Illegal Alien Read online

  Brisbee smiled broadly, as if warming to a favorite topic. “Ah, my brother, the human eye! Testament to God’s genius! Proof of divine creation! Of all the marvels of the universe, perhaps none bears stronger testament than the human eye to the lie of evolution.”

  “Why is that, Reverend?”

  “Why, Brother Dale, it’s simply because nothing so complex as the human eye could possibly have evolved by chance. The evolutionists would have us believe that life progresses in tiny incremental stages, a little at a time, instead of having been created full-blown by God. But the eye—well, the eye is a perfect counterexample. It could not have evolved step-by-step.”

  Someone in the courtroom snickered, presumably at the mental picture of eyes marching along. Brisbee ignored the sound. “The evolutionists,” he went on, his voice filling the courtroom as it had so many churches, “say complex structures, such as feathers, must have evolved by steps: first as scales for insulation, which then perhaps elongated into a frayed coat to aid running animals in catching small insects inside this fringe, and only then, fortuitously, would the proto-bird discover, lo and behold, that they were also useful for flight. I don’t believe that for one moment, but it’s the kind of stuff they spout. But that argument falls down completely when we contemplate God’s masterwork, the human eye! What good is half an eye? What good is a quarter of an eye? An eye either is an eye, or it isn’t; it can’t evolve in steps.”

  Brisbee beamed out at the courtroom. They were all his flock. “Consider the finest camera you can buy today. It’s still not nearly as effective as our eyes. Our eyes adjust automatically to wide variations in lighting—we can see by the light of a crescent moon, or we can see by the brightest summer’s sun. Our eyes can adjust easily between natural light, incandescent light, and fluorescent light, whereas a photographer would have to change filters and film to accommodate each of those. And our eyes are capable of perceiving depth better than any pair of cameras can, even when aided by a computer. A basketball player can routinely determine the precise distance to the hoop, throwing perfect shot after perfect shot. Yes, I can see why the Tosok took the human’s eye as a souvenir—”

  “Now, now, Reverend,” said Dale. “You don’t know that that’s what happened.”

  “I can see,” continued Reverend Brisbee, somewhat miffed, “why anyone from anywhere would admire the human eye, as a sterling example of God’s craftsmanship.”

  At nine A.M. the next morning, Dale and Frank entered Judge Pringle’s chambers. Linda Ziegler was already there, as were juror number 209—a pudgy white woman of forty-one—and a man Dale had seen around the courthouse over the years but didn’t know. A moment later Judge Pringle entered, accompanied by a stenographer. Pringle waited for the stenographer to get set up, then said, “Mr. Wong, will you please introduce yourself to the others?”

  “Ernest Wong, representing Juror 209.”

  “Thank you,” said the judge. “Let the record show that also present are Ms. Ziegler for the People, and Mr. Rice for Mr. Hask, who is not here. Also present with my permission is Dr. Frank Nobilio, American delegate to the Tosok entourage. Now, Juror 209, good morning to you.”

  “Good morning, Judge,” said Juror 209, her voice nervous.

  “Okay,” said Judge Pringle, “Juror 209, your attorney is here. Feel free to stop me anytime you want to consult with Mr. Wong, and Mr. Wong, of course anytime you wish to interpose an objection or make an inquiry, you are entitled to do so.”

  “Thank you,” said Wong.

  “Now, Juror 209, some questions have been raised.” Pringle held up a hand, palm out. “I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong, but when questions are raised relating to juror conduct or juror impaneling, the appellate law here in California requires me to make an investigation, so that’s what we’re doing. Okay? Okay. You were asked to fill out a questionnaire prior to serving on this jury, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you fill out the questionnaire truthfully?”

  “Objection!” said Wong. “Calls for self-incrimination.”

  Judge Pringle frowned. “Very well. Juror 209, we have a problem here. Question 192 on the jury questionnaire asked if you had ever seen a flying saucer. Do you recall that question?”

  “I don’t recall a question using that term, no, Your Honor.”

  Judge Pringle looked even more irritated. “Well, let me read the question to you.” She rummaged on her desk, looking for the questionnaire. Linda Ziegler rose to her feet, her copy in hand. Pringle motioned for her to bring it forward. The judge took the sheaf of papers, flipped through it until she found the appropriate page, and read, “‘Have you ever seen a UFO?’ Do you recall that question?”

  “Yes.”

  “You recall it now,” said Pringle.

  “I’ve always recalled it—but you asked me about flying saucers, not UFOs.”

  Pringle was getting more annoyed by the minute. “What’s the difference?”

  “A UFO is an unidentified flying object. By definition, it’s something the nature of which you don’t know.”

  “And you put on your survey that you’d never seen a UFO.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Court has received a letter from a member of the Bay Area chapter of MUFON. That’s the…the—”

  “The Mutual UFO Network,” said Juror 209.

  “Yes,” said Pringle. “A member of the Bay Area chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, saying that you were a speaker at one of their meetings about eight years ago. Is that true?”

  “Yes. I lived in San Rafael back then.”

  “What was the subject of your talk?”

  “My abduction experience.”

  “You were kidnapped?” said Pringle.

  “Not that kind of abduction. I was taken aboard an alien spacecraft.”

  Judge Pringle visibly moved away from the woman, shifting her weight on her chair. “Taken aboard an alien spacecraft,” she repeated, as if the words had been unclear the first time.

  “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  “But you specified on your questionnaire that you had never seen a UFO.”

  “And I never have. What I saw was wholly identified. It was an alien spaceship.”

  “Alien—as in from another world?”

  “Well, actually, I believe the aliens come from another dimension—a parallel time track, if you will. There’s a lot of good evidence for that interpretation.”

  “So you’re making a distinction between a UFO—something unknown—and an alien spaceship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Surely you’re splitting hairs, Juror 209.”

  “I do not believe so, ma’am.”

  “You felt completely comfortable denying having ever seen a UFO on your jury questionnaire?”

  “Yes.”

  “But surely the spirit of the question—”

  “I can’t comment on the spirit of the question. I simply answered the question that was asked of me.”

  “But you knew what information we were looking for.”

  “With all due respect, Your Honor, it says right on the questionnaire, it says—may I see that? May I see the questionnaire?” Pringle handed it to her. “It says right here, right at the top, it says, ‘There are no right or wrong answers. Do not try to anticipate the answers likely to get you placed on or removed from the jury panel. Simply answer the questions as asked truthfully and to the best of you knowledge.’”

  Pringle sighed. “And you felt what you gave was a truthful answer?”

  “Objection!” said Wong. “Self-incrimination.”

  “All right,” said Pringle. “Did you—”

  “No, I don’t mind answering,” said Juror 209. “Yes, I felt my answer was truthful.”

  “But you know in court we want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Forgive me, Your Honor, but it’s been quite clear throughout this case that you want no
thing of the kind. I’ve seen Mr. Rice, there, and Mrs. Ziegler, cut off all sorts of answers because they were more than either of them wanted the jury to hear. By every example I’ve ever seen, the Court wants specific answers to the narrow, specific questions posed—and I provided just that.”

  “Did you have a special reason to want to be on this jury?”

  “Objection!” said Wong. “Self-incrimination again.”

  “All right, all right,” said Pringle. “Juror 209, I don’t mind telling you I’m extremely disappointed in you. As of this moment, you’re dismissed from the jury panel.”

  “Please don’t do that,” said Juror 209.

  “You’ve given me no choice,” said Pringle. “Just be happy that I’m not finding you in contempt. Deputy Harrison will take you home. We’ll try to get you there before the press gets wind of this, but I suspect they’ll be all over you by this evening. I cannot order you to be silent, but I do ask you to please consider the impact any statements you might make to the media will have. All right? You’re dismissed.” Pringle sighed, then turned to the lawyers. “We’ll move up the appropriate alternate juror. I’ll see you in the courtroom in”—she looked at her watch—“twenty minutes.”

  The lawyers rose and filed out of the judge’s chambers. Frank sidled over to stand next to Dale. “Does this happen often?”

  “People with a particular ax to grind trying to get on juries?” Dale shrugged. “It’s most common in cases like this one, with big potential jury pools. Obviously, you can’t volunteer for jury duty, but if you ask a big enough group of people to come on down, there’s bound to be someone who wants on.”

  Frank waited for Ziegler to drift far enough down the corridor. “This woman—actually, she would have been on our side, wouldn’t she?”

  Dale nodded. “Probably. A real alien-lover. Anyway, one of the alternates will replace her.”

  “Let’s hope that it’s somebody who isn’t crazy but will still support us.”

  Dale grunted.

  “What?” said Frank.

  Dale lowered his voice. “I still haven’t figured out what to do with the information from Dr. Hernandez, but, well, it may only be crazy people who will support us.”

  Frank looked like he was going to protest this, but after a moment he nodded. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  Dale Rice came into the courtroom. He looked at the new juror. Of course, he’d been in the room since the beginning, but this was his first day as an actual voting member of the panel. He was an Asian man, perhaps twenty-five or thirty. There was nothing in his face to convey which way he would vote. Dale smiled at him—a warm smile, a “trust me” smile, a “we’re all in this together” smile.

  It couldn’t hurt.

  The day had been devoted to minor witnesses and arguing points of law. Dale got home after nine P.M., exhausted—as he was more and more these days; he couldn’t deny his age.

  Years ago, after having received a Los Angeles County “Lawyer of the Year” award, Dale Rice was asked by a reporter “whether he was proud today to be a Black American.”

  Dale gave the reporter the kind of deadly cross-examinational stare normally reserved for lying police officers. “I’m proud every day to be a Black American,” he said.

  Still, there weren’t many times when it was an actual advantage to be African-American. He was used to the screwups in restaurants. Waitresses bringing him the wrong meal—mixing up his order with that of the only other black person in the entire place. White people constantly confused him with other black men, men who, except for their skin color, looked nothing like him, and were often decades younger.

  But the one time it perhaps was to his advantage to be big and black was when he wanted to go for late-night walks. Even here in Brentwood, most people were afraid to be out on the streets after midnight, but Dale knew that no one would try to mug him, and since he rarely got home from the office before nine P.M., he was grateful that at least the streets weren’t denied to him after dark, as they were to so many others. Of course, there was always the problem of police cars pulling up to him and asking to see his ID—for no good reason other than it was night, and he was black, and this was a rich white neighborhood.

  Tonight, as he walked along, he thought about the case. The evidence against Hask seemed compelling. His lack of an alibi; his having shed his skin the night of the murder; the fact that he was experienced at dissection, having recently carved up the body of the dead Tosok, Seltar; the video showing him wielding precisely the sort of cutting device used to commit the crime—and his musings on that video about his people having given up too much by no longer hunting their own food.

  Dale continued along the sidewalk. Up ahead, coming toward him, a white man was walking a small dog. The man caught sight of Dale, and crossed over to the other side of the road. Dale shook his head. It never ended—and it never ceased to hurt.

  Judge Pringle should never have allowed the jury to watch Stant shed his skin. Perhaps that alone would be grounds for an appeal, should the likely happen and the jury find Hask guilty. And even if Ziegler hadn’t been able to raise the point in the courtroom at that moment, she’d doubtless make it in her closing argument: Hask and Stant were half brothers, and their regular shedding should have been closely synchronized. That it wasn’t was apparent proof that Hask’s shedding had been induced—and why else induce it on the day of the murder, except that he himself had committed the crime?

  Dale’s footsteps echoed in the night. A few dogs, behind high stone fences, barked at him, but he didn’t mind that; dogs barked equally at everyone. If Dale’s life hadn’t been so busy, he’d have liked to have had a dog of his own.

  Or a wife, for that matter.

  He’d been engaged during law school, but he and Kelly had broken up before he’d graduated. She’d seen then what the work was like, the commitment, the fact that there really was room for nothing else in his life beside his career. Dale thought of her often. He had no idea what had become of her, but he hoped, wherever she was, that she was happy.

  He was approaching a corner, a pool of light shining on the concrete sidewalk from the street lamp overhead. He stepped into the light and began walking now down the perpendicular street.

  And then it hit him—how all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together.

  Christ, if he was right—

  If he was right, then Hask was innocent.

  And he could prove it.

  Of course, Hask would not cooperate. But it wouldn’t be the first time Dale had saved a client despite the client’s wishes. As he headed down that dark street Dale felt sure he knew who Hask was protecting.

  He’d already arranged to examine Smathers tomorrow, but after that he would call Dr. Hernandez. And then—

  Dale turned around and headed back home, moving as fast as his ancient form would allow.

  CHAPTER

  31

  “State and spell your name, please,” said the clerk.

  The square-headed man with white hair and a white beard leaned into the microphone on the witness stand. “Smathers, Packwood. S-M-A-T-H-E-R-S.”

  Dale could have called someone else at this point, but by using Smathers as an expert witness for the defense, he hoped to communicate to any jurors who had gotten wind of Smathers’s attempts to devise a method to execute a Tosok that Smathers did not, in fact, necessarily believe Hask was guilty; it would, after all, be particularly damning if the jury believed that a member of the Tosok entourage thought Hask had indeed killed Calhoun.

  Dale moved over to the lectern. “What is your profession, sir?”

  “I’m a professor of exobiology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto.”

  Dale introduced Smathers’s massive CV into evidence, then: “Dr. Smathers, you heard Reverend Brisbee’s discourse on the human eye. Do you agree with it?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “You don’t believe that
the complexity of the human eye represents clear proof of divine creation?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Your Honor,” said Ziegler, rising. “We object to this. What has the nature of the eye got to do with this case?”

  “Your Honor,” said Dale, “Ms. Ziegler has put much emphasis on the missing parts of Dr. Calhoun’s body. Surely we’re entitled to explore whatever reasons there might be for those particular parts to be taken.”

  “I’m inclined to grant some latitude,” said Pringle, “but don’t let this go on too long, Mr. Rice.”

  “I shall be the very soul of brevity, Your Honor,” said Dale, with a small bow. “Now, Dr. Smathers, you heard the reverend’s contention that the eye could not possibly have evolved in stages. I can have the court reporter read back the exact quote, if you like, but I believe the gist of it was, ‘What good is half an eye? What good is a quarter of an eye?’ Do you agree with that?”

  Smathers smiled and spread his hands. “Today, we consider a one-eyed man to be at least partially disabled: he has a drastically reduced field of view including no peripheral vision on one side of his body, and, of course, he has no depth perception, since depth perception is a function of stereoscopic vision—which requires two simultaneous views of the same scene from slightly different angles.”

  Smathers paused, and took a drink of water from the glass on the witness stand. “Well, there’s an old saying, sir. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If nobody else had two eyes, one eye would be a spectacular improvement over no eyes. You wouldn’t be considered disabled; rather, you’d be considered incredibly advantaged.”

  “But, still,” said Dale, “that one eye is a miraculous creation, no?”

  “Not really. A human eye consists of a lens for focusing light; a retina, which is a delicate, light-sensitive membrane at the back of the eye—sort of like the eye’s ‘film’; and the optic nerve for transferring information to the brain. The reverend is right, of course, that three such complex structures couldn’t simultaneously appear as the result of a single mutation. The eye, evolutionarily, started out as light-sensitive tissue—which had the ability to distinguish light from shadow. Now, that’s not half an eye. That’s not a quarter of an eye. It’s the tiniest, least significant fraction of an eye. There’s nothing miraculous about light-sensitive cells. Our skin is full of their precursors; you tan because of exposure to ultraviolet light, after all. Well, not you, sir, but—”