The Truth Machine

by James L. Halperin

  Liza looked into Tilly’s tear-filled eyes. “Thank you.”

  Ed, Liza, Burns, and Tilly trudged upstairs to Randall’s room.

  Earlier, Randall and Judith had tried to go to sleep but couldn’t. Now they both sat wide awake, playing a video game on Randall’s Macintosh. The sparsely furnished room was much neater than Burns had expected. The entire mess downstairs, he realized, must’ve been made by the three-year-old murder victim.

  Liza hugged her surviving son. “Leonard’s never coming back, sweetie.”

  Judith and Randall both burst into tears. It’s all my fault, he thought. I was supposed to protect him!

  The cat returned to the room and leapt confidently into Randall’s arms. Randall accepted her without hesitation and began petting her affectionately as his body rocked. She nestled with such familiarity that Tilly guessed the animal had sensed the boy’s distress. Tilly sat silently for almost 10 minutes, biting her lip. She noticed that Randall chewed on his tongue, almost like a cow chewing her cud. The back and forth motion of the rocking seemed to calm him down.

  “Randall, I’ve never been involved in a case like this before,” she finally said. “But I know you’re much brighter than your age and I’m told you can understand whatever I tell you. I believe you need to know as much as you want to know.”

  “Then t-t-tell m-me everything.”

  Tilly did. The child continued to rock himself and Tabitha and cried quietly through much of what was said. He had stopped chewing his tongue, but now it occasionally protruded from the left side of his mouth. Tilly wondered if other neighborhood children ever picked on Randall because of his quirks. She kept talking, unsure of whether he understood what she was saying. When she got to Reece’s criminal record, Randall stopped her.

  “But what m-m-makes people like that? And if they knew how bad he is, why did they let him g-go?”

  “We don’t know why some people do terrible things. All we can do is arrest them and try to put them in jail for a long time. We hope by the time they’re released they won’t be dangerous anymore.”

  “B-B-But what about that Doctor Carter?” Randall reminded her. “He knew Reece was still dangerous. Couldn’t he k-keep him in jail?”

  Tilly had no idea Randall had overheard, much less pieced together the meaning of that brief telephone conversation 11 hours earlier. Recovering from her astonishment, she explained the law enforcement role, the judicial process, and how finally the penal system takes over. “Once someone is sentenced, as long as they don’t break any more laws, we can’t hold them in jail any longer than the courts tell us to.”

  “Even if they might kill someone?”

  Tilly patiently explained due process and the presumption of innocence, and how important it was to our way of life. “We have to assume a person’s rehabilitated until they do something wrong. Otherwise people could stay in jail forever just because someone else disliked them. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

  “I, uh, I g-guess not.”

  “The problem is, we never know for sure who’s a threat and who isn’t. We can’t keep everybody in jail just because they might be dangerous. We can’t predict what people will do because we can’t read their minds.”

  Randall thought about that for a moment. “Who d-decides when it’s time to let a person out of jail?”

  As simply as she could, she explained about sentencing guidelines, plea-bargains, and parole boards. Again, Randall did not interrupt until she was through. As he continued to ask questions, she became progressively more amazed at his insight. He never asked a single question she had already answered.

  She responded to every question, never patronizing him, with obvious compassion and awareness of his pain. No one else in the room had spoke since their talk had begun.

  “W-W-Will your boss let you, um, stay here tonight?”

  “Tonight, you’re the boss.”

  Tilly did spend the night, in Randall’s room. She lay curled up in a love seat as they talked until sunrise. They talked about Leonard and about law and politics. She explained to Randall about the tug-of-war between individual rights and the safety of society.

  Eventually they even discussed theology. Tilly had been raised a Catholic, but seldom attended Mass. The Armstrongs went to their Unitarian church every Sunday, and Randall had become quite interested in religion. The theological permissiveness of Unitarian Universalist congregations was ahead of its time. Members were encouraged to form their own opinions about the existence and nature of God, and their relationship with the Creator.

  It was here that their conversation took what was for Tilly its most memorable turn. She told Randall about her four-year-old niece who had died of leukemia. “It was hard for all of us to get used to losing Kimberly. But after a few years, we can accept that she’s with God. It’s still sad, but as time passes, it gets easier to live with.”

  “How do we know th-there is a God, Tilly? No one’s ever seen God, have they?”

  “Some people say they have, but there’s no real proof. Believing in God is an act of faith, except for one thing.” She explained the apparently universal after-death phenomenon as described in many popular books on the subject cluttering the “spiritual” or “new age” sections of most late-20th-century bookstores. Tilly had read one, Following the Light, after her niece’s death. “Thousands of people whose hearts stopped beating and were later revived spoke of having identical experiences. They all remembered entering a long tunnel with the same beautiful, brilliant light at the end.”

  Randall thought for a moment, again biting the back of his tongue. “But couldn’t that just be what a normal person’s brain sees while it’s still alive after the rest of the body dies?”

  To this day Tilly is most amazed by that fragment of their conversation. Nobody in the 1990s, not even neuroscientists, knew it was true, yet somehow a five-year-old child formed that hypothesis in just a few seconds. And even then she suspected that he was right.

  That night, Tilly and Randall began a friendship that would last over half a century.

  During the weeks following the tragedy, several of Liza’s colleagues urged her to file lawsuits against their neighbor and the landscape company. One of her partners told her, “You could also sue the state of Massachusetts and maybe even General Motors. Their insurance companies might settle this case.” But Ed, and especially Liza, had seen what lawsuits did to families. Focused for years on their own victimization, plaintiffs often magnified the unfairness in their minds and blamed the wrong people.

  (Note: At the time, the “deep pockets” were usually the ones sued, regardless of their degree of culpability.—22g CP)

  The Armstrongs rejected such bitterness. Though heartbroken, they knew they could have no more children and made up their minds to pour all their energy and love into Randall.

  When Randall finally slept, he did not dream of flying. In fact, when he awakened just before noon, shaking and in tears, he couldn’t remember having dreamt at all. He wondered if he would ever dream again.

  CHAPTER 4

  BLACKSTONE’S PARADOX

  New Haven, Connecticut

  June 5, 1998—Rwandan war-crime trials conclude as Amnesty International issues a statement condemning the trials as biased and alleging that at least 15 percent of those convicted were innocent. 17,256 Hutus have been found guilty of genocide and scheduled for execution.—The death toll in Ypsilanti, Michigan, reaches 3,147 as the search continues for Elijah Abraham, leader of the religious cult suspected of poisoning the city water supply.—Scientists at Amgen and Hoffmann-La Roche Laboratories announce the results of a double-blind study on an Interleukin 3 drug designed to block blood vessel growth within tumors, and predict victory over most forms of cancer within 10 to 12 years.—Retirement age is linked to the national average life expectancy (ALE). H.R. 1176, which automatically raises the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits to 85 percent of ALE, is signed into law by President Clinton, against
the objections of most legislators of his own party. The American Association of Retired Persons announces their support for all opponents of the bill, a boon for the Democratic party.

  “Seriously, Marshall, why would I want to be president, even if I thought I had a chance?”

  The two men sat near the front window of Claire’s, a mercifully air-conditioned restaurant across from the Yale campus. It was 90 degrees and humid, and there wasn’t much shade on Chapel Street.

  “Because every senator in America wants to be president. Sometimes I think every last one of you actually expects to be president,” chuckled Dr. Marshall Imberg, a well-known professor at Yale. “It’s too soon for you now, Travis, but you’ll have a clean shot in six years. You’re the only legislator who knows how to win this war and believe me, we are at war.”

  Looking down at his speech, Hall made a few last-minute changes.

  At 49 he was an ambitious and talented politician. Three years after Leonard Armstrong’s death, crime was the number one political issue in the United States. The freshman U.S. Senator, Travis Endicott Hall of Connecticut, made the issue his own.

  The two men had met in the late 1980s. Already into his second term as Connecticut Attorney General, Hall had attended a government policy seminar during the 1988 Yale commencement exercises, coinciding with his 15th college reunion. Imberg spoke of governmental “innumeracy,” a popular term for illiteracy with respect to numbers and their meaning.

  “Politicians and bureaucrats,” Imberg contended, “either misunderstand the financial effects of their policies or, worse, ignore them because of political pressure.” He cited an example concerning the Federal Aviation Administration.

  “Cutting $1 billion from the FAA’s budget each year could actually save lives,” he had argued. “Consider a family of three, a mother, father, and small child, traveling from New York to Boston for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad barely scrape together enough money for two tickets on the Shuttle. Then the FAA announces that to improve safety, children over two may no longer sit on their parents’ laps. Unable to afford a third ticket, the family drives to Boston instead, at nearly 10 times the risk of death or injury. . . .”

  Imberg concluded, “Thus, seeking safety regardless of cost doesn’t work.”

  Hall instantly grasped how similar reasoning could be applied to law enforcement. The following year he had introduced himself to Imberg, and the two formed a political alliance. Imberg convinced him to run for the U.S. Senate in 1994. Hall won the senate seat easily, and by 1998 his well-voiced position on crime had made him the most popular first-term senator in America.

  Only 29 months earlier, Time magazine had declared on its cover: “Finally, we’re winning the war against crime.” But in 1998 over 30,000 Americans were murdered and eight million violent crimes were reported.5 The trend was disturbing, yet the cause was unfathomable; any opinions on the subject were guesses, as they still are today.

  (Note: We computers have enough trouble determining cause and effect even with today’s archives, which are millions of times more comprehensive than the simple databases of the 20th century.—22g CP)

  Most politicians considered the escalating crime rate a product of illegitimacy, welfare dependency, guns—or lack of guns according to supporters of the National Rifle Association—poverty, drugs, demographics (i.e. more young males), racial tension, and lack of education. But Hall believed that 80 to 90 percent of the problem could be solved by more intelligently applied law enforcement and prudent judicial process.

  His positions were unambiguous, as his speech to a standing-room-only crowd of 4,700 members of the Connecticut Law Enforcement Association revealed:

  Like most of my colleagues, I’m for more and better-trained police, but the money has to come from somewhere. I say we squeeze it from our irrational legal system. Just one example: our Constitution guarantees a trial by jury of peers. But where does it say 12 people without legal training or experience, selected by lawyers? According to a study commissioned by the Justice Department, the average juror today is less intelligent and less educated than the average citizen. Some attorneys spend more time selecting jurors than they do preparing cases. Instead, we should use panels of three to five highly trained, justly compensated professional jurors, selected at random, without input from lawyers. We’d have more rational verdicts, in less time, at a fraction of the cost. With the money saved from that change alone, experts say we could hire and train 40,000 new police officers.

  Some historians believe Hall was cynical and overly ambitious. More likely he was a principled politician, but not so principled as to be unelectable. The American political system of the time made populism a necessary evil. Humans tend to forget history, so I remind you that politicking was a different occupation before the Truth Machine.

  Hall’s stance on drugs and capital punishment was considered particularly radical. On June 5, 1998, immediately after lunch with Imberg, he delivered his now-famous “Blackstone Address” to the graduating class at Yale Law School.

  Sir William Blackstone, the great English jurist who compiled the Treatise of British Common Law upon which the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States were based, once wrote: “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.” What did Blackstone mean when he penned those words? How do you suppose he would have accounted for those innocent people certain to suffer at the hands of the 10 freed guilty persons? Have we been taking Blackstone’s words too literally . . . ?

  (Note: For history buffs, the entire text of the “Blackstone Address” is reprinted in the Appendix.—22g CP)

  CHAPTER 5

  ESCAPE TO DALLAS

  Los Angeles, California

  December 24, 1998—Moslem terrorists take credit for the destruction of six government facilities in Algeria, killing at least 3,500 and injuring thousands more. Nearly all the fatalities are government workers; ironically most of them are Moslems.—The President signs H.R. 1712, banning cigarette smoking in all public places throughout the United States. The law is scheduled to take effect April 10, 1999.—House Speaker Elect Richard Gephardt (D.MO) prepares his party’s legislators to regain control of Congress in January after their stunning comeback in the November elections.

  * * *

  Bruce Witkowsky reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a single lottery ticket. “Okay, pal. Time to pay the piper. That’ll be 300 big ones.”

  The owner of the “convenience store” had strung 10 feet of colored lights across the front window, but otherwise there was nothing to suggest that Christmas was the next day. Christmas didn’t have much significance to the Witkowskys anyway. They were Jewish by descent, but gave religion little thought. Bruce had once joked to his kids, “We’re Reform Jews. That means we get to pick any five of the Ten Commandments.”

  If their straight dark hair had been professionally styled instead of crudely cut by their mother, and their clothes more expensive, the two boys could have passed for male fashion models. The strikingly handsome 14-year-old David and 9-year-old Philip Witkowsky looked around the convenience store while their seedy-looking father stood at the check-out scanner.

  The store owner studied the card carefully. He knew that if Bruce Witkowsky could forge anything of value, the street hustler/con man wouldn’t hesitate.

  “Looks legit,” he finally proclaimed, and counted out 15 $20 bills. In order to win that $300, Bruce had poured at least $1,000 into the state coffers of California.

  Bruce turned to his sons, holding a twenty in each hand. “There you go, kids. Anything you want in the store’s yours. Candy, soda pop, magazines. Have at it.”

  David watched his father turn back toward the counter and heard him say, “Gimme 40 bucks’ worth of the quick-picks. I feel lucky today.”

  Bruce still had $220, and there was a decent chance most of it would still be in his pocket when he got home later that afternoon. Maybe their mom, Joanne, could persuade him to relinquish $
100 or so before he gambled the rest of it away. Or maybe not.

  The boys finished their shopping, Philip gleefully. But his brother was distracted by the secret scheme he had planned for that evening.

  David was smart enough to know that everything his compulsive gambler father touched was eventually lost. From the first grade until this year in the tenth, he had been enrolled in 11 different schools, most of them in rough neighborhoods. Bookmakers, loan sharks, and occasionally the cops, were all on Bruce’s trail.

  David Witkowsky had taken his own wrong turns. At age 10, he had once carried a Tac-9 gun to school in his lunch bag, and was able to scare off a particularly aggressive 15-year-old bully without having to use the weapon. But he had other demons to fend off and wasn’t always as successful.

  At age 12, he’d been busted for fencing property a classmate had stolen from a neighbor’s house. David needed the money to pay off a 14-year-old bookie in his eighth-grade homeroom class. Maybe David had a gambling problem too, or more likely, he’d just wanted to be like his dad. Someone other than Bruce would have to set him straight. That someone was Judge Stanley Norris.

  Inevitably David had landed in Juvenile Court, an intimidating place; intimidation was the Court’s strong suit since it had very little real power and could only hope to set a kid straight through fear. But something about David had convinced Norris to try a different approach.

  “I hear over a thousand cases a year,” the judge told him. “I expect most of those kids back in my courtroom, and it usually doesn’t take long. I see your family’s got problems, but there’s nothing much wrong with you. You’re an outstanding student, your teachers love you, and your classmates look up to you. I know about people and I feel in my gut that you have potential. I’m gonna let you off with six months’ probation. Since you write so well, as part of your sentence I want you to write me a letter once a month. Tell me where you are and what you’re doing to make yourself a better person. I’ll read every word, because I think you’ll turn out okay. Don’t you disappoint me.”