"Fuck yeah, I admit it!" he said gleefully. "They must've had thirty of them motherfuckers chasing me at one point. I outdrove their asses and lost them. Lost them! How many people you know can say they got away from the cops? That's why they were so pissed off and started beating my ass when I got home. They're fuckin' sore losers!"
"Let's get in the car," Perceville said, grabbing Matt by the arm and pulling him forcefully toward the waiting limousine.
"What about the cocaine they found in your house?"
"How did they treat you in the jail?
"Is it true that you had a gun in your car and that you fired a couple of shots at them?"
They made it onto the limousine and the driver shut the door, sealing them off from the ravenous horde of media types. The driver got in and sped away, heading for Matt's home in San Juan Capistrano.
Perceville was furious. "What in the name of God did you think you were doing out there?" he asked, his voice particularly high and particularly reedy. "I told you not to say anything! You just admitted on camera that you ran from the police deliberately!"
Matt looked at him carefully with the one eye that wasn't swollen shut. "So," he said, "Are you a dick smoker, or what?" he asked.
"What?" Perceville yelled, his face turning red now.
"It's cool if you are," Matt said. "I don't care if you like to suck on some dude's hairy balls or take a schlong up your ass. That's your business. I just want you to know that I ain't into that shit, so don't be thinkin' you're gonna get a piece off of my ass."
"Although my sexual orientation is none of your business," Perceville said, "I assure you that I am heterosexual and I probably get more action than you do."
"I seriously doubt that," Matt scoffed.
"In any case," Perceville said. "We're talking about your mouth. You need to keep it shut. Let me do the talking for you."
"I will until you start spouting a bunch of shit about how I'm going into rehab or that them cops chasing me was a misunderstanding. There wasn't no fuckin' misunderstanding about it. They tried to catch me and they fuckin' lost! I'm proud of that shit, dude. You down with it?"
"You don't admit things like that on camera!" Perceville said. "Are you trying to get thrown in prison?"
"I'd rather go to prison then have people thinking I'm some kind of pussy," Matt said. "And that's the motherfuckin' truth."
Perceville rubbed his temples, trying to massage away a sudden headache. "God help me," he pleaded. "What was I thinking when I took this case?"
Chapter 10b
Matt's preliminary hearing was the following Monday morning, once again before Judge Waters in the Santa Ana Superior Court building. Matt arrived looking much better than he had during his first court appearance. His face was no longer swollen and most of the bruises were fading away. He was dressed in a suit and tie, his long hair hanging over his shoulders.
The accusations against him were read. He was officially charged with: possession of cocaine for sale, possession of marijuana for sale, assaulting a peace officer, resisting arrest, reckless driving, driving under the influence of alcohol, and twenty-three separate traffic offenses related to running stops signs and red lights. "How do you plea?" he was asked by Judge Waters.
"Not guilty," Matt said, repeating what Perceville had advised him to say.
The prosecutor then laid out the basics of his case against Matt. He told about the moving violation that led to the attempt to stop the offending Maserati. He told about the high-speed chase that ensued. He called as a witness the first sheriff's deputy who attempted to stop the Maserati. This officer testified that he was the one to visualize the Maserati's license number, run it, and discover that the car he was chasing was registered to Matthew Norman Tisdale of San Juan Capistrano.
"Do we have to mention my middle name in the court?" Matt said tiredly. "I've always hated my parents for saddling me with that."
"You are out of order, Mr. Tisdale," Waters barked at him. "Do not speak in my courtroom unless you are spoken to or I'll charge you with contempt. Is that clear?"
"Yeah," he said. "It's clear, Your Honor."
The prosecutor then led the court through a chronology of the events of the day in question. When the deputies were forced to call of their pursuit of the Maserati out of concern for the safety of the residents of Lake Forest (Matt opened his mouth at this point to shout out an angry dispute of the claim that they'd "called off" the pursuit, but Perceville managed to silence him by kicking him in the shin) they sent other units to the registered owner's address to ascertain whether or not Mr. Tisdale was home. When the household staff stated that Mr. Tisdale was not, in fact, home at the moment, the deputies requested entry to the house in order to establish this as fact. The servant did consensually allow the deputies to enter the residence where, in plain view, they found large quantities of cocaine and marijuana. This formed the basis for the search warrant, which, in turn, led to the discovery of almost an ounce of cocaine and a pound of high grade marijuana in the defendant's safe.
It was during this portion of the hearing that Perceville proved his worth. This testimony was offered to the court by the patrol officer — a deputy named Michael Worthington — who had made the discovery of the cocaine and the marijuana in the house.
"Tell me something, Officer Worthington," Perceville said on cross-examination of the witness. "What was your purpose in asking for consent to enter Mr. Tisdale's residence on that night?"
"As I told Mr. Sparks on direct," he said. "We were attempting to establish whether or not Mr. Tisdale was at home."
"So your purpose of gaining entry was to find out if Mr. Tisdale was home?"
"Yes," Worthington said.
"And during the course of this examination of the house," Perceville went on, "you noticed a silver bowl sitting on the coffee table in the entertainment room of the house?"
"Yes I did."
"Was the bowl covered with a lid of any sort?"
"There was a lid on it," Worthington agreed.
"And could you see through this lid and determine what the contents of the bowl were?"
"No," Worthington said. "I could not."
"So you had to remove the lid to this bowl in order to visualize the 'fine white powder, resembling cocaine' you testified to earlier?"
"Yes, I did," Worthington said.
"What made you decide to open this bowl, Officer Worthington?" Perceville asked. "You were there to find Mr. Tisdale, were you not? Did you think it possible he might be hiding in that bowl?"
"No," Worthington said, already seeing where this was going. "I did not think he was hiding in the bowl. The reason I opened it is because, in my experience, such bowls are commonly used to store illicit drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. I had reasonable suspicion to believe there might be such a substance inside. As it turned out, I was correct."
"Was there any reason, at this point in the investigation, to believe that illegal drugs played any part in the traffic violations that had brought you to that residence in the first place?"
"Well... no," Worthington admitted. "There wasn't."
Perceville then questioned him about the marijuana bowl, which had been found across the room from the cocaine bowl. He used the same line of inquiry and got the same answers. The bowl was covered with a lid, the contents were not visible while the lid was on, the container was too small for Mr. Tisdale to hide in, and Worthington had to remove the lid in order to discover the contents.
"Thank you, Officer Worthington," Perceville said, nodding at him. "I have no further questions."
The prosecutor could certainly see where Perceville was going with this. He did a redirect examination of Officer Worthington and went into great detail about his training, experience with drugs and drug storage devices, and whether or not Worthington had ever seen such containers used for anything other than drug storage.