Act of God (28 page)

Dana smiled. As independent as she believed herself to be, it never ceased to amaze her how much she had come to depend on
Sam to be there for her, with a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of comfort and compassion and support. The irony of it did
not escape her. Judith was the one who badly needed a good solid man in her life, but it was Dana who had found him.

“I’ll go set the table,” she told him with a happy sigh. “It’s the least I can do.”

Allison Ackerman sat in the breakfast nook of her rambling Maple Valley home. Beyond the windows she could look across her
acres of neatly fenced pasture, and watch the horses grazing. It didn’t seem to bother them that there was very little grass
left to munch on. They had already breakfasted on hay and oats, and were quite content with life.

The mystery writer found herself actually envying them, wishing she could be out there, without a care, without anything more
compelling to do than to push her nose around in the soft warm earth.

Pouring her third cup of coffee of the morning, which was something she rarely did, Allison wondered for perhaps the hundredth
time what she had gotten herself into. What had possessed her to play word games with those attorneys? It all seemed so absurd
to her now.

“What did you do?” her daughter had asked.

“Don’t ask,” Allison replied.

“I probably don’t have to. You baited them, didn’t you?”

The mystery writer sighed. “Yes,” she admitted. “I thought sure one of them would kick me off.”

“Couldn’t you have just found a way to get out of it, like before?”

While it was true that there was no imminent deadline looming over her, Allison did have a manuscript in the edit phase. She
could have used that as an excuse. At the very least, the defense attorney should have let her go. She had made her feminist
position perfectly clear. And there was certainly no shortage of people wanting to serve. As she herself had observed, people
were falling all over themselves to get on this jury. She had even heard a rumor during her weeks in C701 that someone who
had been summoned had actually been offered money to change places with someone who had not.

“Of course,” she told her daughter. She had toyed with the attorneys, skating the edge, challenging both sides to toss her
off, quite comfortable, she thought, in the certainty that one of them would. She was at a loss to understand why neither
had, and perhaps more important, why she now found herself quite
delighted about that. “But I guess I didn’t really want to get out of it.”

Despite her statements to the contrary, Allison began to wonder whether she did indeed have an agenda here. Was it just fun
and games, or did she want to serve on this jury, as the defense attorney had suggested, so she could make it a platform for
what she so fervently believed in? There was no question that she wanted an end to the subjugation of women. What better statement
to make on the subject than to tell the world that despite what the likes of Roger Roark and Jonathan Heal were extolling
at every opportunity, the bombing of clinics like Hill House was never justifiable. Even if it meant the conviction and subsequent
execution of a clean-cut naval lieutenant from Iowa.

The
20/20
interview with Dean and Barbara Latham had painted a glowing picture of an all-American boy, and Allison had watched every
moment of it. To listen to them, their son was the pride of Iowa, an honor student, who cherished life and liberty, believed
devoutly in Christian principles, and could not possibly have committed the horrendous crime for which, through some hideous
mistake, he was about to stand trial. But what else would parents say?

After twenty years of inventing diabolical characters, the mystery writer had learned to look behind the facade.

Juror Number 103 could hardly contain himself. He had hoped, but never really expected, that he would have a part in the Hill
House trial. The only regret Stuart Dunn had was that the school year had started without him, and he would be unable to tell
his students the good news. A substitute was teaching in his place, and it would be perhaps months before he could meet his
students and share his experiences.

“It’s going to be a very controversial trial,” Rose Gregory’s granddaughter told her. “The press is making the most of it.
There are going to be demonstrations and protesters, and crazies running all over the place. Are you sure you want that kind
of stress at your age?”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Juror Number 68 said in a tone that brooked no argument. “But I was summoned, and I’ve been chosen,
and I’ll do my duty.”

John Quinn was philosophical. “It was looking like a slow couple of months anyway,” he told his wife.

“We’ve always lived a quiet life,” she replied. “I’m just afraid all the publicity is going to be hard on the children.”

Quinn shrugged. “We’ll keep them as clear of it as we can,” he said. “And there could be an upside here, too, you know. If
we get all this publicity, maybe it’ll bring some business our way.”

Despite the notoriety that was bound to attach itself to the members of the Hill House jury, Karleen McKay was not particularly
overjoyed about being selected.

In addition to the commitment of time, three important clients with whom she had been working would now have to be turned
over to another Realtor. Having to split those commissions was going to have a significant impact on her income that the ten-dollar-a-day
stipend paid by the state of Washington was not about to cover. Grudgingly, Juror Number 14 spent the time before the trial
began getting another agent in her office up to speed.

“Don’t ever say I never gave you anything,” the executive assistant of FOCUS said, bursting into Priscilla Wales’s private
office.

“What?” Priscilla asked.

A big grin spread across the assistant’s face. “They put one of ours on the jury!”

“You mean someone who actually claimed to be pro-choice?”

“No—I mean a bona fide, signed-on-the-dotted-line member of our fine organization. Which means we’ve got a hung jury at the
very least!”

Priscilla couldn’t believe it. “How do you know?”

The assistant shrugged. “We’ve got a plant in the AIM operation,” he told her. “Someone leaked the list and they got hold
of it.”

The attorney’s mind was whirling. “Who do we have up in Seattle?”

“No one who could get to this juror.”

“Then find me someone we can put up there who can,” she instructed. “Someone in the organization who’s dedicated enough to
go the extra mile, and smart enough to avoid getting caught. Make it a woman.”

“I’ll get on it first thing,” the assistant promised.

“And if she does get caught, make sure she understands that she not only doesn’t know us, she’s never even heard of us.”

The assistant nodded. He knew, perhaps better than anyone else in FOCUS, how much of Priscilla’s life was now her work, and
how far she would bend the rules if she felt it would give her an advantage. “You don’t really think we could lose the election,
do you?” he asked, knowing that was really what this was all about.

Priscilla sighed deeply. “There are whole lot of very stupid people in this country,” she replied. “There’s no telling what
they might do.”

Elise Latham spent most of her weekends alone, eating TV dinners and watching the shopping channels on television, ordering
things she didn’t need.

On Sunday the 17th, she went down to the jail for her allotted hour with Corey.

“Happy birthday,” she said with a bright smile. “How are you?”

“I’m doing just fine,” he lied.

“You’re looking good,” she lied in turn, because lying had become second nature to them. Actually, he looked awful. Over the
past six months, he had grown gaunt and pale, and now had dark rings under his eyes. And he had developed a persistent cough
that the doctors couldn’t seem to cure. “Your mother sent a birthday cake. I gave it to the guard.”

“Who’d have thought we’d be spending my birthday like this?” he said suddenly. “It was supposed to be so different. I used
to think about it all the time on the boat. We would be together in our own home. The two of us, and our baby.”

“Great,” Elise said. “It’s all my fault.”

“I didn’t say that,” he protested. “I just meant, this isn’t where I thought we would be.”

She left as soon as the hour was up, managing to duck the reporters who were constantly in her wake, and headed for Bell-town,
and any bar that was open. She woke up just before dawn, in a filthy bed, beside someone she couldn’t remember ever having
seen before.

She dragged herself home, surprising the media watch on her front lawn, and locked herself in the bathroom. Three hours later,
she emerged, wrapped in a towel, her skin scraped raw from trying to get herself clean.

“Never again,” she muttered to herself as she pulled on a robe and slippers. Then, on impulse, she went to her bureau. Rummaging
around at the back of her lingerie drawer, she pulled out an old address book. She sat down on the bed, flipped the book open
to a specific page, and stared at one of the entries for a long time. Finally, she got up and went to the telephone.

On another telephone, in a different part of town, Paul Cotter was engaged in a conversation of his own.

“Are you satisfied?” the caller asked.

“For the most part, yes,” Cotter replied. “Out of the twelve, there are two of possible concern. But I don’t think we’ll have
any problems with the rest of them.”

“What about the two?”

“We’ll keep an eye on them. If something comes up, we’ll deal with it.”

“If you need anything, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course,” Cotter assured the caller. “Don’t I always?”

T
he survivors of the Hill House bombing, along with the families of many of the victims, gathered in the huge presiding judge’s
courtroom, filling it up.

“I just want you to know that you don’t have to do this,” Brian Ayres told them. “You don’t have to be here at all. I can’t
begin to imagine how painful it would be to have to relive what happened to you. But it
is
your right, and we just wanted to know how many, if any of you, are interested.”

“I’m sure some of us will want to be here,” Frances Stocker responded, and a number of heads bobbed in agreement. The psychologist
was walking now, with the aid of a cane, which her doctors thought she was likely going to need for the rest of her life.
“At least, I know I want to.”

“Do we have to commit to the whole trial?” Joyce O’Mara asked. She was still living with her mother in North Bend, still learning
to live without a lung and a kidney. “I’d like to be here some of the time, but I know I can’t make it all the time.”

“I can probably be here most of the time,” Carl Gentry said. He was working as a night security guard now, and had his
days free. “I think if our presence is going to help Mr. Ayres win his case, then as many of us as possible should be here.”

“I’d like to come as often as I can,” Ruth Zelkin said. “On the days my husband can bring me. I’m not too good on the bus
yet.” The former day care director was slowly finding her way around in the dark, and had begun learning to use the white
cane that offered some measure of independence.