Decision (25 page)

“Of course I will,” he whispered with some impatience. “I have to see what you look like.”

“Well,” she said when he had accomplished the move to the accompaniment of more groans, each of which made her wince. “Here I am.”

He had an impression of dark eyes, dark complexion, a thin, pale, earnest face, big spectacles, dark hair rolled tight in a bun, a taut, intense expression. Jesus, he thought tiredly, one of those. But he was perceptive, and the overall impression, as that South Carolina yahoo had said, was brains. And brains were what he needed on his side. He had plenty but he couldn’t do it alone. Maybe she had the kind he needed. He was too smart to dismiss her without finding out.

“How did you happen to find me?” he asked. “Somebody send you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You know him. He called me and asked me to come.”

“You live down here?” he asked, surprised. She nodded.

“For the time being. My husband comes from here. I just got divorced.”

“You were married?”

She blushed, he guessed; some darker infusion seemed to darken her already dark skin. What was she, part black, Hindu, Jewish, Russian, middle European? He didn’t know: interesting, anyway. He lifted a paw, dismissing his own question. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound surprised. Lots of people get married.”

“True,” she said, stopped looking offended and smiled: really quite attractive if you liked women, which he really didn’t, all that much. Needed ’em sometimes, used ’em sometimes, but didn’t really like ’em, he guessed. Earle Holgren, he told himself with pride, never really
liked
or
needed
anybody.

Except of course, right now, he did need a good lawyer. And maybe, just maybe, this uptight type would be just the ticket. She’d be a novelty, anyway. Joan of Arc and Little David, taking on Goliath, the System.

“Where’d you go to school?” he asked, shifting his position and wincing, at which she winced sympathetically too, so that he laughed in a shaky, whispery way, which was all he could manage right now.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t mind me wincing once in a while. I
hurt,
lady. They really worked me over.”

“Yes,” she said; and added with a sudden blaze of anger, “And we’ll work
them
over, too.”

“You bet,” he agreed. “But first I want to know where you’re coming from. You go to Harvard?”

“I went to Vassar,” she said. “And then to Columbia Law School.”

“Your folks have a lot of dough?”

“Enough,” she said. “I don’t see them much. And yours?”

“Likewise and likewise,” he said. “They may come fluttering around now, though. Try to ignore them if they do. They’ll just get in the way of what we want to do.”

“What do we want to do?” she demanded, suddenly sharp and shrewd, taking him aback a little. But that’s good, he thought, that’s good: she’s a sharp lady. “Where are
you
coming from?”

“I want you to get me out of here,” he whispered with an attempt at a pixie grin that he knew probably looked awful from the outside though it felt cute inside. “It’s not so much where I come from as where I want to go. Which is out. O-u-t.”

“Are you guilty?” she asked, fixing him with a sudden intense gaze. “If I’m to represent you, I’ve got to know.”

“You aren’t representing me yet,” he pointed out, but amicably. “We can talk about that later.”

“I have to know!” she repeated. “I have to know!”

“Well,” he whispered comfortably, “maybe someday I’ll tell you, how about that. Meantime, I want to know what your reasons would be for taking me on. I couldn’t afford to pay you much money, you know. What would you get out of it?”

“The satisfaction of seeing justice done!” she said with a fierceness that surprised him.

“And that would be getting me out?” he inquired in a quizzical whisper.

“Yes!” she said with a humorless intensity. “Yes! I see you as a martyr to this whole corrupt system, a victim of our times, a sincere protester against greed and corruption and the awful danger to our society represented by the construction of poorly conceived, poorly built, dangerously operated atomic energy plants, a sincere and valiant fighter for the cause of human justice, human freedom, human—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he whispered, half smiling, holding up a hand, “whoa,
whoa!
You don’t have to stump-speech me. We aren’t in court yet.”

“But don’t you agree?” she demanded fiercely. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” he whispered, “I agree, I agree. But I’m not saying I’m the same guy you seem to have in mind. You seem to think I did the bombing, instead of being in here on a bum rap.”

“They
think you did,” she said. “You ought to see the papers and hear the television and radio. They’ve got you condemned and in the chair already.”

“So much the worse for them,” he said with a sudden scowl that was startling after his apparent good nature up to now. “False arrest, defamation, trial-by-media—we’ve got ’em where we want ’em. Let the stupid bastards rave on. So much the better for me.”

“They caught you with the detonator,” she said. “They caught you coming out of the cave. They can’t find your wife and baby, they think you sent them off somewhere—”

“Oh, I did,” he said with a sudden attempt at a smile that she couldn’t quite analyze, it looked so distorted on his cracked and swollen lips. “I wanted ’em to have a good time, for a change. They were getting tired being cooped up with me in that little cabin.”

“Where are they?” she asked. He made a feeble attempt at a shrug but had to stop with a grimace of pain which she mirrored in her sympathetic look.

“They went off to the seashore someplace,” he said. “They’ll be back when they’re ready. Meantime it’s best to have ’em out of this, I think. She wasn’t my wife, anyway.”

“‘Wasn’t’?” she echoed quickly and he smiled and shook his head, as much as he could with a patient and indulgent air.

“There you go,” he said, “there you go. So I got my tenses mixed up, couldn’t anybody? ‘Wasn’t.’ ‘Isn’t.’ Anyway, they aren’t here, so who cares, really?” His face darkened suddenly. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you want the truth.”

“You had a fight, then,” she said, frowning. “That’s too bad. She could be a good witness for you if she were friendly.”

“She isn’t friendly,” he said with a sudden little laugh she couldn’t fathom; except she knew it left her uneasy. “Don’t count on her. She won’t testify for me. We’ll just have to go on what we’ve got.”

“Which is what?” she asked, giving him a sudden penetrating look that he was beginning to think was characteristic.

“Well,” he whispered with a sudden wry grimace that she too was beginning to consider characteristic, “not my good looks, that’s for sure.”

“They’ll improve,” she predicted with a smile; and on a sudden impulse added, “Suppose you tell me what your defense will be. I get the feeling you know some law. You didn’t take law, did you?”

“Nope,” he said. “But I’ve absorbed some, here and there. Well, to begin with—”

After he had outlined his theory about circumstantial evidence and how it could be turned in his behalf, he stopped and looked at her with a satisfied expression. “Isn’t that a pretty good defense?”

She studied him for several moments before replying.

“I think you’re guilty,” she said quietly. “I think you’re guilty as hell.”

“I didn’t say so!” he whispered sharply. “They can’t prove it! What the hell makes
you
so sure?”

“Because,” she said, still quietly, “I agree so much with what you want to do and with the point you’re making. I could have done the same thing myself if I had the opportunity. I suppose that’s why.”

There was silence while he studied her in return. Then he laughed as much as he could and rolled again to the wall, groaning once more as he did so.

“Am I to represent you or not?” she demanded.

“Suit yourself,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes, I do! I want to join your statement!”

“Be my guest,” he said with the wracked ghost of a chuckle.

“Shall I tell Attorney General Stinnet?”

“I said, ‘Be my guest,’” he whispered impatiently. “What more do you want?” Again he chuckled. “I’d like to hear what that pompous son of a bitch has to say to that.”

“Don’t underestimate him!” she advised sharply. “He’s one smart son of a bitch and he’s going to turn you into a symbol of everything this country is afraid of. I’ve watched him coming up these past couple of years I’ve been living down here and I know what he plans and how he operates. I’m not underestimating him and don’t you, either!”

“Have faith, sweetheart,” he told her over his shoulder. “Truth and justice are on our side. Righteousness forever!”

“I think you’re crazy,” she remarked, quite impersonally, “but I think we can make you a symbol too—
our
symbol. So I’ll take the case, thank you very much.”

“Thank
you,”
he whispered with an ironic politeness. “Welcome to the evening news.”

“That’s where we’re going to be fighting it,” she agreed. “So I’d better get started right now.”

And ten minutes later down in the prison lobby, facing Henrietta-Maude and the rest who had come over from the hospital, while Earle Holgren lay painfully on his side and slept again after his long and busy day, she did. Earle Holgren, she said, was a symbol of all Americans who truly believed in democracy, a dedicated fighter for the people, an enemy of all the corrupt reactionary fascist forces in the country that were always seeking to—

“He’ll plead not guilty, of course,” Henrietta interrupted dryly.

“Of course,” Debbie Donnelson replied.

“Is he?” Henrietta inquired, wise old weatherbeaten face as shrewd, sharp and tenacious as the intense dark one facing her.

“Have you proof otherwise?” Debbie snapped. Henrietta smiled with the smile of one who, in forty years of newspapering, has seen it all.

“The proof is your job, girlie,” she said. “I just report it to the folks. Right now, they’re going to take a mighty lot of convincing if you’re to make them believe he’s not.”

“They still can’t convict him unless they’ve got proof,” Debbie said.

“Regard Stinnet thinks he’s got enough,” Henrietta reminded. Debbie snorted.

“Regard Stinnet,” she said, “thinks he has a lot of things he doesn’t have.”

Actually, while Earle Holgren continued to sleep peacefully in his cell the dreamless sleep of one both physically exhausted and mentally satisfied, Regard presently found that he had quite a bit more than she thought he did. The sheriff at Pomeroy Station was a tenacious and intuitive young man, too; and after he had thoroughly studied the deserted cabin for quite a while he had a hunch and an impulse, and followed them through.

He went back to the plant, a glare with lights as the inspection team continued to sift carefully through the debris; spoke for a while with the guards now ringing the site in a state of determined, if somewhat belated, alertness; and presently faded away unnoticed into the woods above. There he entered the cave and began patiently traversing it inch by inch, going very slowly, reading leaves and twigs and misplaced stones with all the skill of the mountain-trained.

Midway in the cave, covered over with branches and not too noticeable to the hasty eye, he found the mouth of what appeared to be an old abandoned well. Carefully he removed the branches, stretched full length on the ground to anchor himself, inched slowly to the rim and cast his flashlight beam into the depths below.

Apparently snagged on a ledge he estimated to be no more than ten feet below, he saw a jumbled heap of what appeared to be clothing; a tangle of what appeared to be long black hair, covering what appeared to be a bloody, shattered face; and, staring up at him with apparent intensity but without expression of any kind, what appeared to be, and indeed were, a pair of open eyes.

And even then, Regard Stinnet told himself disgustedly at three in the morning, he still didn’t have the bastard. He had what might be his dead woman and his dead child. He had a crumpled sheet of paper so soaked in blood and waterlogged as to be almost illegible, found in one of the dead woman’s pockets. But he didn’t have his gun—they had tried to dredge the well but it appeared to go off into one of those bottomless fissures characteristic of the hills. He didn’t have his fingerprints, he didn’t have anything on him, really, except his presence outside the cave, his proximity to the scene of the crime—crimes—and dried semen on his pants. He would probably claim he was in the cave making it with some local babe, Regard thought with a disgusted snort, when suddenly the world just blew up around him. And that slick little sharpie who had wandered in out of nowhere to represent him might just be able to make it stick, too.

Well, Regard told himself with grim determination, not if
he
had anything to do with it: and he’d have plenty, Mr. Smart-Ass Holgren could be sure of that,
plenty.
Debbie Donnelson and her client weren’t the only ones who saw that it would be played out on the evening news. He decided he would begin seriously right now to organize the campaign that would make of the Pomeroy Station bomber a symbol of all that was terrifying the country. He would make of Earle Holgren a lever whereby he himself and the millions of worried citizens who agreed with him might get the criminal justice system off its dead ass, as he put it to himself, and
get it moving.

Debbie, he was sure, was going to try all the delaying tricks she could think of: but she wasn’t the attorney general of South Carolina, an operator with a great deal of influence and a great many IOUs to cash. There were ways to speed up a trial as well as delay it, and in this instance he was quite confident he could do it.
His
judges, unlike some of the kooks Ted Phillips had to contend with in California, were
reliable.
They could be
counted on.
He didn’t know which one would get it—he hoped Perlie Williams, who was a boyhood chum and agreed with him absolutely on what needed to be done in the country—but they were all good friends and they would all cooperate.