Decision (29 page)

Chapter 4

Not, of course, that the knowledge would in any way have intimidated Earle Holgren, who by now was beginning to feel considerably better. He would have enjoyed it, in fact—all except its ironic conclusion, which not even he in his wildest dreams could at this moment have imagined. As it was, he could imagine some of the turmoil going on outside. It pleased him immensely.

Faithful to Regard Stinnet’s orders, his captors had subjected him to alternate rest and interrogation; but being of a nature that permitted the instant sleep of the just and the righteous whenever he had a moment’s chance, he had not found it too much of an ordeal.

During his waking periods he had been bland, uninformative and scornfully abusive. “Slob-Face” was the mildest epithet he had addressed to the two deputies assigned to interrogate him, and he had several times come so close to provoking them to strike him that it had been, as he told Debbie delightedly now, “a real turn-on.”

“I don’t think you’re very funny,” she said coldly. “I also think you are a psychopathic murderer. I think I should drop your case and get as far away from you as I can.”

“You are absolutely right,” he agreed promptly, shifting position with an exaggerated wince that brought an instant look of concern to her angry face. “You never said a truer word. Tell me why, though. It’s interesting. I want to know how you think.”

“Why did you kill that woman and child?” she demanded.

He gave her a look of bland surprise.

“Oh, did I? I didn’t know there was any proof of that. In fact, that’s your main defense for all of this, isn’t it? No proof of anything. How come you’re accusing me of it?”

“I thought you were someone with a Cause,” she said bitterly. “I believed in you because I thought we agreed on this whole rotten society and all its works. Now you turn out to be just a cheap murdering psychopath—”

“Stop calling me that word!” he demanded, with a sudden fierce anger, grabbing her wrist in a grip so tight that she gave a little cry of alarm and tried to rise and yank away. But he was too strong for her and inexorably forced her back down again.

“Now,” he said, contemptuously throwing her arm back at her, “you sit still and be quiet. And don’t you call me a psychopath again.
I
know what I’m doing!
I’ve always known what I’m doing and
I
know now.
So lay off the smarts and act like a lady. Otherwise,” he said with an abrupt sunny smile, “I really may have to dismiss you as my counsel.”

“I want to know why,” she persisted, breath coming in little gasps, dark clever face contorted with pain and alarm. “I want to know why, after making a perfectly good statement by bombing that atomic plant, you had to spoil it all by killing that woman and child.”

“Listen,” he said, shifting again, and again grimacing in the exaggerated way that he calculated would enlist her sympathies in spite of herself, “nobody has any proof that I bombed that plant, let alone that I killed anybody—”

“You killed Justice Pomeroy’s daughter,” she interrupted, “and nobody’s sure yet just what you did to Justice Barbour’s.”

“I didn’t do
anything
to
anybody,”
he said with a deliberate recurrence of anger, “and don’t you keep talking as though I did! Nobody can prove anything—”

“They won’t have to prove anything!” she snapped. “Do you have any idea what’s going on outside? Do you have any idea of the pressure that’s beginning to build on this case?”

“My two big sweet interrogators gave me some gobbledygook about something called Justice NOW!” he said scornfully. “All about that yahoo Regard Stinnet and some sort of vigilante group he’s whipping up out there. Do you think the media is going to stand for that?”

“Do you think you’re the media’s darling?” she demanded. “What makes you so sure ‘the media’ gives a damn about you?”

“Because they’ll think I’m being railroaded,” he said triumphantly. “Because I got beaten up and didn’t have my rights protected. Because I’m against atomic energy. Because I’m raising hell with the established order and they love anybody who shits on America. And that,” he predicted, “is why they’ll love me.”

“The sooner you understand what’s going on, the better for you,” she said, rubbing her wrist to help the circulation. “This Regard Stinnet is no yahoo and Justice NOW! is no minor vigilante group. He’s starting a nationwide law-and-order movement and it’s already catching hold like wildfire. He’s going to try to ram this case through just as fast as he can, and with judges and juries the way they are down here, particularly when you attacked their darling Mr. Pomeroy and killed his daughter—” He started an angry protest but she held up her hand sharply and raised her voice—“
You listen to me!
Because they
think
you did, whether you did or not, they’re going to crucify you if they can. He’s demanding the death penalty and he’ll get it. Then maybe you’ll realize what’s going on!”

“And where will my brilliant legal counsel be, all this time?” he inquired softly. “Won’t she be doing anything? Won’t she be trying to help me? Won’t she be raising all sorts of clever points and thwarting this dastardly plot?” He paused, shook his head. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said elaborately. “I forgot, you’ve dropped the case. You’re not with me anymore. You’re going to run away and let the wolves have me.” He sighed and turned his face to the wall, groaning and flinching as he did so. “Ah, well,” he said, voice muffled over his shoulder. “So be it. If I’m doomed, I’m doomed. But I did expect better than this from a sister who seemed to understand what it is really all about.”

“I understand what it is really all about,” she said, voice tart but with an undercurrent of uncertainty that amused and did not surprise him, “but I’m damned if I understand what you’re all about. I still don’t know why you killed that woman and child—”

“Drop that!” he demanded furiously, turning over and half-sitting up, grimacing with a pain genuine this time because of the swiftness of his move. “Just God damned drop it, do you hear me? Nobody can prove I killed
anybody,
so God damn you,
drop it
or get OUT! And decide damned fast which it’s going to be!” And he rolled over again to face the wall, back rigid and unyielding.

There was a long silence during which Regard’s secretary, sitting at the receiving end of the bug that had been placed in the cell during one of the suspect’s sleep periods, had time to check her shorthand notes and correct a couple of haste-induced errors. Debbie finally spoke, in a low, intense voice.

“All
right,
Earle Holgren! All
right!
I’ll stay with your case but it’s only because—only because—”

“Only because what?” he demanded, rolling back over with another carefully calculated wince. “Because you agree with my ideals or you love my big hairy macho bod, or what? I’d really like to know, so I can understand our relationship. It’s got me damned puzzled at the moment.”

“Oh!”
she exclaimed. “You are so—so—”

“I’m just me,” he said with an amiable grin. “Just poor little old Earle Holgren, fighting the people’s battles and holding off the dragons of greed and exploitation. That’s who
I
am. And who are you, Debbie Superstar? What keeps you hanging around?”

“Well, it isn’t your big hairy macho bod!” she said angrily and his grin broadened.

“Oh, now? But you don’t get very many of those, do you, Deb? There’s always a chance with me, though. I’m available any old time. Maybe we can have a legal conference sometime soon without the room being bugged—” he stopped and shouted, “WITHOUT THE ROOM BEING BUGGED” and Regard Stinnet’s secretary, fifty yards away, yelped and yanked the earphones off “—and then, Deb old girl, we’ll see what happens.”

“You’re impossible,” she said, but with a sure instinct he could hear the first intimations of an agonized excitement growing in her voice.
“Just simply impossible!”

“And I forgot also,” he agreed amicably, “I’m a psychopath and a murderer and a dreadful, dreadful person. To hear you tell it. So that wouldn’t do at all, now would it? Plus the fact you shouldn’t sleep with your lawyer, it just causes complications. Which reminds me,” he added with a sudden dark scowl, “my folks tried to send around some smooth-talking legal fat cat from New York during the night. I guess they want me to accept
him
as my lawyer.”

“And are you going to?” she asked, hating herself for the sudden anxiety in her voice, but, he noted with delight, evidently unable to stop it.

He shook his head scornfully.

“I told him to fuck off,” he said. “And I told him to tell them to do the same. Hell, I haven’t seen them in fifteen years. Why the hell do they want to come crawling around now? What have they ever done for me, except disapprove? It’s a fine time for them to be sucking up to me now.”

“Maybe they love you.”

He snorted.

“Do yours?”

“Well—” she began, paused and flushed. “That’s neither here nor there.”

“I thought so,” he said with satisfaction. “They made us what we are today and now they want to come crawling back to beg forgiveness when we’re in the trouble they created for us. At least that’s what the fashionable theories say.” He grinned suddenly, a cruel expression without humor. “And I don’t mind telling loudmouth Stinnet,” he added, raising his voice again, “that that’s sure as hell a mighty good defense nowadays. Especially when it’s true. Right, Debbie Superstar?”

She gave him an alarmed look and said primly, “It is something to consider.”

“You bet it is,” he said, “and so’s this.” And fixing her with his jolly Santa Claus stare, he ran his hand abruptly up inside her leg until it could go no farther, where it then got very busy.

“Oh!”
she cried and jumped up and away, blushing furiously.

“Don’t say, ‘how dare you’!” he suggested with a chuckle. “You know how I dare, right, Superstar? Oh yes,” he added dreamily, “we’ll have a lot of things to consult about, one of these days. Won’t we now?”

“If I take this case—” she began breathlessly. “If I take this case—”

“Well, God damn it,” he said impatiently, “are you or aren’t you? I’d for sure as hell like to know.”

“
I
—”

“Are you?”

“Well,” she said, voice trembling. “I—yes, I guess I am. Yes. I am.”

“All right, then,” he said, rolling back to the wall again. “I think they’re going to indict me tomorrow—or maybe it’s the next day—I’m beginning to lose track of time—anyway, soon—so I think you’d better go now, and get everything in order. Maybe you’d better talk to the press, too. Get the thing rolling. If old Regard is playing for the headlines with his Justice NOW! maybe we’d better start our backfire. Justice for Earle Holgren NOW!—that’s us. Right?”

“You still,” she said from the door to his impassive back, “don’t realize what we’re up against. ‘Justice NOW! for Earle Holgren’ for a hell of a lot of people is
hanging
Justice NOW! So don’t kid yourself. It isn’t going to be easy.”

“Fuck ’em,” he said drowsily, either feigning or actually drifting off to sleep even as he talked. “Got a good case and we’re going to win it, Superstar. We’re … going … to … win … it…”

“We’re going to try,” she said, dark little face suddenly ablaze with determination. “We’re going to do our damnedest.”

“That’s good …” he said in a muffled voice; and in a moment as she stood earnest and intense by the door, the sound of a faint snore reached her ears.

“Oh—!” she said angrily, but the only response was another.

She stood for a moment irresolute, convinced that the snoring was play-acting. Her eyes widened in thought. For a second she looked genuinely afraid. A sudden involuntary shudder, prompted by genuine fear, passed over her body.

“What am I getting myself into?” she whispered to herself. “What am I getting myself into?”

But then, true to her beliefs, her idealisms, the “culture” she had belonged to ever since college, she raised her head in a rigid challenge, stepped out, nodded curtly to the guard and walked briskly down the hall to the room where the press was waiting. She flung open the door and strode in, head high, expression stern.

The handful of reporters who had greeted her at her first press conference on the night of Earle’s capture had grown substantially.

“May we call you Debbie?” Henrietta-Maude suggested. “After all, we’re probably going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

“Certainly,” she said. “I will have to apologize if it takes me a little while to remember you all by name. You have me a bit outnumbered. But it will come. What can I do for you?”

“Tell us about your case,” Henny said. Debbie smiled, rather bleakly, and seated herself on a table crowded with microphones, one leg dangling casually, the other drawn up under her.

“It is a case based on the obvious, I suspect,” she said, while the forty or so reporters in the room, some of whom she did recognize by name from national television, watched and scribbled intently. “It is based on (a), lack of proof; (b), the potential dangers to human life and society posed by atomic energy; (c), the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of the citizen to protest those things he believes to represent such dangers; and (d), the personal background and upbringing of the suspect, which may conceivably have some bearing if the state is able to prove that he actually committed the crimes which the attorney general of South Carolina is attempting to claim he committed.”

“Aren’t you being unusually candid in tipping off opposing counsel about your strategy?” someone inquired. She shot him a scornful look.

“We have nothing to hide,” she said flatly. “It’s all right out in the open. I will never lie to you.”

“Are you satisfied in your own mind that your client did not commit these crimes?” someone asked. She did not hesitate for a second.

“I am satisfied no proof has been produced, or will be produced, that will link Earle Holgren directly with these crimes.”

“That wasn’t the question,” someone else pointed out, persistent but not hostile. “The question was—”

“I know your question,” she said crisply. “Would I be defending him if I did not believe in his innocence?”