Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (37 page)

A few minutes after four, wide awake and restless, I
went downstairs, searching for something I had first read just
weeks before I started the trial of Alma Woolner. In the ninth
chapter of the first book of Aristotle's Rhetoric, I found what I
was looking for.

And those things are noble which it is possible for a
man to possess after death rather than during his lifetime, for the
latter involve mere selfishness; all acts done for the sake of
others, for they are more disinterested; the successes gained, not
for oneself, but for others; and for one's benefactors; for that is
justice; in a word, all acts of kindness, for they are
disinterested.

It was the perfect abbreviated biography of Horace
Woolner, who had been willing to give his life to save three
wounded strangers. I stared at those lines, thinking about their
meaning, listening again in the solitude of the early morning
silence to what he had said. I looked around at the towering
book-lined shelves and then down at the writing desk in front of
me. I felt like a character in a story written by someone else.

I found him at the courthouse a little before eight,
hunched over his desk, his glasses pinched to his nose, lost in
concentration as he wrote out a letter in longhand on a sheet of
court stationery. I stood at the door, waiting until he
finished.

"Come in," he said, without looking up. "Sit down." I
sat on the other side of the desk, watching his large hand move
across the page in smooth, unhurried strokes. He signed his name at
the bottom, put the pen down at the side, and then, for the first
time, looked up.

"My letter of resignation," he told me, as he sat up
and placed his hands on the arms of the chair. Pushing himself up,
he caught his balance and then, in a halting, jerky motion, made
his way to a small table next to a file cabinet on the other side
of the room.

"Would you like a cup?" he asked as he poured coffee
from the dented metal pot into a chipped white mug. The clear
morning light streamed through the window and ran across the floor,
framing his silhouette as he bent his eyes on the simple everyday
task that had been part of his routine for more years than either
one of us could remember. When he came back, he put the cup on the
desk, braced himself with both hands, and lowered himself into the
chair. His eyes on mine, he lifted the cup to his mouth and took a
drink.

"Why did you do it, Horace?" I asked. A pensive
expression covered his face, as if he was not completely sure
himself. Turning away, he sat sideways to the desk, his arms folded
over his barrel-like chest, and sipped the coffee, meditating.

"I knew what was going on between Alma and Gray," he
said finally, his eyes fixed on the dark-colored surface of the
half-empty cup. "I knew it from the beginning. I could tell she was
falling in love with him."

"Didn't it bother you?" I blurted out. His head came
up, an ominous look in his eyes warning me I was on dangerous
ground.

"It wasn't her fault," he insisted. "It was never her
fault."

"And it didn't bother you?" I asked, intent on
knowing everything.

Cocking his head, he looked right through me. "Maybe
it's time you understood," he said, standing up.

He walked toward the small private bathroom at the
far end of the room. A few moments later, I heard behind the closed
door the clatter of something hitting the floor. Then he was
standing in the doorway, and I had to force myself not to look
away. Half of Horace had disappeared. He stood there, like someone
who had fallen through the floor. He had removed his suit coat, and
his pants, and the legs that held him up. All that was left of him
were two black stumps, not even long enough to keep his shirttails
from dragging on the ground. He was the grotesque remnant of a
human being. Standing up, he was at least six foot two; without his
artificial legs, he was less than four feet tall.

"This is what Alma Woolner married," he said, looking
at me with the bleakest, most desolate eyes I had ever seen. "This
is what she goes to bed with every night. You want to know if it
bothered me that she was sleeping with another man? You want to
know if I cared?" His head was shaking hard, his mouth trembling,
as he fought to keep at least the semblance of control. "What
difference does it make? Don't you understand? She deserved more
than me."

I started toward him, but before I had taken a step,
he reached up, grabbed the handle on the door, and threw it shut.
When it opened again, it was Horace the way I had always known him,
moving stiffly across to his desk, lowering himself slowly into his
chair. Only now, instead of the grinning exuberance and quiet
confidence which I had for so many years taken for granted, there
was on his face no expression at all.

"Why did you do it, Horace?" I asked again,
swallowing hard. The light from the window struck the side of his
face and shadowed his large graying head in a yellowish haze.

"I knew that if you believed I killed Russell Gray
out of jealousy, and tried to blame it on Alma out of revenge, that
you'd hate me for that, and that you'd put me on the stand and try
to convince everyone that I was the one who did it, that I was the
black man who murdered his wife's white lover. Who wasn't going to
believe that?"

I had believed it, and I was his best friend. Caught
up in my own delusion, swept away by the certainty that he had
killed Russell Gray, I had taken his belligerent defiance for an
admission that I was right and never once entertained the suspicion
that I might be wrong. I had done exactly what he had wanted me to
do. I was the last chess piece on the board, and Horace had seen it
before the first move had ever been made.

"You're the best I've ever seen," he was saying,
while I thought about how quick I had been to turn on him. "You did
just what I thought you'd do."

I looked at him, almost as angry now as I had been in
court. "And did Gilliland-O'Rourke do just what you thought she'd
do?"

He stared down at his hands, a pensive expression on
his face. "I gave Gilliland-O'Rourke a way out, a way to protect
herself, and I gave her a way to get even."

I still did not understand. "But why? All Alma had to
do was keep telling the truth: that she left and came back; that
she heard the shot; that she picked up the gun. We would have
won."

He raised his head and stared at me, his face an
impenetrable mask. Then he looked away, and suddenly I knew. "She
did it, didn't she? Alma killed Russell Gray."

He did not answer, not at first. "Alma is safe," he
said finally. "That's all that matters."

There was nothing more to say. Wearily, I slid back
my chair and got to my feet. "You don't have to do this," I said,
nodding toward his signed letter of resignation. "You didn't commit
any crime."

He pushed himself up in the chair and looked right at
me. "I was under oath."

"But you didn't lie. You didn't commit perjury," I
insisted. It was a lawyer's argument, and he treated it with
contempt.

"I didn't tell the truth, either, did I?" He raised
his chin and narrowed his eyes. "I knew exactly what I was doing. I
knew what everyone would think when I wouldn't answer the questions
you were throwing at me. I lied, Joseph, I lied by my silence. I
made everyone believe something that wasn't true. So what if I'm
not guilty of perjury? It was still a lie, and just because the law
won't punish me for it doesn't mean that there isn't a price to be
paid."

His eyes still on me, he slowly shook his head. "I
did enough damage to the law. I'm not going to hide behind it
now."

"What are you going to do?" I asked, wondering if he
had even thought about it.

"I don't know," he replied without a trace of
self-pity. "Whatever I have to do to take care of Alma," he said,
looking away. "She needs me." I could almost hear him, talking to
himself, years before, out in that jungle half a world away, each
time he carried a wounded soldier to safety and then made himself
go back for another.

I never told anyone what Horace said that morning, no
one except Kristin Maxfield, and not all of it even to her. When I
invited her to dinner a week later, she seemed surprised it had
taken me this long to call. She had plans that evening, but, she
added after a pause, she could get out of them.

She picked me up in front of my office in a silver
Mercedes.

"It was time to get a new one," she explained, as she
drove along the busy, rain-spattered street.We went to an Italian
restaurant in the heart of the city and sat at the bar while we
waited for a table. It was only a few minutes after six, but on
Friday night a lot of people had dinner in town before they headed
home.

"Here's to our next governor," Kristin said, raising
her glass. "She owes it all to you," she added, after she had taken
a drink. "I was there. I watched you crucify Horace Woolner." She
stirred the ice with the tip of her finger, then looked at me, an
unmistakable sense of vindication in her gaze. "Remember what I
told you? Those people play by different rules."

"You think it's a better set of rules?" I asked. I
took a sip of my scotch and soda.

Her mouth formed the kind of knowing smile that made
you believe she knew everyone's secrets, including your own. "They
get what they want," she replied.

Our table was ready. As we left the bar, I remarked,
"What if I told you that of all the people involved in this, the
only one who got what he wanted was Horace Woolner?"

She thought I was making a joke and then decided I
was only making a mistake. "Gwendolyn is the one who got what she
wanted," she insisted over dinner. "No one is ever going to find
out about her husband, and because of the way the trial ended,
everybody believes she was only trying to do the right thing. What
did Horace Woolner get? He resigned from the bench, and a lot of
people still think he must have had something to do with the
murder."

"He saved the woman he loved."

A look of disdain crept along her lower lip. "She was
sleeping with Russell Gray, for God's sake."

"You don't think someone can love someone enough to
live with infidelity?"

"Would you?" she retorted.

A picture of Horace standing in the doorway, his
shirt hanging down to the floor, flashed through my mind.

"I suppose if you loved someone more than you loved
yourself," I said.

She was not listening. "What I can't believe is that
Gwendolyn got away with murder."

I looked at her and said nothing.

"Her husband isn't capable of it, and she's the only
one left with a motive," she explained. Because the case had been
dismissed, she assumed like everyone else that someone other than
Alma must have done it. Horace was right. Alma was safe. Not only
could she never be tried again, she was now beyond suspicion.

"The night Russell Gray was murdered," I informed her
as I paid the bill, "Gilliland-O'Rourke was speaking at a benefit
dinner in front of five hundred people." The waiter took the money
and left.

"Of course, that doesn't mean she's innocent, does
it?" I asked, as I put my wallet away. "I suppose she could have
hired someone to do it."

There was a question in her eyes, just for an
instant, and then it was gone. It was only when we left the
restaurant that she noticed my briefcase. "Why are you carrying
that?" she asked with a laugh, as we waited for the car.

"I have to go by the jail. I have some papers I have
to drop off with a client," I explained. "Would you mind? It
shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

The parking structure across from the courthouse was
nearly deserted. Her high heels echoed on the concrete floor as we
walked out the front entrance, then faded into silence as we waited
on the corner for the light to change. We cut through the park that
separated the courthouse from the correction facility. Inside,
under the watchful eye of a uniformed guard, I signed the visitor's
log.

"Why don't you come along," I suggested. "You must
have come in here a lot when you were in the DA's office." We
passed through the metal detector and followed the guard down a
long hallway.

"Tell me, what do Conrad Atkinson and his friends
think about what happened? They never much liked Horace, did
they?"

"I don't see Conrad very often," she replied. "I told
you before. We're just good friends." The guard stopped in front of
a door and inserted a key.

"I forgot," I said, peering into her eyes. "This is
where the police interviewed you, isn't it?"

She looked at me, wondering what was going on. The
guard turned the key, unlocking the door, and then, with his hand
on it, waited for me.

"Would you take Ms. Maxfield around the corner?" I
asked. "She might like to see what it's like to observe someone
inside when they don't know they're being watched."

Shutting the door behind me, I sat down at the
rectangular table and waited. A few minutes later, another door
opened. His wrists handcuffed behind his back and his ankles
shackled together with a chain, the inmate was shoved inside by two
armed guards.