Edward Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles to capacity. Two low steps up put him on the granite-faced riser that supported the bench, an imposing cube of wood and marble that, when viewed from the back of the courtroom, had the appearance of an altar. Had the architects had the space they might have added a vaulted ceiling to complete the image of a cathedral. God over the law, the law over man.

That impression was not lost on John Barrish, though he denied the existence of a deity, as well as the power of the state to judge a man for his beliefs. And that’s exactly what this was. Barrish knew. The papers of officialdom might say United States v. John Barrish , but they really meant State versus Freedom. A nonexistent God could not pass judgment on him, and a corrupt, hegemonic government could certainly not break him and make him deny who he was, from where he came, or the right of his kind to take their place in history. They feared what he stood for. They feared those who stood with him. They feared the truth.