Act of God (41 page)

T
hey’ve added a witness,” Joan Wills told Dana the next morning.

“Who?”

“Someone named Joshua Clune.”

“Who is he?” Dana inquired.

“Haven’t a clue,” Joan replied with a shrug. “But they’re putting him up first thing.”

“Get Craig Jessup on it immediately,” Dana said, already out the door.

Joshua had never been so scared in his whole life. Not even when that car had plowed into him all those years ago in Wisconsin,
and he had been in the hospital for so long, and had ended up with the scar on his face. In fact, he felt a little like that
now, like he could see something awful coming, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

He had thought over what Big Dug said about talking to the police for almost a week before he agreed to go. Then he took Big
Dug up on his offer to go with him.

“They aren’t going to put me in jail, are they?” he kept asking.

“No, they’re not,” Big Dug assured him. “They’re just going to talk to you, and then take down what you say, that’s all. And
it might not end up being important at all.”

So Joshua talked to the police, to a man with gray hair named Tinker. He told him that he had seen the delivery man, but couldn’t
identify him.

“He was tall, and he had on a jacket and one of those soft caps.”

“Do you know what time it was that you saw the—uh—the delivery man?” Tinker had asked.

“Well, I know it was after McDonald’s closed,” Joshua remembered. “That’s at eleven.”

“How soon after?”

Joshua shrugged. “I don’t think I know that. I was asleep. I woke up. I don’t have a watch.”

They talked for a little more than two hours before Tinker thanked him for coming in and told him he didn’t think it would
be necessary for him to testify.

“What’s testify?” he asked Big Dug when they were on their way back down to the waterfront.

“It’s when you have to go into the courtroom, and swear to tell the truth, and sit in a chair in front of a whole bunch of
people, and you get asked a lot of questions,” his friend told him.

“But then, everyone would know what I did,” Joshua cried, aghast. “They would know I slept at Hill House when I wasn’t supposed
to.”

“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Big Dug said. “Didn’t the policeman say you wouldn’t have to testify?”

He had, but then he had apparently changed his mind, because first thing Saturday morning, two uniformed officers had come
looking for him. Without Big Dug there to protect him, they had driven him to the police station, put him in a cell, and
left him there for a long time. Finally, he was taken to a room with a table and some chairs and a big mirror in it, and the
gray-haired policeman.

“Joshua, we’re going to have to go over your statement again,” Tinker told him.

And they had, for the rest of Saturday, and on into Sunday. They talked endlessly, and they showed him pictures, and then
they talked some more, and showed him more pictures, until Joshua wasn’t sure any longer what he had really seen that night
at Hill House, or what they told him he had seen.

On Monday morning, they let him shower, and gave him a pair of clean jeans and a shirt to put on, and then took him to the
courthouse, and told him to wait. Then a different man had come in and asked him questions, and Joshua answered as best he
could remember, but his head began to hurt. The only good thing about the whole weekend, if he could say anything about it
was good, was that they brought him whatever he wanted to eat, and there was a bed in the cell where he slept.

But now he was alone and frightened and very confused. He didn’t want to go into the courtroom place they told him about,
in front of strange people, and answer any more questions. He wanted to go back to the waterfront and find Big Dug. His friend
was sure to be worried about him by now, he’d been gone for such a long time. Joshua wondered suddenly if anyone would think
maybe he wasn’t coming back, and take his box and his blanket.

Big Dug had been wrong. The police
had
put Joshua in jail, after all. They had simply waited until his friend wasn’t there to stop them. And he was worried that
they were going to keep him there because now they knew for certain that he had slept at Hill House.

“I’m not sandbagging you,” Brian assured Dana when the defense attorney stormed into his office. “I got word of this witness’s
availability exactly five minutes before I sent word to you through Joan. And if you want a continuance before you cross,
I won’t oppose it.”

“What’s his testimony?” Dana asked.

“He’s an eyewitness.”

“An eyewitness to what?”

“He can place the defendant at the scene, at the time we believe the bomb was set.”

“If there’s anything,” Dana implored her client just before court was due to convene, “anything at all that, for whatever
reason, you didn’t feel able to disclose before, now’s the time to tell me.”

“About what?” Corey asked.

“They’re putting a witness on the stand this morning who can corroborate Milton Auerbach’s testimony. He can put you at Hill
House the night before the bombing.”

There was a pause while Corey looked at her with an empty expression in his eyes. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said finally.
“I guess I can’t believe, after all these months, that you don’t know that.”

Dana sighed. “I had to ask, I had to hear you say it,” she told him. “All right then, let’s go hear what this mystery witness
has to say, and hope to hell I’ve got a miracle or two tucked away in some pocket I’ve forgotten about.”

Joshua shuffled to the stand with the aid of a deputy, who placed his left hand on the Bible, and showed him what to do with
his right hand. The clerk read the oath, and the deputy nodded.

“I do,” Joshua said, as he had been rehearsed.

Then the deputy sat him down and retreated. Joshua smiled at him, and gave a little wave as the man took a seat at the rear
of the courtroom.

“Please state your name and address,” the clerk instructed.

“Joshua Clune,” the witness recited. “I live in Seattle, under the viaduct.”

A murmur rippled through the spectator section, and Dana blinked in surprise.

“A homeless man?” Joan whispered.

“Brian must really be panicking,” Dana whispered back, knowing, as far as most juries were concerned, that homeless people
rarely made credible witnesses.

“Joshua,” the prosecutor said kindly, “how long have you lived under the viaduct?”

“As long as I been here,” Joshua replied, smiling broadly. “It’s real nice. I have my own box and my own blanket. That is,
I do if someone didn’t take them by now because I been gone so long. And I have good friends, like Big Dug.”

“You said, as long as you’ve been here. How long is that?”

“Well, let’s see,” Joshua replied, scratching a bit at his freshly washed hair. “It must be close on a year now. I think I
came in October.” He paused for a moment and then nodded. “It must have been October, ’cause I remember it wasn’t raining
yet. It didn’t rain until November.”

Dana quickly scribbled down the words “Big Doug,” and looked up to see that several members of the jury were beginning to
smile. She had to admit, with a sinking heart, it was easy to like the young man.

“All right, Joshua,” Brian continued, “tell us about when you got sick.”

“I got sick in the end of January,” Joshua replied. “I had a cough and a fever, and my throat hurt real bad.”

“And what did you do?”

“Big Dug took me to Hill House, to see the doctor.”

“And what did the doctor do?”

“He examined me real good, and then he told me to come back the next day for medicine.”

“And did you?”

Joshua looked down. “Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Brian prompted him, “but you’ll have to speak up.”

“I went back to Hill House,” Joshua said in a louder voice.

“The next day, like the doctor told you?”

The witness looked as though he might cry. “No,” he said, almost whispering. “I went the night before.”

“Why did you do that?” Brian asked gently.

“Because I forget, sometimes,” Joshua said. “And I didn’t want to forget the doctor, and not get my medicine.”

“What did you do at Hill House when you went there?”

“I found a little place toward the back, where it was nice and cozy, and I went to sleep.”

“What time did you go to sleep, Joshua, do you remember?”

“I went to sleep around ten and then I woke up. When I woke up it was around eleven-thirty.”

“How do you know what time it was?”

“Because McDonald’s had just closed and the people who work there were going home. That’s what woke me up.”

“And what happened when you woke up?”

“Not much for a while. Then the delivery man came.”

“What do you mean, the delivery man?”

“A man came to the clinic. He had packages and he took them down the basement.”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know… about half an hour. Maybe a little more.”

“So sometime around midnight, a man came to Hill House and took packages down into the basement?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you see the man clearly?”

Joshua shrugged. “It was dark, but I could see him.”

“What can you tell us about him?”

“He had on a jacket.”

“What kind of jacket?”

“It was dark and it had a zipper.”

Brian picked up a navy windbreaker. “You mean, like this?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Anything else?”

“He had on a cap.”

“What kind of cap? Like a baseball cap?”

Joshua shook his head. “No, like a winter cap.”

Brian picked up a navy blue seaman’s cap, and showed it to the witness. “Like this?”

“Yes,” Joshua said. “Just like that.”

“Were you able to see the man himself, what he looked like?”

Joshua nodded solemnly. “It was dark, but I could see pretty good,” he said, looking at Corey Latham. “It was him.”

I
t was early afternoon before Brian finished his examination of Joshua Clune, and the judge advised the jury that the trial
would not resume until Wednesday. “If you need more time,” he told Dana, “just let my clerk know.”

“What do we do now?” Joan asked as the two attorneys left the courthouse.

“We wait for Craig Jessup to come up with something,” Dana replied. “And we pray.”

The jurors were delighted to have a day off. In twos and threes, they filed out of the courthouse, into the autumn sunlight,
threading their way through the crowds that threatened to block Third Avenue completely, and had already slowed traffic to
a crawl. Since the start of the trial, the number of people converging on the area had increased dramatically, from a few
dozen during jury selection to what was now estimated to be close to a thousand. They brandished their banners and their posters,
shouted their messages, sold their trinkets, prayed, and sang. Aside from a few minor skirmishes, however, the demonstrations
had been peaceful. A full complement of police was on hand each day to try to keep it that way.

“Look at them all,” Karleen McKay commented to Allison Ackerman, as the two women exited together. “Don’t any of them have
jobs to go to?”

“For a lot of them, I think this
is
their job,” the author replied.

“Protect the preborn,” a short, slender man with inch-thick eyeglasses beseeched the two jurors, trying to stuff his pamphlets
into their hands. “Celebrate life.”

“Protect free choice,” a short, heavyset woman with facial hair pleaded with them, trying to press her flyers into their hands.
“Without it, we’re no better than slaves.”

“I’m dizzy,” Karleen said, as they got to James Street and turned left.

“I’m nauseated,” Allison said.

They parted company at the parking garage on the corner of James and Second. It was on the tip of Allison’s tongue to ask
Karleen if she’d like to go for coffee, but it would have been awkward. The trial was what they had in common, and they were
not allowed to discuss it.

The mystery writer drove home to Maple Valley instead, fixed herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and poured herself
a glass of milk. “Comfort food” her mother called it, when Allison was a child and worrying over something. It had always
worked, and she had done the same with her own daughter.

Allison sat at the kitchen table while she ate, and watched the horses frolicking in the pasture. Joshua Clune was on her
mind. Homeless he might be, and developmentally delayed, as well, but he was also believable. He had no reason to lie. And
his identification of Corey Latham was the first piece of evidence in the three-week-long trial that tied the defendant directly
to the
crime. It was a while coming, she thought, but could not have been more welcome.

“I’m getting real worried about Joshua,” Big Dug told the nondescript man who had casually sought him out Tuesday morning.
“He disappeared on Saturday. I’m starting to think something awful might have happened to him.”

“I guess it depends on how you look at it,” Craig Jessup said with a shrug. “He appears to be in police custody.”