Decision

by Allen Drury

  “It did not disturb Melissa,” Mrs. Holgren said, to the audience’s amusement, echoed from beyond the walls. “She grew up a perfectly stable young lady and is now the happily married mother of three in Montclair, New Jersey. Would you like her to come and tell you about it? She would probably be quite happy to do so, if you wish.”

  “No,” Debbie said with frigid politeness. “I do not think that will be necessary. Did you and your husband ever try to influence your son’s thinking politically during his formative years in high school and college?”

  “We made our views known to him. They did not agree with his.”

  “Is it not a fact that you threatened to withhold his allowance, and at one time refused to give him an automobile he had been promised for his birthday, because he would not abandon what you regarded as ‘unhealthy associations’ with certain student protest movements?”

  “Did he tell you that?” Mrs. Holgren inquired. “He always was good at fabricating reasons for things.”

  “Mrs. Holgren, I am not asking you your opinion of his veracity—”

  “Oh?” the witness said quickly. “I thought that was one of the issues here.”

  Again there was amusement, and at Debbie’s side her client moved restlessly, scowled and reached out and tugged at her dress. “Yes?” she whispered in an annoyed tone, leaning down. “Drop the bitch,” he whispered. “She’s too fast for you.”

  “But—” she began.

  “I know her,” he said dryly. “After all, I’m her son. Drop her.”

  For a moment Debbie’s face was a study. Then she shrugged and turned to the bench, ignoring Mrs. Holgren, who was staring down at her hands and ignoring her.

  “Your honor,” she said, “this witness obviously has no intention of being cooperative. I have no more questions.”

  “Your honor,” Regard said, “I do. Just one. In your opinion, Mrs. Holgren, as his mother and knowing him as only you and his father can, would this defendant be capable of the crimes with which he is charged?”

  “Your honor—” Debbie protested, but Perlie Williams again held up a cautionary hand.

  “Would you like me to repeat the question, Mrs. Holgren?” Regard inquired softly. She gave him an anguished look, her hands working at her purse. She shook her head. Tension rose sharply.

  “No,” she said. “I—I understand it…” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “It is an awful question to ask a mother … a terrible question.”

  “But necessary,” Regard said gravely, “I believe.”

  “Then I would have to answer—” she said, so low it could hardly be heard beyond the immediate area of the bench—“yes.” And, composure shattered, began again to cry.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Holgren,” Regard said quickly. “That will be all.”

  ***

  Chapter 5

  Time seemed to jump: the next two days of the trial went fast. Regard put on the stand most of the members of the group that had captured the defendant, Debbie cross-examined them diligently to no avail. Like Sheriff Lanahan, their memories were dim as to exactly what had transpired. They simply could not remember whether the defendant had been informed of his rights though they did concede that they might have “roughed him up a little bit.” Townspeople testified that they almost never saw Janet, remembered her really hardly at all. Construction workers and guards testified to the daily, sometimes twice or even three times daily, visits of the defendant to the Pomeroy Station plant. A couple of them said they had the feeling that he was “around the place a lot,” particularly in the last few days before the dedication. One said he “thought I saw him in the woods a couple of times quite apart from his jogging. He stopped by to visit with two of the guards rather late at night.” Forensic experts were called, the detonator was examined, studied, analyzed.

  It was all inconclusive.

  Nothing quite tied Earle Holgren beyond reasonable doubt to the crimes.

  No one was quite able to link him inescapably with them.

  Circumstantial evidence piled up.

  Absolute, irrevocable facts seemed to elude the prosecution.

  For most of the country and an overwhelming portion of the media, this did not seem to matter much. In the ten days since the trial’s beginning, Justice NOW! had continued to grow, its membership now up to almost eight million. Its effects began to be felt far beyond the confines of the courtroom in Columbia, though that remained the focus of national attention and the prime symbol employed by the movement’s organizers. Many courtrooms throughout the land suddenly found themselves the objects of vigils, “citizen watches” as they came to be called, impatient and insistent that the processes of justice be speeded up. Some judges, resentful but nervous, began to shorten recesses, telescope time, do away with lawyers’ deliberate delays. Many more, glad to have the excuse, jettisoned cases right and left, sometimes with more fervor than fairness. A noticeable quickening and toughening began to be obvious everywhere, encouraged by the governors, the attorneys general, the growing number of speeches in the legislatures, the constant proddings of the local press, the increasingly vocal and organized insistence of the citizenry.

  There was also a grim tightening-up of the war against street crime. In seven days Justice NOW! managed to produce and distribute nationwide a pamphlet, How to Organize Your Block Against Street Crime. Already, in a hundred thousand neighborhoods and more, citizens were meeting, practicing with guns, being taught how to arrest and disarm, forming street patrols, launching around-the-clock surveillance, indulging themselves, and encouraging the police to indulge, in swift and violent reaction to the slightest sign of criminal activity.

  Already at least ten would-be robbers and half a dozen rapists had been violently roughed up.

  Five did not survive.

  The mood was furious and savage. The reaction had finally come, and it was terrible.

  Bewildered and dismayed, some of the major media sought desperately to denounce, caution, soothe. Further bombings and attempted assassinations of some of their leading figures were the only responses. CHAOS IN THE STREETS! cried the worried television specials. AMERICA RUNS AMUCK! proclaimed the anxious news magazines. LAW BECOMES LAWLESSNESS! said the somber editorials.

  Hardly anybody paid attention.

  In such a climate, the initial popular presumption of Earle Holgren’s guilt rapidly became an accepted article of faith. Some major newspapers and the networks might expound frantically on vigilantism and try to point out that the facts did not yet warrant such a judgment but their desperate concern was dismissed with impatient contempt by the overwhelming majority of their countrymen, and even by some of their own.

  “We think,” the New York Post editorialized on the third day of the resumed trial, “that Earle Holgren is guilty as hell.”

  And this, a few protesting voices to the contrary, summarized the prevailing conclusion.

  With such support, the attorney general of South Carolina, never one to doubt his own capabilities and potential, felt a comfortable confidence as the trial entered its fourth day and he prepared to put on the stand his four concluding witnesses. Each day at recess he and Debbie, faithful to their promise to the media, had held separate press conferences. Hers, despite a valiant determination to put a good face on things, sounded increasingly uncertain under the sharply probing questions of Henrietta-Maude, her colleagues from the statehouse, and the glittering and gossipy luminaries of national TV and journalism. Many of them were not partisans of the attorney general, many of them in principle favored Debbie’s cause, but her insistence that the facts were not there to convict her client seemed increasingly wan and defensive as popular clamor grew. There was an air about the jury, too. As any seasoned trial lawyer could tell from looks, expressions, set of body, tilt of head, sharp attention or yawning lack of it, their minds were beginning to be made up.

  “We’re home free,” Regard told Ted Phillips exultantly when the California attorney general called to check
on progress, “and that murderous bastard is seeing his last days, or I miss my guess.”

  Under heavy guard, but at Regard’s orders still permitted to have magazines and newspapers, listen to radio and TV and keep fully current with his progress in the public estimation, the defendant was hardly ready yet to concede his prosecutor’s jubilant conclusion. He was convinced of the motivation for the attorney general’s generosity—“to make me scared as hell,” he told Debbie scornfully—but he was not about to let it succeed. If anything she thought it made him, outwardly at least, more self-confident and more defiant.

  “Hell!” he said, in a talk they had on the eve of what they knew (Regard did not) would probably be the last day of the trial. “He isn’t proving anything.”

  “You read the papers and watch TV,” she said in a tone she hoped would prod him into being more serious. “This country has gone mad. You know he doesn’t have to prove anything.”

  A contemptuous expression crossed Earle’s face.

  “Oh hell. ‘Reasonable doubt.’ Well, there is a reasonable doubt, isn’t there? If those rednecks on the jury convict me, what court in the land will uphold them?”

  “Plenty,” she said shortly and shook her head, baffled. “You must feel some concern, for God’s sake. It’s your neck.”

  “They haven’t really heard from me, yet,” he said with a calm confidence that to her seemed almost bereft of sense. “I have a little support myself. And even if we lose here, we’ll take it on up. If the state supreme court licks us, we’ll take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. They won’t dare uphold the death penalty. Under South Carolina law they can’t even give me the death penalty anyway, unless there’s a unanimous jury verdict in favor of it. And who says Old Yahoo is going to get that? He isn’t even going to get a verdict of guilty at all, with the flimsy stuff he’s got.”

  “He isn’t Old Yahoo. He’s exactly the same age you are, thirty-six. And he knows his jury. Putting your mother on came pretty close to wrapping things up as far as unanimity goes.”

  He scowled.

  “That bitch! I’ll cut her to pieces when I’m free to talk.”

  Debbie shrugged.

  “I hope so, because she certainly didn’t do you any good.”

  His scowl deepened.

  “Is Stinnet going to put those Justices on the stand?”

  “I’m sure of it. He’d be a fool not to, wouldn’t he? And he’s nobody’s fool.”

  “More cheap shots for sympathy.”

  “And he’ll get it, too,” she said tartly, “unless you can find some way to overcome the impact of one dead girl and another in a coma.”

  “Is she still in one?” he asked with an odd sort of detached interest, as though it were something entirely separate from his concerns. “There was a rumor on last night’s news that she had come out of it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said somberly. “They’re being very close-mouthed. The rumor I heard, from somebody who got it from one of the hospital staff, is a lot different from that.”

  “Well, no doubt her father will try to pin me to the mast with it, whatever it is,” he remarked scornfully.

  “Don’t you knock her father!” she said with a sudden fierceness. “He may be the only hope you have, when all is said and done.”

  He snorted.

  “That phony liberal?”

  “He is not a phony liberal!” she retorted with the same blazing anger, “and don’t you ever say that about him! You aren’t worthy to lick his boots, you with your phony pretensions to be some sort of world-saver! You’re as empty of purpose and devoid of reason as any punk out there on the street. You’re all alike!”

  And suddenly once again his hand was on her wrist, and his grip was so tight that she almost screamed for the guard as his eyes bored savagely into hers.

  “Listen,” he said, very softly. “Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again, you hear me? I do have a cause, I do have a purpose, I am better than that trash! What I do means something. And don’t you forget it.”

  “So you say,” she said, breathing heavily, simultaneously frightened and angry but having sense enough not to try to pull away as the guard looked in, snorted in derisive misinterpretation, and walked on. “So you say. But it isn’t going to do you a damned bit of good if you blow it all with your God damned crazy ego. Now, I told you not to touch me again. And I mean it!”

  And she aimed a vicious kick under the table that caught him just where she hoped it would. He howled and dropped her wrist, clutched himself and rocked back as the guard, responding to his yell, rushed up, looked in and started to unlock the door. She held up a hand and shook her head.

  “We’re fine, thank you, officer,” she said calmly. “Mr. Holgren just injured his hand a little.”

  “Mister Holgren shouldn’t be so free with his hands,” the guard said, locking the door again, “and maybe he wouldn’t get himself hurt.”

  “That’s what I tell him,” she said cheerfully. “Thank you, guard.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the guard said sardonically and walked off down the hall, whistling.

  “I’d suggest you be damned careful what you say about the Justices,” she said as though it had never happened, “particularly Justice Barbour, when you get on the stand. He may well be the swing vote on the Court if your case ever gets up there. You may need him.” She gave a sudden derisive chuckle. “You may actually need somebody, Earle Holgren! How about that?”

  He gave her a long thoughtful look that for some reason sent a sudden chill down her back.

  “What’s with you and this guy Barbour?” he inquired with a deliberate lazy insolence. “Have you been sleeping around with Supreme Court Justices, Superstar? Tut, tut.”

  “I talked to him,” she said, ignoring his ostentatiously sly grin. “On your behalf, believe it or not. He didn’t have to tell me anything: he told me he would try to be fair. If you want to ignore potential help like that from such a source under circumstances like these, then the hell with you. You don’t deserve to be saved.”

  He gave her a sudden, sharp, shrewd glance that again she found oddly disturbing.

  “That’s what you really think, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you this, Superstar: They’re all out to get me, your precious Justices along with the rest. So let ’em come at me. Their minds are made up. It’s all a farce, just like this whole worthless fucking country. But I’m ready for ’em, precious Tay and all the rest! If he has to agonize that much about it, then the hell with him too.”

  “He only wants to be fair!” she protested, sounding closer to desperation than she had anticipated, much closer than she liked.

  “‘Fair!’” he echoed sarcastically. A sudden profound bitterness settled over his face. “Shit! Nobody’s fair, in the world I live in.”

  But as his trial moved toward its conclusion, and as the rising tide of civil unrest came closer and closer to the citadel itself, there were nine who knew desperately that they, above all, must try to be fair. One in particular found the terrible weight of fairness almost more than he could bear. And he was aware that it would not stop. Long after the event, he supposed, he would still be trying to decide whether he had really been fair in the case of the Pomeroy Station bomber.

  In a few terrible moments, in one terrible afternoon, he had apparently lost beyond recovery both his daughter and his wife. Janie’s seizure had lasted, they told him, not more than a minute and a half. Mary’s reactive and apparently permanent withdrawal had begun almost immediately after. When he and Moss had rushed into the hospital after their tire-screeching dash from the plantation, it was already obvious that his wife was moving off into some territory where he could not find her. Her anguished cry over the telephone, calling him back, was the last show of real emotion. From then on, nothing but a frigid and uncommunicative politeness had been her only response to his desperate pleas for support, help, understanding, love.

  To her almost psychotic bitterness over the f
act that he had been largely responsible for permitting Janie to go to Pomeroy Station there now was added a monumental resentment created by their daughter’s loss of mentality. That this loss was permanent he refused, for several days, to accept. Mary had accepted it at once; it had simply confirmed her worst imaginings. When the doctors finally persuaded him that he too must abandon hope he had gone through such a night of pain and agony as he had never thought to experience. It was then that he realized that Mary, too, was gone forever. He remembered with a terrible self-mockery that he had wanted this, and would soon in the course of things have actively sought it: but not for such a reason, and not at such a price.

  The ultimate jest came, however, when he learned that, though gone from him in any emotional or caring sense, she apparently had no intention of leaving his roof and board. She was going to punish him, he realized. The helpless body of their daughter was to be the means.

  “I suppose,” he said, on the day after his long night, “that we will have to start thinking about—about Janie.”

  “What about Janie?” she had asked, not turning to look at him, continuing the blank staring out the window that now occupied most of her time whenever they were alone at the hotel.

  “Well, obviously, there are some serious things to plan for. How much longer we should keep her here. How we get her back to Washington. What we do—then.”

  “I can’t stand the thought of her in an institution,” she said, and a sudden sob, unexpected and seemingly startling her as much as him, broke through. It was quickly stifled and she repeated firmly, “I can’t stand the thought of her in an institution. I won’t have it. I simply won’t have it.”

  “Mary,” he said with a sinking heart as he realized the full import of her concluding words, “we have to be practical—I have to be practical.”

  “You!” she said, swinging suddenly to face him for a moment, eyes haggard but unyielding. “You! Were you ever anything else? What has practicality got to do with it when Janie’s peace of mind is concerned?”