Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  Dana peered at him in the half light of the purple interview room. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s just that I’m alone so much. I can have visitors only three hours a week, and the rest of the time I’m all by myself. I eat alone. I exercise alone. Nobody talks to me, except the guards, and they’re not very sociable. And besides, I always have to watch what I say to them. I always have to be careful. It’s just so hard, and I get so lonely.”

  “Your minister can come more often,” Dana reminded him.

  “I know, and he does, as much as he can,” Corey hastened to assure her, but then a sheepish smile spread across his face. “It’s just that, well, mostly he reads from the Bible, and while it’s very uplifting and all that, it’s not exactly the same as two people getting together and talking to each other, if you know what I mean.”

  Dana smiled. “I know what you mean.”

  “You’re really the only one who can come here whenever you want, and get the private room, and all. And I thought, well, maybe you could find a reason to come more often. Something you forgot to tell me, or a question you forgot to ask. And you know, if you didn’t have anything about the case to discuss, maybe we could just talk about whatever we felt like. It’s the monotony, you see. It’s driving me crazy.” He stopped before he blurted out about the headaches, and the nightmares, and the bitter acid that was roiling around in his stomach now on a pretty regular basis. “But I know how busy you are,” he said instead, “and I’d understand if you didn’t have time.”

  Paul Cotter had long since removed the bulk of Dana’s workload from her calendar, smoothly transitioning her clients to other partners and associates. The Latham case was now her only priority.

  “I’ll come every day, whether I need to or not,” she promised. “And I’ll stay as long as I can.”

  “You’re famous,” Sam told her when she finally made it home that evening.

  “Why?” she replied. “What did I do?”

  “You made the cut on Jonathan Heal’s Prayer Hour.’

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Apparently, once a week, he selects someone to elevate to his own personal list of living saints, and this week, it seems to be you.”

  “Who is Jonathan Heal?”

  “Ah, the joys of working sixteen hours a day,” Sam said with a grin. “You get to miss the really important stuff. Jonathan Heal is this major televangelist, with a reputed following of millions. He goes around in this ridiculous white suit, preaching the gospel, and rakes in a fortune. I read somewhere that his real name is Jacob Hunsucker, but he changed it because he didn’t think that name would inspire the flocks.”

  “How did I get to be a part of all this?” Dana asked.

  “Oh, your sainthood was conferred because you’re representing the great protector of the preborn. According to him, you are noble, you are virtuous, you are the epitome of modern woman.”

  “Do I leap tall buildings with a single bound?”

  Sam chuckled. “I think he left that part out. But he did get in that you are the only hope of a morally bankrupt nation.”

  “Rubbish,” Dana declared.

  NINETEEN

  Joan Wills had every intention of becoming a partner at Cotter Boland and Grace, and sooner rather than later, if she had anything to say about it. Recruited right out of the University of Washington Law School, she had worked for the firm for seven years, doing every bit of scut work demanded of her, and quietly biding her time.

  There was no question in her mind that she was the sharpest associate in the office. According to her time sheets, she was by far the most sought after, and she had easily logged twice as many billable hours as any of the other eleven associates. Additionally, in the last couple of years, she had been acknowledged several times by the executive committee for bringing in significant business of her own. If that didn’t qualify her for partner status, she didn’t know what would.

  She was certainly aware of Cotter Boland’s less than pro-feminist history. But Joan figured she had an ace in the hole on that score. Dana McAuliffe had led the way. And as far as Joan was concerned, Dana McAuliffe walked on water.

  Smooth as satin, soft as cashmere, hard as nails, and nothing less than totally professional, the firm’s only female partner exemplified everything the senior associate wanted to be. Let her male counterparts idolize Paul Cotter or Elton Grace, Joan was perfectly content to learn at the feet of the person she had chosen to emulate.

  When the invitation came for her to sit second chair on the Latham trial, the thirty-two-year-old attorney knew this was the final test. Office scuttlebutt had it that a new partner was going to be made next year, and that Joan was on a short list of three senior associates being considered. She felt confident, if she performed well on what was arguably going to be the most important case the firm had ever handled, it should all but assure her of the offer.

  At the very least, she knew Dana would go to bat for her. During the past couple of years, the two attorneys had moved past being just colleagues to become friends. It would not have been unusual, for someone looking, to find them discussing everything from legal matters to shoe styles over yogurt in the lunchroom. Occasionally, when they worked late, they would go out to dinner together. And on one occasion, Joan joined Dana and Molly at the symphony to hear Sam play.

  Despite some in the firm occasionally confusing them, the two women hardly resembled each other, with some three inches in height and thirty pounds in weight separating them. Although, as expected, tailored suits dominated their work wardrobes, Joan preferred the charcoal grays and navy blues to Dana’s choice of soft colors. While both had blond hair, Joan’s was more strawberry than honey, and she wore it somewhat shorter than Dana’s flowing shoulder length. And where Dana’s eyes were large and brown, Joan’s were hazel and slightly slanted. Still, there was a sense of likeness about them that was obvious to most.

  “I was sure one of the partners would have taken second chair on this one,” Joan said breathlessly. “Or at least one of the boys.”

  “It was my choice to make,” Dana replied with a shrug. “And it was made with Paul Cotter’s full approval.” In fact, Cotter had been downright enthusiastic when Dana discussed it with him.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I want the case,” the associate hastened to add. “But I have to tell you, right up front, even if it costs me the job, I’m pretty much pro-choice.”

  Dana smiled. “That’s okay,” she said. “You’re in good company.”

  “Well, what I mean is, to put it politely, I’m not particularly sympathetic to our client.”

  “Neither was I, at the beginning,” Dana conceded. “But go spend some time with him, as I have. You might want to reconsider.”

  Joan raised a cynical eyebrow. “Come on. Are you going to tell me you think maybe he didn’t do it?”

  “No. I’m going to tell you I think maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

  It was a nonanswer, of course, but Joan had enormous respect for Dana’s intelligence and judgment.

  “Interesting,” she murmured, but her mind was already beginning to whirl. If she had a hand in getting Corey Latham an acquittal, in the biggest case that had ever hit the state of Washington, she was certain the partners at Cotter Boland would not be able to deny her.

  “My name is Joan Wills,” she told the alleged Hill House bomber from her side of the metal table in the purple interview room. “I’m going to be assisting Dana McAuliffe with your defense.”

  A hollow-eyed young man, accustomed enough to his shackles, she noted, to have become adept at the jailhouse shuffle, sat down and looked back at her without expression.

  “Thank you,” he said politely.

  “Don’t start thanking me until we get you out of this,” Joan responded with a bright smile.

  “Will you?” he asked in a dull voice that suggested he did not expect a reply.

  “Shouldn’t we?�
� she countered.

  His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. “Did you have a choice?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “Could you have said no, you didn’t want to represent me?”

  “Sure I could’ve,” she replied easily, because it was true. “No one at my firm is forced to work on a case if he or she doesn’t want to.” She paused for a moment. “Actually, I wanted this case,” she added. “You see, it’ll probably make me a partner, even if we lose. But it’ll definitely make me a partner if we win. Now, does that make you feel better or worse?”

  He laughed, in spite of himself, it seemed. “Better, I guess,” he said. “You’re a lot like Dana. You tell it like it is.”

  “Don’t worry, whatever else goes down, neither one of us is going to lie to you,” Joan assured him, pleased by the comparison. “We guarantee to give you the bad news right along with the good.”

  “I’d like to be able to do something, you know, to help you with my defense,” he said. “But I don’t know what more I can say other than I didn’t do it.”

  “Trust me, you’re going to help,” Joan said. “When we go to trial, you’ll have the opportunity to get up on the witness stand and make that very statement to the jury, just as persuasively as you know how.”

  “The thing is, I look in the mirror, and I see the me I think I am, the me that everyone who knows me knows I am,” he said, and she could hear the desperation in his voice. “Then I read the newspapers, and they’re describing someone I don’t even recognize.”

  “That’s not unusual,” she told him. “In fact, the media is famous for it. What they don’t know, they make up out of whole cloth.”

  He looked at her with anguished eyes. “But how is the jury going to know which one is the real me?” he asked.

  “Okay, I went and saw him,” Joan reported to Dana.

  “And?”

  The associate shook her head. “I always thought I was a pretty good judge of character, that I could tell, just by looking at someone, what was what. But this guy, I don’t know. I admit, I was absolutely convinced the son of a bitch did it. I was going to go to the jail and meet him, and come back and tell you it was time to get the stardust out of your eyes.”

  Dana chuckled. “And now?”

  “Now I’m going to start looking for all the holes I can find in the state’s case. Because I have reasonable doubt.”

  “I went to the jail the first time, feeling exactly the way you did,” Dana told her. “I wanted him to be guilty, so of course, in my mind, he was guilty. I didn’t want this case. I wanted a good reason not to take it. But here I am.”

  Joan shrugged. “Two crazy women,” she said.

  It suddenly occurred to Dana to wonder whether that might not have been why Paul Cotter had been so willing to put Joan on the case. The client now had two women who might just be crazy enough to believe in him.

  “The anonymous tip came by mail,” Al Roberts told Craig Jessup. “It was typewritten and had a Seattle postmark. It said there was an officer at Bangor whose wife had recently had an abortion at Hill House, and was pretty steamed up about it, and saying some wild things.”

  “That’s all?” Jessup asked.

  “That’s all,” Roberts confirmed.

  TWENTY

  In the prosecution of Corey Latham, we want to send a very strong message,” a spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office told Stone Phillips on Dateline. “What kind of message?” Phillips asked.

  “One that says we will not tolerate terrorists in this country, whether they come from the Middle East or the Midwest.”

  “Do you think a conviction here will send that message?”

  “If not the conviction, then surely the execution.”

  “But doesn’t terrorism succeed, for the most part, because terrorists are committed to their causes,” Phillips pressed, “and are apparently ready and willing to die for their acts?”

  The spokesperson shrugged. “Well, I’m a lawyer, not a psychologist. But it seems to me that one dead terrorist means one less terrorist.”

  For three months, the Reverend Jonathan Heal had kept Corey Latham in his public prayers. Without ever once having met the young man, the televangelist nevertheless took every opportunity, during his nightly Prayer Hour, to extol his numerous virtues and the unjustness of his circumstances.

  It had more than paid off. Slowly at first, but then with gathering momentum, a stream of money had found its way into the good Reverend’s Kansas City post office box—coins, bills, checks—from every corner of the country, all with little messages of encouragement and support for the young naval lieutenant. The sheer volume of it had overwhelmed the ministry’s two bookkeepers.

  “We’ve had to double our trips to the post office, just to clean out the box to make room for more,” one of them said.

  “What do we do with it?” the other one asked.

  “How much?” Heal inquired.

  “Almost four million dollars, and it’s still coming in.”

  The Reverend threw back his head and laughed. “The power of prayer,” he cried.

  “We aren’t going to keep it all, are we?” the first bookkeeper inquired.

  “Certainly not,” Heal asserted. “You make out a check for, say, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and send it along to Seattle. Put the rest into the general fund.”

  “Only two hundred and fifty thousand?” the second bookkeeper whispered to the first. “Is that all he’s going to get?”

  The first bookkeeper shrugged. “Who’ll ever know?” she replied. “The lieutenant will be thrilled with his quarter million, and come Christmas, you and I will get an extra big bonus for being such good employees.”

  The presidential campaign was in full swing. By the middle of June, the state primaries had all but guaranteed the nominations of the two leading candidates. The Republican convention in July and the Democratic convention in August would do little more than rubber-stamp the already decided.

  There would be no surprises, no controversy, no lastminute political maneuverings at either convention; just foregone conclusions. Reporters assigned to the two candidates scrambled to find anything of interest to report.

  Pollsters across the country determined that there was little to choose from between the two. They both favored a strong military, better education, improved health care, and less government spending. There was really only one issue on which they totally disagreed: abortion.

  “We are supposed to be a civilized country,” Prudence Chaffey declared on CNN’s Larry King Live. “What kind of civilization condones murdering innocent infants in the womb, and then condemns murdering their murderers?”

  “But it wasn’t just people performing abortions who were murdered at Hill House,” King observed.

  “That’s true, and that’s tragic,” the AIM executive conceded. “And we should do whatever is necessary to prevent such a thing from ever happening again, which is why I support the Republican candidate for president. He has promised us a Constitutional amendment that will guarantee every American the right to be born. And he has pledged to work with Congress toward the criminalization of all abortion.”

  “How exactly would you expect him to accomplish that?”

  “With relative ease, actually,” the Houston matron replied. “As we know, the overwhelming majority of the people in this country are opposed to abortion. All they have to do, come November, is vote for those candidates who believe, as they do, that feticide is wrong and must be stopped. As soon as that happens, abortion will be history.”

  “The Democratic candidate for president is hardly the irresponsible liberal his opponent would like the American people to think he is,” Priscilla Wales told Larry King several days later. “He simply doesn’t happen to believe that government was ever intended to deprive us of our rights as individuals. Which is why I support him. If we’re capable of stepping into an election booth, and casting a vote for
the candidate of our choice, why shouldn’t we be capable of making every other important decision, as well?”

  “There are some who seem to think that the bombing of Hill House was inevitable,” King suggested, “and that continued support of Roe v. Wade will simply escalate the violence.”

  The head of FOCUS shrugged. “Three quarters of the people in this country favor abortion,” she said. “Now, what are we supposed to do? Honor the majority, as we always have? Or bow to the minority because if you don’t give them what they want, they’ll go out and make a bomb?”

  “How is it that ’three quarters’ of the population support abortion in this country, while the ’overwhelming majority’ opposes it?” Dan Rather asked his television audience on the CBS Evening News. “Well, the answer is simple, really. It’s all about polls—who’s doing them, and how the results are interpreted. Since polls are frequently something less than scientific, results can be controlled by the specific population samples that are surveyed, and by the language of the questions that are asked. In this case, the two sides of the abortion issue are sampling different populations and slanting their questions to elicit those responses that best support their particular assertions. So the reality of polls is that you can pretty much get them to reflect whatever you want them to.”

  The weekly lunch at Al Boccolino had been somewhat less regular since the grand jury indictments against Corey Latham had been handed down, Dana often finding it necessary to work right through lunch.

  “It’s not a problem, and I understand,” Judith said one Wednesday in late June when Dana forced herself to break away from the office to keep their appointment. “I only wish I were that busy.”

  “Well, it’s a mixed blessing, I assure you,” the attorney responded.

  In the rush of the case, Dana had not had much time to work on the details of her plan for setting Judith up in an art gallery. It was little more than a week ago that she had finally gotten it thought out enough to sit down with Sam and discuss it. To her delight, he seemed quite receptive to the idea, and even offered to talk to their accountant. She opened her mouth to say something, wanting to share at least the concept with her friend, then closed it again. It wouldn’t be right to raise Judith’s hopes if nothing came of it.