Decision (22 page)

Chapter 1

Enough is
e-nough,
Regard Stinnet was saying silently to himself, over and over, as he sat in the hospital waiting room. Enough is
e-nough.
This was too much. Just
too
much. Somehow in his mind—and he had learned from experience that he could trust his mind to mirror reasonably well the reactions of most minds in the country—the bombing of Pomeroy Station and the horrible attack on two innocent young girls was an instant symbol of everything that was wrong with the criminal justice system.

It was true that the criminal justice system had not had time to deal with the culprit; it was true that the culprit was apparently only one man, and he more a deranged ideologue than one of the haphazard violent who were terrifying the citizenry: but those facts did not matter. Somehow, psychologically, Earle Holgren was suddenly and instantaneously a symbol for the whole damned messed-up country. Regard Stinnet sensed, for he was a very shrewd politician, that his destiny was probably going to be very closely entwined with that of Earle Holgren. And, he suspected, he would not be alone in this.

Far from it.

Quickly, as he waited for Moss Pomeroy to come out of the room where Sarah and Janie had been taken, the attorney general of South Carolina reviewed what had been discovered so far about the bomber of Pomeroy Station.

He was known in the little town, where he had occupied a cabin hidden in the woods for some two years, as Billy Ray, one of many aliases: the FBI had found out already that his real name was Earle Holgren. It had established his age, his parentage, his college and post-college radicalism, his living arrangement with a woman and child. It was known that they kept strictly to themselves, which was not regarded as strange by the neighbors: mountain people did. Holgren apparently did all the shopping. The woman almost never appeared. Only two or three residents could be found who had even seen her, and their descriptions were uncertain and inconclusive.

There had been periods when Holgren had been away from his abode, sometimes for as long as a month. The FBI was working on a theory that would align his absences with certain disastrous events elsewhere. So far it had been unable to get a fix on anything. But many facts were coming in fast on Earle Holgren.

The major thing seemed to be that he was an active and inveterate protester against the society; one of those damned radicals that Regard Stinnet hoped to sweep out of the world along with all the kooks and crazies who were terrifying the good people of America. The Earle Holgrens had motives, they made some pretense at idealism and noble principles, but in Regard’s mind, as in many of his countrymen’s, it came down to the same bottom line: they were all violent, they were all against society, they were a disturbing and dangerous element—and it was time, and past time, to get them out.

He was too good a lawyer to be careless, however. He was already worried about one thing: he had ascertained through careful questioning of the sheriff out there that the boys who grabbed Holgren had been a little overenthusiastic and hasty and he had an uneasy feeling that Earle Holgren was very well aware of it. These types always knew their rights, he reflected grimly, and they or their damned left-wing lawyers always made the most of them. In this case it was quite apparent that the prisoner had not been notified of his “rights,” and it was quite apparent that he had been brutalized pretty badly. The way was open for all sorts of trouble in trying to bring him to book.

Why there
should
be trouble, though, Regard thought with great exasperation, the good Lord and Aunt Minnie only knew. There was no doubt the man had done it—one of the best trackers in the mountains had been put on his trail and, though Earle had somehow managed, by one of those illogical flukes that often happen in such cases, to leave his cabin and return to the scene of his crime undetected, his pursuer had picked up his traces on the trail, tracked him to the cave, and then had identified him beyond doubt through simple observation of the way in which he had carefully scraped the leaves and dirt away from the detonator, carefully wiped and rewiped it for fingerprints and then covered it over again.

How did Earle know it was there in the first place? Why was he so careful about wiping it off? Why did he so carefully rebury it?

Obviously because he had put it there and obviously because he knew any fingerprints that might be on it were his.

But, as Regard recognized with a frustrated sigh, knowing something for certain and proving it in court were frequently two different things. He knew he had his work cut out for him.

There were, however, several things in his favor. The principal one was the general climate of public opinion, still only two hours away from the event and still quivering with the horror of it. Expressions of shock and dismay were coming in at a steadily mounting rate from all over the country. The identity of the victims brought it home with shattering impact. To think that it had been directed against Justice Pomeroy of the United States Supreme Court! And Justice Pomeroy’s daughter Sarah! And the daughter of another Supreme Court Justice, the newest one, Taylor Barbour! It was absolutely outrageous. It was unbelievable. It virtually guaranteed a verdict of guilty—inevitably so in South Carolina but also, he was sure, in any court in the land.

This time the very citadel of law and order itself had been attacked, no matter if the reason might have come from some twisted misdirected idealism concerned with something else. When
he
got through with it, he promised himself grimly, there would be only one motivation anyone would remember: Earle Holgren had been trying to destroy the Supreme Court, the protector of our liberties, the guardian of our laws, the precious inheritance that keeps us and our children free! No, my fellow Americans, this was no petty, mean, sneaking, skulking crime prompted by the misbegotten twisted idealism of a sorry specimen of humanity—
this was an attack on the Supreme Court of the United States itself!

Beat that one, you shabby two-bit bastard of a no-good tramp, Regard Stinnet advised Earle Holgren with silent savagery. If—you—can!

There was a stir down the corridor and he jumped up to look, but it was not the Justice or any member of his family, only a couple of nurses and an orderly wheeling some elderly man along. Regard turned back to the waiting room, which he was sharing with a sizable crowd of reporters, and shook his head.

“Nothing yet,” he said. One of the men who covered the statehouse regularly demanded,

“Regard, damn it all, when you goin’ to give us a statement on this thing?”

“When we know what’s happened,” he said. “Now you all know that, I’ve told you a dozen times.”

“We know what happened to the plant,” the reporter said.

“Right!” he said. “Right! But we don’t know the outcome yet of this egregious and dreadful attack on the Supreme Court of the United States in the person of our own Justice Pomeroy! We don’t know what’s happenin’ to his lovely little daughter or to that other lovely little girl who just happened, God bless their poor sweet innocent souls, to be in the way when this foul murderous perpetrator unloosed his evil deed upon them! We do not know yet what—”

“Are you saying this was an attack on the Supreme Court rather than an attack on the Pomeroy Station plant?” another reporter inquired, this one a hard-bitten old bat who had been covering the statehouse when Regard Stinnet, he often told her with relish, was still wettin’ his diapers.

“Henrietta-Maude,” he said, “now, you just use your imagination a little bit, will you please? You know very well that this was no ordinary attack on some ordinary old atomic energy plant. God knows we’ve had enough of that crazy sort of thing in recent years, but this was a coldblooded, deliberate attack on Pomeroy Station when
Justice
Pomeroy was there, and it was deliberately designed to destroy
Justice
Pomeroy
as a symbol of the Supreme Court of the United States!”

“How do you know that?” Henrietta-Maude inquired, unimpressed. “The guilty party tell you that before your men slugged him into unconsciousness?”

“They weren’t ‘my men’!” he snapped, “and I don’t know anything about their ‘slugging him into unconsciousness’! And neither do you, Henny, you weren’t there. No more was I!”

“Then how do you know?” she persisted with the doggedness he had come to know and hate. “He leave you a written statement or something?”

“I’m not sayin’ we have a ‘guilty party’ yet, and if we do, he didn’t leave us anything as far as we know now,” Regard said.

“Then this ‘attack on the Supreme Court’ business is all your own idea?” Henny’s male colleague inquired in the same skeptical tone she had used. He snorted.

“Great God Almighty, great balls of fire in the mornin’!” he exclaimed. “If you folks aren’t the most skeptical, disbelievin’, down-puttin’, unhelpful—”

“Well, is it?” Henny reiterated, unimpressed. “Did you dream up this so-called ‘attack on the Supreme Court’ just to rouse up the country, Regard Stinnet? Wouldn’t put it past you one minute. Sounds just like you.”

“I don’t
need
to dream it up,” Regard said with an impatient sarcasm. “It’s right there plain as the nose on your face, which is some plainness, believe me, Henrietta-Maude. It’s as obvious as you are, which is some. Do you mean to tell me you’re out defendin’ bombers and murderers and all—”

“Is
anybody dead?” one of the other reporters demanded quickly. They were suddenly eagerly alert.

“Now listen,” he said, telling himself he’d got to watch his temper, sometimes it got a little ahead of him. “Now listen, y’all. You saw me come in that door ten minutes ago, y’all were already here. You know I’ve had exactly the same sources you have in the last ten minutes, which is nil. Why do you think I’d be waitin’ here if I knew anything? I’m waitin’ for news just like you. And here,” he added as a bustle began down the hall and they all jostled out to greet it, “it may be comin’, right this minute.”

And so it did, and it was obvious before he reached them that Justice Pomeroy had nothing but further tragedy to relate. Sue-Ann, face muffled in handkerchief, was sobbing on his arm, a doctor was steadying her on the other side, the head nurse hovered about them both. Moss hardly seemed to see them at all as they surrounded him with questions, respectful, but urgent.

“Governor—Mr. Justice,” somebody started it going, “can you tell us—?”

He took a deep breath and tried to speak. His voice broke and he started over.

“I—have to tell you,” he articulated with difficulty, “that our—our daughter—Sarah—is—is gone.”

There was a shocked intake of breath, protests, curses, sympathetic sounds; several of the women, including Henrietta, began to cry softly even as their pens scribbled busily.

“And Jane Barbour?” Henny asked, managing to sound both sympathetic and true to duty.

“Janie is—alive. But the doctors say her condition is—is very—uncertain—at the moment.”

“You mean that she—?” someone asked. Moss shot him a look in which anger and despair commingled.

“I mean,” he said harshly and clearly, “that the doctors say that she may not—come out of it.” Sue-Ann uttered an anguished cry and Moss added bleakly, “I do not know which—which—is worse, the certainty or the—uncertainty.”

For several seconds there was an appalled silence, broken only by the quick scurry of their pens.

“Are Janie’s parents—?” someone asked finally.

“I talked to Justice Barbour an hour ago,” Moss said, more calmly. “He said they were flying down at once. They should be here soon, and then—then—you can talk to them. It seems only fair to ask you to put all this under embargo until you have.”

“We are so sorry, Governor and Mrs. Pomeroy,” Henrietta said clearly. “We hope the guilty person is suitably punished.”

“He will be,” Regard Stinnet spoke up before the Pomeroys could reply, “if the sovereign state of South Carolina which I represent has anything to say about it. And by God, we
will!”

“What if it comes up to the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice?” a voice inquired, its owner sounding unhappy at having to ask but doggedly doing his duty. For a very long moment, there in the hushed, brightly lit hospital corridor, Moss stared at him without expression. Then he sighed, a deep and infinitely tired sound.

“That depends,” he said. “First—if it comes. And secondly, on the courts below.”

“Will you disqualify yourself in such an event?” the voice persisted, if possible unhappier but knowing, as did they all including the Pomeroys, that it had to be asked.

Again there was a long silence before Moss replied.

“That, too,” he said at last, “depends.”

“So you may
not
disqualify yourself,” Henrietta said flatly, and for a second it seemed likely that only her weatherbeaten years around the statehouse, her sex and gray hair prevented Moss from actually striking her. But his furious look passed as instantaneously as it had come and he only said again with a heavy sigh,

“I know you all feel you have to ask these questions, Henrietta, but Sue-Ann and I are really very tired now, and I think you can excuse us if we just go along back to—our—our—baby… Regard, you come with us and then you can tell these folks later about the—the arrangements.”

And with a dignity that no one now dared challenge they turned and walked slowly back down the long bleak corridor, Regard taking Sue-Ann’s arm and accompanying them with a subdued and suitable gravity.

Ten minutes later he was back, face strained but in command of things and obviously savoring the feeling. Sarah’s funeral, he said, would be held on Monday at “High Pillars,” the Pomeroy plantation. Interment would be in the family plot on the plantation. Family and close friends only would attend. No media coverage would be allowed.

“And as for that—that—being,” he added with a sudden furious anger, “he will get
justice.
I swear by everything peace-loving, law-abiding Americans hold dear,
he will get justice.”

“What’s his name?” someone demanded, but Regard only shook his head impatiently. He wasn’t ready for that yet.