Act of God (52 page)

Robert had been out during the lunch break. He had seen the latest issue of
Probe.
Making a quick decision, he put the two women in his own office. “I’ll get the deputies,” he said.

“I was afraid something like that might happen,” Joan murmured.

“To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten all about it,” Dana said, with a touch of irony. “I was too busy envisioning every five
o’clock news lead in the country warning mothers about the potential dangers of hot chocolate.”

“I say we get back to the office and come up with some kind of statement,” Joan suggested. “On both issues.”

Before Dana could respond, Guff and Marty, the two deputies, appeared in the doorway.

“Are you ladies ready?” Guff asked.

“We certainly are,” Joan replied.

Questions began firing at them the moment they entered the corridor outside the courtroom. Ignoring them, the two officers
marched the attorneys through the swarm of media people, physically clearing the way when necessary, and hurried them into
a waiting elevator. Three reporters appeared out of nowhere at the last minute, and tried to jump aboard before the doors
closed. They were unceremoniously shoved aside.

“Whew!” Joan exclaimed. “It’s like dodging real bullets.”

“I think we’re in the clear now,” Guff said.

Dana set her jaw. Joan was right, of course. She was going to have to come up with a statement about the article, or risk
having her personal life disrupt the trial. But it would have to be carefully thought out.

By the time the elevator doors opened on the main floor, she had settled on a gracious but firm, “No comment for now.” That
would stop them for today. By tomorrow, she would be prepared.

To her great relief, there were no reporters waiting to accost her in the lobby. She was safe for the time being, knowing
that outside the courthouse, they could blend into the crush of people, and likely be gone before anyone had a chance to recognize
her.

One by one, they pushed through the revolving door, made their way out from under the portico, and turned left toward Jefferson.
The demonstrators, grown now from hundreds into thousands, were alternately singing and shouting at one another. But the moment
they saw Dana, they began to surge toward her, threatening to break through the police barricade.

The first projectile hit just as they were crossing Third Avenue. The overripe tomato caught Dana full in the chest and oozed
its way down the front of her coat.

“Baby killer!” someone shouted.

“Murderer!”

“May you rot in hell!”

Before anyone quite realized what was happening, tomatoes were pelting her from all directions, followed by raw eggs, and
finally, animal feces, some of it spilling over onto Joan.

“Abortion makes you the mother of a dead baby!” a woman hissed in her face.

Guff and Marty sprang into action. Grabbing the two women, they pulled them back from the corner and into a handy doorway.
Guff then barked into his two-way radio, and almost immediately, half a dozen additional deputies were on the scene. Using
locked arms, they managed to drive back the
crowd enough to get a police car through. The attorneys and their guards quickly climbed inside and were driven off.

“No more of this walking stuff. From now on, we drive you wherever you need to go,” Marty told them, and neither Dana nor
Joan were of any mind to argue.

“My God, what happened to you two?” Angeline Wilder exclaimed after the deputies deposited the attorneys in the Cotter Boland
reception area some ten minutes later. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a barn.”

“We just ran into a few unpleasant people, that’s all,” Joan told her.

“I can guess why,” Angeline said archly, a copy of
Probe
in plain view on her desk. She lowered her voice. “I think you’d better go clean up a bit. Mr. Cotter said I was to tell
him the moment you came in. He’ll probably be looking for you.”

“No kidding,” Joan said sardonically. She took Dana by the arm and steered her into her office. “Coat,” she said, and waited
until Dana undid the buttons. Then she peeled the filthy garment off her partner, and tossed it aside. The gray suit was untouched.
“Come on,” she said.

“Where?” Dana asked.

“To the bathroom, of course. We have to wash that stuff out of your hair.”

Dana allowed herself to be propelled down the hall and into the bathroom, and did not protest when Joan stuck her head under
the faucet and ran water and then soap all over it. Angeline purloined a towel from Paul Cotter’s private bathroom, and Dana
permitted Joan to dry her hair. The two attorneys were back in Dana’s office for less than a minute before the intercom buzzed.

“May I see you in my office, please,” the managing partner said, in a manner that required no response other than dispatch.

Dana rolled her eyes at Joan. “I think I feel just like the lamb does who’s heading off to the slaughter,” she said.

Straightening her shoulders, she marched down the corridor, and knocked on the solid mahogany door at the far end. There was
no visible copy of
Probe
in Paul Cotter’s office, he was far too sophisticated for that, but Dana knew it was there, somewhere.

“Charles tells me the trial is going well,” he said as soon as she was seated across the desk from him.

“I would say it’s going as well as we expected,” she concurred.

“He also tells me you and Latham appear to have become especially close.”

“We’ve become professionally close, yes,” she amended.

“That might make things a bit awkward.”

“What things?”

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you on this,” he said. “I’ve
seen the tabloid that came out today. I assume you know what I’m talking about?”

“I do.”

“Well, my personal feelings about the matter aside, I’m very much afraid this… revelation, whether there is any truth to it
or not, may present a major roadblock to your continuing to first-chair this trial.”

“Why is that?”

“I think it should be obvious,” he suggested. “If the media frenzy over you is even half what I believe it’s going to be,
just the distraction alone could considerably lessen your effectiveness, and I think you’d have to agree that would not be
in the best interests of the client.”

“Not saying whether I agree with you or not at the moment, what do you see as an option?” Dana inquired, wondering whether
Joan would be able to handle Corey on the witness stand.

“I think there may be a reasonably uncomplicated solution,”
Cotter replied. “We could simply slide Charles up to first chair, allow you to stay on in second chair, so there’s at least
the appearance of continuity, and move Ms. Wills down to third.”

Dana blinked in surprise. “You want to put Charles Ramsey in charge of the defense, knowing what you know about him, about
what he did?”

The managing partner shrugged. “What do we know about him?” he asked. “Other than some off-the-wall allegation I can’t seem
to find anyone able to corroborate, all I know is that he’s been a first-rate attorney, with a spotless reputation, since
before you were born.”

“Is that why Craig Jessup got a letter terminating his services?” she asked. “Because he stumbled onto something that could
tarnish Ramsey’s image, and by proxy, this firm’s?”

“Jessup acted irresponsibly,” Cotter barked. “He was retained to investigate certain matters pertaining to the trial itself,
and he chose to go far afield of that. I will not have employees overstepping their bounds.”

“He didn’t overstep, he was acting on my instructions,” Dana informed the managing partner. “I asked him to look into the
jury list issue. When it backfired on us, I thought it might be relevant down the road.”

“Well, I may have overreacted,” Cotter conceded.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said, “because I’ve already rehired him.”

He frowned. “Perhaps we should leave that decision to Charles,” he suggested.

“Oh?” Dana said. “I thought we were just talking possibilities here. Are you saying a decision’s already been made?”

“Well, I naturally assumed, under the circumstances, that is, that you…”

Defer to him as the head of her firm, she would. Give up without a fight, she would not. “You assumed what?” she asked, her
voice neutral. “That I’d just roll over and relinquish the
reins? Why would I do that? As you may recall, you begged me to take this case, when I made it perfectly clear I didn’t want
it. But now it’s mine, and frankly, I think I’m doing a damn good job of it.”

“This is not a commentary on the quality of your work,” he reminded her. “It’s not your competence that’s at issue here.”

“My current personal discomfort notwithstanding, I have no reason to think I can’t continue to do a good job,” she told him.
“Furthermore, the key to this case is going to be, and always has been, Corey’s own testimony. And I have serious reservations
about Charles’s ability to handle him effectively on the stand. He doesn’t know him. He’s barely said two words to him in
court. He’s never even bothered to go up to the jail and meet with him. On top of that, he hasn’t sat in on so much as one
of the preparation sessions. On the other hand, Joan has done all these things. So if you’re really serious about replacing
me, she’s the one you should consider.”

Cotter scowled at her. “May I remind you that you’re speaking about a respected senior partner in this firm,” he said. “And
while I appreciate your loyalty to Ms. Wills, I happen to be confident that Charles would handle the defendant’s testimony
without the slightest difficulty, and is the proper choice.”

“And you’re prepared to make that decision right here and now?”

“Is there any reason not to?”

“Well, don’t you think you might be jumping the gun just a little bit?” Dana wondered.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to wait and see whether the media influence becomes the distraction you envision,”
she suggested, “before you leap to the conclusion that it’s going to be, and pull me off the case, perhaps prematurely?”

Cotter cleared his throat. “Well, yes, I see your point,” he allowed. “All right, I’ll get in touch with the executive committee,
and we’ll all plan to meet here on Sunday, say at two o’clock, and assess the situation then.”

Dana smiled with a lot more sanguinity than she felt. “That sounds reasonable to me,” she said.

Over the past several weeks, Rose Gregory had grown so fond of Dana McAuliffe, and her valiant efforts to defend that nice
naval lieutenant, that when she saw the tabloid at the checkout counter in the Queen Anne Safeway, she just didn’t know what
to think.

“The woman never claimed to be a paragon of virtue,” her granddaughter tried to tell her.

“She never came out and said she wasn’t, either,” Rose countered.

“Did she have to?” her granddaughter argued. “She was hired to do a job, to defend Corey Latham, whatever her personal beliefs
were. Well, that’s exactly what she’s doing, and I have to tell you, I admire her for it.”

“But she seemed such a fine young woman,” Rose said. “I trusted her. She seemed to have the right moral values.”

“She’s exactly the same person you liked this morning.”

“Maybe,” Rose said with a sigh. “But now I’m so disappointed, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I certainly hope this
isn’t going to affect the way I feel about the defendant.”

Although she never dared admit it to anyone, Allison Ackerman got some of her best story ideas from the tabloids. The murders
were always depicted as being so gory, and the circumstances, real or imagined, were so bizarre. During the trial, she had
studiously avoided looking at any newspaper, or at any television newscast or commentary that concerned itself with the case.
It wasn’t only because the judge had admonished the jury not to, although that was reason enough. It was more that she
really wanted to make up her own mind, without any outside influence.

But the latest issue of
Probe
changed all that. It stared at her from across the counter in the pharmacy, and Allison grabbed up a copy without a second
thought, stuffing it into her handbag after she had paid for it, so the deputy who accompanied her wouldn’t see it.

Once safely inside her house, she pulled the tabloid out and proceeded to read the article about Dana McAuliffe, word for
word, without even taking off her coat.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she muttered when she got to the end, a big smile spreading across her face. “I knew I liked that
lady.”

It was true. During the course of the trial, Allison had come to admire the defense attorney for her competence, her conduct,
and her quiet confidence as a woman in what was still considered a man’s profession. Now, she admired her even more.

D
ana drove home automatically, her mind not on the road. It had taken four associates to get her through the media mob outside,
Smith Tower, and safely into her car.