Time's Witness

by Michael Malone

  “So why subpoena half the state?”

  As in the past, he advised me to use my noggin: “I did it to scare the bejesus out of them.”

  “I heard you succeeded.”

  “I did.”

  “Heard they dropped to a manslaughter plea.” I pulled my broken hand to a new position on my chest. “You turned them down. So why’d they let go of first degree? If they didn’t want witnesses to—”

  I could hear the shuffle of his search through his pockets. “Oh, there was only one witness who ultimately mattered. That's the one I negotiated; reluctantly felt I had to negotiate, given my client's history. To get the death penalty out of the picture then and there. To take away one day of that horror from George. So a name came off the list, and I will keep that name out of the testimony.”

  “Julian Lewis.”

  “Exactly. A name in exchange for the threat of the gas chamber.” His chair scraped closer to me. “Ah, Cuddy. The world. ‘Those who think, laugh; those who feel, cry.’ And this old man, well, he goes back and forth.…I’m told Mr. Brookside is still critical. What a miserable thing. Such a vibrant man.…My assumption is that he was caught in the crossfire of your vendetta.”

  “Not mine, Winston's.”

  “Ummm.…But apparently, everyone else has taken the shooting for an assassination attempt on Brookside.”

  “Let them.”

  “Why not? More thrilling. Possibly more useful.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, “How is Mrs. Brookside?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like me to find her? Tell her anything?” His hand touched mine. “Let her know you’re all right? She must be here at U.H.”

  “That's okay. Alice probably told her.…But thank you.” Outside the window, a plane flashed across the sky of stars.

  “I’m recalling you to the stand. Think you can make it Wednesday?”

  “To ask me what?”

  He chuckled. “What I ask you will matter less than what you look like, and why.”

  “Why didn’t you take the manslaughter plea for George?”

  A match flared in the dark, then my nostrils twitched at the sharp familiar smell of his cigarette. “Why should I? More to the point, why should George?”

  I said because manslaughter is a much shorter sentence than second-degree murder, and if the jury should find against them, he’d be sending George back to prison for too long, and besides not even George would deny that he’d killed Pym.

  By my side, the small red flame brightened, dimmed. Isaac's mellow, low-pitched voice was calm as the sky outside. “According to the law, ‘killing’ isn’t necessarily a crime, is it? Depends on the killer's state of mind, on his intent, on his alternatives. In George's case, as I will demonstrate to the jury on Monday, his intent was to save his own life.”

  I was sliding off into sleep. I mumbled. “Deep down, we know George also had alternatives.”

  Isaac's hand stroked against mine. “Deep down, we all have alternatives. We can’t always reach them.”

  Pulling myself up, I told him that yes, after all, I did want to “talk about it,” about Russell, and I explained what had happened in the cemetery. Quietly nodding, he listened, then he said, “All right. The bureaucratic solution would be to fire Justin. The pure solution would be charge him with a crime.”

  “I was out of control myself. I beat the man to death.”

  “No, you didn’t. That's medical speculation.”

  “I tried to.”

  “Ah, intent. Didn’t Russell intend to kill you, and in that mutual combat weren’t you trying to save your own life?”

  “No, I was trying to kill him. I went crazy.”

  Moonlight caught Isaac's hands as he rubbed them over his face. “Crazy.…I’m going to tell you something. When I was a youngster, Slim, a public defender, fresh out of law school, I had this case. A girl named Edith Keene. A mulatto—as they called her. She shot a white man who she said had sexually attacked her little sister. She shot him six times. She intended to kill him. I didn’t want to use an insanity plea, or plead her guilty. I was conceited, and I thought I could get her off on a smart legal loophole I’d come up with. The truth is, I didn’t give a damn about Edith Keene.

  “At any rate, I lost that case, and they put Edith on death row. And if she hadn’t been before, after a few months in that place, well, everybody who saw her agreed she was insane. So, of course, that stopped the execution, and she was sent to the state asylum.… She died there. Another inmate beat her to death.

  “What I’m trying to say, Slim, is that the letter of the law is pure—like your arrest record as chief was pure. But the spirit of the law is as muddy as water with living things growing in it. Right and wrong all snarled together, truth and lie sometimes so entangled at the root you have to be very careful you don’t kill one trying to pull out the other.…Well, you think about it.” He leaned over the bed and brushed his hand against my hair. “But later. Now, go to sleep.”

  Around midnight, I inched myself out of the high cool hospital bed, managed to get my eyes open enough to see through, and found that I could move my arms. I could stand up. I could walk. At least limp. My clothes had been thrown away, but someone had brought me one of my uniforms from the office; left it folded on the bureau. Pulling on the HPD khaki pants and the starched shirt took ten slow, tiring minutes. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. What looked back wasn’t familiar.

  When I made it out to the eerily quiet, fluorescent-white corridor, I saw Justin outside my door, bent over in a plastic chair, reading FBI files. He looked up. “Hiram brought your captain's outfit. He's always thought you ought to wear it. You want your shoes? They’re on the shelf in your closet.”

  I followed him back into the room, and he laced the shoes on my feet. “You don’t look good.” He straightened up. “‘At ingenium ingens inculto latet hoc sub corpore.’ According to Horace.”

  “Yeah? By which he meant to say what?”

  “‘But hidden under that wreck of a redneck exterior is the mind of minds.’” Justin's smile was full of gladness that I was alive. He didn’t think I owed him a thing for saving me. Just as he didn’t think he’d done a thing wrong firing that second shot. Hell, I don’t know what that is. An amazing carelessness, born of what?—maybe just born of birthright.

  I said, “Well, tell Horace from me it's always been my good fortune that looks aren’t everything.” I started down the hall.

  “Don’t go down that way.” Justin followed after me. “If the nurse's station doesn’t stop you, you’ll run smack into Bubba Percy and a whole litter of nocturnal newshounds.” He returned to his chair in the hall. “Here's another irony you’ll like. You’re the hero of the hour. Horatio at the bridge. Coriolanus at the gates. If you think that's purple prose, you should have heard Carol Cathy Cane on the Late News. You’ve single-handedly made the streets safe for democracy.”

  I turned around. “I guess that makes you the man who shot Liberty Valence.” We stared at each other a while. Then he gave me a salute and left the room.

  part three

  The Wind and the Rain

  chapter 27

  The hospital director's office was in the old wing of the hospital. Paul Madison opened the door when I knocked. At the far end of the large room, by windows that opened over the pretty fields and Gothic courtyards of Haver University, Lee stood looking out. Behind her, streetlights glowed on the old golden bricks. She wore a black silk dress with a necklace of pearls; I suppose someone had called her here from her dinner party. Her face, frowning, turned toward the door, but she didn’t move. Between us was a distance filled with soft covered armchairs, polished woods, lamps, and rugs. Above the small oak mantel was another painting of Justin's father.

  Paul's hair was shaved off around the bandage over his forehead. Another bandage covered his cheek, and a thin one bound his neck above the black collar. “Cuddy!” he gaped. “You shouldn’t be walking
around, should you?” His arm drew me back into the hall. “I went upstairs to check on you, but they said you were asleep. Dear God, you’re really banged up, aren’t you?”

  “I’m okay. Mostly cuts and bruises.”

  “Thank God. I’m sorry I wasn’t much help. Why did that man kill Cooper? Was he insane?”

  “I guess—if you think evil's insane. It makes a useful hired hand though, doesn’t it? For the people who were paying Russell.” There was still blood spotted on Paul's black clerical jacket. I put my hand on his small shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to get messed up in it, Paul.

  But you got a lot of guts. Not the kind of thing they prepare you for in the seminary, is it?”

  “Well, Cuddy, in fact it's exactly what they’re prepare you for. I mean, death.” His hand touched the gauze on his cheek, felt it tentatively, as if for reassurance. Then, shaking his head softly, he gestured toward the room. “I was just sitting in here with Lee Brookside. We’re still waiting for word on Andy. ‘Critical but stable’ was the last report.”

  Following him inside, I looked over his head across the room at Lee. I said to him, “But Brookside made it through the operation all right. The bullet's out.”

  Paul nodded. “‘A miracle of modern surgery,’ this doctor tells me. I told him, ‘I would debate the authorship of the miracle.’ The man laughs. He thought I was making a joke. But they’re very encouraged. Now, they tell us how small a chance they really thought Andy had. That the odds were about a thousand to one.”

  Moving softly around the desk, toward us, Lee murmured, “Those are the kinds of odds Andy prefers.” Reaching the center of the room, she paused and held out her hand. “Cuddy…”

  I stepped toward her, and took the offered hand. “Lee…I’m sorry.” Her face was drained, pinched; there were lines under the gray eyes I hadn’t seen before. Her other hand touched my cast at the wrist. We stood like that for a second before she moved back, her fingers lifting gently from mine, then holding her arm to her chest.

  “I want to thank you, Cuddy. We all do. Paul said you’re the one who chased down the man who shot Andy.”

  I said, “The man's dead.”

  Paul walked over to us. “And faced him down too. Cuddy saved my life.” Indignant, he pointed at my injuries. “That kind of savagery. Was he hired by some group like the Klan? The reporters are saying—”

  I stopped him. “Paul, excuse me. Would you mind? I’d like to speak to Lee for a moment?”

  The rector stepped quickly back. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll go check at ICU again. Fine. And I’ll get us some coffee.”

  The room was as still as snowfall after he closed the door. We just stood, looking at each other, unguarded, bone-weary. Then she said quietly, “You’re alive.”

  “Yes. What I wanted you to know is—I was right beside him when the shot was fired. His first impulse was to…to shield me. I don’t mean because it was me. I mean, because I was next to him.”

  She nodded. “Yes. He is brave.”

  I shook my head. “That's not bravery. That's…virtue.” She nodded again, but didn’t speak. Finally I said, “Are you all right?”

  Her chin lifted as she swallowed. “A while ago, I didn’t think he would make it. They, well, they told me he wouldn’t. But now I’m sure he’ll…,” she tried to smile, “…win.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Tears welled so slowly in her eyes the first two caught in the lashes, like drops of rain. Then she turned away and sat in the armchair near the mantel.

  She stared into the empty fireplace. “I was very much in love with my first husband.” I felt first surprise, then an abyss of pain split inside me. I waited for her to go on. The light on her smooth dark gold hair hurt my eyes. “After the fire,” she said, “they took me to Nice to…identify the body.” She had not once talked to me about this young Frenchman, the climber who’d died, trapped in a burning hotel, at twenty-seven. I must have known I hadn’t wanted to ask about him. Her eyes lifted to mine. “I never want to feel that pain again. I never will let that happen to me again.”

  I stood there, holding on to the winged back of a chair. My voice was hoarse. “But you said they think Andy is going to make it.”

  Tears fell on tears in her lashes. “Oh, Cuddy… I’m not talking about Andy. I’m talking about us.”

  I came to her; she reached up both her hands and grabbed my unhurt one. And I said what I’d always told myself I wouldn’t ask her. “Will you leave him?”

  Her hands tightened on mine. “No.”

  “Because of what's just happened?”

  Her face tilted up to mine. “No. You’ve known the answer from the beginning.”

  Slowly I pulled my hand away and stepped back.

  She said, “I can’t.”

  I looked down at her. “You could. You won’t.”

  Her hands fell to her lap. The rings gleamed, beautiful and old. “No, I won’t.” She spoke clearly.

  “Because you love him? I’d honor that. Because he needs you? You need him? For a commitment to a marriage? I’d honor all of it.” My fingers squeezed on the mantel ledge; pain shook my arm. “But not for his political career.”

  Silk rustled as she stood quickly, her eyes bright and wet. “It isn’t only his. It isn’t only ‘politics.’ And to me, it isn’t a ‘career.’”

  “Then you tell me what it is.”

  She looked at me. “I don’t know if I can make you understand what I mean. I feel very deeply…that I’ve inherited obligations…no matter what my…personal feelings are.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I moved too fast, and, dizzy, I grabbed at the chair back, carefully breathing until my head cleared.

  “Can’t you understand that?”

  I nodded at her; flushing, my voice rising. “Yes, I can understand it. It's noblesse oblige bullshit. What you ‘inherited,’ Lee, was a shitload of money. Because your great-great-grandpa figured out an easy way for a hell of a lot of stupid people to suck smoke. That's what you inherited! The rest is fucking bullshit.”

  “Cuddy, stop it.”

  Making my way back through the room of furnishings, I turned at the door. “Look, I’ve been through this before, remember? Once before, you asked me to ‘try to understand.’ A long time ago. And you came back a year later, a year too late, and said you were wrong. Well, you’re still wrong.” My face was as burning as hers.

  She pressed her hand against her throat. “Why are you being so cruel?”

  I forced the words through the clamp in my throat. “Because I’m mad and hurt! Because we’re losing each other. Because I love you.”

  Her hands moved up into her hair and tightened. “I love you too.” “Then why are we doing this?”

  Her face wet now, she stared across the room at me. Finally she said, “I guess we came too close to death not to be honest.”

  The door closed quietly in my hand; the knob was brass.

  chapter 28

  Three days had passed since, on Monday morning, Isaac Rosethorn began calling his witnesses for the defense. The press table was now half-empty. Reporters had abandoned the trial for the newer news of Andrew Brookside's “fight for life” after the “Terror at Trinity.” The candidate was still in intensive care, and University Hospital's lobby looked like a battle camp, with tripods for tent poles, and raincoats for bedrolls. As I’d tried to sneak out of the place Saturday evening, I was assaulted by journalists, their electronic cameras whirring like frenzied hornets. Probably as a result of my emotional numbness after the talk with Lee, I stood there under their grilling, noble as a statue, and came off, Bubba told me, “prime-time caliber. Loved the bit when you said, ‘The real heroes at Trinity Church were Andrew Brookside, whose first impulse under fire was to save others. And Father Paul Madison, whose first impulse was to save the life of the man trying to kill him.’ Good stuff, paisan.”

  As I walked out of the hospital, I saw Lee in the lobby talking with Mrs. Dyer Fanshaw, who was
crying. Lee and I looked at each other across the large crowded room for a long moment. Then I turned away and left.

  In this go-round with Lady Fame, a picture of me that somebody had snapped as I was being helped into the ambulance at the cemetery made People—in a sidebar to the Brookside story. Edwina Sunderland mailed me the clippings and I stuck them under the pineapple magnet on my refrigerator. (She also enclosed a blue monogrammed note: “Cuthbert, You have taken Excitement farther down the road than my envy wants to travel. Come play bridge. Yours, E. N-R. S.”) Some newspapers applauded my heroic action (CAPTAIN KLAN-BUSTER one dubbed me); others called for my resignation: under the headline, MAKE MY DAY, a leftist weekly referred to me as a “rural Rambo.” I canceled my subscription. The Carol Cathy Cane show telephoned Nancy White in the hospital; apparently Zeke wasn’t very friendly to the caller. But by the end of the week, the locusts had flown over us, and were gone; rather, were all hovering above the bed of Andy Brookside, waiting.

  So, on Monday, Rosethorn had been forced to begin without a full house “to tear down the tawdry set that the State has hammered together in this courtroom.” The State's table, on the other hand, was more crowded than ever. There were now four prosecutors—the assistant D.A., a state's attorney, and the assistant attorney general—all of whom kept a watchful eye on the D.A., Mitchell Bazemore. Judge Hilliardson had instructed this group that only one of them could question any given witness, but Isaac still made much of the defense's outnumbered, underdog position. “Don’t rush me, Mr. Bazemore. I’m old and I’m crippled, and I don’t have a battalion of reinforcements to relieve me!” It did look like an unequal battle: at one table, a well-dressed row of male WASPs; at the other, a young Italian woman, an elderly Jew, and a black man accused of murder.

  The prosecution proved quite content to throw Winston Russell's corpse to Isaac Rosethorn's dogs, as long as there was no suggestion that Russell had had any more friends while alive—and certainly none in high places—than he had six days after his death, when there wasn’t a soul in the state who didn’t claim always to have despised him. The Carolina Patriots, for example, were eager to confess Russell's sins, years of them—even that they’d known he was getting inside information (of, for example, my whereabouts on Friday) from a deputy in the sheriff's office. The only reason they hadn’t told us sooner about all this was that they’d been “scared to death” of him. Winston was Hitler and everyone else was a good German.