The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [83]
I stopped. Silence. Cletus looked kind of sad, in fact. But not a word. Gunston was following very closely, but letting me run. He would. I represented great information, without his having to go through the discovery process. And I might make a mistake he could bring back to haunt me in court.
Blitek was another matter. “According to the common law, a free man is supreme in his castle. And any invited guest in his castle is the same person in right as the sovereign citizen.”
Gibberish, but familiar gibberish. I now knew why Gunston hadn’t been too happy with Blitek on the “team.”
“Yes?” I shouldn’t have asked.
“Based upon that, the so-called ‘warrant of arrest’ which you presented to Mr. Cletus G. Borglan, freeman, is refused for cause without dishonor and without recourse to him, and need not be complied with because it is irregular, unauthorized, incomplete, and is a void process.”
“We’ll make a note,” said Davies. “I’ll file it under ‘bullshit.’ Now, let’s get on with this.”
“Under protest,” said Blitek.
“Sure,” said Davies, cheerfully.
I started up again. “Now, when you got to the farm, you remember what you did first? No, don’t answer that. I’ll tell you, because I was there. You announced in front of five cops and three agents that a couple of cops had been killed.” He started to speak, but I held up my hand. “Just a minute. Wait. Don’t say anything. It’s gonna get a lot better.”
I reached into the file. “I have a statement from a witness that says you got a phone call in Florida, about the time the two brothers got murdered. Says you were all concerned, and that you left the next morning for Iowa. Because of the call.”
Cletus just was going to burst if he didn’t say something. “Bullshit!”
Well, it wasn’t much of a defense. But I think it made him feel a little better. Gunston put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go, Cletus. He’s going too far out on a limb now.”
Blitek just looked startled. I assumed it was because he so seldom dealt with evidence.
“You know, that’s just what I thought.” I put on my reading glasses, and looked down at the paper I held in my hand. I looked at it for a second, and then looked at Cletus. I looked over the top of my glasses, without raising my head. “I thought, ‘There ain’t no way to prove that, that’s just hearsay’” I stared over the top of those little glasses for all I was worth. Timing was everything.
“Until I got this,” I said. “With this subpoena,” I added. And I handed both documents to his real attorney, not to Cletus, not to Blitek. As Gunston looked at it, I said, “It’s your phone bill, Cletus. A phone company record of the call being placed from your farm, to your place in Florida, just minutes after the Colson brothers were killed. In black and white.”
Cletus was very pale. Gunston didn’t look all that good, either. Silently, he passed the bill to his client. I thought Blitek was going to trip as he got up and stood behind Cletus, peering over his shoulder.
You could have heard a pin drop, as they say. I don’t know how I ever did an interview before I got those glasses.
“You want to stop, or do you want me to give it all to you now?” I asked. Quietly. All for effect. They’d have gotten the phone bill on discovery, anyway.
Cletus looked up. “Go ahead,” he said, in as close to a whisper as he could probably get. I looked at Gunston. He nodded. Nothing to lose, there. Besides, I think he was really curious. Blitek I ignored.
“We’ve been following Gabriel for years,” I said. Call it a white lie. “We” as in “We the People …”
That was when Cletus surprised me. He turned to the side, and threw up on the floor.
Seventeen
Thursday, January 15, 1998, 1848
Nothing like heaving on the floor to bring a party up short. We made Cletus clean up his own mess. Jail rules. Got him a damp cloth for his forehead. He was all quivery for a few minutes.
“Tell me the truth, now,” said Davies to Gunston. “You trained him to do that, right?”
Gunston wasn’t particularly amused, and told us that the interview was over. We’d abused his client