Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  The profile then ran down all the readily obtainable facts—her background, her education, her experience, added what little information there was available about her personal life, and then appeared to run out of steam.

  “After all these words, recounting so many facts,” the piece concluded, “do we really know any more about Dana McAuliffe than we did before we began? Oddly enough, the answer is—probably not.”

  “Would it hurt to talk to some of these people?” Sam asked. “I should think some publicity might be helpful.”

  “This case isn’t about me,” Dana replied. “It’s about a terrible tragedy that will have repercussions for decades to come, and a man unjustifiably caught up in the middle of it. I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about that.”

  “Maybe that’s what you should say.”

  Dana shrugged. “I’d rather do my talking in court,” she said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jury selection was completed at four o’clock in the afternoon of September 8, twelve good and true individuals having been duly impaneled, plus an additional four who would serve as alternates.

  Abraham Bendali scheduled opening arguments to begin on Monday two weeks hence, and then promptly took himself, his beloved wife, Nina, his two sons, their wives, and his three young grandchildren off to the San Juan Islands.

  “What’s the matter with dad?” his eldest asked. “He hasn’t taken a holiday off for as long as I can remember.”

  “I think it has something to do with retirement,” his mother replied. “He’s trying it on.”

  So far, Bendali had said nothing to anyone about the impending end of his career. Not even to his wife of forty-three years, although sometimes he had the feeling that she knew more about him than he knew about himself. The only decision he had made was that he would call it retirement. Then, when the time was right, he would sit down quietly with Nina and tell her what the doctors had found.

  Dana came home from the jail, where she had gone to spend time with Corey after court was adjourned, stripped off her clothes, and ran hot water into the tub, adding half a bottle of bath salts for emphasis. Her skin turned bright red as she stepped into the tub, but she ignored it, sliding down until the water reached her chin. She could hear Sam downstairs, rattling around in the kitchen, putting dinner together, and she knew that a good wife would get up and go down to help, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. So she stayed where she was, for almost an hour, somewhere between awareness and oblivion, until she felt the stress beginning to float away and the water grow tepid, and then she climbed out and pulled on a thick terry robe.

  “The prune is here,” she declared, padding into the kitchen. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” Sam replied. “We’re about ready at this end.” He had grown accustomed to cooking over the years, and to his surprise, found he thoroughly enjoyed it. “So you can just sit right there and let me contemplate your beautiful shriveled self.”

  Dana smiled. As independent as she believed herself to be, it never ceased to amaze her how much she had come to depend on Sam to be there for her, with a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of comfort and compassion and support. The irony of it did not escape her. Judith was the one who badly needed a good solid man in her life, but it was Dana who had found him.

  “I’ll go set the table,” she told him with a happy sigh. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Allison Ackerman sat in the breakfast nook of her rambling Maple Valley home. Beyond the windows she could look across her acres of neatly fenced pasture, and watch the horses grazing. It didn’t seem to bother them that there was very little grass left to munch on. They had already breakfasted on hay and oats, and were quite content with life.

  The mystery writer found herself actually envying them, wishing she could be out there, without a care, without anything more compelling to do than to push her nose around in the soft warm earth.

  Pouring her third cup of coffee of the morning, which was something she rarely did, Allison wondered for perhaps the hundredth time what she had gotten herself into. What had possessed her to play word games with those attorneys? It all seemed so absurd to her now.

  “What did you do?” her daughter had asked.

  “Don’t ask,” Allison replied.

  “I probably don’t have to. You baited them, didn’t you?”

  The mystery writer sighed. “Yes,” she admitted. “I thought sure one of them would kick me off.”

  “Couldn’t you have just found a way to get out of it, like before?”

  While it was true that there was no imminent deadline looming over her, Allison did have a manuscript in the edit phase. She could have used that as an excuse. At the very least, the defense attorney should have let her go. She had made her feminist position perfectly clear. And there was certainly no shortage of people wanting to serve. As she herself had observed, people were falling all over themselves to get on this jury. She had even heard a rumor during her weeks in C701 that someone who had been summoned had actually been offered money to change places with someone who had not.

  “Of course,” she told her daughter. She had toyed with the attorneys, skating the edge, challenging both sides to toss her off, quite comfortable, she thought, in the certainty that one of them would. She was at a loss to understand why neither had, and perhaps more important, why she now found herself quite delighted about that. “But I guess I didn’t really want to get out of it.”

  Despite her statements to the contrary, Allison began to wonder whether she did indeed have an agenda here. Was it just fun and games, or did she want to serve on this jury, as the defense attorney had suggested, so she could make it a platform for what she so fervently believed in? There was no question that she wanted an end to the subjugation of women. What better statement to make on the subject than to tell the world that despite what the likes of Roger Roark and Jonathan Heal were extolling at every opportunity, the bombing of clinics like Hill House was never justifiable. Even if it meant the conviction and subsequent execution of a clean-cut naval lieutenant from Iowa.

  The 20/20 interview with Dean and Barbara Latham had painted a glowing picture of an all-American boy, and Allison had watched every moment of it. To listen to them, their son was the pride of Iowa, an honor student, who cherished life and liberty, believed devoutly in Christian principles, and could not possibly have committed the horrendous crime for which, through some hideous mistake, he was about to stand trial. But what else would parents say?

  After twenty years of inventing diabolical characters, the mystery writer had learned to look behind the facade.

  Juror Number 103 could hardly contain himself. He had hoped, but never really expected, that he would have a part in the Hill House trial. The only regret Stuart Dunn had was that the school year had started without him, and he would be unable to tell his students the good news. A substitute was teaching in his place, and it would be perhaps months before he could meet his students and share his experiences.

  “It’s going to be a very controversial trial,” Rose Gregory’s granddaughter told her. “The press is making the most of it. There are going to be demonstrations and protesters, and crazies running all over the place. Are you sure you want that kind of stress at your age?”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Juror Number 68 said in a tone that brooked no argument. “But I was summoned, and I’ve been chosen, and I’ll do my duty.”

  John Quinn was philosophical. “It was looking like a slow couple of months anyway,” he told his wife.

  “We’ve always lived a quiet life,” she replied. “I’m just afraid all the publicity is going to be hard on the children.”

  Quinn shrugged. “We’ll keep them as clear of it as we can,” he said. “And there could be an upside here, too, you know. If we get all this publicity, maybe it’ll bring some business our way.”

  Despite the notoriety that was bound to attach itself to the members of the Hill House jury, Karle
en McKay was not particularly overjoyed about being selected.

  In addition to the commitment of time, three important clients with whom she had been working would now have to be turned over to another Realtor. Having to split those commissions was going to have a significant impact on her income that the ten-dollar-a-day stipend paid by the state of Washington was not about to cover. Grudgingly, Juror Number 14 spent the time before the trial began getting another agent in her office up to speed.

  “Don’t ever say I never gave you anything,” the executive assistant of FOCUS said, bursting into Priscilla Wales’s private office.

  “What?” Priscilla asked.

  A big grin spread across the assistant’s face. “They put one of ours on the jury!”

  “You mean someone who actually claimed to be pro-choice?”

  “No—I mean a bona fide, signed-on-the-dotted-line member of our fine organization. Which means we’ve got a hung jury at the very least!”

  Priscilla couldn’t believe it. “How do you know?”

  The assistant shrugged. “We’ve got a plant in the AIM operation,” he told her. “Someone leaked the list and they got hold of it.”

  The attorney’s mind was whirling. “Who do we have up in Seattle?”

  “No one who could get to this juror.”

  “Then find me someone we can put up there who can,” she instructed. “Someone in the organization who’s dedicated enough to go the extra mile, and smart enough to avoid getting caught. Make it a woman.”

  “I’ll get on it first thing,” the assistant promised.

  “And if she does get caught, make sure she understands that she not only doesn’t know us, she’s never even heard of us.”

  The assistant nodded. He knew, perhaps better than anyone else in FOCUS, how much of Priscilla’s life was now her work, and how far she would bend the rules if she felt it would give her an advantage. “You don’t really think we could lose the election, do you?” he asked, knowing that was really what this was all about.

  Priscilla sighed deeply. “There are whole lot of very stupid people in this country,” she replied. “There’s no telling what they might do.”

  Elise Latham spent most of her weekends alone, eating TV dinners and watching the shopping channels on television, ordering things she didn’t need.

  On Sunday the 17th, she went down to the jail for her allotted hour with Corey.

  “Happy birthday,” she said with a bright smile. “How are you?”

  “I’m doing just fine,” he lied.

  “You’re looking good,” she lied in turn, because lying had become second nature to them. Actually, he looked awful. Over the past six months, he had grown gaunt and pale, and now had dark rings under his eyes. And he had developed a persistent cough that the doctors couldn’t seem to cure. “Your mother sent a birthday cake. I gave it to the guard.”

  “Who’d have thought we’d be spending my birthday like this?” he said suddenly. “It was supposed to be so different. I used to think about it all the time on the boat. We would be together in our own home. The two of us, and our baby.”

  “Great,” Elise said. “It’s all my fault.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he protested. “I just meant, this isn’t where I thought we would be.”

  She left as soon as the hour was up, managing to duck the reporters who were constantly in her wake, and headed for Bell-town, and any bar that was open. She woke up just before dawn, in a filthy bed, beside someone she couldn’t remember ever having seen before.

  She dragged herself home, surprising the media watch on her front lawn, and locked herself in the bathroom. Three hours later, she emerged, wrapped in a towel, her skin scraped raw from trying to get herself clean.

  “Never again,” she muttered to herself as she pulled on a robe and slippers. Then, on impulse, she went to her bureau. Rummaging around at the back of her lingerie drawer, she pulled out an old address book. She sat down on the bed, flipped the book open to a specific page, and stared at one of the entries for a long time. Finally, she got up and went to the telephone.

  On another telephone, in a different part of town, Paul Cotter was engaged in a conversation of his own.

  “Are you satisfied?” the caller asked.

  “For the most part, yes,” Cotter replied. “Out of the twelve, there are two of possible concern. But I don’t think we’ll have any problems with the rest of them.”

  “What about the two?”

  “We’ll keep an eye on them. If something comes up, we’ll deal with it.”

  “If you need anything, you’ll let me know?”

  “Of course,” Cotter assured the caller. “Don’t I always?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The survivors of the Hill House bombing, along with the families of many of the victims, gathered in the huge presiding judge’s courtroom, filling it up.

  “I just want you to know that you don’t have to do this,” Brian Ayres told them. “You don’t have to be here at all. I can’t begin to imagine how painful it would be to have to relive what happened to you. But it is your right, and we just wanted to know how many, if any of you, are interested.”

  “I’m sure some of us will want to be here,” Frances Stocker responded, and a number of heads bobbed in agreement. The psychologist was walking now, with the aid of a cane, which her doctors thought she was likely going to need for the rest of her life. “At least, I know I want to.”

  “Do we have to commit to the whole trial?” Joyce O’Mara asked. She was still living with her mother in North Bend, still learning to live without a lung and a kidney. “I’d like to be here some of the time, but I know I can’t make it all the time.”

  “I can probably be here most of the time,” Carl Gentry said. He was working as a night security guard now, and had his days free. “I think if our presence is going to help Mr. Ayres win his case, then as many of us as possible should be here.”

  “I’d like to come as often as I can,” Ruth Zelkin said. “On the days my husband can bring me. I’m not too good on the bus yet.” The former day care director was slowly finding her way around in the dark, and had begun learning to use the white cane that offered some measure of independence.

  “I can probably make it for most of the trial,” Betsy Toth Umanski said. She reached up and patted the hand that rested on the back of her wheelchair. “Andy can bring me in the mornings on his way to work, and pick me up after.” Despite her crippling injuries, she and Andy had married, only two months later than they had originally planned, and were already talking about adoption.

  “My wife won’t be able to come,” Rick Holman told the group. “But I’ll try to be here as often as I can.” Janet Holman had not recovered from the death of her son. In April, she had tried three times to kill herself. After the third attempt, she was admitted to a private hospital. The doctors, so far, had not ventured a prognosis.

  “I’ll be here,” Joe Romanadis said softly. “For my wife and my triplets.”

  “There’s no reason why I can’t be here for most of the trial,” Joseph Heradia volunteered. “I’m not so busy right now that I can’t make the time.” Neither a victim nor a survivor exactly, he nevertheless felt a kinship with his co-workers. In addition to that, he had a quarrel with Dana McAuliffe.

  “How can you defend that piece of scum?” he demanded when he heard she was representing Corey Latham.

  “The same way you can save the life of a man who just murdered a roomful of people and got hurt trying to escape,” she told him.

  “It’s not the same,” he argued. “I’ll save the man, sure, so he can stand trial for what he did. You’re trying to get the guy off for what he did.”

  “It is the same,” she assured him. “Someday I hope you’ll see that.”

  Well, he intended to put her to the test, he thought, every day, in the courtroom.

  A woman stood up at the back of the room, holding a little girl in her arms. “My name is Shawna Cal
lahan,” she said in a thick brogue. “My sister Caitlin died in the bombing, and I’ve come to take my niece home with me. I thank all of you who’ll be at the trial, and ask you to keep Caitlin and Chelsea in your prayers.”

  “I’m going to be here for my Brenda,” Raymond Kiley said softly. “I’ve already arranged it with my boss. I get as much time off as I need.”

  “I’d like to be here, too,” Helen Gamble said. “I know my twins are still with me, but I want to come for all those, like Brenda and Caitlin, who aren’t.”

  “Me too,” Marilyn Korba said simply. “I think my Jeff would want me to bear witness.”

  “All right then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Brian said. “We’ll reserve a block of seats that will be sectioned off and held for you every day until, say, ten o’clock each morning, after which they’ll be open to the general public. You can coordinate among yourselves how you want to allot them. Other than that, seating will be on a first-come-first-seated basis. Does that sound reasonable to everyone?”

  There was a general murmur of assent.

  “I’m willing to be the clearinghouse,” Frances Stocker offered, rising to face the group. “I can give everyone my telephone number, and you can call and tell me when you want to come, and I’ll tell you if there’s space available.”

  “Wait a minute,” Carl Gentry interrupted. “What about when the verdict comes in? I think most of us would want to be there for that.”

  Everyone nodded, and looked at the prosecutor.

  In truth, the value of having survivors sitting in the courtroom every day and reacting to the proceedings, in plain sight of the jurors, was immeasurable, Brian knew. But once the case went to the jury, the impact of having them there virtually disappeared, and every journalist in the country would be vying for a seat when the verdict was announced. Fitting them all into a space that was set up for less than two hundred people would be a major juggling act.