All Over the Place

System Works

You murder your wife and the nasty-minded cops know it. Nonetheless you help with searching, and drive boy scouts around to put up posters.

Add crying on TV, interviewer Wendy Wertz leading you tenderly.

You inwardly muse, while looking with Rotarians, how this dogshit area really does resemble the one where you deposited her under trash and rusty, corrugated tin.

Never found, but you're tried anyway.

Prosecution stages a bimbo parade.

Your lawyer counters that you're not on trial for being a bad altar boy, but for murder. Beyond a reasonable doubt! he hammers. You grow to love the phrase.

Her parents think you did it, but they're snivelers anyway. Since they can’t speak a word without sobbing, even talk show hosts reject them.

At any moment, a minimum of two jurors will sleep under the weight of the circumstantial evidence.

You smile at the panel or cry, depending on signals from your attorney. His behavior itself is against the law. Much breaking of the law at trials–fortunately curtailed when the rare judge rouses to pay minimal attention.

After the verdict you explode into shuddering sobs, which may even be real. Then you hug anyone not repelled.

You tell the cameras and blinding lights that your nightmare is finally over, and that everyone, however innocent, is in danger from overzealous prosecutors. Now the police, you sneer, can get after the real...

The male prosecutor won’t speak; the female sobs. Bimbos have fled, but unlimited supply.

Your mother and father are wiped out with the attorney fees, but what the fuck, they're ancient anyway.

No good comes from anything like this, you tell Lucille, barkeep at The Carousel. She's secretly grateful that such a good tipper won't be put to death.

You put a C-note on the Lakers.

Your lawyer’s beefy face fills all the TVs there. The system works! he informs Margo Gellerham, new Channel 6 anchor.

They switch to Father Morrisey, spiritual advisor to wife’s parents: God will ultimately judge.

You scrabble up to give him the finger, starting from near the floor and ending over your head. That felt good! you tell Lucille, ask if it’s too late to double the bet.

You will get to more freely strut when, at a press conference arranged by the newly-elected district attorney one year later, a jailed drifter confesses!

In addition, he is Jesus Christ and must be bathed by virgins.

In a quiet deal with church leaders, latter pronouncement squelched by all outlets. They already had a prominent minister cited in a husband’s divorce complaint detailing a rotational game played at a choir convention.

The drifter is ultimately convicted and refuses to appeal. He is sure he’ll sit in God’s lap.

Your personal appeal (“The Christian”--Journal-Sentinel editorial anoints you) is later turned down by the governor.

Asked to join picketers outside the execution, you do, but just long enough to announce a run for Congress. Mystifying them, and embittering further, if possible, your old prosecutors.

The following night you agree with Matts Rundeist of Fox News that America is the greatest nation on the face of the earth.