299 Days: The Stronghold (6 page)

“Shoot ‘em!” someone yelled out. Some people laughed.

Rich didn’t laugh. “That’s not going to work for some things, like small thefts,” Rich said. “I don’t want to live in a place where a kid stealing a can of gas gets executed for it.” The crowd was quiet. The “shoot ‘em!” guy probably felt a little embarrassed.

Rich continued, “But, on the other side of the spectrum, I don’t think we want all the bells and whistles of the current…I mean former legal system. It was pretty good at letting criminals go over and over again.” Rich let that sink in. He wanted there to be a little “shoot ‘em!” sentiment in the crowd, just not too much.

“So,” Rich said, “we have a proposal to have a simple—simple—set of laws out here. Stealing small amounts, and we’ll define those and open it up for debate, would result in jail time. Probably a shorter jail time. Everyone in the community would know who the thief was, which is fine if it means a safer community. Stealing larger amounts would result in more jail time. People in jail would work, of course. We don’t want to give them an incentive to sit in jail and get free food. The community would need to feed them, so they’ll need to work for their meals.”

“Feed them?” someone yelled out.

Rich snapped back, “Yes. Feed them. We’re not animals. We need to come out of this with our humanity intact. If we start shooting each other over little things, we might as well be living in Frederickson or Olympia or, God forbid, Seattle. Anyone who wants that is free to go.”

It was silent. Grant thought that only a respected former law enforcement officer like Rich could have the credibility with the crowd to say this. Grant thanked God that Rich was there.

“Now, for serious crimes, like rape and murder,” Rich said, “well, we will shoot ‘em.” That got some applause from the crowd. “Maybe hang them. We can decide that. I’m leaning toward hanging. It makes much more of a statement than shooting.” More applause. Everyone in that meeting was afraid of rampant crime. They were afraid that the old way of preventing crime—formal police and courts—was over with. They craved a new solution to this problem.

Rich motioned for Grant to come up to the front of the room. “Grant here, who was a lawyer,” it was funny to hear that in the past tense but it was true, “has some ideas on how to do all this. Don’t hate him because he was a lawyer,” Rich said with a smile. Rich wasn’t just cracking a joke; he was communicating something important: you may hate lawyers, but you need one now and this one isn’t a piece of crap like most are.

Grant knew this was an important presentation. There was a lot at stake. He got up to the podium and started off, surprised by the wave of calm he felt in himself. He was strangely confident. He was going to nail this.

“My basic plan,” Grant said, “is, one, simplicity, two, the Constitution—the real Constitution, not all the made up stuff they’ve come up with lately—and, three, transparency. Here’s what I mean,” he said pointing one finger up to show the number one.

“Simple. The laws will be simple,” Grant said. “As in, theft of up to $100 in pre-Collapse value is second degree theft. Theft of more than $100 is first degree theft. Second degree theft is a week in jail. First degree theft is between a week and a year. I think we should have a jury decide the sentence. You all live here and it’s your system. You should decide. I’m just throwing out the week and year thing to give you a sense of what I mean by ‘simple’ laws. Every single person out here needs to know what price will be paid for a crime.”

“Second,” Grant said, “the Constitution is how we run this. No unreasonable searches. In an emergency, of course, the constables…”

Right then and there, Grant just picked the term “constables” out of thin air. He needed a term for “cops,” but one that didn’t have any negative connotations to it like “cops” had developed prior to the Collapse. “Constable” had an old English or New England feel to it. A civilized feel. The term implied a part-time, citizen police force. He’d run with it and see how people reacted.

Grant continued, “The constables can run into a house if they’re trying to save a life or chasing someone. They can’t just barge into a house because they feel like it. If they do that, they’re not being constables, they’re being burglars and they should be shot like any other burglar.” That got some gasps from the crowd. Pow nodded. Grant wanted to emphasize that no one was above the law, not even him or the Team.

“Other parts of the Constitution,” Grant said, “that should apply are a jury of your peers. That’s very important. We’re not going to be like the former government that would fine you $10,000 for cutting a tree on your property and then not let a jury of your peers—who probably thought that shouldn’t be a crime at all—determine if you should pay it. Like I said, I would like the jury to decide the sentences. I think it’s reassuring to know that if you are accused of something that a bunch of your neighbors will have the power to acquit you or lower your sentence.”

“Also,” Grant said, “people are innocent until proven guilty. It makes prosecutions a little harder, but you know what? I don’t want to live in a place where I’m guilty until I prove myself innocent. That’s how the old system was, as a practical matter, and I didn’t like it much and I suspect you didn’t, either.” He was using this as a way to remind people how bad the old system was and implying that the Patriot system would be better. Because it would be.

“Of course,” Grant continued, “a person can only be convicted in a trial. A fair trial. No indefinite detentions. No military tribunals. None of that stuff. Trials will be open to the public, with a jury. Always.”

“Also, a defendant gets to confront his or her accuser,” Grant said. “That’s in the Constitution, too.” Grant paused to let all this sink in. It meant that if someone wanted to accuse you of something that could result in you going to jail or getting hanged, he or she had to have the courage to look you in the eye. No anonymous “tips” that led to someone who didn’t like you getting you in jail or killed. Here, in Pierce Point, operating under the Constitution, the jury got to look at the body language of the accuser and see if he or she looked like they were falsely accusing someone.

“A defendant will know the charges against him or her and will have time to prepare a defense,” Grant said. “He or she can have an attorney—although there are no other trained attorneys out here—or any other person to represent them. They can have time to prepare a defense, but they’ll probably be in jail the whole time awaiting trial so they have an incentive to hurry up. But, they can have all the time they need.”

“They’ll have the right to speedy trials, too,” Grant said. “They can have a trial within a few days if they want. A truly innocent person would want that. We won’t let someone rot in jail for a year and then have trial. That’s just like a one-year jail sentence without a trial. You will remember that with all the budget cuts in the past, defendants weren’t getting speedy trials. That’s wrong and we won’t have it out here.”
“Besides, it won’t take us months to prepare for a trial,” Grant said. “We won’t have motions and technicalities. We’ll have simple. Memories of witnesses will be fresh soon after the crime. We’ll get on with it. No twenty-year death row appeals, either. If you’re guilty, and the jury says death, you’re gone.” That got some applause, although that was not Grant’s intention.

“Evidence,” Grant said, introducing a new topic. “We’ll have simple evidence rules; the simple ones that worked just fine in this country for about 150 years until the lawyers,” some people laughed at Grant putting down lawyers, “started complicating everything. No hearsay unless one of the limited exceptions to hearsay applies. I don’t want third-hand stories, with no opportunity for cross examination to test the story, to be sending people to jail or getting them hung.”

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Grant said. “Cross examination. That means the other side questioning a witness to see if there are holes in his or her story. A defendant or his or her representative can cross examine a witness. We’re not convicting people with just one side of the story coming out.”

There was a pause. Rich asked Grant, “What do we do about the mentally ill?”

Grant was glad Rich remembered that topic. “Well, there are some people who, in peacetime, had medications to keep them under control. They don’t have them now. Odds are that several people in Pierce Point are in that category. We can’t have people being a danger to themselves or others. I’m not sure we can treat them, not without all the medicines we took for granted in the past. So we’ll have to keep them confined if they’re a danger. We have a house picked out around here that should do the trick if it comes to that. We would lock it and guard it. If people got better, they would be released. We’d have medical people evaluating them. It would take a hearing and a jury to commit someone. They would need to be a serious danger to be confined. We take liberty very seriously, but we also take community safety seriously.”

That about covered it. “Any questions?” Grant asked.

Someone asked, “Do jurors get paid?” An odd question, but oh well.

Grant thought. He remembered the old system where jurors got $10, lunch, and a parking pass. It was very hard to get people to serve on juries. Some of them lost hundreds of dollars a day by not being able to go to their jobs. Grant said, “Jurors can eat all day at the Grange.” That might not be a big deal now, he thought, but wait until winter when food is scarce. People will be clamoring to be on jury duty.

Mark raised his hand with a smile, “Who will the judge be?” The crowd laughed.

“Well,” Grant said modestly, “me if you’ll have me. I think I’m the only lawyer out here. The lack of lawyers here explains why things are running so smoothly.” More laughs. “Seriously, I will do it but I would need to be elected. And if I start to suck, you need to vote me out.”

“Judge Matson!” someone yelled out. Grant couldn’t help smiling. He flashed back to college when he told Lisa’s parents that he was considering being a judge. Now it was coming true, just in a setting no one could have imagined then.

“Where will the jail be?” someone asked.

“Rich and I were thinking about the abandoned place near here,” Grant said. “Rich, what’s the name of it?”

“The Schenk place,” Rich said. “She died a few years ago and it’s just going to pot. We’d have some guards there. The jail guards can be people who are not as able to do the gate guard duty, which involves more physical activity and probably more shooting.”

“How many would the Schenk place hold?” the same guy asked.

“Dunno,” said Rich. “If we fill it up, and I hope we don’t, then we’ll get another jail.”

“What about a mental ward,” a woman asked. Grant remembered that incoherent older woman they saw that afternoon during the census. Grant and Rich hadn’t picked out a specific place for that.

“We’re open to suggestions on a place for the mental ward,” Rich said. “It should be close to here,” he said, referring to the Grange, “so we don’t have to transport people far. An abandoned place is OK, as long as it is livable.”

“Transparency is the next thing,” Grant said. “Everyone gets to see how everything is decided. Period. Pretty simple.”

There was a pause. “Well,” Grant said, “no one wants to hear a lawyer talk all night so, if there aren’t any more questions, I’m done. How we do our justice system out here is for you to decide, as long as it follows the Constitution and is simple and transparent. I guess you could decide to have a system that didn’t follow that, but it wouldn’t involve me or my men.” That was the first time Grant had thrown down the term “my men” and the concept that the community would have to fight the Team if they went astray. It was the right time to hint at it. Grant wasn’t going to participate in a dictatorship or vigilante gang. The residents needed to know that. The short speech he gave about the Constitution and decency was the time to make that point.

It was quiet for a while. Rich introduced the next topic.

“OK,” Rich said, “we have the Chief here to bring us up to speed on the beach patrol. Chief, take it away.”

Chief Boswain’s Mate (retired) Shane Eaton came up to the front. He had on work clothes, not hunting clothes.

The Chief went up to the podium and addressed the audience like he was giving a briefing to the captain of a ship. “We have twelve volunteers so far. All good men and women.” He introduced those of them who were at the meeting, which included Paul. It was good to see Paul had a solid role. Two, actually, because he was the metal fabricator for the gate and probably other projects, as well. It looked like Paul had lost some weight and was beaming with confidence. He looked happier than he had since Grant met him.

“We’ll have one boat on the water at all times,” the Chief said, “including at night when it’s a little trickier. We have plenty of boats made available to us. I’ve been told to get with Drew and make sure those donations are recorded,” the Chief said as he was scanning the crowd for Drew. He saw Drew, they waved to each other, and the Chief kept going.

“We will always have two in the boat for safety. We’ll cruise the water and into the open waters of the Puget Sound a little. We’ll try to conserve gas by drifting whenever possible. We’re there to detect any unauthorized craft, to board them if necessary, and to act as a deterrent. As far as authorized craft go, we are asking residents to stay off the water unless they absolutely have to be out on it. Try to get in touch with the Grange here and they can radio us that someone from here is on the water. I understand that there will be fishing and crabbing going on. We’ll work on a system of identifying friendlies. Speaking of fishing, we think that one of the reasons outsiders might encroach on our waters is to fish and get crab, clams, and oysters. We’ll tell them to leave and make an impression on them to not come back,” he said with a smile.

“In addition to the two on a boat,” the Chief said, “we’ll have at least one man with a radio walking the beach roughly parallel to the boat. The beach walkers will be looking for any unauthorized people who have come ashore. They will also be a deterrent. The beach walkers will be well armed and they will need to know how to walk up on someone undetected. So far, my beach walkers have regular hunting rifles. I’d like to upgrade if possible, but I understand that AR-15s are in short supply right now. I can use people for this who don’t know boats. So if you’re a hunter or, better yet, ex-military, I’d love to have you as a beach walker.” Grant noticed that this was the first request for better armament he’d heard. He thought about that basement full of ARs and how much they’d be appreciated. But they were Chip’s, so it was up to him on how, or if, to use them.