Private Screening (20 page)

“For
Harry Carson
?”

“To pay the bills. I'd have another three to four months of not doing much on other cases. There're house payments, the new alarm system …”

“For Harry Carson,” she repeated. “I told you this would happen the day you took the case.”

He gave a broad, helpless shrug. “We're broke.”

She watched, silent, until Lord's arms fell to his side.

“You're right,” he said finally. “Domestic arguments begin sounding like trials, where nothing that's said is quite true or quite fair. Maybe it's that we lead such different lives.…”

“Oh, Tony, please—it's so hollow when you turn philosophical. It's not
you
. The man I live with burns to achieve, no matter what it costs.”

He made himself wait to answer. “If I end up disappointed with my life,” he told her, “it'll be because of what I've done, not failed to do.”

“Then
do
it.” She stood. “Go ahead, Tony. I'll sign the mortgage and watch you.”

She walked briskly to the shower, as Lord had known she would.

Lord sat on the floor in a work shirt, blue jeans, moccasins. It was ten-thirty; his office was dark.

Silent and silver, Harry Carson shot Kilcannon like a robot. He fell, and then Stacy Tarrant was touching his forehead. Lord could feel the look she gave him.

“Doesn't it ever bother you,” DiPalma had asked, “that Carson had you all picked out?”

Lord put on the second film.

Escaping, Carson saw the camera and knelt to fire. When he rose, it was not to run, but to stare at his hands. As he turned toward the fallen man, mouth opening, Lord froze the videotape.

If DiPalma knew the reason Carson gave was politics, he would win. Divorced from tactics and obligation, Lord knew, the morality of what he might do required a client who had acted alone, too deranged to understand his motives.

Staring at Carson, Lord pondered his own motives.

He sat there for moments. When he went to the telephone and dialed, Carson's dazed expression still filled the screen.

There were five rings and then a deep voice answered, “Yes?”

“This is Tony Lord.”

There was a pause. “How did you get this number?”

“I went to court. I have to plead him tomorrow.”

“I know.” The voice was so flat it was hostile. “I watch TV. I even read your letters.”

“Look, I need you to tell me what happened to him there.”

“Ask the Army.”

“There aren't any records—not for the last few months.”

Damone paused again. “Then,” he answered quietly, “you should ask yourself why.”

“It doesn't matter—I have to know.” Lord used his final, empty threat. “I can always subpoena you.”

There was another, longer silence. Then, very softly, a click.

Lord watched Carson, until he heard the dial tone.

Four assistants flanked DiPalma. The five watched Judge Rainey as if Lord no longer existed.

“Case number 84-762,” the clerk pronounced, “People versus Harry F. Carson.”

There was the peculiar silence of massed bodies, poised for when the silence was broken. Rainey, a white-haired politician so concerned with appearances that Cass had dubbed him “The Great Oz,” straightened as if posing for a portrait.

“Mr. Carson,” he intoned, “the state charges that on June second of this year, intentionally and with premeditation, you shot and murdered United States Senator James J. Kilcannon. What is your plea?”

Carson gave Lord a tentative glance. “Not guilty,” Lord responded. “By reason of insanity.”

There was an intake of breath. Rainey slammed his gavel. “Very well. Trial will commence November first.

“The plea,” he continued in a rich bass voice, “requires the court to rule on the petition of Satellite News International to televise these proceedings. We share Mr. Lord's concern that such broadcasts not prejudice the defendant's right to a fair trial, and take note of SNI's willingness to restrict itself to a single camera, without close-ups of any witness.

“We are also concerned that this case already has received massive, unavoidable publicity, to which
both
prosecution and defense have added. Nor are we unaware that in the past, political assassinations have resulted in continuing unhealthy speculation and widespread misunderstanding of verdicts reached in courts of law.

“Such a result in this case would compound the tragedy which led to it. Therefore, the petition of Satellite News International is granted.”

The gavel cracked. Rainey stood, and then reporters filled the double doors as if sucked out by a vacuum.

Carson watched the bench where Rainey no longer sat. Touching his shoulder, Lord said, “I'll see you this afternoon,” before the marshals led him away.

From the rear, Hart Taylor grinned at Lord.

An anger Lord could not control swept him past Taylor, through the corridors, out of the building. And then he found himself trapped with DiPalma on the highest step, facing more reporters, questions, lenses glinting in the sun.

A flash of superstition ran through him, growing to a kind of awe. Now, no one's life would be untouched—not his or Marcia's or Christopher's, not Carson's or Beth Winship's, or even Stacy Tarrant's. To
know
this, he thought, and yet be so unsure.

DiPalma had raised one hand.

“The people,” he began, in a hard, rising chant, “know the rational, premeditated act of an assassin from the stupor of a so-called flashback. Mr. Carson did not murder at random or by accident. As thousands watched, he stalked a United States senator with a German-made Mauser and put a single bullet through his brain.” He turned to Lord so that the cameras would record this, then faced them to conclude, “To seek another penalty than death would compound the contempt for reason which has brought us here today.”

“Mr. Lord!”

Lord felt doubt and anger and necessity fuse into resolve. If this were to be tried on television, he would give them an opening statement to remember. As he framed his answer, he saw Rachel Messer pushing to be near him.

“The prosecutor,” he began, “paints Harry Carson as a cold-blooded killer so that no one asks the question, Why? We intend to ask it for him.

“In 1968, when Mr. DiPalma and I were safe in law school, the government sent an eighteen-year-old boy to fight the most traumatic war in American history. That war returned to us a different Harry Carson. And it is that same war, not a ‘contempt for reason,' which has brought us here today.

“If someone were to tie up their pet dog at nine in the morning and start lobbing hand grenades around him, by six that night they'd have a different dog. If, after that, the rest of us spat on the dog for having changed, then that dog would understand more about Harry Carson than either I
or
Mr. DiPalma.” Facing DiPalma, Lord's voice was level but quite clear. “And if, after that, we shoot the dog, as the prosecution wishes, then none of us need understand at all.”

There was a low whistle: as Rachel reached him, thrusting her microphone to his mouth, Lord saw how the news would open.

“But,” he finished softly, “I believe a jury will.”

Rachel grinned. Nodding to DiPalma, Lord began moving through the crowd.

THE TRIAL: STACY TARRANT

November 1–November 9

1

F
OR
the first two punishing weeks of trial, watching DiPalma prove Harry Carson an assassin, Lord waited for Stacy Tarrant.

His days ran together. He worked past midnight, awoke to scribble notes, cross-examined on a few hours' sleep. Through television, he relived DiPalma's attack in numbing third person.

Each morning he passed SNI's forty-foot broadcast truck, its satellite dish aimed at the sky like a silver web, its black cable climbing the steps to the lobby, past the usual shuffling defendants who stole for drugs, battered wives, charge-card deadbeats, jobless men and bag ladies, the half-insane who talked to themselves on the street and erupted into violence. More cameras looked past them, at him.

The cable ended at the high-security courtroom, bypassing the metal detector and theater-type seats where the press listened to piped-in sound and watched through a ceiling-high sheet of bulletproof glass. Inside, Rainey presided from a raised bulletproof bench. To his right front were DiPalma and four associates; Lord, Cass, and Carson sat nearer the jury to his left. Rainey had placed the camera behind a makeshift wood partition, so that the cameraman shifting angles would not distract the jury. But the effect was of an unblinking eye which hypnotized Carson.

Lord bought him a gray suit and had his hair cut short, trying to suggest the younger Carson he wished the jury to imagine. Instead, Lord sensed his stare at the camera remind the jurors of the violence which had brought them here.

For Carson to have a chance, Lord needed jurors with open minds. He tried to pick those who would listen to Shriver: opponents of the Vietnam War; older women with sons; young women who might prefer him to the prosecutor. But DiPalma saw this. Using peremptory challenges, he got rid of three young secretaries, a scientist from NASA, a nurse whose teenager had gone through counseling.

DiPalma's priorities were equally clear to Lord: admirers of Kilcannon; order-givers who disliked weakness; ex-military officers or business executives; fundamentalists; feminists who would identify with Stacy Tarrant. They seemed to come at him without a break. With one juror left to pick, Lord used his last peremptory challenge to strike a female executive who kept smiling in his direction; hard experience had taught him that smilers voted against the lawyer they smiled at.

Cass was already watching the next prospect, a severe-looking woman with a Bible. “Get rid of her,” she whispered. “Somehow.”

Briskly, DiPalma found out that the woman was childless, a bookkeeper, had never traveled or known a psychiatrist. He blessed this life with an approving smile and sat.

Rising, Lord asked, “You
do
know that Mr. Carson has been indicted for the murder of Senator Kilcannon?”

The woman's thick glasses gave her a wary look. With a curt nod toward Carson, she answered, “Yes.”

“But you're willing to presume his innocence.”

She frowned. “I know that's the law.”

“I gather you're afraid that the indictment means that he's
not
innocent.”

She clutched her Bible. “Yes.”

“Your Honor, I think we can excuse Miss Walker.”

The judge leaned forward. “Miss Walker, if I tell you to ignore Mr. Carson's indictment, will you?”

After a moment, she answered, “Yes.”

“Challenge denied,” the judge said. “You may continue, Mr. Lord.”

Lord turned to Rainey long enough to register amazement, then faced the woman. “I notice you've brought your Bible, Miss Walker. Do you sometimes pray?”

Her eyes brightened. “Yes,” she answered firmly.

“Does God answer your prayers?”

“He
hears
them. He hears the prayers of all those who believe.”

Lord looked puzzled. “But does He speak to you?”

She gave a resolute nod. “In my thoughts.”

“Does that happen when you ask Him to?”

“No.” She scowled at Lord's incomprehension. “When He wishes, He will speak to me.”

“Even about decisions in your everyday life?”

“Yes.”

Lord tilted his head. “Suppose He decides to speak to you about Harry Carson? Who will you obey, God or Judge Rainey?”

The woman was silent. “Take your time,” Lord said mildly. “I know what a difficult choice that would be.”

Behind him, Cass coughed.

“God,” the woman answered.

Lord turned to Rainey with a half-smile.

“You're excused,” the judge said tersely.

The next prospect, an older man with a crew cut, cool gray eyes, and a clipped manner, gave his name as George Kleist.

“What is your occupation?” DiPalma asked.

“I'm a retired naval captain.”

“Whose navy?” Cass scrawled on her notepad.

Staring at it, Lord listened to more answers: that Kleist was an engineer by training; that he had served honorably in World War II; that both sons were business executives; that he had been married for forty-three years; that his family had never felt need of a psychiatrist.

“Whichever navy,” Lord whispered to Cass, “they'll elect him foreman if he stays.”

He had slept perhaps an hour, and now had brief seconds to decide how to approach a nightmare twelfth juror with his peremptory challenges gone and the first eleven watching. Standing, he faced a man whose strong jaw and steady gaze suggested neither hostility nor doubt.

“Mr. Kleist,” he began. “I've just listened to the outline of an exemplary life. So all I ask is this: can you look at Harry Carson, and promise him
and
me that you will judge his actions with an open mind?”

Slowly, Kleist turned to Carson. As if startled, Carson's gaze snapped from the camera. For the first time, he looked confused, vulnerable. Across the gulf of age and experience, the two men stared at each other.

“Yes,” Kleist answered finally. “I can.”

Lord nodded. “Then we've got a deal, Mr. Kleist.”

It was done, he thought. And then he saw Hart Taylor, grinning through the bulletproof glass.

The trial opened badly, with the coroner.

Lord addressed Judge Rainey. “I've already assured Mr. DiPalma that we'll stipulate the cause of death. The evidence he wishes to offer through Dr. Boyd has the potential to inflame the jury without adding one scrap of necessary proof.”

Rainey scowled. “The prosecutor has a right to present his own case.” Sitting, Lord could only hope that he had dampened the impact of what was coming.