The Sacrifice (35 page)

Lester was scheduled to come to the office the following afternoon for the first of three preparation sessions. Scott would ask direct examination questions and see how his young client responded. Mr. Humphrey had agreed to serve as a surrogate prosecutor. To assist the older lawyer, Scott prepared questions to be used in cross-examination. Mr. Humphrey could probably do a better job on the spur of the moment than Scott could by preparation, but it was good practice for Scott to anticipate the lines of attack Lynn Davenport might follow. Through repetition of questions and answers, Scott hoped Lester would develop an automatic response to the D.A.'s likely assaults and turn her questions to his advantage by using them as the springboard for further explanation of his innocence. At least that was the theory.

Shortly before lunch, Kay called.

“Can we talk before the meeting?” Scott asked. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Lester Garrison.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I'd like to look over his schoolwork and see if there is anything helpful in it.”

“I doubt you'll find anything. Lester is a fair student who could do a lot better. Do I need to ask his permission?”

“No, I'm his lawyer.”

“He's not here today anyway. I didn't check with the office to see if he called in sick.”

“I hope he's sick,” Scott replied. “One of the conditions of his release pending trial is that he attend class. No exceptions except illness or death. If he lays out of school, the judge will throw him back in the youth detention center.”

“Do you want me to find out?”

Scott thought for a second. “I'm sure Dr. Lassiter received a copy of the judge's order, so I'd rather not stir it up. We only have a few days until we find out what's going to happen with the whole situation.”

“Of course, I'll have to report him absent from class.”

“I understand. Is six o'clock this evening okay?”

“I guess, but I won't have a chance to eat supper.”

Scott was ready. “Do you like Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“Supper will be delivered to modular unit three.”

Scott hung up, then realized he hadn't asked what she wanted him to order. It didn't matter. After ten minutes in one of those little white cardboard boxes, all Chinese food tasted the same.

The Tuesday group sat at their usual table. Tao came into the cafeteria as soon as he finished cleaning the boys' locker room in the gym. The lunch hour was in full swing. Five young people were seated at the table. One of them was the dark-skinned girl whose picture he had carried in his pocket for the past week. The angels were nowhere in sight.

“I've got to make a decision, and I don't know what to do,” Alisha said.

“What about?” Janie asked.

Alisha looked over her shoulder. There was a long line at the food service area. She couldn't tell if there was a threatening face in the room or not.

“I know we're not supposed to talk about things mentioned at the table to other people, but this is so serious I'm not sure I want to risk it.”

“Then don't,” Janie said matter-of-factly. “We can pray without knowing any details.”

They sat quietly for a few seconds, then Kenny Bost prayed. “Father, you know even more about this situation than Alisha. Show her what you want her to do. Protect her and take away all fear.”

Another student continued, “Give her the strength to do the right thing no matter what others might tell her. Show her what you want her to do in a way that is so clear she won't worry anymore.”

Janie had her Bible on the table. She opened it and turned several pages. “Isaiah 30:21 says,
‘
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”' Lord, please do this for Alisha. Let her know which way to turn and what to do.”

Tao's heart began beating faster. Something was happening at the table. He moved closer. He was using a broom to sweep up food that had dropped on the floor. He could hear the students' voices. Tao could understand more and more simple English words beyond what he needed to perform his job, and if he was listening to one person in a quiet place, he could often get the gist of a conversation. But the roar of sounds in the cafeteria made distinguishing a specific voice as difficult as identifying a single drop of water in a rainstorm. The girl with dark skin was speaking. She closed her eyes, and he knew it was a prayer.

Tao leaned on the broom, bowed his head, and began praying softly in his local dialect. Two girls walked by, overheard him, and gave him a strange look. He kept his head lowered for almost a minute until the burden lifted. He looked up. The dark-skinned girl opened her eyes and nodded to the other students.

“I know what I need to do,” she said. “Thanks.”

Tao couldn't hear what she said, but he knew what she meant. “
Va
tsang
—thank you,” he said.

The bomber didn't want a metal pipe filled with nails. A few people cut or maimed or killed was inconsistent with his vision of fire engulfing the main hallway. However, the practical preparation of a bomb with the capacity to damage or destroy a large building presented a challenge. There weren't any books in the school library by nineteenth-century anarchists. No chemistry textbooks contained an appendix explaining how to build an explosive device.

His salvation came through the Internet. The information available at the click of a mouse would have amazed Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Ultimately, the student could have dedicated his project to Timothy McVeigh. The Oklahoma City bomber used a truck filled with fertilizer. The student had a different goal. He wanted a bomb within the school, not parked outside. But the Internet links to McVeigh's name led him into the dark places where information was available and resources could be located.

He had begun purchasing supplies as soon as he had conceived the idea. Innocent items standing alone could become deadly in the right combinations. He learned that the major expense of demolition related to safety. If he was willing to sacrifice personal protection, the price of mass destruction was surprisingly cheap.

26

He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

S
TEPHEN
C
RANE

S
cott stopped at the Chinese restaurant and looked at the takeout menu. The last time he'd eaten Chinese food with a date, she'd ordered Mongolian beef. He decided to add a chicken dish in case the beef didn't hit the mark. Scott would eat whichever meal Kay rejected. He stepped up to the counter. “Mongolian beef, Hunan chicken, three egg rolls, fried rice, and duck sauce.”

“How many egg rolls?” asked the young, oriental girl behind the cash register.

Scott hesitated. He loved egg rolls. “Make that four.”

Kay wouldn't want more than one. That would leave three for him. He drove quickly to the high school. The parking lot was deserted except for Kay's car beside her trailer. He carried the food up the wooden steps to the classroom. Kay was at her desk grading papers.

“Dinner is served,” he announced, setting the bag on her desk. “Let's eat first. The smell of the food was torturing my stomach all the way over from the restaurant.”

“What did you get?” Kay asked.

Scott took out the containers and opened them. “Fried rice, Hunan chicken, Mongolian beef, and egg rolls.”

“Mongolian beef is my favorite,” she said.

That made Scott's choice easy. “I prefer the chicken.”

Kay cleaned off one end of her desk.

“Chopsticks?” he asked, holding up a pair that was in the bag.

“Of course.”

They both used chopsticks. Kay was more adept than Scott. She could capture a single grain of rice and transport it safely to her mouth. Scott's technique was more of a crab approach. He chased the rice and chicken around his plate while opening and closing the sticks until some of the food could be scooped up.

He quickly ate two egg rolls. Kay finished one, then asked, “Are there any more egg rolls? I always order two or three if they're not too big.”

Scott looked in the box where the remaining egg roll waited. It looked smaller and smaller.

“These were fairly large,” he said. “Are you sure you want another one?”

Kay picked up the container. “You've already eaten two, so we can split the last one.”

“Okay,” Scott agreed reluctantly.

Toward the end of the meal, Scott used a plastic fork to finish eating. More than five minutes with chopsticks raised the possibility of a muscle spasm in his right hand.

“What do you have to show me about Lester?” he asked.

Kay pulled open the lower drawer of her desk and took out a manila folder. “Everything he's turned in is here. He's been in the literature and creative-writing track this semester, so there are several short papers and one longer one. They're not in order.”

She opened the folder. The first page was a short essay on
To Kill a
Mockingbird
. Scott immediately suspected Lester wouldn't like the book because of Atticus Finch's racial tolerance. He was right. Lester's biting critique reflected their conversations at the youth detention center.

“He didn't like the book,” Scott said simply.

“No. He thought I was trying to brainwash him.”

“A good idea,” Scott replied.

Next came Lester's two-paragraph analysis on the excerpt from Thomas Wolfe's
Look Homeward, Angel
. In the margin beside his small handwriting was a pair of carefully drawn and shaded lightning bolts. Underneath he'd added a dark swastika that had been colored in so completely that it shone.

“Voluntary artwork,” Scott noted.

“I see it all the time, but I prefer a smiling face with a caption that says, ‘Have a nice day.' I don't know why Lester did that. I guess it's his way of proving that he can do whatever he wants in the margins of his paper.”

“Did you say anything to him about it?”

“No. If he'd written a message or threat, I would have notified the office, but drawing a symbol is not something to report. I usually try to ignore them.”

Scott rubbed his finger across the swastika. The paper was slightly wrinkled because of the concentration of black ink.

“If the D.A. saw this, she'd try to find a way to blow it up on a poster board and hang it on the wall of the jury room.”

Several nondescript pages followed. No artwork, but there were small blocked areas of black ink that could have been words or drawings in the margins of several pages. Nothing unusual about Lester's attempts to answer the questions. His grades fluctuated wildly. He made a ninety-eight on one test, followed by a sixty-seven the following week. One of the first papers of the year was on
The Red Badge of Courage
. Lester had written a two-page report and received a B+ for the paper.

“He liked this one,” Scott commented when he saw the grade on the top of the first page.

Kay looked over his shoulder. “Yes. When I graded that paper, I thought he might be a diamond in the rough.”

Scott leaned back in his chair. Lester knew the story, and he'd thought about it. His sentences were short and choppy. Scott could almost hear Lester's voice spitting out his opinion.

A bloody bandage is a red badge of courage. Most people don't know anything
about courage. They haven't been in danger. You can't know what you
will do until you have to do it. The boy in the book ran away. He came
back. That is what counts. In a war people die. True courage is to come back
and kill your enemies.

The paper continued, but Scott stopped. He slid the paper over to Kay with his finger on the paragraph. “What did you think when you read this?” She read the paragraph again while Scott watched. “Especially the last sentence.”

Kay paused. “I didn't think about it. I was grading twenty-eight papers and probably thought it was Lester's opinion about one of Stephen Crane's themes. I don't penalize a student who is trying to analyze literature.”