Murder in the Haight

I shuffled into the courtroom, hands and feet shackled. My wrinkled, oversized jumpsuit was not quite the invigorating twist of Orange is the New Black, more the burnt umber Bob Ross frequented in his wretched sunsets.

As I sat, I turned to see my husband in the audience. (Is this an audience? What do you call this?) I looked at him and smiled, thinking back to the days he’d come see me in my silly off-off-off Broadway plays. And now he’s here to see me on trial for the murder of Mrs. Peale. The performance of a lifetime.

The defense brings back its first witness for cross-examination. That’s me.

“What were you doing on the day in question, the 9th of March?”

“Well it was a normal day,” I said. “I woke up to see my husband off to work, then I got into my workout clothes to go for a walk. Then I went back to bed for 2 and a half hours. Then I had some breakfast, Raisin Bran — but there were hardly any raisins in it, which is, like, really annoying. Then I played Dots on my phone for awhile. It’s this game where the goal is to connect consecutively colored dots to destroy them and then when you…”

“Ok, that’s fine, that’s fine.” the lawyer stammered. He was in his mid-late fifties with salt and pepper hair but obviously quite active — that annoying San Francisco kind of active, the kind of guy who warms up for his 25 mile bike ride with a 3 hour hike. The kind of guy who doesn’t go back to bed for two and a half hours. But all I could think about was the fact that he reminded me of a porn star. A porn star I’d seen once a long time ago on the Internet. He wasn’t even a star, it was more like random amateur porn. Porn is so weird. You see it once and it stays with you forever, and not in a good way. That’s why I don’t watch porn anymore.

“Mrs. Shivers?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?”

“When did you finally leave your house?”

“Oh, yes, when Mrs. Peale wanted to come by to do some painting. Just touch ups, on the fence in the backyard. Not damage we caused, but things that had been there before we moved in.”

“So you left your apartment to meet her outside?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“So what…on Earth…made you bring a 9 millimeter semi-automatic handgun with you, to meet a woman in her 50s outside in broad daylight?”

The way he emphasized 9 millimeter semi-automatic handgun really bothered me.

“Well I was going for a walk afterward, which is why I put on my workout clothes, and I don’t know if you’ve been to Haight street but there are really sketchy people everywhere.”

“Sketchy?”

“Yes. You know, vagrants? You know, white guys with dreads. It’s crazy.”

The lawyer tried to move on but I wouldn’t let him. “Think about that,” I turned to the jury. “White guys. With dreadlocks. It doesn’t make any sense.”

A few understanding nods inspired me to continue.

“Crazy people who should have jobs but instead they’re on the street because they’re sticking it to the man. Babbling about the yacht club they couldn’t get into or the golf clubs they never got. Maybe they have mental problems or dementia or schizophrenia or other some such psychosis, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

“So you fear the neighborhood you live in?”

“Yes.”

“But with so many people on the street, dislocated from their homes, Mrs. Shivers, aren’t you part of the problem?”

“Objection, relevance,” my lawyer piped up. I would have objected myself if I hadn’t been so intrigued by the question.

“Your honor this goes to motive,” said the amateur porn star.

The judge allowed it. Motive? Interesting.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?”

“Uhhhm, kinda yeah? How am I part of the problem?”

“Your husband works for a large tech company, does he not? And you, yourself, also work for a large tech company, although your hours are questionable.”

“Yes, but how does the fact that we have good incomes hurt our neighborhood?”

“Because of displacement.”

“Oh come on. The only person I displaced when I moved into that apartment was the rich fat fuck who left because she bought a bigger one.”

There was an audible gasp from the audience. Yes, an audible gasp. Motive — indeed.

“So you resented your landlord?”

“No, of course not. She’s a successful African lady. Or, she was.”

“She was from South Africa.”

“Exactly.”

“But she was Indian.”

“Of course, I know that. I take ethnicity very seriously, as we all should,” I said indignantly toward the jury. “I have lots of friends who are immigrants. My husband is a quarter Slovakian.”

“Wasn’t your husband born in Illinois?”

“Well, yes, but his great grandmother was Slovakian.”

“Slovenian,” my husband said from the audience.

“Order!” the Judge hissed.

I cleared my throat and rubbed my eyes. Was I coming off as kind of ignorant? I wasn’t sure. “Yes. Slovenian.”

The lawyer looped around the courtroom, arms clasped behind his back. He faced my defense attorney, then the audience, then the jury and finally back to me. I’m pretty sure I saw the same move in Philadelphia. Denzel did it better.

“So you say that while walking through the alley toward the backyard, you and your landlord were approached by… a mountain lion?”

“Yep. That’s correct.”

“A mountain lion.”

“Yes. A mountain lion.”

“Mrs. Shivers are you aware that there are literally no mountain lions anywhere in the entire city of San Francisco?”

“That’s not true, a mountain lion was spotted as recently as a few years ago and I know that for a fact.”

“And who told you that?”

“This white guy with dreads.”

“Ok, Mrs. Shivers. If we are to believe that a mountain lion did in fact approach you and your landlord in the alley, how do you explain the fact that your landlord was shot in the chest at close range?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mountain lion, I never had. They’re scary. Our landlord was in front of me, and she saw the mountain lion and like a pussy she turned to me and ran, but, I mean, thank God I had the gun on me because I was able to pull it out and fire a warning shot, which totally scared the mountain lion away, but I’ve never shot a gun before so then it turns out I actually shot Mrs. Peale, uhm, you know, in the chest.”

“Wasn’t Mrs. Peale carrying an open can of paint?”

“Yes.”

“So, she dropped the can of paint and ran toward you?”

“No, she held onto the paint because she’s a cheap bastard. I mean, was.”

“But she must have dropped the paint when the bullet landed in her chest and sent her flying back?”

“Right, yes.”

“And yet… neither you nor your landlord had any paint on you when you were found?”

“Yeah, it’s nuts.”

“In fact, the can of paint was neatly, not hurriedly, placed in the alley, and found in pristine condition after the paramedics arrived.”

“Listen,” I said slowly, eyes fake welling with fake tears. “I really liked Mrs. Peale. I didn’t want for any of this to happen. Thinking back, I should have just kneed the mountain lion in the balls like my high school teacher, Mr. Altasian always said to do. But I panicked. And I used my gun. And I ended up shooting Mrs. Peale. And I’m sorry. I truly am. I didn’t mean to kill her, I was only trying to protect myself from that mountain lion. Protect both of us really. Which, actually, when you think about it, I totally succeeded at.”

“WHY WAS THERE NO PAINT ON YOUR CLOTHES?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!” I countered back.

“It sounds more to me like there was something in the backyard you didn’t want your landlord to see.”

The lawyer crossed back toward the prosecution and picked up a a photo sealed in plastic. He displayed it for the courtroom, like a second grader at show and tell. “Isn’t it actually true that you and your husband had started growing weed in the backyard to supplement your already enormous tech company incomes?”

When he turned to me I could finally see the picture, and it was incredible. Those hemp seeds we’d planted just four months ago had already grown into beautiful, massive money-making machines.

“Hey how did you get that?”

The judge reminded me that the lawyer would be asking the questions. I took a deep breath.

“Tell the truth Mrs. Shivers.”

“I mean, that weed isn’t mine.”

“We know it’s your weed, Mrs. Shivers. And we know the real reason you bought that gun is because you thought you needed one in case a drug deal went bad.”

“Mrs. Peale was the drug deal gone bad.” Oh no. Why did I say that?

The lawyer paused. “You don’t expect us to believe Mrs. Peale was the drug dealer?”

“The weed was on her property. We didn’t plant it there, it just started growing. When she found out we were planning to sell it, she wanted to swoop in and steal it. She wasn’t going back there to do any painting, she was going back there because she was a greedy dick who couldn’t let anyone have more money than her.”

Oh no. Another audible gasp. But I couldn’t stop now.

“She was a dick! The rent was way too high. And she wouldn’t leave us alone. Like, fuck her! She doesn’t own us, she wasn’t better than us, always pointing out how much money our tech companies had lost in the stock market that day. She couldn’t just leave us alone, could she? Telling me I’d be the one babbling on Haight street someday. You want to know who’s really ruining the neighborhood? People like her. I may have killed her by accident but I did the city a favor.”

I forgot to say something about not being able to handle the truth, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. I was going to prison. And not in a good way.

“You’re a brave woman,” the judge said.

Or maybe not.