The Just And The Unjust (2 page)

On the wall behind the bench, in still more arresting resemblance, the face of Judge Linus Coates, the Old Judge, hung among the gold-framed portraits. Abner was generally held to be the spit and image of his grandfather. When people from out of town, lawyers from other counties, came up on some case in which Abner happened to take part, almost every one of them, if he met Abner in the Attorneys' Room, commented on it. At the first conversational opportunity, the visitor, excited by his own perspicacity, was fairly sure to observe,' Mr. Coates, I noticed one of those pictures in there. Aren't you some relation —?'

Childerstown residents who could remember the Old Judge were yearly fewer; but Judge Philander Coates, the Young Judge, had been, and still was, a figure of local note. Three months ago in March Abner's father suffered a stroke, and he had not left his house since; but every week or two the
Examiner
gave him a paragraph headed: 'Judge Coates Doing Well', or 'On Road to Recovery'.

In the same way, with the same knowledgeableness, the spectators knew Martin Bunting, a short, neat, prematurely greying man, now near the end of his second term as district attorney. They knew Harry Wurts and George Stacey, sons of local people, Childerstown boys — George Stacey really looked like a boy, and there would be an interesting surprise for many people in seeing him there, a practising attorney. They knew Judge Vredenburgh on the bench, and the clerks under him. They knew the tipstaffs in their blue jackets. Some of them probably knew one or more of the jurors. Even the state police, two officers at each of the doors to the back hall at the right and left of the bench, were young fellows from the Childerstown substation who had been kids in the school yard, swimmers without bathing suits down in the old canal, summer evening loiterers at the corner of Court and Broad Streets a year or so ago. Their transformation by polished black leather and grey whipcord into armed men could be viewed with amazed indulgence.

The only people who were unknown, who had never been seen or heard of before, who had no history, nor even any names, since few spectators would be sure yet which was Howell and which was Basso, were the defendants and their confederates and the witnesses associated with them. They, and the man Frederick Zollicoffer alleged to have been murdered by them in this county, were what the rustic townships still called foreigners — the people from somewhere else.

The word, like one of those old men who still used it, and who still drove a shabby curtained carry-all to town, sparing a poor horse's hoofs by keeping to the shoulder of the concrete highways, was a homely joke; but Abner was not sure that it didn't fit the present case better than any other word. Stanley Howell and Robert Basso; their two former associates, Roy Leming and Dewey Smith; Susie Smalley, their shocking slut of a girl friend who sat next to Mrs. O'Hara, the Warden's wife, wearing a dress of thin green stuff which seemed pasted at all points to her jointless body; Mrs. Zollicoffer, the black-draped widow of the dead man; the dead man's gross brother, William Zollicoffer; the dead man's gross one-time partner, Walter Cohen — they did not not belong here. They came not merely from some other county but from some other world.

Now that they were here, they were not welcome. Even the spectators who had them to thank for the show they hoped to see did not thank them. The encircling eyes were curious but all cold. They looked at Stanley Howell, pale, peaked, and furtive, and Robert Basso, dark, round-headed, stocky, and sullen, as they would look, gaping, with a shrug or a shudder, at that tight wire-netted box in which the owner of a local hardware store often kept for a few weeks a couple of rattlesnakes somebody had managed to catch alive. Next time, in the unlikely event that Howell and Basso were going to have any next times, Howell and Basso might do well to notice where they went when they drove out at night in search of a quiet place.

2

Bunting said, 'If your Honour please, the Commonwealth will call John Costigan.'

Nick Dowdy came infirmly to his feet. He gave his lapel a tug to settle his blue jacket, neatly embroidered on the left sleeve with the word
crier
in silver thread. He moved over behind the stenographer, lifted a small Bible, and laid it flat open on the rail of the witness stand.

Joe Jackman, the stenographer, snapped on his green-shaded light. He picked up successively and examined several stylos, chose one, and held it poised. Joe was a tall, spare man with a grave expression that would have become a minister of the gospel. In the course of the last six or seven years more than ten million words had been pronounced from the witness stand a yard or so above his left shoulder and bent head. To get every one down, it was necessary for him to form the habit of listening to the sound, not the sense. While others sat back, free to decide what was important and worth hearing and what was not, free to speculate on the speaker's meaning and motive, to recall what had been said before and to anticipate what might be said next, Joe Jackman, with an intent dedication of mind, simply wrote. It was not a job for a casual man, and Joe, though he smiled cheerfully and, meeting Abner's eye, even made a face, took serious views of life.

While John Costigan walked to the stand, there was another stir. At the long table to the right, the one used by members of the bar waiting to come before the Court, sat four men from city newspapers, Maynard Longstreet, editor and owner of the
Examiner
, and Adelaide Maurer, who was the local correspondent of a press association. They all shifted and stretched, rousing themselves, moving their folded copy paper, laying out their pencils. One of the city reporters, craning across two others, addressed Maynard Longstreet, probably asking him how to spell Costigan.

Judge Vredenburgh looked sharply down at his table. By the set of the Judge's mouth and the hard dimpling of his chin and cheeks, it could be seen that the presence of visiting reporters irked him. Maynard Longstreet had good reason to be there — it was right for the local paper to report proceedings. Adelaide Maurer was a nice girl, divorced from a worthless husband and doing what she could to earn a living. The others were present with the intention to manufacture and print sensational rubbish prejudicial to the dignity of the law; and Judge Vredenburgh would have been glad to send them about their business. Since this could not very well be done, at least while they behaved themselves, he turned his gaze critically on the full courtroom.

The spectators, stirring, shifted feet, cleared throats, exchanged whispers in a swell of sound like the rote of surf. Judge Vredenburgh frowned and said loudly, 'want everyone's attention, please!'

Nick Dowdy, leaving his Bible on the rail, dodged back to his seat under the bench, lifted his mallet, and struck the block twice. A hush fell on the sloping tiers. John Costigan stood still at the steps to the witness stand. The newspaper writers became motionless, looking at their pencils.

Judge Vredenburgh said, 'This is a case of importance, and a large public attendance is proper. However, it is not easy to hear in this courtroom; and with so many people present, it will be impossible unless everybody is perfectly quiet. There will be no whispering, and no moving around, please. The tipstaffs will have to see to this.' He bent his formidable gaze on them for a moment, his mouth grumpy but his eyes not unpleasant, so that those who could not hear would understand anyway.

Martin Bunting stood silent with an easy, dry expression, his convex profile to the jury, his eyes sharp and level on John Costigan by the steps. Bunting lifted a hand and stroked the close-cropped grey hair at the back of his head, watching the Judge, who finally gave him a nod. John Costigan moved again, mounting the steps. He put his hand on the Bible, cocked an ear to Nick Dowdy, nodded, and sat down. Nick, sidling past Joe Jackman, blinked at the bench and said, 'John Costigan sworn.'

Bunting said, 'Where do you live, Mr. Costigan?'

'Cherry Hill Road, Harfield Township, sir.' Costigan's blunt-featured, ruddy face was composed and attentive. He took care to talk into the microphone set in the rail of the stand; and, in mechanical reproduction, his voice dropped distinctly from the loudspeaker in the corner above the jury.

Bunting said, 'What is your position?'

Bunting could not be in much doubt about that, since, as district attorney, he had appointed John to it; but they looked at each other formally, and Costigan said, 'County detective, sir.'

'Were you near Milltown in this county on the tenth of May of this year?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Where?'

'At the Childerstown Pike bridge, the state road over Fosher's Creek.'

'What were you doing at that place at that time?'

'I was grappling for a body.'

Costigan's voice was level and his face impassive. Costigan's lips closed calmly after the word 'body'; and a second's deep silence fell while the jury took it in.

The twelve jurors, and the spare sitting with them in case one of them became sick or died, had hardly given the case they were hearing a thought until now. They had all been busy affecting intelligent attention and easy dignity. Since not one of them, in so novel and prominent a position, actually felt either, their postures, though varied by their various ideas of intelligence and ease, were one in being stiff and self-conscious. Though different, as their ways of conveying attentiveness and dignity were different, their expressions were the same in being all solemnly silly.

Costigan's word jarred them; and, jarred, they let their affectations slip. In the front row, Genevieve Shute's middle-aged face quivered as she swallowed twice. Old man Daniels twitched his long upper lip and explored his ear suddenly with his finger. The foreman, Louis Blandy — a short, stout man who owned the Childerstown Bakery —stole a glance at the defendants seated with counsel at the second table. He then looked at Bunting, puffed out his lips, pulled in his chin. His look said that he had been prepared to hear something like this.

Bunting said to Costigan, 'Did you succeed in raising a body from Fosher's Creek at that time and place?'

'We did, sir.'

'At about what time of day, Mr. Costigan?'

'About noon, sir. That is, about eleven-fifty-five a.m.'

'And you were in charge of the persons engaged in grappling for this body?'

'Yes, sir. I was.'

'And you were present while it was being done?'

'I was present.'

'And you saw a body raised from the creek?'

'I did, sir.'

Abner, who had also seen the body raised, admired John Costigan's air of modest achievement. The state highway crossed Fosher's Creek above the mill dam where the water was eighteen or twenty feet deep. Because the county line was fixed at the middle of the Creek, and it had not been certain just where the body would be found, the party included a city police captain from a suburban precinct and a couple of homicide squad men, who were glad to leave the dirty work to Costigan. It was raining hard and a steady patter of drops on the pond could be heard against the low rush of water pouring out the spillway under the old brick walls of the mill. Officers of the state motor police blew their whistles incessantly while they waved on cars that tried to stop on the bridge to see what was happening. The mill employees were more fortunate. Their faces crowded every window. That morning not much work could have been done in the mill.

Bunting had driven over with Abner in Abner's car, and they ran it down in a grove of trees whose buds were just breaking into a haze of light green foliage at the end of the dam across the water from the mill. In the parked car they sat and smoked while the rowboat went back and forth. First the grapplers brought up the frame of an old kerosene stove, and then an automobile tyre. The city police on top of the dam included at least one humorist, who called out when the tyre came into the boat, 'Can't keep that, bud! Got to throw the little ones back!'

On the dam top, too, was Stanley Howell in the custody of a deputy warden of the state penitentiary. Howell had been given a policeman's raincoat, but he wore his own checked cap, limp with rain. He kept indicating further to the left. 'He made forlorn, awkward gestures, throwing his left hand out, for his right hand was not free. He was joined by his right wrist to the deputy warden, and the two of them, in identical black rubberized coats, formed a double monstrosity; Siamese twins, obliged to do everything together. Under the sodden cap, Howell's pale face was frail and wasted and marked like a martyr's with long-endured suffering. Bunting, Abner knew, had been displeased with Howell's appearance. Looking at Howell, a jury might feel some doubt about the confession that the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents got from him. Howell looked as though he had been having a bad time.

This was only the truth. Abner had pieced together most of the story of what happened to Frederick Zollicoffer's kidnappers after they killed him. You could say that they seemed to be out of luck; and as a matter of fact their luck was so fantastically bad that another age surely would have been awed by Retributive Justice's celerity and precision. The night of the killing they had all left the bungalow where Zollicoffer was held and returned to the house where Howell and Susie Smalley had been living before the enterprise was undertaken. They were there about a week, probably arguing about whether to lie low or to attempt some other job. There were some conversations during this period to be put in evidence, but the only definite action appeared to be an attempt to steal another car. They had already stolen one car, the car in which Zollicoffer had been murdered; and Abner supposed they thought it prudent to get rid of this. He could not do more than suppose, because their plans never seemed to follow any logical pattern. If they rose at times to a sort of shrewdness, without intermission they fell to the most staggering stupidities. Only they themselves could know what they thought they were doing.

The attempt to steal the second car was a failure; they were frightened off. Indeed, they seemed to have been frightened so badly that they must have decided to scatter. Robert Basso drove away the other car, the car in which Zollicoffer had been murdered, and abandoned it. That was when Robert Basso's luck ran out. He got rid of the car by leaving it in a country lane. It was long past midnight, and he could be sure nobody saw him. His next move was to walk back to the state highway and boldly try to thumb a ride. By a chance that could be only one in a hundred the first car he signalled, or at any rate, the first car that stopped, turned out to be the state police motor patrol. The two officers in the car asked Basso what he wanted.