Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  “Murderer!” they screeched.

  “Baby killer!”

  She hung up on them. After a while, she took the receiver off the hook. There was something about the calls that seemed vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was, and it was too much trouble to try. Instead, she wrapped herself in the cold comfort of silence. She had never felt so alone. When it grew light outside, she took a shower, got dressed, and went to Port Townsend.

  Molly seemed surprised to see her. “You haven’t come to take me home, have you?” she asked anxiously. “Daddy said I could stay all weekend, and I’ve made plans.”

  “Stay you may,” Dana assured her. “Are you having fun?”

  “Oh yes,” the ten-year-old replied, her eyes shining. “There’s just so much to do.” And she was off with her cousins.

  “Thanks, mom,” Dana said, when the girl was gone.

  “We’re not entirely cut off here, you know,” her mother told her. “We’re aware of what’s going on in the big city. I don’t know how long we can pretend that nothing’s happened.”

  Dana sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll leave, if that would make things easier for you.”

  “No need for that,” her mother said. “You raise your children the best you can, but once they’re grown and gone, you no longer have control over what they do.”

  “I know I’ve disappointed you,” Dana said. “I’ve probably disappointed everybody. But I did what I thought I was supposed to do.”

  “God knows we’re not all perfect,” her mother reflected. “Which is why He teaches us as much from our failures as from our successes. What’s done is done. It’s how you live with it that counts.”

  Dana nodded. “That’s what I have to figure out,” she said.

  Her mother glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Then I expect you’ll want to see your father. He’s still down at the office.”

  There was no resentment in her voice that her husband would routinely go to work on the weekend, only acceptance of how things were.

  Dana found Jefferson Reid at his desk, poring over legal tomes, searching out precedents.

  “A few more years of this, and I’ll be blind,” he grumbled when he saw her. “They keep printing this stuff smaller and smaller.”

  “That’s because there’s more and more of it,” she suggested. “If they made the print large enough to be readable, you wouldn’t be able to lift the book.”

  He pushed the tomes aside. “I guess I don’t have to ask you what you’re doing here,” he said.

  She dropped into one of his deep leather chairs. “Why?” she asked. “Because I always come running to you when I’m in trouble?”

  “Is your case in trouble?” he asked immediately.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “Cotter is making a few noises about moving me out of first chair, but I can’t believe he’s really serious about doing it. Other than that, all things considered, I think we’re in pretty good shape.”

  “Can you handle the distraction?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “I made a brief statement last night, and I’m going to wait to see how that plays out before I decide whether I need to do anything more.”

  “Well, if you’re worried about us, your mother’s the religious one in the family, but she’s also a realist. Mind you, it’ll stick in her craw for a while, but she’ll work through it.”

  “I know.”

  He peered at her. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Sam’s gone,” Dana said.

  “What do you mean, gone?” he asked.

  “He left me last night.”

  Jefferson Reid contemplated his daughter for a long moment. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I wanted to,” she said. “But I knew how much he wanted a child of his own, and I didn’t know how to tell him that a partnership in my law firm was more important at the time. I thought I’d take a couple of years, get established, and then have a baby. But I was always working so hard, I guess the right time never really came.” She sighed. “I didn’t want him to know that I’d killed his only chance.”

  Reid rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Did you tell your mother about this?”

  “No,” Dana admitted. “But I was thinking maybe, if it was okay with both of you, that Molly could stay here for a while. Well, at least until the trial is over. It would make things a lot easier, and she wouldn’t miss that much school. We’re only talking a few more days.”

  “I’ll talk to your mother,” he said. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “Thanks, dad,” she said, pulling herself out of the chair. “I guess I’ll get going then.”

  “Aren’t you going to stay the weekend?” he asked. “I’m almost through here. We could talk some more.”

  “No,” she replied. “I have to get back, and see what kind of hell has broken loose. I have a meeting with Cotter tomorrow afternoon, and I’ve got to see Corey. Right now, he’s my top priority: getting through the rest of this trial, and getting him acquitted, if I can. I have to make sure none of my personal stuff touches him in any way.”

  Reid stood up and took her in his arms. “I know you,” he said. “You’ll tough it out.”

  She was halfway out the door when she stopped. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You’ve always made the decisions for the family, done what you thought was right, and mom never questioned it. You raised me to be just like you, to follow my dream, to go for the career, to make the hard choices. But then I try to do what I think is right, and look what happens.”

  “I guess that’s my fault,” Jefferson Reid said, shaking his head. “I did raise you to be like me, but I forgot to tell you that being a woman in a man’s world doesn’t make you a man.”

  Craig Jessup felt a little silly, walking through Volunteer Park on a Saturday morning, counting off benches until he found the one his caller had specified. Clandestine operations were not exactly his thing. But the man had been insistent, and Jessup complied. He figured if the information the caller had hinted at was as promised, it would be a small price to pay.

  He sat down at one end of the designated bench, opened the required newspaper, and began to wait.

  At exactly ten minutes before eleven, a bulky man with a crooked nose sat down at the other end of the bench and pulled out a newspaper of his own.

  “Nice day we’re having, isn’t it?” the man inquired casually.

  “If you like October,” Jessup replied, as he had been instructed. “Myself, I prefer May.”

  The opening gambit had been played. The bulky man nodded as if satisfied. “Please keep your newspaper up while we talk,” he said.

  “Can’t I take notes?” Jessup asked. “I don’t work too well from memory.”

  The man seemed to think about that. “I’d prefer if you didn’t,” he said after a moment. “And I won’t give you my name. I’m in enough danger, just meeting with you. But I felt I had to do it.”

  “Why?” Jessup asked. “Are you a plant or a traitor?”

  “Neither,” the man replied. “I’m just a moral man, who believes that the ends don’t always justify the means. We’ll talk, and when we’re finished, I’ll leave my newspaper on the bench. Be sure to take it with you.”

  Behind his copy of yesterday’s Times, Jessup rolled his eyes. This had better be good, he thought to himself.

  Sam McAuliffe spent the night watching CNN from a hotel room near the Space Needle, torturing himself over endless replays of the statement Dana had given.

  “Proper decision,” she had said, made for “valid reasons.” For almost seven years now, he had eaten breakfast with her every morning, and slept beside her every night. He thought he knew everything important there was to know about her. As far as he could tell, they had a perfect marriage. He didn’t understand how she could have lived the past five years of it with that awful lie between them. He began
to wonder if, in fact, he really even knew her at all.

  Could a law partnership have meant so much more to her than her marriage? He understood her career was important, and that it would always come first. It was impossible not to recognize that. But to the exclusion of anything else? He had known her as intimately as a man could know a woman, and the thought that her family might mean nothing to her had never occurred to him, even when it was staring him in the face. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that the last seven years had been nothing more than an act.

  Sam hugged himself as hard as he could to stop the tears, but they came anyway, long, shuddering rivulets of them. He rocked back and forth on the bed, a grown man crying like a lost child. He had never been lonelier or more miserable than he was at that moment.

  In the morning, he went out and rented a small, furnished apartment in Magnolia by the week, because he wanted to be close to Molly. He was the only father she had any real memory of, and he would not do to her what the other one had done. Then he went by the house, both relieved and disappointed to find that Dana wasn’t home, packed up a few more of his things, and left.

  It was just past three when Dana returned, pushing her way past a rude gaggle of press people at her front door. Safely inside, she saw that her message machine was blinking at her. Dropping her coat and handbag on the floor, she ran to the telephone, hoping for a message from Sam. There wasn’t one. However, there were four messages from Craig Jessup and one from Joseph Heradia. With a sigh, she returned Heradia’s call first.

  “I just wanted you to know, in case you were wondering,” he said, “I had nothing to do with that article.”

  “I was pretty sure of that,” she was quick to assure him. “Doctor-patient confidentiality works the same as attorney-client privilege.”

  “And I also wanted you to know,” he added, “that I don’t blame you now for taking this case. I gave you a pretty hard time about it at first. I was that upset. But I’ve been sitting in the courtroom, listening to the testimony, and well, I have to tell you, I’m not so sure any more that the police got the right guy. And if they didn’t, well then, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get him off.”

  “Thank you,” Dana said, feeling her heart lurch inside her chest. “Thank you very much.” If someone with an understandable bias against her client could come to that conclusion, she wondered how far behind the jury might be.

  She dialed Jessup’s number next, and he picked up on the first ring.

  “I was afraid you might have taken off for the weekend,” he said with obvious relief.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I did go out to Port Townsend,” she told him, “but only for a couple of hours. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I think you’d better come over here,” he replied.

  She was ringing his doorbell twenty minutes later.

  Louise Jessup ushered her in, rolling her eyes. “He’s been in a tizzy for hours,” she confided. “Ever since he came back from the park.”

  “The park?” Dana echoed.

  But Louise put her finger to her lips. “Let’s let him tell you,” she whispered.

  They found Jessup in his office, reading over some pages. He gestured to the recliner. “Please sit,” he said.

  “Would you two like some tea or some coffee?” Louise inquired.

  Her husband shook his head. “This time, I think you’d just better bring the scotch,” he said.

  Dana blinked. “Okay, what’s this all about?” she asked.

  “I kept bumping into things in this case that just didn’t make sense to me,” he began. “And I don’t like it when that happens. I’m the kind of guy who needs to see the whole picture. Anyway, I have a detective friend down at the department. We’ve known each other for almost thirty years, and I’d trust him with my life. So when things started turning funny, I went to him, and to make a long story short, I now have reason to believe that some members of your firm may be into something they shouldn’t be.”

  “You mean Cotter Boland?” she said, startled.

  He nodded. “I had a conversation today with someone who is very much in the inner circle of the Coalition for Conservative Causes.”

  “That’s Roger Roark’s group, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Did you know that they’re footing the bill for Corey’s defense?”

  Dana stared at him. “No, I didn’t,” she replied. “Cotter said we were taking the case as a favor to a friend. He didn’t say who the friend was.”

  “Well, it’s Roark,” Jessup confirmed. “Aside from two hundred and fifty thousand dollars contributed by some televangelist, the rest has come right from the CCC—well over a million dollars, so far.”

  “I knew Cotter Boland was conservative, but I didn’t realize it reached that level.”

  “There’s more,” Jessup said. He leaned over his desk and picked up a handful of microcassette tapes. “These recordings were made of a number of inner-circle CCC meetings by the fellow I talked to today. Publicly, Roark’s group has been pretty clear on the subject of Corey Latham, deploring the act, but applauding the actor, so to speak. Privately, however, it appears they intend to see him convicted.”

  “Your contact told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “The CCC wants Corey convicted?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? They’re staunchly pro-life.”

  “Yes, but Roark’s in bed with the Republican nominee for president, and the race is too close to call. The nominee has as good as promised Roark an antiabortion amendment if he’s elected. And Corey is the fall guy. The clean-cut All-American who single-handedly took on the evils of abortion. An acquittal won’t do it. The nominee wants a martyr.”

  Dana frowned uncomfortably. “Is this heading where I think it is?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hating to have to tell her. “According to these tapes, you were expendable.”

  She wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t true, that taking the case had been her decision. But there was enough in what Jessup was saying that made sense to her. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she murmured. “The jury list—it was leaked deliberately, wasn’t it? The backfire was intentional.”

  He nodded. “More than likely, Ramsey was acting on Cotter’s instructions.”

  “That’s why Cotter put him in third chair. He probably hadn’t sat third chair in thirty years. He wasn’t a watchdog, he was a spy. And it’s why Cotter put me off when I told him about the leak. And why they terminated you.”

  “Probably.”

  At that, Dana sat up just a little straighter in the recliner. “Well, I’m afraid they miscalculated,” she said. “Roark, Cotter, Ramsey, and all the rest of them, whoever they are.”

  “How is that?” he asked.

  “Because I intend to win this case,” she told him.

  Jessup smiled and, reaching for a piece of paper on his desk, tore it in half, and threw it into the wastepaper can. “Paid in full,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That was my final bill. I doubt that Cotter Boland would have paid it, under the circumstances. But you just did.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dana was at the jail at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. While she waited for Corey, she thought over what she was going to say to him, and how she was going to say it. How would she tell a man on trial for his life because his wife had an abortion that his attorney had had one, too? How would she explain to a man who held all life sacred that she had taken a life because it interfered with a career step?

  Or would she have the opportunity to tell him anything at all? If he had already heard about the article in Probe, or if he had been allowed to see any of the Sunday morning news shows on which she was being prominently featured, would he reject her out of hand?

  It was simple really, she decided. If he gave her the chance, she would tell him the truth, straight up, whatever the result. It was only fair, an
d it was how she preferred to deal with clients anyway.

  Corey entered the interview room then, shuffling in his shackles, and Dana’s heart sank. His face was drawn, his expression ragged.

  “What’s going on?” he asked in an agitated voice, as soon as he saw her.

  “Well, it’s a bit of a long story,” she began.

  “She never showed up for visiting hour, and she didn’t call,” he declared. “Is she sick? Did something happen to her?”

  Dana blinked. “Back up,” she told him. “Who? When? Where?”

  “Elise, of course,” he said. “She didn’t come for the visit yesterday. My mother was here. They usually split the hour, but Elise never came. Have you seen her? Have you talked to her? My mother said she’d try to find out, but I won’t see her again until tonight. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “No,” Dana had to tell him. “I haven’t seen or talked to Elise since court adjourned on Friday.”

  “Something awful’s happened to her, I just know it,” he said.

  “I’ll find out,” Dana promised. “But don’t worry, I know you would have heard if it was anything serious. I’m sure she’ll be here tonight, right on schedule.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Friday was an extremely traumatic day for her, you know. Maybe she just needed to take some time for herself.”

  “You think that was it?”

  “I certainly think it’s possible,” she told him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The last few weeks, she’s been acting a little funny.”

  “Stress,” Dana suggested. “We’ve all been under a lot of stress.”

  “Yeah,” he allowed. “I guess that could be it.”

  Dana took a deep breath. “Corey, I know you’re worried about Elise, but we have to talk about something else now.”

  “What?” he asked, suddenly alert. “Is it something about the trial? Has something gone wrong?”