Decision

by Allen Drury

  No more rough stuff whose results people could see, for Earle Holgren; but there were, as Regard Stinnet had learned in the terrifying three months he had been a prisoner of the communists in Vietnam, other ways.

  He got up from his desk, started to snap off the lights. On a sudden impulse he returned to the desk, took a book from a shelf behind it, opened to a familiar picture. Across the stately white pillars and EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW he slapped the hand-drawn seal of Justice NOW!

  “We’ll see, friends,” he said with a grim little chuckle. “We’ll see.”

  Then he roared off home in his armored Mercedes and fell into a heavy sleep for four hours, rising fresh as a daisy, as he proudly told Carolyn, to face the excitement of the day on which Justice NOW! would be born.

  ***

  Chapter 3

  In Washington, those who lived and worked under the banner Regard had thus, in his own mind, improved upon, arose in more troubled mood. It was a Saturday morning and normally not more than three or four would have gone to their offices. Today, drawn by a compelling and irresistible urge to seek the reassurance of one another’s company, they were all in the building by nine o’clock. Shortly thereafter the Chief called them to the Conference Room.

  He had ordered a wide-screen television. He adjusted the picture, reduced the sound to inaudibility and turned to face them.

  “Good morning,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stinnet of South Carolina is going to be performing in a few minutes. I thought we should watch.”

  “By all means,” Justice McIntosh said. “Have you heard from—?”

  “Neither,” The Elph said, “and aside from my first call expressing our condolences, I haven’t tried to reach them. I didn’t think we should intrude until they want to contact us.”

  “Oh, certainly not,” she agreed. “I just wondered.”

  “I’ll admit my impulse has been to call every hour on the hour,” he said with a sad wryness, “but I suppressed it.”

  “I expect we’ve all felt that way,” Wally Flyte said. “I still can’t believe it happened. The national evil has landed on our doorstep now, all right.”

  The Chief Justice nodded unhappily, and gestured to the television screen. A reporter was mouthing something as the camera opened on a crowded press room and a tall, lanky, well-dressed individual appeared on the podium. “I think Mr. Stinnet is about to tell us everything he wants us to know.”

  Hughie Demsted, seated nearest the machine, got up and increased the volume. Then they settled back attentively as the commentator said in a hushed voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, Regard Stinnet, attorney general of South Carolina…”

  In a voice he made deliberately heavy and emphatic, Regard ran through his prepared statement. He had made only one significant change. He had awakened with the conviction that this really was the big chance. He had decided that if he was going to gamble he had better gamble and gamble big. It was time to throw the dice or call the game. He disclosed the identities of Janet and John Lennon Peacechild and he had revised the key paragraph so that it now read:

  “A suspect is being held pending further investigation by the FBI, by my office and by the district police and local government officials at Pomeroy Station. The name of this individual is Earle Holgren, though he has used numerous aliases over the past few years. He is a former resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, thirty-six years of age. He was a student radical in college and has since been engaged in various underground activities and protest movements of a radical nature. There appears to be sufficient evidence to link him to the crimes at Pomeroy Station. We believe we will have enough to obtain an indictment before the day is out. Should conviction occur, I am serving formal notice now, according to the laws of South Carolina, which require thirty days’ notice of such intention, that the death penalty will be sought.”

  He raised a peremptory hand to still the clamoring questions that immediately arose and went firmly on with his planned peroration concerning the sad state of the criminal justice system, the attack on the Supreme Court and, finally, the demand for Justice NOW!

  He began folding his notes at the lectern as the questions, surging and insistent and featuring now famous national names and faces, rushed there from far beyond the familiar statehouse crowd in Columbia, began to besiege him. For a moment or two he appeared about to answer, his expression still earnest, open and sincere, eyes thoughtfully widened, but just then (Right on schedule! he thought with satisfaction) a telephone rang at a table off to one side of the platform and behind him an aide leaped to get it.

  “Mr. Stinnet!” he cried excitedly. “It’s for you, Mr. Stinnet! It’s Mr. Ted Phillips, the attorney general of California!”

  “What the hell—?” a famous voice among the media inquired. But the networks knew, for instantaneously there appeared before the Justices in Washington and before all their many millions of countrymen and women who were watching that day, a split screen: Regard to the left, Ted Phillips to the right.

  Solemnly Regard offered the vice-chairmanship of Justice NOW!

  Solemnly Ted accepted.

  “Thank you, my friend,” Regard said. “I know that you agree with me that all states should be represented on the board of this organization, as all states and all citizens are directly involved in the war against violent crime. Therefore I shall appoint all of our fellow attorneys general to serve as associate vice-chairmen of Justice NOW! Very soon I shall convene a meeting of all who desire to come.

  “I think,” he said in a tone that would, he knew, make it very difficult for any to refuse, “that most of us care enough about lifting terror from the backs of our citizens and restoring true justice to America to attend. Together we will plan how best to organize to bring that justice back to America.

  “Meantime”—he looked once more earnestly, directly into the cameras, “meantime, what can the honest men and women of America do? You can join us, I say to you, my countrymen and women! You can join Justice NOW! We don’t need your money—except maybe no more than a dollar apiece to help defray expenses of a small secretarial staff, because I know there are going to be so many, many millions of you that a dollar apiece will be more than ample. The main thing we need is your support—your strong, articulate, loyal, patriotic, law-loving, law-abiding, law-strengthening support, which will give us literally the strength of millions from all across this beloved, worried land.

  “Send your names to me, Regard Stinnet, Attorney General, Columbia, South Carolina. Do it today! Together we will raise a mighty army to strike the shackles from the law! Together we will smite the transgressors and drive them from our streets and cities! Together we will do battle for the Lord and for the safety of ourselves, our children and our society! Join us! Join us! Together we will be invincible! Enough is enough! Justice NOW!”

  And, face aglow with mission and purpose, he replaced the telephone receiver on its hook. On the other side of the split screen, his face also appearing enrapt in vision, Ted Phillips almost reverently did the same.

  For a long moment there was utter silence in the crowded press room in Columbia, in the Conference Room of the Supreme Court of the United States and indeed in most places across an entire continent within sound of Regard Stinnet’s voice.

  “Whooo-eee,” Justice Demsted said softly as he got up and went to the machine. “That’s some attorney general. May I, Chief?”

  “Yes, turn it off,” Duncan Elphinstone said with a little shudder of distaste; and when Hughie had done so and returned to his seat, the Chief drew a long, thoughtful breath, gave them a moody glance and said, “Well.”

  “It doesn’t look good, does it, Dunc?” Wally Flyte remarked softly. Clem Wallenberg snorted.

  “It looks like bloody hell and damnation for everybody,” he said. “This is exactly what we’ve been afraid of, and now it’s come. What do we propose to do about it?”

  “What can we do about it?” Ray Ullstein inquired. “It hasn’t come up to us, and it won’
t for a while yet. Maybe never, if some clever advocate gets hold of it and gets this individual released.”

  “I don’t think anybody will be released from this one,” Hughie Demsted said. “I think this Stinnet has the country’s mood analyzed perfectly. There’s going to be enormous pressure for a fast trial and a fast conviction, unless I miss my guess.”

  “And the death sentence,” the Chief Justice said gloomily.

  “And an appeal to us,” May McIntosh predicted. “And there—we—are.”

  “You shouldn’t object,” Justice Hemmelsford remarked tartly. “That will give you and Clem a chance to write more brilliant opinions pointing out how awful the death sentence is. Those of us who happen to believe in simple justice won’t have a chance to be heard in all the approving uproar.”

  “I don’t know that it will be all that approving,” Justice McIntosh retorted with some asperity. “If the public clamor is as heavy as Hughie thinks it will be, then we may find ourselves very much in the minority, not only here but nationally.”

  “This is an anti-death-sentence Court—” Justice Demsted began. He paused. “Or is it?”

  “I know you were counting on picking up Tay Barbour’s vote,” Rupert Hemmelsford said with some spitefulness in his voice, “but where does Tay Barbour stand now? It suddenly isn’t an academic question for him and Moss, is it?”

  “It suddenly isn’t academic for any of us,” Justice Wallenberg growled. “And maybe it’s a good thing. We get entirely too removed and Olympian on this Court. We tend to be pretty arrogant and self-righteous sometimes. Maybe it’s good to have real life yank us down off the bench and rub our noses in the filth and unhappiness of this world once in a while. One of our brethren almost lost his life yesterday; his child did. The child of another is apparently hanging between life and death. Maybe it’s good for us to have to live with reality for a change. Not, of course, that I’m happy it happened the way it did, you understand me. But maybe it’s time we were humbled. We play God too much in this building.”

  There was startled silence for a moment. Mary-Hannah adjusted her pince-nez and looked at them thoughtfully.

  “I quite agree. Here we sit in our nine separate chambers like little tin gods, above the law, above the people, even, thanks to John Marshall”—she smiled wryly—“and may he preserve us from the ebb of public support as he has for so many long, long years—above the Congress and above the President. We are too Olympian sometimes. We are guilty of too much righteousness. But how can we feel that way now, when ‘law and order’ is suddenly taking on a very grave and potentially lawless aspect? I’m dreadfully worried, myself. One unbalanced murderer is starting to shake the whole fabric of American justice—indeed the whole fabric of American society. If he’s the type he appears to be, I’m sure he’s enjoying it thoroughly. And his case is coming up to us sooner or later, of that I’m sure. Probably sooner. How do we reconcile our sworn duty to the country and the law with the problem he poses?”

  “How do we deal with the problems Stinnet and his sidekick in California pose?” Rupert Hemmelsford inquired gloomily. “That’s the immediate issue. Like you, May, I’m worried as hell. This ‘Justice NOW!’ bit is not a very happy idea, in my estimation. They’re going to have the whole country riled up by nightfall.”

  “It is already,” Duncan Elphinstone said with equal gloom. “I wish there were something we could do. I’d like to issue a statement deploring it, but that would be too much of a shock, I suppose.”

  “It would only bring great criticism,” Justice Flyte said, “and anyway, how could you? Their ostensible purpose—in fact, I don’t have any reason to doubt them, I think their genuine purpose—is law and order. They do want to re-establish and strengthen it. They are genuinely appalled by the spread of violent crime. I’ll grant you Stinnet is using it to make political hay, but the bottom line is still violence, lawlessness and wanton disregard for life. That’s something every decent citizen can relate to, and millions of them are doing so, right now. And as you say, Hughie, it’s going to bring enormous pressures.

  “Convict and kill: that’s all the majority wants to do to this guy right now. There’re going to be some very fundamental issues raised by this case, I’m afraid; and I’m afraid it won’t be at all clear-cut.” He sighed heavily. “Sister and brethren, thanks to little Mr. Earle Holgren, we, like everybody else, face one hell of a problem.”

  “And the biggest problems of all, of course,” the Chief said sadly, “are those faced by Moss and Sue-Ann and Tay and Mary. I only wish we could help them.” His eyes were sad and far away. An answering sadness fell upon them all as the law sank suddenly into the background and the full import of the human tragedy rushed back. “I only wish we could.…”

  But whether anybody could was a question to which, Tay decided as the day wore on, there was as yet no answer. Certainly he did not seem able to find one: it was all he could do to keep on an even keel himself. He received no help from Mary. She remained closed off in her private world, and though he tried several times, he could not break through.

  After their interview with the doctors and their brief talk with the Pomeroys, they had returned to the room where Janie was sleeping. A nurse hovered, and at first he suffered this, uneasily but with some patience. Mary did not.

  “Would you mind getting out?” she snapped suddenly. The nurse, a kind-faced woman whom he judged to be in her later fifties, responded with a startled look.

  “I’m here on doctor’s orders, ma’am,” she said politely; and added, more firmly, “and here I intend to stay until ordered otherwise.”

  “I’m ordering you otherwise,” Mary said harshly. The nurse did not flinch.

  “Indeed,” she said. “I meant doctor’s orders, Mrs. Barbour. Those are my orders.”

  “Not against the wishes of the family,” Mary said crisply. “Do I have to go and get the doctor and make a scene of it?”

  The nurse started to respond on the order of, “You are already,” visibly caught herself just in time.

  “I shall go and talk to him myself,” she said with dignity.

  “Please do,” Mary said. “And take your time about it. There’s no need for you to hurry back.”

  “Whatever he says,” the nurse said coldly and went out, lips tightly pressed, hostility and disapproval in every step.

  “Why did you have to do that?” he inquired automatically; he was really too tired and emotionally exhausted to care. But it seemed something should be said.

  “Because I am in torment,” his wife said in a dead voice. “I am in hell. I have to let it out somehow. Would you rather I turned on you?”

  “I’m more used to it than that poor woman,” he said with a sad indifference. “Go ahead.”

  “Sometimes, Taylor Barbour,” she replied in the same desolate tone, “I think you have no feelings whatsoever. Sometimes I think you are composed of the law, of ambition, a reasonably large endowment of brains—and nothing. Nothing at all. There is no heart. Somewhere it got left out.”

  “Mary,” he said, voice trembling, looking at her with a sad patience across the comatose form of their daughter. “I understand how you feel. I am—trying to be patient with you, under great provocation. But I am not going to take it much longer. I warn you. Not much longer.”

  “What can you do?” she asked. “Certainly you can’t leave me now. Not when my child lies at death’s door because of your indulgence and irresponsibility toward her welfare. That would not fit the image of the great Mr. Justice Barbour, now, would it? To abandon me and Janie in this, our time of extremity?”

  “You are so dramatic,” he said with a sigh. “So dramatic. I too am having my ‘time of extremity.’ Don’t you think it would help us both—and help Janie—if we tried to be friends and help each other through it, instead of your being so grossly unfair? I have done my best with this marriage. I have been a good husband, I have been a good father. This I know, and this I cling to. You can’t d
estroy that knowledge, though God knows you are trying hard enough. And the awful thing to me,” he added quietly, “is that I don’t know why. I just don’t know why.”

  “Perhaps there is no reason,” she said, the ghastly ghost of a smile crossing her face for a moment, “except your own perfection. It may be too much for those around you—or for me, at any rate. Others can admire it from afar. I have had to live with it.”

  “But I’m not perfect,” he protested, thinking even as he did so that this was an insane conversation, and perhaps that was the answer, perhaps she truly was insane. “God knows I am not. I have never claimed to be. I have never thought to be. The idea is absurd.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no. Perfect Taylor Barbour, the perfect lawyer, the perfect man, the perfect husband and father—so good, so kind, so dignified, so superior. Always superior. And I suppose, if the case of the destroyer of your daughter, perhaps even yet the murderer of your daughter, ever comes before you, you will be superior then. I can see you now—weighing all things, balancing all things, being thoughtful, considerate, compassionate, forgiving to a piece of human filth who doesn’t deserve a second’s forgiveness from anyone—being Taylor Barbour, the perfect judge, calm, judicious, above it all—inhuman.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” he said, voice harsh with strain, “that I will be the perfect judge if this case ever comes before me.”

  “Your character won’t permit you to be anything else,” she said with a sigh. “These are the things on which you pride yourself. They comprise the entity known as Taylor Barbour. You cannot betray them, for that would be to betray yourself. And you wouldn’t do that, even for your own daughter.”

  For a long moment they stared at one another, passed beyond hostility into some other world of utter truth; and finally he sighed and rubbed his eyes with his hands.

  “No,” he said, voice low. “You are right. I could not betray the objectivity and fairness I believe in—I could not betray the law as I see it. I should have to be fair, because that is what I am. Without that there wouldn’t be any Taylor Barbour.”