by Paul Heald
In between classes, Arthur had stopped to listen to one of the rabid itinerant preachers who descended on the campus to harangue the students about the evils of their constant fornication, drug use, and substitution of rock and roll for God. The combination of their ridiculous literalism and heckling by the students provided some of the best free entertainment that the university had to offer.
“I know what sort of sinfulness you all engage in every night: FOR-NI-CA-SHUNNNNNNNNN!” Jeb thundered, a rail-thin figure in a stained down jacket who might have been mistaken for a street bum in another context.
“Could you point out some of the girls you’re talking about?” a gawky student asked while Jeb was drawing a breath for his next tirade. “I’ve been trying to fornicate all semester, but I can’t find anyone to fornicate with!”
Then, Jeb began reading lengthy passages from Saint Paul’s letters in support of his thesis that all of the women on campus should be at home, either married and caring for their children or making their parents’ lives easier. Purporting to speak for the outraged women in the audience (who had been maintaining an amused silence), a bearded graduate student attacked Jeb’s thesis obscenely, screaming that Jeb was a “pea-brained shithead,” punctuating his points with fist-shaking fury. Arthur listened to the two ideological enemies yell, the venom in their voices poisoning the splendor of the day around them. Prompted by some innate sense of fairness, Arthur found himself yelling to his classmate, “You’re a philosophy major. Why don’t you try using some logic?”
The sudden outburst earned him the curious stares of the onlookers and a string of invective from the student philosopher. Jeb had no comment. He hated getting any support from the crowd. Arthur turned and walked quickly into the anonymity of the Student Center. As the butterflies in his stomach subsided, he sat down and watched the fountain misting in the interior courtyard of the spacious building. A moment later someone sat next to him.
“Excuse me. My name’s Alan Whitehead, and I run the Presbyterian Student Center on Campus.” The stranger looked to be in his midthirties, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. His face bore an expansive and genuine smile. “This may seem like a silly question, but I was wondering why you defended Jeb out there.”
Arthur looked at the young minister and scooted around in his seat to face him. “I wasn’t defending him—Jeb is a moron. It just bothers me to see a guy whom I know is a totally rational Marxist let himself get dragged down to Jeb’s level … Rage isn’t the right response to Jeb’s blather, especially since he loves it so much.”
“What is the right response then?” Whitehead asked. “That’s something I struggle with because, as you can imagine, people like him don’t help business very much.”
“I don’t know.” Arthur shrugged. “You just have to forgive him for being such a fucking idiot. But that’s kind of condescending, I suppose.”
“I don’t think it’s condescending at all.” The minister laughed. “I’m quite certain Jeb needs forgiveness—all he can get. I suppose if God can forgive some serial killer, then we should be able to tolerate old Jeb.” He got up with a final word of praise about Arthur’s skills as a theologian and left.
Arthur remained seated, watching the sunlight play on the mote-like spray of the fountain and wondering whether he agreed with Whitehead that God could forgive a serial killer. In theory, he thought He could. God could do whatever He wanted, which meant that theoretically God could forgive anybody for anything. Of course, that did not mean that He had to. But it never hurts to ask, thought Arthur. So, he did.
He stared at the fountain for a few minutes longer while the burden of his pride lifted a little. Before the abortion, he had never really done anything he thought was deeply wrong, but now he was no better than anybody else. He was surprised by the sense of freedom that came with the simple admission that he had failed. Having irretrievably lost perfection as a goal, he put his conceit behind him and breathed in deeply again and again. When the clock at the top of the student center chimed 1:00 p.m., Arthur remembered that the woman with whom he was desperately in love would be getting out of her math class in fifteen minutes. Forgetting his hunger, he rushed out of the building to find her.
* * *
The Georgia sun was warm on their backs when he finished his story. Arthur’s focus remained inward as he stared vacantly across the room. Suzanne did not trust herself to speak. She felt an overwhelming longing to touch him, to heal him, but she could not move toward him. The impossibility of having him weighed on her like never before. Before she lost control, she stood up shakily and left the room.
XXVI.
THEN EVERYTHING FALLS APART
Melanie sat in her office on Monday morning and imagined Carolyn Bastaigne’s fury at losing her chance to work in New York, her desire to slander the Judge and somehow punish him for discovering her brilliant insider trading scheme. To whom had she raged? A number of different scenarios seemed plausible. She might have complained to her co-clerks or even Ms. Stillwater. Wanting to spare the Judge her anger, a protective person in his chambers could have hustled her into the hall and away from his office. A confrontation could easily have resulted in Carolyn fleeing into the stairwell, or perhaps an argument could have spilled into the stairwell itself where the unlucky girl might have tripped and fallen.
Of course, she might have threatened the Judge directly. It was hard to imagine the Judge chasing her, but it was possible. At a minimum, the Judge must have suspected something beyond an innocent slip on the way to get a candy bar. According to both Ms. Stillwater and Suzanne, the Judge had become withdrawn about the time of Carolyn Bastaigne’s death. The closed curtains and his sour disposition suggested that he blamed himself for something. One thing seemed certain, someone knew more about Carolyn’s fate and had covered up their involvement.
Her restlessness eventually drove her out of her office and down the hall to the library. She found Phil in his favorite seat, feet propped up on the conference table, reading cases.
“You want to go out for a cup of coffee?” she asked.
“In the middle of the morning?” He held up his coffee mug and gave her a questioning look. “What’s wrong with Ms. Stillwater’s brew?”
“Nothing. I just want to get out of here for a bit. Let’s go,” she pleaded. “The Judge isn’t going to notice.” He shrugged and stood up.
“Should we get Arthur too?”
“No,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Leave him alone. He came in this morning looking like a zombie and locked himself in his office.”
They slipped out of the courthouse into the cool morning air. A café had just opened in a former bank building, and the smell of fresh roasted coffee hit them as they turned the corner onto College Avenue. Melanie waited to speak until they were both served and seated.
“You’re going to think I’ve gone nuts.”
“I already think you’re nuts.” Phil smiled and dumped three packets of sugar into his mug. “Go ahead. What paranoid theory have you come up with now?”
She edged forward in her chair and pushed her drink to one side. “I spoke to Jennifer Huffman, and she started talking about Carolyn without being prompted. In fact, I kinda cut her off because I was getting freaked out. She says that on the day Carolyn died, she said she was really pissed at the Judge.”
“So, Carolyn went down to Judge Myers’s chambers after he talked to her.”
“Definitely. What’s even more interesting is her state of mind at the time. Jennifer said she was hopping mad and even threatened to kill Judge.”
“Well, that’s a pretty common turn of phrase.” He shrugged and gave his coffee a stir.
“Yeah,” she admitted while still pressing her point, “but Jennifer swore she was really worked up. She didn’t say it, but it seems likely that Carolyn returned to chambers for another confrontation.”
“Is there a record of a second meeting in the personnel file you looked at?” He blew on the top
of his coffee and the small lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses fogged up.
“Nope. But remember that Sidney Dumont said that the Judge was the last person to see her alive, not Jennifer Huffman.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. Tell me if I’m crazy.” She laid out her theory as if she were presenting a memo to the Judge. “I’m starting from the premise that Carolyn did not slip on the stairs on the way down to get a chocolate bar. I stood in that stairwell this morning and kicked off my shoes to check the traction.” She stuck her feet out to show that she was not wearing nylons.
“It’s virtually impossible to slip on marble in bare feet, even if you’re in a hurry or careless. I think there must have been some sort of confrontation.”
“Are you suggesting,” Phil asked doubtfully, “that someone pushed Carolyn down the stairs?”
“Not necessarily,” she cautioned with a tip of her mug. “But I can imagine her rushing in to yell at the Judge for ruining her career. Can you imagine how someone in the chambers would take that? The Judge threatened by a felon who broke the most sacred confidentiality rules in order to commit securities fraud?”
“One might get a little upset. I’ll grant you that.”
“A little? If she burst back into chambers spoiling for a fight, an argument could easily have spilled into the hallway.
“Think about it,” she continued, caught up in the reenactment of the imagined events. “The biggest part of this mystery is why Carolyn took the stairs. She was lazy; she always took the elevator. But if someone was pursuing her, she might not wait for the elevator and face the music. She might be tempted to flee down the stairs.”
“Maybe.” He considered her version of events and nodded. “It makes some sense.”
“Remember the coroner’s report?” Melanie pushed her theory further to see his reaction. “It reports massive injuries to the back of her head. Now, that might have resulted from her twisting in the air as she fell, but it’s also possible that she was facing away from the stairs when she tripped or …”
“Or what?” Phil asked, daring her to complete the thought.
Melanie frowned at him and sighed. “Or was pushed.”
“You don’t believe that, and neither do I.” Now it was Phil’s turn to frown. “It’s true that the Judge is depressed, and we all know he’s a hard-ass. But there’s no way that someone in the chambers intentionally pushed Carolyn Bastaigne.”
“I know, I know. But something happened in that stairwell. Something had to have happened. And I really can see someone following her into the hall.”
“Fair enough,” he replied. He took a sip of coffee and thought for a minute. “It’s as plausible as the candy bar theory and provides a reason for the Judge’s mood swing five years ago. He wouldn’t be too broken up about a lousy clerk who had an unfortunate accident, but he might be bothered by a death caused directly by his phone call to Cravath.”
He gave the coffee a couple of quick swirls and then looked up. “Is there any mention in Carolyn’s file of Jennifer Huffman?”
“Definitely not.” She shook her head. “And there was certainly nothing in the letter from the Justice Department.”
“Okay,” he admitted reluctantly. “But we’re still missing something. For example, if Carolyn were having a knock-down, drag-out fight out with someone in the hallway, then why didn’t anyone hear anything?”
* * *
The work week began for Arthur with a hot cup of coffee and a frustrating proofread of an opinion Melanie had written. Preoccupied with Sunday’s drama, he took twice as long as usual to find typos and make substantive suggestions. He scanned the paper with little immediate comprehension, rereading the same paragraphs over and over before deciphering their meaning, unable to hang on to his ideas for how to improve it. The draft was already quite good, amenable mostly to minor changes, but fine tuning came only with a sharpness that Arthur lacked. Instead of concentrating, he measured with his fingernail the depth of the scratches on his desktop and analyzed each sound floating up from the bustle of Court Street. Shaking his head to clear his mind only served to remind him that the hair flicking in his eyes needed cutting, and he wondered whether he should go back to the old Filipino barber who said he liked everything about Clarkeston except its lack of bowling alleys.
With new appreciation for people with learning disabilities, Arthur got up to fill his mug from the coffeepot in Ms. Stillwater’s office. As he poured, he noticed that the fax machine had just finished spitting out a one-page message from the Circuit Executive’s office. He picked it up and smoothed it against his chest. The message was worded similarly to the one received on the morning that Karl Gottlieb had been executed. The only difference was the name of the subject—Averill Lee Jefferson—and the time of death—6:48 a.m. that morning.
Arthur had forgotten about Jefferson.
He stood in absolute stillness for several moments. The fax machine was at the end of a long electronic pipeline, running from Clarkeston to the headquarters of the court in Atlanta, from Atlanta to the death chamber in Starkville, Florida, where electricity had delivered its final message for the State. He held the sheet, connected to everyone involved, executioner, governor, attorneys, witnesses, and judges. None of them believed the death of Averill Lee Jefferson would deter even a single future murder. The state had exacted retribution; no other purpose had been served. Arthur looked at the sheet of paper and felt that retribution retrace itself across the miles and through his trembling hands. Starkville was over three hundred miles away, so the lights had not dimmed when the switch was pulled, but he could feel something happen in Clarkeston nonetheless, a faint seismic tremor of the soul.
After several minutes, he tried to drop the fax on Ms. Stillwater’s desk, but it stuck to his hand and fell to the floor. He left it there and stumbled back to his office where he pushed away Suzanne’s pregnancy to a far corner of his mind and locked away in another compartment the death of the man he had never met.
* * *
He worked through lunch, eating without tasting a sandwich brought from home, while he scrolled silently through several dozen bankruptcy cases on the computer. Phil had left to run an errand for the Judge in Atlanta, and Melanie was closeted in her office completing another opinion
Arthur, walled off from all distractions, worked without speaking until the early afternoon. As he sat at his desk, outlining a bench memo, he heard a tap on his door and saw the Judge come in. The rare visit to his clerks’ offices usually meant the assignment of extra work, but Arthur cared little whether he had to write another memo or do some extra research for the Judge, as long as he wasn’t bringing another death case.
He sat down and asked Arthur if he could smoke. Arthur gestured vaguely. “The window’s open.”
“I know it’s a little late to ask you this, but did you ever read that play I gave you?” The Judge blew a narrow stream of smoke over his left shoulder away from Arthur. It snaked languidly into the bookshelves, pushed softly by the spring breeze. Hearing disappointment and disapproval in the Judge’s voice, Arthur dared to deflect the fault for their lack of communication before Jefferson’s execution.
“I read it as soon as you gave it to me, but you left early on Friday afternoon and didn’t come in on Saturday. I wanted to call you, but Ms. Stillwater said that you’d gone out of town for the day. And Sunday …” Arthur looked down and his voice trailed off. “I didn’t think that you wanted to be bothered on a Sunday.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He flicked an ash into Arthur’s wastebasket. “Something about Jefferson’s case struck a chord in me and I remembered the play. I’m not sure why.” The Judge paused a moment and sighed. “He was no Gottlieb, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t.” Arthur stared at his shoes, avoiding the piercing gray eyes.
“Well”—the Judge gathered himself to leave—“he was more sympathetic than most of the petitioners who come through here, but I couldn’t se
e any way to get over the procedural hurdles in front of him.”
Arthur slowly looked up, and something in his expression must have stopped the Judge in his tracks. What the young clerk offered up was not a confession, but a deliberate leap into the pit. He retraced for the Judge the beginnings of his research and his conversations about Medea with Kennedy and Suzanne. He included the false starts and his growing doubts that Jefferson deserved to be executed. “Why couldn’t we argue that Jefferson’s crime—unlike Gottlieb’s—was not especially heinous? Jefferson believed what society told him, that passion and erotic love are good things. He was just mentally unable to handle the pain that comes with the territory.”
“Maybe,” the Judge murmured.
Arthur made his points as forcefully as he could, hoping fervently that the Judge would see some obvious flaw in his line of argument, but the old man just nodded at him to continue. “That’s not to say Jefferson’s innocent of murder—he’s guilty as hell—but isn’t his crime pathetic rather than heinous?’ Arthur leaned forward as he explained. “Gottlieb was evil incarnate. He’s the poster boy of heinousness. Wasn’t Jefferson something different? And doesn’t that make him innocent of his sentence and free from the procedural bars that prevent him from arguing his lawyer’s incompetence?”
A long section of ash fell to the carpet and broke apart. The Judge sat silently, ignoring the mess he had made, looking over Arthur’s shoulder at the vast expanse of blue sky stretching cloudless all the way to the coast. He sighed and looked at Arthur with pity and admiration.
“Not bad, son. That’s creative and powerful reasoning … I might have gotten Judge Byrd to go along with it. McIntosh would never have voted for a stay, but Judge Byrd might have, and all it takes is two votes.” His voice trailed off. He seemed to be imagining making Arthur’s argument to his long-time friend on the bench.
The Judge shook his head and stood up. He stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of the glass-covered desk and swept the butt and ash into the trash with his hand. “Welcome to the shitty side of judging, Arthur. I’ll tell you a secret. I never second-guessed myself in the old days. Never. Now, I do it all the time, whenever I grant a stay and whenever I deny one.”