by Allen Drury
“Am I to represent you or not?” she demanded.
“Suit yourself,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Do you want to?”
“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes, I do! I want to join your statement!”
“Be my guest,” he said with the wracked ghost of a chuckle.
“Shall I tell Attorney General Stinnet?”
“I said, ‘Be my guest,’” he whispered impatiently. “What more do you want?” Again he chuckled. “I’d like to hear what that pompous son of a bitch has to say to that.”
“Don’t underestimate him!” she advised sharply. “He’s one smart son of a bitch and he’s going to turn you into a symbol of everything this country is afraid of. I’ve watched him coming up these past couple of years I’ve been living down here and I know what he plans and how he operates. I’m not underestimating him and don’t you, either!”
“Have faith, sweetheart,” he told her over his shoulder. “Truth and justice are on our side. Righteousness forever!”
“I think you’re crazy,” she remarked, quite impersonally, “but I think we can make you a symbol too—our symbol. So I’ll take the case, thank you very much.”
“Thank you,” he whispered with an ironic politeness. “Welcome to the evening news.”
“That’s where we’re going to be fighting it,” she agreed. “So I’d better get started right now.”
And ten minutes later down in the prison lobby, facing Henrietta-Maude and the rest who had come over from the hospital, while Earle Holgren lay painfully on his side and slept again after his long and busy day, she did. Earle Holgren, she said, was a symbol of all Americans who truly believed in democracy, a dedicated fighter for the people, an enemy of all the corrupt reactionary fascist forces in the country that were always seeking to—
“He’ll plead not guilty, of course,” Henrietta interrupted dryly.
“Of course,” Debbie Donnelson replied.
“Is he?” Henrietta inquired, wise old weatherbeaten face as shrewd, sharp and tenacious as the intense dark one facing her.
“Have you proof otherwise?” Debbie snapped. Henrietta smiled with the smile of one who, in forty years of newspapering, has seen it all.
“The proof is your job, girlie,” she said. “I just report it to the folks. Right now, they’re going to take a mighty lot of convincing if you’re to make them believe he’s not.”
“They still can’t convict him unless they’ve got proof,” Debbie said.
“Regard Stinnet thinks he’s got enough,” Henrietta reminded. Debbie snorted.
“Regard Stinnet,” she said, “thinks he has a lot of things he doesn’t have.”
Actually, while Earle Holgren continued to sleep peacefully in his cell the dreamless sleep of one both physically exhausted and mentally satisfied, Regard presently found that he had quite a bit more than she thought he did. The sheriff at Pomeroy Station was a tenacious and intuitive young man, too; and after he had thoroughly studied the deserted cabin for quite a while he had a hunch and an impulse, and followed them through.
He went back to the plant, a glare with lights as the inspection team continued to sift carefully through the debris; spoke for a while with the guards now ringing the site in a state of determined, if somewhat belated, alertness; and presently faded away unnoticed into the woods above. There he entered the cave and began patiently traversing it inch by inch, going very slowly, reading leaves and twigs and misplaced stones with all the skill of the mountain-trained.
Midway in the cave, covered over with branches and not too noticeable to the hasty eye, he found the mouth of what appeared to be an old abandoned well. Carefully he removed the branches, stretched full length on the ground to anchor himself, inched slowly to the rim and cast his flashlight beam into the depths below.
Apparently snagged on a ledge he estimated to be no more than ten feet below, he saw a jumbled heap of what appeared to be clothing; a tangle of what appeared to be long black hair, covering what appeared to be a bloody, shattered face; and, staring up at him with apparent intensity but without expression of any kind, what appeared to be, and indeed were, a pair of open eyes.
And even then, Regard Stinnet told himself disgustedly at three in the morning, he still didn’t have the bastard. He had what might be his dead woman and his dead child. He had a crumpled sheet of paper so soaked in blood and waterlogged as to be almost illegible, found in one of the dead woman’s pockets. But he didn’t have his gun—they had tried to dredge the well but it appeared to go off into one of those bottomless fissures characteristic of the hills. He didn’t have his fingerprints, he didn’t have anything on him, really, except his presence outside the cave, his proximity to the scene of the crime—crimes—and dried semen on his pants. He would probably claim he was in the cave making it with some local babe, Regard thought with a disgusted snort, when suddenly the world just blew up around him. And that slick little sharpie who had wandered in out of nowhere to represent him might just be able to make it stick, too.
Well, Regard told himself with grim determination, not if he had anything to do with it: and he’d have plenty, Mr. Smart-Ass Holgren could be sure of that, plenty. Debbie Donnelson and her client weren’t the only ones who saw that it would be played out on the evening news. He decided he would begin seriously right now to organize the campaign that would make of the Pomeroy Station bomber a symbol of all that was terrifying the country. He would make of Earle Holgren a lever whereby he himself and the millions of worried citizens who agreed with him might get the criminal justice system off its dead ass, as he put it to himself, and get it moving.
Debbie, he was sure, was going to try all the delaying tricks she could think of: but she wasn’t the attorney general of South Carolina, an operator with a great deal of influence and a great many IOUs to cash. There were ways to speed up a trial as well as delay it, and in this instance he was quite confident he could do it. His judges, unlike some of the kooks Ted Phillips had to contend with in California, were reliable. They could be counted on. He didn’t know which one would get it—he hoped Perlie Williams, who was a boyhood chum and agreed with him absolutely on what needed to be done in the country—but they were all good friends and they would all cooperate.
He didn’t want any of this two-, three-, four-year lag on this one.
He wanted justice and he wanted it now.
“Justice NOW!” he muttered to himself. “Enough is enough. Justice NOW!”
The two thoughts made a nice combination.
Hell, they made a damned good pair of slogans for a nationwide organization.
Rapidly he sketched his ideas for its seal on a memo pad.
That, he told himself with satisfaction, made a mighty effective sign. Harassed men and women throughout the nation could rally around that one. They could also rally around its founder and leader, who suddenly saw himself in mind’s eye standing on endless flag-draped platforms stretching into infinity while millions beyond number roared their approval and in gratitude began to talk, in a great ground swell that would not be denied, of higher things.
Well—he snorted and stopped himself short. There’s a long way to go yet, Regard, boy, he thought dryly; y’all better stop sellin’ those chickens before their mammies have even laid the eggs. Right now you’ve got to organize. And you’ve also got to send that boy Earle Holgren right back to his Maker the fastest possible way you know how.
And that, he reminded himself in sudden glumness, is not going to be easy.
He picked up the eavesdropping stenographer’s notes, which he had read already several times, and ran through them once again. Illegal as hell, he couldn’t use a damned bit of it in court, but it was enlightening and helpful, anyway, even if it did leave a lot of things unanswered. At least he knew the nature of his opponents better. One of them was a cold-blooded killer absolutely beyond conscience and morality. The other was a wide-eyed, tensed-up female ideologue, innocent and idealistic on the one hand and o
n the other a shrewd, sharp, calculating little legal whiz kid who would be like a terrier in her defense of what she saw as her client’s “statement.”
“You want to ‘join it,’ sister,” he said aloud with another snort. “You want to ‘join it’! Well, by God, aren’t you the one, though.”
But that didn’t mean the calculating part of her wouldn’t be a damned tough legal barrier. Particularly when, as he knew full well, she would have behind her the support of a number of famous well-heeled people and organizations and very likely a substantial share of major media as well. Not that any of them would condone outright or even indirectly what Earle Holgren had done in taking three lives and possibly destroying a fourth: but they would be inclined to sympathize with what he had done to the plant, and they would be very anxious that his “legal rights” be protected, and they would be very hypersensitive to anybody who seemed to be critical of what they conceived to be a sincere, if misguided and possibly even extreme, social protester.
Who was this mysterious guy in New York Debbie mentioned who had called her in? She hadn’t named any names, but Holgren obviously knew at once whom she meant. His personal lawyer, maybe? Some left-winger who kept an eye on cases like Holgren’s and stood by to help out when needed? Maybe even some Commie, which wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility at all according to the FBI reports Regard had received in the past three hours, covering the Sixties and Seventies when Holgren had been getting in deeper and deeper. Or maybe even Holgren’s rich old man, who feared and despised everything Holgren stood for and abhorred what he had done but nonetheless might have answered the call of parenthood in an emergency, as so many of the poor pathetic abandoned bastards did when their kids who hated them got into trouble.
A lot of possibilities. So far the FBI hadn’t come up with it and maybe they wouldn’t; but it was something to hammer on, anyway; something to throw Miss Deb off balance, perhaps. Something to speculate about in the media, most of whose members might despise what he was doing, but could be trapped by a clever man into using their own news channels to distribute his claims and allegations nationwide.
Yep, the evening news was where it was going to be fought out, equally with the courtroom: because he was going to make damned sure that the evening news came right inside the courtroom. He had his move on that all planned. The evidence so far might be all circumstantial but the conclusions to be drawn by the public could be crushingly decisive if he played them right. He damned well intended to.
He looked for a thoughtful moment at his freehand seal of Justice NOW! Any able draftsman could whip it into shape in ten minutes. By nightfall of this very day coming up, stickers, decals, T-shirts, ashtrays, banners, placards, you name it, could be streaming off assembly lines. He had a friend right here in Columbia who was in the novelty business: they saw eye to eye on the crime situation, and Regard bet he’d be willing to contribute most everything at a quarter cost, if not even right-out free. And he’d also bet that his friend Ted Phillips in California knew or could quickly find similar resources out there. In a week they’d have the country blanketed from one side to the other. Given the state of mind people were in about the situation, Justice NOW! could very well be the fastest-growing organization ever dreamed up in America. The confirming thing was that there had been no necessity to dream it up: it was there full-blown, a natural, a child of the times.
He glanced at his watch: three-thirty. It was half-past midnight in Sacramento. He dialed the home number Ted Phillips had given him. A drowsy young female voice answered. In a moment Ted came on.
“I’ve got me an idea,” Regard said without preliminary. “Listen to this.”
“That’s great!” Ted Phillips enthused when he finished telling him about his plans to make Earle the symbol, and about Justice NOW! “That—is—great! I don’t see how it can miss.”
“Want to be vice-president?”
There was a pause of several seconds: Regard knew what was happening. Ted Phillips was calculating all the political angles, just as he had himself. He was confident of the outcome. Popular concern was so great that there could only be one.
“I think it’s the best way to channel this threat of vigilantism into constructive and useful channels,” Ted said slowly. “This is the compromise solution we have all been seeking, between unbridled public vengeance and the slackness and inadequacy of the present criminal justice system. This is the answer. This is the middle ground. Justice NOW! will lead the way.”
“Save that,” Regard said jovially, “and use it. The answer, in other words, is yes.”
“The answer is yes,” the attorney general of California said, “and I couldn’t be happier to sign on. What about a national convention? The sooner the better, I’d think.”
“That’s a damned good idea,” Regard agreed. “We’ll tie it right in with the case. I’m not standin’ for any delays in this matter. He’s got him a shrewd little biddy who I have the feelin’ is a pretty good little lawyer, but I’m not puttin’ up with any nonsense. We aren’t goin’ to drag this case out for the next five years. We’re goin’ to move and move fast. The whole country is goin’ to demand it—except that, God damn it, I’ve got my work cut out for me to prove he did it. Wish me luck.”
“I do that,” Ted Phillips said. “If I think of any way to help, I will. It’s good to get moving.”
“Justice NOW!” Regard remarked.
“Enough,” Ted rejoined cheerfully, “is enough.”
And enough of this damned hectic night is about enough for me this very minute, Regard told himself as he sent his compliments to Mrs. Phillips and bade his new friend and colleague good night. It was now nearing 4 a.m. and he had been up for almost twenty-two hours straight, the last eight of them on the merry-go-round of what he was already capitalizing mentally as State of South Carolina v. Earle Holgren. He had damned well better get on home and get at least three or four hours’ sleep. The new day was going to be equally busy.
First, though, he decided he had better draft his formal statement to the media while everything was still fresh in his mind. He decided he would call a formal conference for 10 a.m. to start the ball rolling and at that time would put the whole thing in perspective. Wearily, yet with a final surge of strength that came from an iron constitution and an iron will, fortified by genuine indignation and an unwavering ambition, he began to write in the silence of his book-lined office.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans and friends of justice:
“As you all know, there occurred in South Carolina last night a dastardly horrible crime against lives and property.
“The property was the atomic energy plant at Pomeroy Station.
“That can be rebuilt.
“The lives were those of two young girls, a young woman and a male child of approximately six months in age.
“They can never be rebuilt.
“A possible suspect is being held pending further investigation.
“There is substantial indication that the attack was not only upon the atomic plant per se, but upon the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition to disrupting the plant, it seems clear there was a clear intention to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mossiter Pomeroy and through his death do grievous damage to the faith and confidence Americans have in their judicial system.
“Unhappily, as many Americans recognize with alarm and dismay, that judicial system is at the moment in substantial disarray. This episode makes that sad fact even clearer. Will we now have endless delays, endless legal quibbles, devious and dilatory obstructionist tactics by unprincipled lawyers—” Ah, there, Debbie! he thought. How y’all, gal? “—and a complaisant tenderness for an obvious murderer on the part of too-lenient, too-‘liberal’ judges?
“Not in South Carolina. Not in an America whose people cry out more desperately than ever in the face of these latest awful crimes, ‘Enough is enough! We want Justice NOW!’ Not when the Supreme Court, the ve
ry cornerstone of our laws and our liberties, has been directly, viciously, wantonly attacked with consequent loss of one beautiful young life, the possibly permanent damaging of another, and who knows what dark reasons for two additional deaths?
“It is time now to change all this once and for all. It is time for America to return to the concept not only of ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ which is the great motto of the Supreme Court, but to equal justice under law swiftly rendered and speedily carried out.
“America has been patient too long.
“America has been lax too long.
“America has freed her criminals and punished their victims too long.
“Enough is enough!
“America wants Justice NOW!”
And in a separate statement, which he would dictate to his secretary first thing in the morning and release simultaneously with his spoken word, he would announce the formation of Justice NOW! Immediately after that would come Ted Phillips’ endorsement from California, and they would be off and running.
Earle Holgren, you murderous psychopath, he thought with satisfaction, you’ve started something a little bigger than you planned, boy. We’re going to use you to hang the whole kit and caboodle as high as we can haul you. From now on this country is going to be on the march. At last we’re goin’ to clean up this criminal mess from coast to coast and border to border. At last all you worthless murdering bastards, you scum of the earth, are going to meet your match. Enough is Enough.
He picked up the phone, called the jail and told them to rouse Earle Holgren immediately.
“He’ll just be restin’ nicely,” he said. “You go in there with all lights blazin’ and start poundin’ him with questions the minute you get him awake. Don’t give him time to collect his thoughts, just go after him. Then let him sleep again. But don’t let him sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Keep up the routine as long as it takes. He’ll break one of these days. Or he’ll be damned sorry he didn’t.”