A Ghost of Justice (20 page)

44

"That
goddamned bastard should be dead and rotting already.  Where is it you found him?"

Emily heard about how her grandfather had acted in Phil Lindley's office after the trial, but she wasn't prepared for this, her own Gee-Pop addressing her in this manner.  "In a cemetery in Richmond," she said, her voice suddenly shaky.

"Well, why in hell isn't he down in the dirt of that cemetery right now?  I just don't understand that.  If he had murdered
my
son that's exactly where he'd be."

Emily thought to herself that was what would have happened had she kept her gun yesterday morning.  But now she wasn't as certain it would have been the right thing.

Her grandfather continued.  "What about you, Bob?  You would've killed that creature if he had done that to one of your boys."

Bob glanced at his sons.  He cleared his throat.  "I… Yeah.  I probably would, Pa.  But I'm sure Eric has his reasons for--"

"Reasons my ass!  He's just screwing around like he has all his life."

Bob's eyes widened.  "He's an accomplished archeologist, Pa."

"So?  Hell.  This house may be big, but it's an old joke by comparison to what either of you have," Eric Senior said, gesturing at them.

"It's close to where he works.  Besides, we aren't here to criticize Eric, but to help him."

"Help him?" the old man shouted.  "I'll be damned if he needs help.  No Sheafer ever needed help in a matter like this.  What the hell does he need help for?  That man is guilty.  The court said so weeks ago.  What more does he want?"

Bob started to say something, but Emily didn't want to hear another patronizing statement.  This old monster wasn't the same man who had been her loving Gee-Pop.  Loudly she said, "Just shut up!  I'm tired of this."

Startled faces stared back at her.

Steadily, she continued, trying to take advantage of the silence.  "Put yourself in Dad's place for once, okay?  Come on.  Andrea?  I know
you
can.  Bob?  He's your…"  She had to compose herself to say the next word.  "…brother."  Chewing briefly on her lip, she decided to try just once to talk to Eric Senior.  "Gee-Pop, you asked what more Dad was wanting."

"Damn right.  But I don't really care what it is.  What he needs to do is shoot the bastard."

"That's what
you
need.  He isn't you.  He's a lot like you, but not the same."  Emily took a quick, deep breath and started pacing slowly, thinking rapidly.  Then she

Stopped, faced them and held her arms out.  "Have any of you stopped to think:  What if the court was wrong?"

45

"I
hope you didn't mind me asking you to recount your version of what happened, John.  I am usually better prepared than this."

"No.  I've said it so many times, I…  You know, I still dream about it."

Debra left the wall and sat on the bed, facing him.  "Do you dream about anything else in your life?"

"Lots of things."  Like mom yelling at me for blowing algebra or laming a concert, he thought, but didn't say.

"Like what?"  She shook her head.  "I don't really want an answer to that.  I don't put much importance on the contents of dreams, just in the feelings they leave us with.  What I'd like to hear is what you would tell me about your childhood.  What was it like?"

This wasn't exactly what he was expecting.  It didn't seem to have any direction to it that he could see.  "I don't know.  Pretty normal, I guess."  He blew his nose.  For what it was worth, his cold or flu, or whatever, was better.

"Did you get along with your siblings?  Your parents?"

"Ah…I was an only child.  I got along with my parents okay."

"School?  Friends?"

"Yeah.  I did all right in school.  Not good enough for a full scholarship or anything like that.  But Dad said that didn't matter as long as I could get in a college."

"So education was important to him."

John nodded.  "He only went to a business school, himself.  He did all right, though.  Executive manager at a supermarket is good, but he wanted me to get a degree from a four-year school.  Be a professional."

"Did he put a lot of pressure on you?"

"What?  No way.  He never did anything like that.  Mom did enough of that."  He smiled at a memory.  "Everyone was thrilled when I made first chair in the high school orchestra."

"What instrument was that?"

"What is
wrong
with you, Emmie?" Frank demanded like she had suggested infanticide.

"Look," she said.  "I was just as sure as the rest of you guys.  Now, well, I don't know."  She raked her bangs to one side but they fell back to her brows.  "What he says sounds like truth."

"Sure," Ed said.  "Well, his type are born liars.  They can make you believe anything they want to.  It doesn't take much to figure how
that
actually went.  She tried to get away and he chased her out.  He caught her on the patio and threw her down head first.  Just like the neighbor said."

Emily looked at Ed for a couple of seconds.  He seemed so closed minded.  She couldn't remember that he was like that as a child.  None of them had been.  "Is that what you believe, Ed?"

Ed shook his head in disgust.  "Sure.  We all do," he said, waving an arm to include the rest.

Andrea said, "I don't know."

"Mother!" Ed exclaimed as if wounded.

No one paid him any attention.  All looked at Andrea.

"What?" Emily said in a small voice.  An unexpected ally: girls against boys.

"Well," she started.  "I just did what you said, Em.  I put myself in Eric's shoes, as best I could.  And, when faced with the facts without the court experience, and faced with that I was supposed to execute John Hardy myself, I decided I would have to be certain about it in my own right."

Emily smiled weakly, grateful.  "Yeah.  That's it.  That's all.  He just wants to be sure."

The hall door opened and Eric stood in it.  After a second he stepped in and laid his arm on Emily's shoulder.

"Well," Eric Senior said.  "Have you killed him yet?  I didn't hear a damned shot.  What're you doing now?"

"I've been listening to you," Eric replied.  Emily felt him squeeze her shoulder, communicating a vast expression of love, appreciation, pride, she didn't know what else.  "It's been interesting."

"Everything's 'interesting' to you.  A stupid old arrowhead in the back yard, a little blue glass jar in the dirt: 'interesting.'  When are you going to
do
anything?"

He sighed.  "A criminal psychologist from the School is evaluating Hardy right now."

"Now, John, I want to go back to something you said.  Do you remember when I asked you if your father put pressure on you to excel in school and you said he didn't need to because of your mother?"

He nodded.

"Why was that?"

John lowered his eyes to the floor yet again.  He was getting familiar with the pattern in the wood grain between his shoes.  "Dad just didn't do things that way.  He was pretty easy-going.  As long as I did my best, he was satisfied."

"Would you say you were close to your father?"

"Yeah.  We were.  Even after I dropped out I was able to get to see him now and then."

"When was the last time?"

"Well."  John sighed and scratched his cheek.  "The very last time doesn't really count, I guess."

"Why is that?"

"'Cause it was when I got caught by the Sheafers.  And before that it was when I was tried, but they wouldn't let him see me unsupervised.  So the last
real
time was November.  I came through Richmond on my way back south to look for work."

Debra prodded him.  "You still haven't answered my main question, John."

"I'm sorry.  I…what was it?  I kinda lost track."

"That's okay.  Maybe I didn't phrase it succinctly enough.  What did your mother do that put pressure on you?"

"Oh."  He sat quietly, not wanting to answer, not really sure how to.

46

"Look
," Eric was saying.  "I told you that the psych exam was incomplete.  I don't care anymore why that was so.  I just want it done now.  That's how it has to be."

"'Has to be,'" Eric Senior mocked.  "You've always had to have things 'the way they have to be' in your opinion.  It was that way when you were a kid," he said harshly.  "I never understood you then and I sure as hell don't now."

The old man's tone made Emily wince.  Her father held his ground, but Eric Senior seemed to hate him.  She felt she was missing something here.  It was more than the present issue of John Hardy, serious though that was.  There appeared to be old wounds or feelings Eric Senior had held for a long time.

She knew about unresolved grudges.  The painful memory of her mother dying of a pulmonary embolism after an injury at one of her landscaping projects resurfaced.  Emily had blamed her for dying.  The feelings lasted for almost a year.  She never told her father about them, but she had made things awful for him.  Yet, at thirteen, things were so black-and-white.  It was either right-or-wrong and things fit where they went.

Eric Senior ranted on, disturbing her thoughts.

"That goddamned monster up there deserves to die.  You know that.  If you don't do it, I'll do it myself!"
Emily blinked in surprise.  The voice was gravely with aged maleness, but the words had been her own.  Once.  And they had been wrong.  "Shut up!" she shouted impulsively.  "Dammit, Dad knows what he's doing.  Just leave him alone and let him do it."  She didn't remember approaching him, but there was old Eric Senior, sitting beneath her, eyes bulging and his face nearly crimson.

Sputtering at first, he managed to yell at Eric, "Are you gonna let her talk to
me
like this?"

"Damn you, Emily.  Show some respect," Ed blurted before Eric responded. 

"To a close-minded old man?" she retorted.  "Don't any of you understand what is really going on here?  The court, and you, just want my father to go upstairs and kill a man, without any consideration whatsoever."

"He is supposed to carry out the court's decision and sentence," Frank said.

"Thank you
so much
for clearing that up for us, Frank," she said, staring hard at him.  She then added, "So he should go on and do it?  Without giving it another thought?"

Frank broke eye contact.  He looked around, then said, "Yes.  The probabilities tech stated at the trial that the evidence statistically weighed heavily against Hardy."

"Which is a grossly improper use of statistics," Eric finally said, taking over his own defense.  He took Emily by both shoulders and pulled her gently but firmly back from Eric Senior.  Before he let go, though, he gave her another appreciative squeeze, with both hands.  "Being entrenched in the business world like you are, Frank, I would have expected you to realize that."

"It's the law, Uncle."

"Yes.  It is."

Ed stood, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt and coat.  "Sorry, Uncle Eric, but I can't help the way I feel.  Maybe you think you needed this meeting, but it's just been a waste of time."  He looked at his cuffs again.  An ugly but firm tone of certainty in his voice, he said, "Go on and execute him.  Get it over with.  You'll know it's right, eventually."

Eric calmly said, "Thank you for your opinion, Ed.  That's all I really want from each of you.  And I'll not argue the points with you, either.  But leave it to me."

Looking up at the ceiling as if he could see Hardy above them, Ed said, "I suppose you're feeding him, too."  He then left the room, saying, "You all know he has to die."  The front door slammed as he went out.

"Do 'we all know' that?" Eric addressed the rest.

The room was silently tense.

For Emily, they were standing there, she and her father, holding off an enemy made of their own family.

The image held until Bob broke the silence.  "I…don't pretend to speak for the others, Eric, but when the dust settles on all this, you do what
you
have to.  I'll stand by your decision."  He stood as if to illustrate.

Andrea joined Bob, taking his hand.  "Goes for me, too, Eric."

Emily chewed on her lower lip as Eric said, "Thank you, both of you."  She was relieved that not everyone was an enemy.

With that, they all rose and left without any more words, Frank and Tricia (who had said nothing since coming in) solemn.  Old Eric scowled as he walked out.

Eric moved to follow Bob outside, but stopped and looked at her.

She said, "Go on.  I think I need to be alone for a bit."

He scanned her face, then nodded.

She curled up at the end of the small sofa after they were all outside.  He has no idea how terrible I've been to him, she thought.  Or worse, maybe he does.  I've been just like…(she couldn't call him Gee-Pop anymore, or grandfather, even)…she settled on Old Eric. 
He
still saw things as black-and-white, right-or-wrong.  No areas of uncertainty.  Everything very clear.

Just as she once had.

So had her father.  At first.

It was easier then.  God, she hadn't thought so at the time.  It was so easy to ignore the questions.  She knew what had changed her:  Seeing the contrast between her father and Old Eric.  What had changed her father?

A tapping sounded at the door.

She turned to see a dark-haired woman.

"I'm sorry to disturb you.  I'm Dr. Angelucci and I am looking for Dr. Sheafer."

Emily brushed back her bangs.  "I think he's out on the front porch."

"Thank you."

The psychologist gone, Emily rested her head on the back of the sofa.