Decision (47 page)

Chapter 1

It was hot in Washington and getting hotter. The capital’s suffocating summer, starting tentatively in May, now lay heavy, humid and implacable on the city. It was the time of stifling days and breathless nights; the time when, after sundown, the fortunate scurried swiftly in air-conditioned cars from air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned gathering places and scurried nervously back; when the less fortunate—the frustrated, the empty, the wandering—took to the streets and shadows; when the sinister underbelly of the beautiful troubled city came to life; when many, particularly the young, roamed aimless, hopeless and murderous under softly overarching trees through silent alleyways along eyeless ruined houses, and when even on brightly lighted thoroughfares in what the media described as “fashionable [i.e., white] Northwest,” their frightened fellow citizens thought long and hard before venturing even the shortest of distances on foot.

It was a time that could be used to justify the existence and activities of Justice NOW! and cause it to flourish. And it was a time for those who tended the law to look to their task with deep unease and grave foreboding.

Tay did not know, returning to Washington at such a time, whether the reserves of character he felt he possessed were sufficient to carry him safely through the testing that now lay immediately ahead. Whatever the outcome he knew he could not emerge unscathed. But like his sister and his brethren, he knew that he now had no choice.

Given the national mood that surrounded the case of Earle Holgren, he had not been surprised by the jury’s verdicts nor had he been surprised by the prompt acquiescence of the supreme court of South Carolina. The reaction in the media centers of the north had been predictable: the customary expected voices in both Washington and New York had denounced the “national hysteria” which they blamed for “the obvious railroading of a defendant who has not yet been clearly shown in law to be guilty of the crimes with which he is charged.” The mood elsewhere was much more grim and much more vindictive.

The national consensus, he knew, had its elements of hysteria, but there was something deeper underlying, a cold, determined decision to “stop this thing,” as the attorney general of South Carolina put it, “once and for all.” The reference to “this thing” was vague but it was clearly understood by his countrymen. It meant all that complex and conglomeration of crime, whether born of economic uncertainty, emotional instability, dope, greed, envy, terrorism, thrill-seeking or whatever, that plagued the nation. Earle Holgren had become the symbol and it was undoubtedly true that his being so had done much to inspire the swift and absolute nature of his sentences despite the circumstantial nature of the evidence. But Tay knew, as everyone directly involved in the matter knew, that he was beyond question guilty, and that Justice NOW! in its insistence upon absolute justice had perhaps given a decisive assist to the cause of a decent, law-abiding, safe society.

But there, of course, was the problem for him and his colleagues, he thought as he stared moodily out into the garden of his house in Georgetown and dabbled halfheartedly with the scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee that Julia had put before him. They were not very good today. Her usual skills had deserted her in the face of the family tragedy. She could scarcely mention Janie’s name without retreating to the kitchen in floods of tears and her meal did not do much to distract him from the gloomy thoughts that accompanied him in his echoing, deserted dining room. “Law-abiding” was the crux of it. How could you be law-abiding if the laws were stretched, no matter how just the cause?

Mary was still in Columbia: it was not yet possible to move their sleeping child. He had returned late last night to be in time for today’s regular Friday conference of the Court. It was the last conference of the term. Adjournment was expected sometime in the next two weeks. So far Debbie had not moved to file her appeal but he suspected it would not be long delayed. It was now a matter of strategy. He was as certain as he was of anything that he would be the key to it.

He sighed, a heavy sound, as the kitchen door opened and Julia appeared with a coffeepot.

“Yes, I know,” she said gently, putting a worn hand on his shoulder with the familiarity of ten years in the household. “It’s hard, Mr. Barbour, it really is. Why don’t you have some more coffee and see if that won’t make it better?”

“Thanks, Julia,” he said, pushing aside the half-eaten eggs. “Maybe it will. I mustn’t burden you with it, in any case.”

“We’ll all be burdened with it, Mr. Barbour,” she said sadly, pouring the coffee, “for a long, long time to come.”

He smiled wanly.

“I expect so. But you have troubles of your own, Julia. How’s Bubba?”

“That boy is no good, Mr. Barbour,” she said vehemently, distracted, as he had hoped, by the mention of her oldest. “He just is
no good.
I try to keep him in line but it doesn’t help. He’s out there in the streets all the time runnin’ wild, and there just isn’t much I can do about it, workin’ and all. They try to make him stay in school, he won’t stay. They warn him and warn him, but he won’t pay attention. Sometime soon,” she said somberly, “he’s goin’ to do somethin’ real bad, Mr. Barbour. Real bad. I’m scared for him but I don’t know what I can do. I just don’t. He turned eighteen yesterday. He’s as big as an ox already. And strong. And stubborn. He’s the hardest-headed child I know. And I have to work, I can’t do anythin’ for him but give him clothes and put food on the table. That’s not enough, with children runnin’ wild like they do nowadays.”

“Do you suppose he’d like some work with me on the Court?” he inquired with a sudden inspiration. The long-playing saga of Bubba going downhill had become increasingly insistent in the past three years and he had often wished there were some way to help. Now that Bubba was old enough, perhaps he could. Every Justice had a messenger, by custom black, and if that didn’t suit, there were other modest but respectable jobs around the Court that might be filled by a Bubba determined to make something of himself—if Bubba were. Julia brightened noticeably.

“Mr. Barbour,” she said, “that would be wonderful!”

“I’ll speak to the Chief Justice,” he promised, distracted for the moment from his own desperate troubles, pleased to think that he might be able to do something constructive for a fellow being. There was also a certain substitution in his mind, in a curious, bittersweet way: he couldn’t do anything more for his own child. Perhaps he could help Julia’s.

“Mr. Barbour,” she said solemnly, “I can’t thank you enough for that. I just can’t. Bubba will thank you too when he realizes what a chance you’re givin’ him. The Court: they must be nice people on that Court if they’re all like you.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “they’re quite nice. As much as I have been able to see of them so far,” he added with a rueful little smile.

“I know,” she said. “It’s awful. Just plain awful. What’re you-all goin’ to do to that murderer that killed Miss Sarah and hurt Miss Janie, Mr. Barbour? I hope,” she said with a matter-of-factness that he knew expressed the feelings of the majority of their countrymen, “that you’re goin’ to kill him dead.”

“Well, Julia,” he said carefully, “I know a lot of people feel that way—”

“Everybody I know,” she said in the same matter-of-fact tone. “Don’t you, Mr. Barbour? Doesn’t seem to be much doubt he did it, is there?”

“Perhaps not,” he said, still carefully, “but the law requires that certain safeguards be observed when someone is brought to trial—”

“Safeguards!” she said with a sniff. “He didn’t worry much about safeguards for Miss Sarah and Miss Janie, did he?”

“No,” he agreed somberly. “Apparently he did not.”

“Well, then.”

“I know, Julia, but the law isn’t that simple. The law says—”

“Who cares what the law
says!”
she demanded with sudden bitterness. “He killed Miss Sarah and hurt Miss Janie so bad she’s like never to recover. What does the law do for
them?”

“That’s right,” he echoed bleakly. “What does the law do for them? That’s what I have to reconcile, Julia. That’s what all of us on the Court have to reconcile. It isn’t going to be easy.”

“You’ll do it,” she assured him confidently. “Just remember what’s right and you’ll do it, Mr. Barbour. You can’t miss, long as you do what’s right.”

“And that is?”

“Kill him dead,” she repeated calmly. “There’s nothin’ else, in a case like his.”

And there, he thought as he got in the car ten minutes later and started through the heavy morning traffic to the Hill, you have it, stated in the simplest possible terms: do what’s right and kill him dead. Too bad, he reflected wryly, that the law is not that clear-cut. By rights it should be, but unhappily for many it is not.

The beautiful building shone softly under a leaden sky, its glistening marble dulled by the rising heat. Sightseeing buses were already parked alongside, first groups waited impatiently for the public tours to begin. Law clerks, secretaries, reporters moved quickly up the sweeping steps and through the great bronze doors. EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW stared down, seemingly as commanding as ever. Within, nine troubled people began to try to come to terms with Earle Holgren and the challenge he represented to the noble sentiment in whose spirit they strove to live and adjudicate.

“Conference will be in order,” Duncan Elphinstone suggested in a somewhat perfunctory tone. Wally Flyte, seeking to inject a lighter tone, remarked, “Well, Dunc, it isn’t as though we’re being riotous.”

There was a murmur of amusement down the table, a stirring of coffee cups, a straightening of papers. Clement Wallenberg cleared his throat.

“We really don’t have much left to do today, do we?”

“No,” the Chief said. “Everything is pretty well set for the next couple of weeks—and then adjournment on the fourteenth—and that’s it.”

“Except for one thing,” Hughie Demsted pointed out, “symbolized by the presence here of our two brethren who have been absent.”

They exchanged looks with Moss and Tay. A little silence fell. Finally Rupert Hemmelsford spoke.

“Tell us about him, gentlemen. If you can stand to.”

Tay started to speak, hesitated, deferred to Moss. Moss stared moodily down at the table and appeared to be, for several moments, far away. At last he looked up.

“He is a murderous, unrepentant, irredeemable psychotic,” he said evenly, “who is guilty as charged and deserves exactly what the jury asked for him. That does not mean, however,” he added quietly, “that there are not points of law that we will have to meet … if, that is, a majority here wishes to confirm the verdict.”

“Which is something of an assumption,” Wally Flyte observed softly. And again a silence fell.

“Tay?” the Chief Justice asked finally. He came out of a brown study to find them all looking at him save Moss, who had retreated again into his contemplation of the tabletop. He started to speak—paused—took a deep breath—started over.

“I agree with Moss,” he said in the same dispassionate tone Moss had adopted. “He is a worthless human being, not excused by any social deprivations or insurmountable psychological obstacles—a genuine embodiment of evil—a
really evil human being,
of which there are some in this world. He is one. There are, as Moss says, issues of law. But the basic facts of the matter are entirely clear. At least in my mind.”

“Of course,” Clem Wallenberg said, “with all respects to the two of you, you are not the most objective of witnesses.”

“No,” Moss said sharply, all trace of his old bantering relationship with his colleagues gone, perhaps forever, “we are not. But you asked us, Justice. And we have told you. Do you expect us to apologize for it?”

“I expect you to be judicial,” Justice Wallenberg snapped and Moss rounded on him so quickly that Hughie Demsted on his left instinctively interposed himself for a second before relaxing.

“Look,” Moss said, voice low and shaking with anger. “You be just as superior and smug as you like, Clem, but it isn’t going to bring my girl back—and it isn’t going to make his girl well again—and it isn’t going to do anything but make you out to be the ass you are. Now I’m telling you—”

But this was too much for the Chief, who slapped the table, hard, with his hand and reared back in his chair.

“If you don’t mind, Justice,” he said to Moss, voice like ice, shock of white hair quivering,
“we will conduct ourselves like gentlemen in the chambers of this Court.
Or I shall terminate this conference and adjourn the Court for the summer right now, if need be… Moss and Tay: no one here lacks any human sympathy for what you two have been through. I do not think, Clem, that it does any good to be—as Moss quite accurately said—smug and superior. It is a wonder our brethren are able to be here at all, so soon after this tragedy; objectivity may not yet be entirely possible. But I would hope that in due course, as we discuss this matter more deeply, a reasonable amount of it may be re-established in all of us. I would remind the Court that that is what we are here for.”

Justice Wallenberg scowled and did not answer. Justice Hemmelsford leaned forward.

“I am wondering, Chief,” he said quietly, “whether perhaps it isn’t asking too much of our brethren, who have suffered these terrible tragedies, to participate in this matter. Shouldn’t they perhaps consider removing themselves from consideration of the issue? If objectivity is not possible—and perhaps it isn’t really for any of us, but at least more for us than it is for them, I am sure—then would not withdrawal be the most judicious act?”

“I’ve expressed my opinion on this to both of them,” the Chief said promptly. “Perhaps others would care to, so that they can at least have the benefit of some consensus here—if there is one. You’re clear enough, Rupe. Wally?”

One by one they did so: Wally remarking that their withdrawal would not mean “any shame or disgrace or loss of public interest. On the contrary, I think it might be seen by many as the most honest and honorable thing to do”… Clem saying flatly that while he sympathized with their emotional situation, “they ought to disqualify themselves. Don’t expect they will, but they ought to”… Ray Ullstein remarking thoughtfully that he wouldn’t presume to give advice but “will simply make the assumption that has to be made about this Court by everyone if we are to survive as the powerful institution we are—and that is that each of us makes his individual judgment as honestly and honorably as he can on the basis of the facts as he sees them. Therefore I know that whatever Moss and Tay decide, it will be their best decision and their most honest one”… May McIntosh expressing similar sentiments and concluding that “whatever you decide, my friends, it will be the most honest and honorable decision you can make. Good luck”… Hughie Demsted, saying he could sympathize as a fellow parent with their conflict between regard for the law and desire for vengeance and concluding that “Nobody can tell you what to do and nobody really has a right to judge what you do unless he sits in the same place. All I can do is join in wishing you luck.”