Coyote the Trickster yawned in perfect boredom, and out of his gaping mouth tumbled the blue Earth wrapped in an old black Blanket. When Coyote saw what he had done, he said aloud, "Good joke," then laughed uproariously at his own cleverness.
       Coyote's words resounded like thunder beneath the Blanket and his laughter fell as rain upon the Earth, making slimy green puddles from which Everything-that-is grew.
       Even the First People came from the puddles.
       They crawled out of them on their bellies, then stood up beneath the old black Blanket and feared.
       When he saw the People's dark confusion, Coyote chuckled for a moment, then snapped his white-tipped tail like a whip across the sky, leaving behind a Story that looked just like the Sun.
       "Ahh!" the First People exclaimed, for now they could see their own shadows, which they studied in fascination.
       Soon they forgot the Story that lit up the Earth and ended their confusion.
       Coyote howled in dismay because the People were so foolish. His howl echoed in the Canyons many times over until the People thought the echoes were the First Story.
       Coyote tried to laugh at their new foolishness, but nothing came out of him but dismay, which the People called Death.
       Then Coyote couldn't stop laughing.
       He grabbed his sides and rolled across the world in a fit of glee.
       Finally he reached the hills where Dog was curled up in a ball.
       "You wouldn't believe what I just did," he bragged, then told her in great detail of his exploits. She listened attentively and nodded at all the right moments, for she knew it would be her turn when Coyote was done.
       "You wouldn't believe what I just did," Dog announced, then held up each pup she had given birth to while Coyote was off playing.
       Coyote gasped in amazement, then noticed that one of them had a white- tipped tail exactly like his own.
       "You shall fly between worlds," he told that pup. "The world of the foolish People with little memory shall be your home, while the world of the Story shall be your salvation."
       I was that pup.
       This is that Story.

The first time I saw the Dog he was trussed in chains and locked behind two sets of steel bars.  He stood rigidly in the holding cell, his pale hands crossed at the wrists, staring at something only he could see.  I couldn't tell if he were a simpleton or a farm boy who'd had too much to drink and forgotten his own name.  Then he stared straight at me through the bars, gave me a doleful look, threw back his head and howled, baying like a coon dog running in the night.
       I cringed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
       It was after six p.m. and I should have been sucking down my first Catamount Amber Ale instead of watching a human dog perform behind steel bars; but at exactly 5:57, just as I had been leaving the office, the phone had rung.  I don't know what it is about ringing phones, but I can't let sleeping dogs lie or ringing phones go unanswered.
       “Public Defender Office,” I had answered automatically, my mind already out the door and in the pub across the street.
       “Jimmy?”
       It was Diane, the public defender and my boss.  I could tell by her voice that something big was going down.  I could feel the tension that ran through the telephone lines directly from her to me.  Was it then the warning bells first sounded in the back of my mind?  Get ready, Jimmy, your life's about to change. . .
       “What's wrong?”
       “I'm at the courthouse.  Judge Stone just appointed us to the Dog Case.”
       The Dog Case is what the press had tagged a gruesome homicide of a six-month-old baby whose mother had left her asleep in a car seat while she ran inside the Mobil mini-mart to pay for her gas.
       Why Dog?
       Because when they finally found the baby's body in the hills five miles away, it had been shaken apart from the limbs the way some canines worry their prey.
       My stomach turned over just thinking about it.
       “Does that mean they've got the Dog?”
       “The suspect is at the jail right now.  I want you to go over there and stay with him until the sheriffs transport him to the courthouse.  It shouldn't be long.”
       “What's his name?”
       “John Doe for now.  Apparently he won't talk to the cops.”
       “Won't or can't?”
       “That's what I want you to find out.”
       “No problem.”  I was about to hang up when I heard her say something I didn't catch.  I yanked the receiver back to my ear.  “What was that?”
       “If he talks to you, make sure no one overhears the conversation.”
       “Give me a break, Diane.”  My voice was brittle with scorn.  I bristle whenever she plays lawyer with me.  Every so often I've got to remind her that it was me who trained her, not the other way around.
       A year ago when she had walked through the doors of this office for the first time, Diane was six months out of Vermont Law School.  She had just passed the Bar exam and finished her clerkship at a small private firm that made its money on real estate.  One Friday she's doing title searches in Stowe, the next Monday she's handling arraignments in St. Johnsbury.
       The morning of those first arraignments I could hear her losing her breakfast behind the glass-paneled door of the Ladies Room.  I didn't mention it, but stayed close to her throughout the morning.  I sat directly behind the defense table in the Caledonia County District Court and watched her knees shake uncontrollably every time she stood up to address the court.  But her voice never even quavered, and that made me think she might actually make a decent public defender.
       “And Jimmy . . .”
       “Yeah?”
       “Be careful.  There's something very weird about this case.”
       “There usually is,” I said in exaggeration, which broke the tension and made her laugh.  Diane has this bubbly laugh that tickles me every time I hear it.  “See you shortly,” I added, then gently put the receiver back into its blue plastic cradle.
       I heard the church bells on Main Street strike six times.  I could be at the jail in five minutes if I hurried.
       The Dog was waiting.

 

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2.  Lucky

The Dog's name at birth was Donald Allen Hall, but he called himself Lucky.  One side of his face was covered with a strawberry — a red wine-colored stain of skin that ran from above his left temple, across his forehead to the bridge of his nose, then nearly straight down the middle of his face into his shirt collar.  When you glanced at him, it's all that you saw.  Not the color of his eyes or the jut of his chin, just the strawberry that transformed his face into a harlequin's mask.
   At the time of his arrest he was twenty-two years old and homeless.  He had no family in Vermont, no friends, no job.  In short, if bail were set in this capital case, the Dog would languish in jail for lack of it.  Part of my job as a criminal defense investigator is making our clients look good to the court.  I can't accomplish that if they're sitting behind bars.  With Donald “Lucky” Hall, I'd need more than a little luck to make him look like anything other than a prime suspect of an act so heinous it shocked the conscience.
   I didn't know any of this about the Dog when I first heard him howl.  He was inside a large holding tank directly across from the tiny room where lawyers meet with their incarcerated clients.  The Dog's howl resounded in the concrete vault of the empty cell, sending chills up and down my spine.  I'd been working in the public defender system for ten years and had witnessed some strange behavior, but this was downright eerie.
   “Did I make him do that?” I asked Rod, the shift supervisor who had escorted me through the jail to the attorney's room.  I saw Rod nearly every day, and we had this unspoken agreement.  If Rod knew something I needed to know, he let it slip.  I returned the favor by keeping him posted on the anguish level of my clients.  The last thing Rod wanted on his shift was a suicide.
   “Naw, he's been howlin' like that since they brought him in an hour ago.  Reminds me of my first coon dog.  One night he's so worked up he follows a smart old coon into an apple tree, just scrabbles right up after it.  Soon as the dog's into the crotch of that tree, the coon jumps off a high branch into the night, leavin' the dog stuck behind, howlin' in fear and frustration to be tricked that way — treed by a coon!”
   I started to laugh out loud but was pulled up short when the Dog howled again, this time with such force that I flinched.
   “Yeah, that dog was a lot like this fellow here,” Rod said, cutting me a look out of the corner of one eye.
   I wondered if he were trying to tell me something he couldn't come right out and say.  I was about to ask when the Dog howled again.
   Normally, Rod's presence is enough to stifle anyone's baser instincts.  Though he stoops over as if gravity is dragging down his meaty shoulders, Rod standing tall is six feet six inches and 270 pounds.  When Rod had come back from Vietnam, a personnel officer at the Vermont Department of Corrections had taken one look at him and hired him on the spot, assigning him to the Goon Squad at the old Windsor State Prison.  Whenever a prisoner had started acting up, the Goon Squad had been sent in to “quiet things down.”
   That was a long time ago, but Rod continued to have a chilling effect on most people.
   Rod unlocked the two sets of steel bars to the holding cell, then motioned for the Dog to follow him.  The Dog was cuffed both at his wrists and ankles, and the cuffs were attached by heavy chains to a thick leather belt that was strapped around his waist.
   He took one look at Big Rod and backed away.
   “Gonna play that way, are we?”  A grim smile spread across Rod's face as he lumbered into the cell, wrapped a giant hand around the Dog's skinny arm, then half led, half dragged him across the hall to the attorney's room.
   We were deep in the heart of the jail beyond the reach of any natural light.  There was just one bulb recessed in the steel-plated ceiling.  It cast a pale orange glow on the sweating concrete walls, making everything indistinct and almost smoky, reminding me of the hellish scenes painted by Hieronymus Bosch.
   The Dog howled in misery the whole way across the hall, his harlequin's mask a study in torture.  Since I could see that Rod wasn't physically hurting him, I wondered what was behind the anguish so evident on the Dog's face.
   As they passed by I reached out a reassuring hand, but the Dog pulled back in fear and snarled at me, his chains rattling like Jacob Marley's in A Christmas Carol.
   Rod chuckled and, as he shoved the Dog into the attorney's room, said, “I'll leave you two lovebirds alone so you can get better acquainted.”  Even through the thick smudged lenses of his glasses, I could see Rod's eyes twinkling at the prospect of my being stuck alone with the Dog.  While we had a solid trust relationship, it clearly was within the confines of our adversarial roles, which meant we both took pleasure in the other's professional tribulations.
   “Before you disappear, I'd appreciate it if you'd remove all the hardware from my client.”
   “You just might regret that, good buddy.  Trooper Smalley is at the emergency room right now gettin' stitched up from bites your client inflicted before they could get him lashed down.”
   “If that cretin Smalley ever tried to bust me, I'd bite him, too.”
   “I guess I can't argue that one.”  Rod laughed and unlocked the cuffs.  “But remember, this is your idea and I'm not responsible for any harm you may incur in the performance of your dubious duties.”
   “Big Man Rod, you're simply the most eloquent screw I've ever known.”
   Rod bellowed at my sarcastic use of the old epithet for a jailer, then added as he left the room, “From the looks of it, I'm ‘bout the best screw you're gonna see tonight.”
   I grimaced in distaste at the sexual entendre.  Though I'd unwittingly opened the door to it, I don't play the sex-talk game, which I consider crude and counterproductive.

Even after nine hours in court, Diane Ashley-Warner, Esq., looked exquisite to me.  It wasn't just her physical appearance, which I found alluring enough, but something deeper, a kind of sensual energy that pulled me towards her unrelentingly.  Of course Diane was unaware of this.  Long ago I had learned the trick of masking sexual interest with smug indifference.  When you look the way I do, dissembling is a survival skill.  Yet at certain rare moments I let slip the iron mask to study her unawares.
      This was one of those moments.
      As I had entered the first set of double doors on the Eastern Avenue side of the brick courthouse, I had spied Diane at the other end of the long hallway. She was talking animatedly to someone inside the district court clerk's office.  I'd stopped before knocking on the second set of glass doors and lingered a moment, feasting on the sight of this woman who wielded more raw power over me than she'll ever know.
      I love to watch her body speak its subtle tongues.  The quick sweep of her elegant fingers as they punctuate a point.  The way her hips swivel as she laughs.  The slight tilt of her head when perplexed.  All of it titillates and amuses me, making me feel more alive than I manage on my own.
      She was dressed in a pale yellow cotton shift that hung to her knees, a purposely loose fit to hide her body from invasive eyes like mine.  Diane has a runner’s body, thin yet lithe, her legs long and finely muscled, her shoulders broad, her breasts small.  She has a pointy nose on a face that’s too often too solemn, but when she smiles she holds nothing back.
      Except for the black blazer whose padded shoulders gave her the more formal look required for court, she could have been headed for a boat party on Lake Champlain.  Her silver-blonde hair, which must have been white as a child, was held back by a barrette at the nape of her neck.  She had black slipper-like shoes on her feet, the right one softly stroking the back of her left calf.  As she did so, a black leather shoulder bag swung slightly at her side.  The only jewelry she wore was a pair of tiny gold ear studs and a very large and ostentatious diamond ring.
      I once had chided her about the ring, which I’d implied was out of character, and she had defended it as Bob’s choice.  “It was his mother’s wedding ring,” she had replied curtly, obviously aware of the lavish statement the ring achieved.
      At that moment I'd looked into her green eyes and seen that I had hit a sore spot, so I mumbled something about the value of tradition and changed the subject.
      
      Now as I studied her I could see my own reflection in the glass panel of the door before me.  What I saw was a tired-looking man of forty-eight with dark bulging eyes and thinning gray hair pulled tightly back into a long pony tail.  A thick salt-n-pepper beard dominated my face but couldn't hide the flat, wide nose, the swarthy complexion.  Thick-bodied and short, I was dressed in my usual uniform:  dark jeans, a blue work shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a knit tie loosely knotted, a tan corduroy sport coat I'd found at a church rummage sale.  I saw my rumpled reflection, then through it to Diane, and realized not for the first time the absurdity of my infatuation.
      An ugly man should know his limits, resist and dissemble.
      I resumed my iron mask of indifference and pounded on the locked inner door to the courthouse.  The glass rattled loudly, making Diane turn towards me.  I saw her eyes light up in recognition, then she said something to the person inside the office, whose braying laughter spilled into the hallway, so I knew it was Lucy Miller, the district court clerk.  Miller must have pressed the buzzer that unlocked the door, for I heard the lock click open.  Even in pastoral Vermont, court security was getting tighter every year.
      Diane turned away and headed down the hallway in my direction.  Her black slippers made soft sliding sounds on the tiled floor.  Her eyes bore into mine, making me flush with anticipation.
      We met outside the jury room where we usually interview clients before arraignments.  She stood very close to me, our shoulders nearly touching, and then she placed a hand on my arm, pulling me even closer.  Our faces were so near I could feel her breath on my neck, and for a moment I thought her lips were parting in invitation.
      My fantasy splintered as her lips broke into lawyer's words.
      “Lucy just told me that Judge Stone is biting at the bit to get this over with so we can all go home, but I convinced Lucy we need a few minutes to go over the case with our client before the arraignment.  What did you find out at the jail?”
      I flinched inside, then tried to form a response but couldn't.  What I had interpreted as intimacy was merely Diane being professionally discreet.  I turned away from her and opened the door to the jury room.
      When she followed me inside, I said with my back to her, “Not much, he wouldn't talk to me either.  I wouldn't even know his name now except I got lucky as I left the jail.”
      “Lucky?”
      “You got it — Lucky — that's what he calls himself.”
      “What's his legal name?”
      “Donald Allen Hall.  I know this only because I ran into Sue Lecroix.  Do you know her?”
      “Isn't she a new correctional officer?”
      “That's right.  Turns out she also volunteers at the community meals held at Grace Church.  He apparently has been coming there to eat for the past few months.  Sue recognized him.  He used to live on a farm near her parents' hunting camp in North Danville.  She told me he was a foster kid there.  Apparently the farm family had a contract with the state to provide emergency shelter for kids who're especially troubled.”
      “And our client was one of them?”
      “Definitely.  Sue told me he rarely talks, and then only in response to direct questions.  She also told me he has no family here.  No one knows much about him, just his name and age.  He simply appeared one evening at the rest area on Interstate 91 in Lyndonville.  The attendant said he saw a battered old Chevy with Connecticut plates.  Someone shoved a teenaged kid out the door, then took off fast.  He called the cops, and Lucky ended up living with Sue's neighbors until he turned eighteen.”
      “I thought social services keeps working with kids like him even after eighteen.”
      “They probably did, but that was four years ago and they must have given up at some point because Sue says he's been living in a tent down by the river underneath the Portland Street Bridge.”
      Diane considered this for a moment, then went back to an earlier point she wanted clarified.  “If the farm family provided temporary shelter, why did he continue to live there?”
      “I don't know.  Maybe social services couldn't find anywhere else to place him.  I guess he was too weird for their long term foster homes.”
      “You mean because he doesn't talk?”
      “Not exactly.”
      Just then we heard the courthouse doors open and the sound of a dog whimpering.  I looked at Diane and inclined my head in the direction of the whimper.
      “Tell me that's not who I think it is,” Diane said, her eyes widening in disbelief.
      “You ain't heard nothin' yet,” I said as a baying howl erupted in the high-ceilinged hallway.
      A gruff voice hissed “Shut-up!”  Then there was a sharp rap on the frosted glass of the jury room door.  When Diane opened it, two grim-looking sheriff's deputies stood on either side of Lucky.  I'd seen both of them before but didn't know them by name.
      “Here's your client,” the taller one said, layering more contempt on the word “client” than I thought possible.
      “We'll be sitting right there,” the second deputy said, pointing with his trigger finger at a bench directly across the hall.  Then he shoved Lucky inside the room and quickly closed the door before Diane could object to the shove.
      As soon as Lucky spotted me, he shuffled over to my side of two large conference tables placed end-to-end in the narrow room.  His chains rattled as he sidled up to me.  He whimpered a few moments then stopped, clearly calmed by my presence, which surprised me.
      Diane took it all in without comment, then walked to the other side of the tables and sat down in one of the Windsor chairs.  She removed a file from her black leather shoulder bag and opened it.  Inside was the Information, a pink sheet of paper that contained the formal criminal charges brought by the State's Attorney.  Attached to it were affidavits by the investigating officers, including Trooper Smalley.  She read them over carefully, then turned to Lucky and said, “My name is Diane.  I'm the public defender for Caledonia County.  Judge Stone, who'll be presiding at your arraignment in a few minutes, has appointed me to represent you, at least for the arraignment.”
      Lucky stared at her blankly.
      “Would you like to sit down?” Diane asked, motioning towards a chair in front of him and directly across the wide table from her.
      When he didn't respond, she tried again.  “What's your name?”
      He just moved closer to me, clearly disturbed by her persistence.
      Then Diane abruptly pushed back the Windsor chair and stood up.  The steel-capped chair legs scraped loudly on the floor, which made Lucky wince.  Diane started walking along the other side of the table towards the windows at the end of the room, dodging chairs in her way.  It was stuffy and dark in the room, so I assumed she was going to open a window or raise the dark green shades.  Instead of stopping at the windows she kept coming around the second conference table until she was on our side of the room.  She walked right up to Lucky, looked directly into his eyes, and smiled at him warmly.
      “Let me start again,” she said.  “My name is Diane.”  She held out her hand, and when Lucky didn't take it, she continued reaching towards him until she gently touched his forearm.  Lucky looked down at the floor, avoiding her gaze, but he didn't pull away.
      Then she said softly, “It's okay, Lucky.”
      When he heard her say his name, he snuck a glance before quickly lowering his eyes again.
      Diane patted his arm and pulled two chairs out from the table so that they faced one another.  She sat down in one and motioned to the other.  Lucky glanced at her again, hesitated, then sat in the chair, his shoulders hunched over and his head hanging.
      Diane reached out and took both his hands in hers.  As she did so, the chain that was strapped to the belt on his waist rattled slightly.
      “Do you have any idea why you are here, Lucky?” she asked in a voice uncharacteristically gentle.
      Lucky looked up at her with his doleful eyes, then shook his head, almost imperceptibly.  If I hadn't been watching intently, I would have missed it.
      “I didn't think so,” Diane said.  She studied him a moment more, glanced at me, then continued.  “The police say you took a six-month-old baby out of her mother's car and then killed her by shaking her body until it broke apart.”
      Lucky responded, as he had in the jail, as if he'd been punched in the face.
      “I'm sorry, Lucky.  I don't want to upset you, but we have to go over this before the arraignment.  As part of the arraignment, the judge first must decide if there's been a crime committed, which obviously there has, and then whether it's likely that you are the person who committed it.  That's called determining probable cause.  The state police who arrested you claim that you were seen by the store manager at the mini-mart at the time of the kidnapping.”  She dropped Lucky's hands and reached across the gleaming maple table to grab the paperwork.  After glancing at the Information she said, “This was almost three weeks ago on a Friday afternoon, September 25.  Do you remember anything about that day?”
      This time Lucky didn't respond at all as far as I could tell.
      “Lucky, you have to think about this.  It's important that you remember where you were on that day, who you were with, what happened.  You have to be able to help us.  If you weren't there at the mini-mart, if you can prove you were somewhere else entirely, we can claim you have an alibi, but we have to make the claim soon or lose the legal right to that defense.”
      It was as if she hadn't spoken, and I could see that Diane was losing her patience.  Her voice took on a more aggressive tone.  “Lucky, this is important.  You must talk with me.  You're being charged with murder and kidnapping!  You could end up spending the rest of your life behind bars, whether you did it or not.  Please talk to me!”
      She might as well have been speaking to the wall.  Lucky had gone somewhere else.  He was an empty container.  No one home.
      As soon as she realized this, Diane turned to me and casually announced, “I'm going to ask Judge Stone to order a competency evaluation.”
      “Don't do it, Diane.”
      Her face flushed with anger.  “Why the hell not?  My client won't even talk to me!”
      “Because they'll never find him competent, and you know it.  It's a cheap shot:  Send your difficult client off to the shrinks and never see him again.  No trial, no conviction, no work, just Waterbury State Hospital for Lucky until he dies or they kill him with their so-called ‘treatments.'  Is that what you want?”
      She glared at me, then said, nearly shouting, “This is my call, not yours!  If he can't communicate, he can't assist in his defense, which means he's legally incompetent to stand trial.  I don't know what your problem is, but take it somewhere else!”
      I couldn't believe she was saying this.  “I thought we were a team, Diane.”
      “Not when you're attacking my professional judgment.”
      “Fuck your professional judgment!  We're talking about a human life here.”
      “What about the victim?  Was hers not ‘a human life'?”
      I shook my head in disbelief.  “I don't know where you're coming from on this.  Just because he won't talk to you doesn't mean he's guilty.  We have no idea what happened that day, whether he was even there.”
      “And how do you propose to find out?”
      “I don't know, but we'll never get the chance if you go ahead with your competency request.”
      “I don't see any alternative.  At least he won't be in jail.”
      “There are worse places than jail, Diane.”  As soon as it was out, I wished I hadn't said it.  She'd hear the pain in my voice, and it pricked her curiosity.  She looked at me a long moment, then asked quietly, “Why do you say that?”
      I stared back at her, resisting her green-eyed gaze until the silence that rose up between us solidified like a granite wall, each of us on either side of it.
      There was a knock on the door, which opened just enough for Lucy Miller to stick her head in.

4.  The Defendant

Accusing a public defender of selling out her client does not exactly enhance career longevity, but at the time I didn't care.  Lucky deserved better than Diane was giving him, and I was the only one around to remind her of that.  If doing so meant I had to put my job on the line, then I would.  I'm not a hero, but I'm no wage-slave, either.  Besides, street lawyers are supposed to be above the hierarchal mindset of their more conventional colleagues, or so I always believed.
      As we entered the small courtroom across the hall, I hoped Diane was reconsidering her position on Lucky, but no sooner had they sat down at counsel table than he let out one of his ear-splitting howls.  When Judge Stone grimaced in distaste, Diane turned to me with a superior look that confirmed her earlier intention.  From the set of Judge Stone's face, it was obvious Diane would have no problem getting him to agree.
      Not that she would under normal circumstance.  Any of the actors — the judge, the attorney for either side, a guardian, even some “other person acting on behalf of the defendant” — can raise the issue of competency, though in practice it's left up to defense counsel to question whether their client can meet the two-pronged test.  Simply put, criminal defendants must be able to understand the charges they face and be able to assist their lawyers in their defense.  Although the threshold to be found competent is low, I doubted Lucky would ever pass the test.
      Which meant that unless a miracle happened, the whole question of his guilt or innocence would never be addressed.
      Judge Stone began reading aloud from the Information, but quickly stopped when he saw the John Doe.  “Mr. Brown,” he said to the State's Attorney, “do we have an ID for the defendant yet?”
      “I may be able to help, your Honor,” Diane said before Brown could reply.  “My client's name is Donald Allen Hall.”
      “What's your date of birth, Mr. Hall?”
      When the judge looked directly at him, Lucky started whimpering and glancing back to where I sat in the first row behind the defendant's table.
      “I don't have an exact date of birth,” Diane said, “but I believe he's twenty-two years old.”
      Lucky's whimpers grew louder and more insistent, the judge's irritation more pronounced.  Stone wasn't known for his patience, though in other ways he was a fair and competent judge.
      “Isn't there something you can do to calm your client?” he asked Diane.
      “I'm not sure, your Honor, but I think if my investigator was sitting next to him, it might help.”  As a non-lawyer I wasn't permitted on the other side of the bar that defined the legal arena.
      Judge Stone looked at me and nodded his head in consent.
      I quickly took the seat next to Lucky, which appeared to help.  Though his breathing, a kind of staccato panting, was loud enough to fill the courtroom, he immediately stopped whimpering and sat quite still.
      In the quiet that followed, Judge Stone quickly found probable cause, then informed the defendant of his legal rights, including the right to return the following day for the official arraignment.  As usual, Diane agreed to waive the 24-hour rule and proceed directly to the formal arraignment.  Stone then accepted the not guilty plea Diane tendered on behalf of Lucky, and at the State's request denied bail to the defendant, “given the capital nature of the offense.”
      When Diane stood up and requested an evaluation for competency, Stone glanced down at the form he was filling in and asked, “And insanity at the time of the offense, as well?”
      She hesitated, and I didn't know why since it was standard practice to address both issues if there were any chance that the defendant's mental state might be raised, either during trial or at sentencing.  When she started shuffling papers on the table in front of her, an obvious ploy for time, I suspected she was having second thoughts, that what I'd said was starting to sink in.  She glanced my way and saw me staring at her.  Then she stiffened and said emphatically, “Yes, your Honor.”
      He checked off the additional box on the form and then ordered Lucky sent directly to the Vermont State Hospital at Waterbury for up to thirty days.
      The State's Attorney jumped to his feet and objected.  “Your Honor, the State requests that the evaluation be done at the correctional center or at the offices of Northeast Kingdom Mental Health.  We do not believe that the defendant needs to be transferred to Vermont State Hospital.  We're under the impression that sending him there could result in unnecessary delay of the case.”
      What he really meant was that he was grasping at straws to avoid a finding of incompetency.  The last thing Brown wanted was an incompetent defendant, which would mean no clear conviction on a widely publicized homicide that had horrified the public.  State's Attorneys were elected officials in Vermont, and the next election was looming.  This was exactly the kind of case that incensed voters, exacerbating their worst fears about public safety.  Brown, who had been in office for the past sixteen years, knew that he had to bring in a quick and clear conviction with maximum punishment.
      Diane rose and countered Brown's argument.  “The Division of Mental Health is expediting all evaluations.  They clearly want to reduce their census in a continuing effort to downsize the state hospital.”  She put her hands inside the pockets of her black blazer, then continued.  “I also would point out that given my client's — ” she grasped for the right words — “current demeanor, he faces harassment and potential physical violence from the other inmates at the correctional center.  I suggest the state hospital would be a safer, more appropriate setting for the evaluation to occur.”
      Judge Stone nodded his head in agreement and said simply, “My order stands.  The State's objection is noted for the record.”  Then he stood up and started leaving the courtroom.  A pale man of fifty whose nervous eyes darted behind gold wire-rim glasses, Stone was short with a growing paunch, neither of which was noticeable until he came down from the elevated judge's bench.
      “Judge Stone,” the State's Attorney called after him.  Walter Brown had a high, almost whiny voice that seemed at odds with his physical stature, for he was a tall, trim man who always held himself erect as though he were standing at attention.
      Stone turned brusquely back, clearly annoyed.  “Mr. Brown, I am not eager to hear whatever it is you insist on saying.  We have been in this courtroom since eight o'clock this morning and it is now nearly seven in the evening.”
      “I'm well aware of that your Honor, but I want to point out that 13 V.S.A. 4815 requires that the defendant go through a screening process before a formal evaluation occurs.”
      Brown was a fighter who never gave up, even on the most picayune points.  He was relentless, some said ruthless, and it made him one of the toughest prosecutors in the state.
      Stone turned to Diane for help, and while she knew the prosecutor was legally on solid ground, she said, “If the State is truly concerned with timeliness, it ought to understand that the screening process itself will result in additional delay.  At this time of night, it's unlikely that the competency screener would be immediately available.  The statute allows the court to forego the screener's recommendations if they can't be made within two hours of the defendant's appearance at court.”
      Judge Stone considered the options for a moment, then turned to the State's Attorney.  “Thank you, Mr. Brown, for reminding us of the wisdom of the legislature in circumscribing judicial discretion.”  His sarcasm cut through the courtroom.
      “Your welcome, your Honor,” Brown said, ignoring the sarcasm because he'd thought he'd won.
      Judge Stone turned to Diane.  “And thank you, Ms. Ashley-Warner, for making it possible for us to go home tonight.”  He quickly gathered together the various documents before him and handed them to Lucy Miller, who had been monitoring the tape machine that was recording the proceedings.  Then Stone pronounced with finality, “The defendant will be transferred to the state hospital for an immediate evaluation to determine competency to stand trial and insanity at the time of the offense.”
      He banged his gavel, something I'd never seen him do, and was gone from the bench in a flurry of black judicial robes.
      Diane smiled sweetly at Brown, who shrugged his shoulders in feigned nonchalance.  She could afford to be gracious, having gotten exactly what she'd wanted.

 

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