Dark

I know of a road, (CA 127) which bypasses Interstate 15 between Baker California and Los Vegas NV. The road wanders through Pahrump Nevada, then on to Los Vegas. It is a 50-mile detour, but sometimes it’s shorter than waiting for the freeway (I-15), blocked by an all-to-frequent wreck to be cleared.

It is 100 miles (give or take a few miles) from Baker CA to Pahrump NV. There is only one populated place on the road, Shoshone, at the junction of CA 178 and 127. Shoshone is a gas station and a house. Otherwise, there is nothing.

I know there are hundreds of lonely roads throughout the west just like it, but this road is so close to 2 major metropolitan areas, that its loneliness and remoteness does not register in my thinking.

A late start for the drive to Vegas put us in Baker, CA after dark. A wreck on I-15 near Jean NV, with an expected 3-hour road closure, put us on the dark highway 127 shortcut.

We followed a large truck for 30 miles or so, and I became aware that the ONLY lights we could see were our headlights and the trucks tail lights; we had not passed or seen another car since we left Baker. There was no moon. It was ink-black outside the car.

Just about here-

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=35.72366,-116.29612&spn=0.1048,0.233459&t=p&z=12

I was intrigued by the lack of any man-made light. It was a bit odd, yet familiar, like a misplaced friend’s name. I had camped out many times earlier in my life, and I guess I always took the dark for granted. I really wanted to see the stars again!

I found a shallow turnout, pulled off the road and turned the car engine off, shut off the headlights and stepped out of the car. The interior light of the car made an island of light in the blackness. We closed our doors, and the darkness took over.

The stars above us were a dizzying swarm, the sky gloriously splashed with points of light from horizon to horizon. We both stood and gaped at the sight. Familiar constellations were so bright, yet so surrounded by other points of light, we could not recognize them immediately.

There was a problem.

If you looked away from the stars you could see nothing; not the car, not each other, the highway, nothing. The earth had gone away, only the stars remained. The feeling was disquieting, the sort of “crawly” you get when you think someone is talking about you or looking at you without your knowing.

Our eyes adjusted to the darkness, and we could begin to see the silhouette of the horizon. The lights of Los Vegas 100 miles away made the faintest of glows behind the mountains to the north and LA lights did the same in the south. The glow was so dim, we had to ask one another, “Do you see it too?” It was not comforting. The distance only reinforced the alone-ness of the place.

Afraid is much too strong a word for what we felt. “Discomforted” and “Ill at ease” come closer. Why did we feel that way? There is nothing to fear out there on that highway. The most dangerous being on the planet is mankind, and there were no people in speeding cars with guns, drinking, talking on cell phones and looking for a way to prove their manhood. So what could harm us?

Not wild animals- there are no Grizzly Bears, and a Mountain Lion would surely prefer the smaller and less chewy (probably) sheep down the road. Coyotes are too small to take me on, as well.

The only thing left is fear of the dark and unknown. An ancient inbred feeling that something we can’t see and identify is waiting to eat us, steal our children and send us all to the bottomless pit.

I imagined the night-fear in ancestors long since gone, the feeling of being watched. A time when the flame of a candle or a campfire would be the brightest man-made light on the planet.

I imagined trying to standing between the darkness and my loved ones, surrounded by dangers known and unknown. A wolf, a bear, an enemy, a dark creature of the night made of shadows, waiting to close in around you when the light was gone.

I heard a disembodied shadow nearby say “Can we go now?” and answered, “Yes, I’m ready”. The interior light of the car lit the area as I opened the door. I started the car and banished the surrounding darkness with headlights. All was familiar again. I could see that there was no reason to be fearful.

How fortunate we are to be able to banish our fears so easily.

Jury Duty

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve added anything to this conversation. Blame it on jury duty. It’s a good subject for a Blog, but the law says that you can’t write or talk about the case until it is completely over and done.

The story is this: A 50 something lady and her sister went to JC Penny’s to shop. She was casually dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and carried a 7 or 8-inch square basket purse, open on top with 2 half-circle 6’ bamboo handles. Holding the 2 handles together held the purse closed.

The ladies went separate ways, with our “lady of Interest” (LOI) going to the costume jewelry counter. As the jewelry counter is a high loss area, the store “loss prevention team” began to watch and record her actions with video cameras.

Our subject browsed the ear-rings, holding several up to her ears in front of a mirror, selected a 6” necklace and went to a checkout counter to check the price and was told she’d need to stand in line to do so. She elected not to wait.

She moved off to other areas of the store, keeping the necklace with her as she shopped.

At some point the necklace found its way into the handbag. Loss Prevention accosted the LOI just outside the doors of the store, searched the purse and found the necklace.

Our LOI claimed to have no knowledge of how or when the necklace got into her purse. She offered to make good on the purchase price, but the store refused and called the police.

These are simple facts, but the case was not as obvious as you might think.

The state must prove 4 things in order to convict the LOI of petty theft:

She took the item without permission

She intended to keep the item

She removed the item from the store

She INTENDED to take the item

All of the allegations must be proved “beyond A Reasonable Doubt”. Items 1, 2 and 3 were easy, the tape and testimony proved all 3 fairly conclusively.

Number 4 (Intent) was not so obvious. Prosecution needed to show that the LOI INTENDED to put the necklace in her purse and keep it forever without paying.

The LOI claimed that she tried to get a price check on the item and was turned away due to the line waiting service. She further states that there were no “scanners” available to read the price. Therefore, she put the necklace in her hand (also carrying the purse), continued to shop, rejoined her sister, bought an iron and left the store. She forgot the necklace completely in as much as it was being held in the same hand as her purse, and the purse handle was the same shape as the necklace. She was sure that at some point the necklace inadvertently had fallen out of her hand into the purse. The necklace shape and size fit exactly into one of the 3 sections of her purse, and remained unseen (by her) through the checkout process. This story is more plausible than it sounds. In examining the purse, we confirmed that such an event COULD happen. The purse handles did indeed match the shape of the necklace and the necklace could have slipped easily into the purse.

That’s Reasonable Doubt.

Our LOI was a very normal person. She has a long-term marriage, was employed by a school, but out on disability. She was injured in an accident at the school, and is under the care of a doctor and is using pain medication. She and her sister testified that the medication caused her to be a little woozy and forgetful. There was no doctor’s testimony or a description of the affects of her prescription.

She has never been convicted or accused of anything like this before.

So far (for me at least) it was not an open and shut case. The $29 price of the necklace did not seem to me to be sufficient to cause the LOI to risk the embracement of a trial and possible jail, especially given her history, employment and testimony of her sister.

Others, however, believed that the thrill of the hunt might have played a part. Still others believed that poor service at the checkout counter had “encouraged” the LOI to seek a little revenge.

We were at an impasse.

We decided that the determining factor should be a review of her actions as recorded on the security tape. If there was an indication of dishonesty, we should be able to see it. If not, reasonable doubt would guide us to a “Not Guilt” verdict.

We played the tape- a 40 minute, mind numbing, surrealistic, impersonal snippet of real life in a Penny’s store. People came and went without reason or explanation, were zoomed in upon by the unseen observer for no clear reason. The camera paned and zoomed around the jewelry counter and its adjacent areas relentlessly.

Finally, the LOI entered the picture, purse in her right hand, hanging at her side. You could see the necklace in her hand between the handles of the purse, positioned directly over the purse opening. She moved into an area with several chest high hanging clothing displays. She touched, nor moved nor stopped to look at any of them as she wandered through the display. Her hand carrying the purse and necklace remained at her side, completely hidden from view.

We slowed the video to frame by frame mode and waited for the LOI to exit the clothing display. Her purse hand came into view. Her fingers were moving. Her first finger and her index finger were extended, pointing directly down at the purse.

She had just dropped the necklace into the purse! She was so “casual”, and there was such a “who me?” look on her face that I lost all doubt as to her “Intension”. We could not come up with any reason to move her fingers in the way we had seen OTHER than to drop the necklace.

It was an “Ahhaa!” moment for the entire jury. It took about 5 minutes to wrap up the verdict and notify the judge.

Why did she do it? Who knows? A bad day, medication, revenge for poor service, adventure, whatever the reason, she will be paying a fine and doing a couple of weeks of community service as payment. Oh yes, and paying about $10,000 in legal fees.

Worse still is she may not have told her husband yet.

She should have picked a nicer necklace.