Adjourned (6 page)

Macklin turned away and continued pacing, ignoring him. Shaw slipped his hands into his pants pockets and remained standing in place, feeling awkward and claustrophobic.

"I can't face my daughter anymore, not after what I've done." Macklin kept pacing, his gaze cast to the floor. Shaw could barely hear him. "I'm afraid the blood on my hands will smear her, that the horror will take her like it's taken everyone I've touched since Dad was killed. I love her more than anything in this world, and I can't hold her.

"It's a disease, a fucking disease!" Macklin yelled suddenly, startling Shaw. Macklin ripped a framed print from the wall over the mantelpiece and swung it like a bat against the opposite wall again and again, until he had shattered it to bits.

"Don't you see? The same disease that took my father is infecting me." Macklin advanced angrily on Shaw and grabbed him by the neck with both hands. Shaw fought to stay calm. "It eats away at me late at night. It pokes and prods me until I break out in a cold sweat and grit my teeth to hold back the screams."

Macklin shook him. "
I want to kill!
I want to cut these savages away like a tumor. Do you understand? There's a side of me that wants pure carnage, and goddamn it, you're feeding that. You and Stocker and the slime on the streets—you're pushing me into it, begging me to do it. I can't help myself. I want to even the scales, make it right again. I need to make it right again."

Macklin stared into Shaw's eyes and saw himself. Macklin saw his wild eyes, his sweat-dampened face, his cheeks red with fury, his jaw tight with rage.

Make them pay.

For the first time, Macklin saw the face behind the voice that had driven him to kill. The voice that was urging him to kill again.

Make them pay.

Macklin gently released Shaw and saw the reddish impressions his fingers left on Shaw's throat. Macklin took two steps back and held up his hands in a show of surrender.

Shaw hoarsely cleared his throat and took a deep breath, his hands still in his pockets.

"Last night she said she loved me," Macklin whispered. "For a minute I thought I could have it all again. Happiness. Peace. Someone to love. And in a split second it's gone. Up in flames. I can almost hear someone laughing at me."

Macklin stepped up to Shaw again and gently rested his hands on Shaw's shoulders. "I'm sorry, Ronny. It's just that . . . I don't want to lose anyone else. I know you can't accept who and what I am now. But try. This time you came to me—this time you asked me to do it. You're part of what I've become."

He drew Shaw close into a tight embrace. Shaw felt stiff, uninvolved, as if he were watching it all on television, but he wrapped his arms around Macklin anyway.

"I'll try to be a friend to you," Shaw whispered raspily. "But what you're doing is wrong. It's against everything I believe, everything your father believed. I can't turn my back to that."

Macklin leaned away from Shaw. "Ronny, you and I grew up together. We are brothers."

"That's what makes it so hard." Shaw shrugged off Macklin's arms and turned toward the door. "Remember what you said to Mayor Stocker about law and order, judicial review. Don't betray yourself by picking up a gun and playing vigilante again."

Shaw opened the door, stepped outside, and paused for a moment, his back to Macklin. Sunlight bathed Shaw and cast his shadow on Macklin.

"I'm sorry about Cheshire," Shaw said. "I want the people who did this as badly as you do." He pulled the door closed, shutting out the sunlight and leaving Macklin alone in the dim, smoky living room.

"No," Macklin said to the closed door. "No, you don't."

# # # # # #

"
Judge for Yourself!
" the toothsome host yelled, a huge grin stretched across his face. "The show that puts you behind the bench and sentences you to prizes like . . .
a brand-new car
!"

The studio shuddered with shrieks of glee and hundreds of clapping hands. The clatter sounded to Shaw, standing behind the window of the control booth to the rear of the audience, like a flock of deranged birds.

The stage curtain behind the host opened. Lights flashed. Buzzers rang. A buxom brunette drove a glossy silver Oldsmobile Cutlass across the stage, parking it in front of the massive judge's bench that dominated the set.

The cameras panned over the audience, zooming in on the clapping, cheering, screaming, hysterically happy women bobbing in their seats. The show's synthesizer-borne theme song blared over the speakers beside the flashing "APPLAUSE" signs above the stage.

The host swept his hand over the set behind him. "Now, meet our two contestants!" Two smaller judges' benches, one occupied by a woman with an overbite and the other by a black marine, appeared on either side of the set as if under the host's magical control.

Shaw shifted his weight uncomfortably. He didn't like being here. The emotional echo of his heated encounter with Macklin this morning was strong. Now here he was watching this. The contrast made him slightly dizzy. Or perhaps it was just the claustrophobic control room, the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke, the dreamlike glitz and blitz of the game show.

Or Shaw's fear. Coming here could be, he realized, the biggest mistake of his life.

"Okay, two, zoom in on Dirk," the director said into mouthpiece of his headset in a voice that sounded like it escaped from a throat filled with splintered wood. The camera-two TV monitor filled with the host's face.

". . . just predict the judge's verdict on these real, small-claims cases and you win!" The perpetually grinning host sauntered behind his podium on the far side of the set. "And now, here's our judge, the Honorable Harlan Fitz!"

"Camera three, close on Fitz, cue the commercial," the director mumbled perfunctorily. These same shots, Shaw assumed, were called day in and day out.

Harlan Fitz appeared at the bench, in his traditional judge's attire, with what Shaw thought to be a tired grimace on his face. Fitz was a broad-shouldered, strong fifty-five-year-old man, and his face had aged well. Shaw noticed it hadn't fattened or sagged with time. A gray-brown mustache and beard gave him a scholarly look. Age showed itself only in the few lines across his brow, the puffy bags emerging under his eyes, and the slight recession of his hairline.

The
Judge for Yourself
theme music swelled as Fitz took his seat, and the audience clapped like performing seals ready to do tricks.

The host pointed at the camera. "Stay right there—the excitement begins right after this!"

"Okay, bring up the music. Camera one, pull back wide." The director raised his hand, his index finger extended. "Aaaaaand"—he whipped his arm down and jabbed the woman beside him—"roll commercial."

The commercial filled the screen. A good-looking woman, apparently a lawyer, ran through the courtroom, breezed through an executive board meeting, and whisked past the maître d' of a fine restaurant to a table.

"Gee, Mary, how do you stay so active?" her plain-looking harried female lunch companion asked, her voice dripping with absolute awe.

Mary reached into her purse. "New You–brand tampons!"

Shaw sighed, switching his attention from the monitor to the stage. Technicians scurried on the set like ants. Fitz sat stoically at his bench, staring blankly into the audience. Shaw felt a little sad. This wasn't the Harlan Fitz who had once been a feared judge and outspoken critic of the inadequacies of the law.

Shaw thought back to the Public Disorder Intelligence pision file on Fitz he had read after the meeting with Macklin in Stocker's office several days ago. The report attributed Fitz's retirement to political and personal pressures. It concluded that Fitz was overwhelmed by the futility of battling what he saw as the inadequacy of the law and became disheartened by the lack of cooperation from fellow judges. Exasperated and exhausted, he retired.

Fitz became a nomadic media personality, a frequent guest on radio and TV programs. According to the numerous newspaper clippings of interviews done with Fitz that Shaw read in the PDID file, Fitz thought he could educate the public, initiate change. The media exploited Fitz's outrage, Shaw believed, ignoring the man's insights and turning his vehement attacks on the legal system into entertainment.

Shaw studied Fitz now as the director signaled the cameramen that the commercial break was nearly over. Shaw thought Fitz looked lost. He prayed to God that he was reading Fitz right. That assumption was his long shot. Macklin—the city, for that matter—depended on that.

Yet once the commercial was over, Shaw watched Fitz come alive, whittling away what little confidence Shaw had in his all-important assumption.

Fitz played the game with wit and vigor, appearing both knowledgeable and authoritative. Even interested. That was no small feat. The contestants were argumentative morons with no concept of the law or, it seemed to Shaw, simple logic.

Once the next commercial break came, Shaw noticed the judge sag, the glow disappearing from his face. Unlike the toothy host, when the cameras went off, so did Fitz.

Maybe,
Shaw thought,
just maybe there is some hope.

After a few more cases were heard, Ms. Overbite broke the 0-to-0 deadlock with the black marine and won the game. Then came the "judge-off" for the car. She had to match Fitz's decision on a particular case. Shaw didn't hear the host read the question, but it had something to with premature ejaculation, mud wrestling, break dancing, and a set of broken skis.

Ms. Overbite closed her eyes and clutched the host. Her lip quivering, she announced her decision. She looked hopefully at Fitz. A prerecorded drum rolled. A hush fell on the audience. Fitz held up a gavel-shaped placard with his answer scrawled across in felt-tipped marker. Their decisions matched.

The woman screamed joyfully, jumping around the host like a hysterical kangaroo. As the audience went wild with applause, Shaw slipped out of the control room and into a narrow slate gray corridor. He shuffled toward a door a dozen footsteps away. Harlan Fitz's name, hastily handwritten in capital letters on a sheet of typing paper, was affixed to the door with yellow masking tape. As Shaw neared Fitz's door, his fear grew. He knew that Fitz had frequently—and publicly—chastised the ill-prepared prosecutors, careless cops, and sleazy lawyers who let criminals slip through the justice system unscathed. That's what had gotten the PDID interested in him. But Shaw also knew his proposal could just piss off Fitz even more. The judge could go to the press.

And then comes the end of the world.

Shaw turned the doorknob and stepped inside. He immediately felt cramped for breathing space. The windowless room seemed to him to be barely larger than his car. The lack of circulation gave the room the hot, oppressive quality of an oven recently used to cook a batch of Arrid Extra Dry. A white wood table and lightbulb-lined mirror claimed half the room, and two folding chairs were propped against the opposite wall.

He opened a chair and sat down, crossed his legs, and waited.

It will work out, Ronny.

Shaw laughed to himself.
Yeah, sure.

He heard footsteps outside, and before he could brace himself, Fitz pushed open the door.

"I see you found my dressing room, Sergeant." Fitz grinned, dropping heavily into the folding chair opposite Shaw. Gone were the judge's robes. Fitz was in the sweat-dampened shirt and jeans he had worn under his robes, which he had rolled up into a ball and placed on his dressing table.

"What did you think of the show?" Fitz asked, slapping Shaw's knee.

"It was very entertaining," Shaw replied.

Fitz laughed. "Bullshit."

Shaw smiled awkwardly, not knowing whether to join in Fitz's laughter.

"You probably hated it more than I did," Fitz said. "Look, a guy has to make money. Maybe I'm educating someone out there, who knows?"

"Well, it educated me, if that means anything," Shaw replied. "It's the first time I've even been behind the scenes, so to speak, of a TV show. I'm impressed."

"Thank you. You're very kind, Sergeant." Fitz's smile waned. "So why exactly do you want to talk with me?"

Shaw shifted uneasily in his seat. "Well, that isn't easy." He dropped his gaze and pondered his feet. Unable to think of an easy way to approach it, Shaw opted for the bottom line. "What do you know about Mr. Jury?"

"I know he's a vigilante who has killed half a dozen people."

"That's all?" Shaw asked, chancing to look at Fitz. The judge frowned.

"What more do you want, Sergeant? The guy is running around doing what most of us would like to do."

"Would you call it a sort of justifiable homicide?" The remark didn't come from Shaw but from the script Shaw chose to perform. It was as if he was part of an undercover operation, playing a role. Nothing, to him, could ever be said to justify Macklin's actions.

"Just what are you getting at, Sergeant? I just got done playing the only game I want to for today." Fitz folded his arms across his chest and pinned Shaw under a stern gaze.

"What if I were to tell you Mr. Jury is interested in introducing some due process into his vigilante justice?"

"I'd say it's still vigilante justice," Fitz replied. He stared into Shaw's eyes, trying to see something there. Shaw wanted to get up and run.

"And I'd say it seems Mr. Jury is a better man than I thought," Fitz said slowly. His eyes narrowed. "Am I talking to Mr. Jury?"

"No," Shaw responded quickly. Too quickly, he thought.

"All right, Sergeant," Harlan Fitz groaned testily. "Let's quit the sparring. Make your point."

"What would you say if Mr. Jury wanted you to be that due process, to evaluate evidence and determine who, within the scope of the law, is guilty and innocent?" Shaw's throat felt raw, stone dry.

Fitz's stare didn't waver. The silence in the room was a crushing weight on Shaw's shoulders that grew heavier with each hourlong moment.

"I'd say my phone number is in the book."

That next afternoon Mother Nature got angry. She blew the rain clouds away with fierce, gale-force winds that blasted through the city, ripping trees out of the ground, tearing off roofs, severing power lines, and smashing in plate-glass windows.