Act of God (19 page)

The publisher smiled. “I need a veteran here, someone with just that attitude, someone I can rely on to get a story and get
it right, someone the kids fresh out of school can learn from. Are you clean enough to be that person?”

“I’m clean,” Kirby replied. “I’ve been clean for two years now.”

“I know,” the publisher said. “That’s why you got this interview. But I also happen to know that you haven’t worked much in
the past few years, either. So the question is, will you be able to stay clean when the pressure is on?”

Kirby looked at the man through disillusioned eyes, hating that he had to beg for work on a rag that wasn’t even good enough
for toilet paper. “I can’t make you any promises,” he said, “except that I’ll try. I want to stay clean. I want to work. Hell,
I need a job, okay, and this is the first interview I’ve had in eight months. You’d be going out on a big limb with me, but
I’d do my damnedest not to let you down.”

The publisher had taken a chance, not that much of a chance, really, at least monetarily, and had not been disappointed with
his bargain. Kirby had done his job, delivered his pieces on time, and earned the respect of his much younger coworkers. If
he was drinking, it certainly wasn’t apparent to anyone.

At the end of May, Kirby knocked on the publisher’s door.

“I want to go to Seattle,” he declared.

“Why?” his boss asked. “We’ve already got someone up there covering it.”

“I know,” Kirby said, “but I think there’s something there for me. I don’t know what it is yet, but I can smell it.” He gave
the publisher a cynical look. “I think it might be my Pulitzer.”

“I know how busy you are, Ms. McAuliffe,” Corey said shyly one day, when he had been in the King County Jail for two and a
half months. “But do you think maybe you could come see me once in a while, even if it’s not about my case?”

Dana peered at him in the half light of the purple interview room. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It’s just that I’m alone so much. I can have
visitors only three hours a week, and the rest of the time I’m all by myself. I eat alone. I exercise alone. Nobody talks
to me, except the guards, and they’re not very sociable. And besides, I always have to watch what I say to them. I always
have to be careful. It’s just so hard, and I get so lonely.”

“Your minister can come more often,” Dana reminded him.

“I know, and he does, as much as he can,” Corey hastened to assure her, but then a sheepish smile spread across his face.
“It’s just that, well, mostly he reads from the Bible, and while it’s very uplifting and all that, it’s not exactly the same
as two people getting together and talking to each other, if you know what I mean.”

Dana smiled. “I know what you mean.”

“You’re really the only one who can come here whenever you want, and get the private room, and all. And I thought, well, maybe
you could find a reason to come more often. Something you forgot to tell me, or a question you forgot to ask. And you know,
if you didn’t have anything about the case to discuss, maybe we could just talk about whatever we felt like. It’s the monotony,
you see. It’s driving me crazy.” He stopped before he blurted out about the headaches, and the nightmares, and the bitter
acid that was roiling around in his stomach now on a pretty regular basis. “But I know how busy you are,” he said instead,
“and I’d understand if you didn’t have time.”

Paul Cotter had long since removed the bulk of Dana’s workload from her calendar, smoothly transitioning her clients to other
partners and associates. The Latham case was now her only priority.

“I’ll come every day, whether I need to or not,” she promised. “And I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“You’re famous,” Sam told her when she finally made it home that evening.

“Why?” she replied. “What did I do?”

“You made the cut on Jonathan Heal’s Prayer Hour.’

“What are you talking about?”

“Apparently, once a week, he selects someone to elevate to his own personal list of living saints, and this week, it seems
to be you.”

“Who is Jonathan Heal?”

“Ah, the joys of working sixteen hours a day,” Sam said with a grin. “You get to miss the really important stuff. Jonathan
Heal is this major televangelist, with a reputed following of millions. He goes around in this ridiculous white suit, preaching
the gospel, and rakes in a fortune. I read somewhere that his real name is Jacob Hunsucker, but he changed it because he didn’t
think that name would inspire the flocks.”

“How did I get to be a part of all this?” Dana asked.

“Oh, your sainthood was conferred because you’re representing the great protector of the preborn. According to him, you are
noble, you are virtuous, you are the epitome of modern woman.”

“Do I leap tall buildings with a single bound?”

Sam chuckled. “I think he left that part out. But he did get in that you are the only hope of a morally bankrupt nation.”

“Rubbish,” Dana declared.

J
oan Wills had every intention of becoming a partner at Cotter Boland and Grace, and sooner rather than later, if she had anything
to say about it. Recruited right out of the University of Washington Law School, she had worked for the firm for seven years,
doing every bit of scut work demanded of her, and quietly biding her time.

There was no question in her mind that she was the sharpest associate in the office. According to her time sheets, she was
by far the most sought after, and she had easily logged twice as many billable hours as any of the other eleven associates.
Additionally, in the last couple of years, she had been acknowledged several times by the executive committee for bringing
in significant business of her own. If that didn’t qualify her for partner status, she didn’t know what would.

She was certainly aware of Cotter Boland’s less than pro-feminist history. But Joan figured she had an ace in the hole on
that score. Dana McAuliffe had led the way. And as far as Joan was concerned, Dana McAuliffe walked on water.

Smooth as satin, soft as cashmere, hard as nails, and nothing
less than totally professional, the firm’s only female partner exemplified everything the senior associate wanted to be. Let
her male counterparts idolize Paul Cotter or Elton Grace, Joan was perfectly content to learn at the feet of the person she
had chosen to emulate.

When the invitation came for her to sit second chair on the Latham trial, the thirty-two-year-old attorney knew this was the
final test. Office scuttlebutt had it that a new partner was going to be made next year, and that Joan was on a short list
of three senior associates being considered. She felt confident, if she performed well on what was arguably going to be the
most important case the firm had ever handled, it should all but assure her of the offer.

At the very least, she knew Dana would go to bat for her. During the past couple of years, the two attorneys had moved past
being just colleagues to become friends. It would not have been unusual, for someone looking, to find them discussing everything
from legal matters to shoe styles over yogurt in the lunchroom. Occasionally, when they worked late, they would go out to
dinner together. And on one occasion, Joan joined Dana and Molly at the symphony to hear Sam play.

Despite some in the firm occasionally confusing them, the two women hardly resembled each other, with some three inches in
height and thirty pounds in weight separating them. Although, as expected, tailored suits dominated their work wardrobes,
Joan preferred the charcoal grays and navy blues to Dana’s choice of soft colors. While both had blond hair, Joan’s was more
strawberry than honey, and she wore it somewhat shorter than Dana’s flowing shoulder length. And where Dana’s eyes were large
and brown, Joan’s were hazel and slightly slanted. Still, there was a sense of likeness about them that was obvious to most.

“I was sure one of the partners would have taken second chair on this one,” Joan said breathlessly. “Or at least one of the
boys.”

“It was my choice to make,” Dana replied with a shrug. “And it was made with Paul Cotter’s full approval.” In fact, Cotter
had been downright enthusiastic when Dana discussed it with him.

“Don’t get me wrong, I want the case,” the associate hastened to add. “But I have to tell you, right up front, even if it
costs me the job, I’m pretty much pro-choice.”

Dana smiled. “That’s okay,” she said. “You’re in good company.”

“Well, what I mean is, to put it politely, I’m not particularly sympathetic to our client.”

“Neither was I, at the beginning,” Dana conceded. “But go spend some time with him, as I have. You might want to reconsider.”

Joan raised a cynical eyebrow. “Come on. Are you going to tell me you think maybe he didn’t do it?”

“No. I’m going to tell you I think maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

It was a nonanswer, of course, but Joan had enormous respect for Dana’s intelligence and judgment.

“Interesting,” she murmured, but her mind was already beginning to whirl. If she had a hand in getting Corey Latham an acquittal,
in the biggest case that had ever hit the state of Washington, she was certain the partners at Cotter Boland would not be
able to deny her.

“My name is Joan Wills,” she told the alleged Hill House bomber from her side of the metal table in the purple interview room.
“I’m going to be assisting Dana McAuliffe with your defense.”

A hollow-eyed young man, accustomed enough to his
shackles, she noted, to have become adept at the jailhouse shuffle, sat down and looked back at her without expression.

“Thank you,” he said politely.

“Don’t start thanking me until we get you out of this,” Joan responded with a bright smile.

“Will you?” he asked in a dull voice that suggested he did not expect a reply.

“Shouldn’t we?” she countered.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. “Did you have a choice?” he asked.

“About what?”

“Could you have said no, you didn’t want to represent me?”

“Sure I could’ve,” she replied easily, because it was true. “No one at my firm is forced to work on a case if he or she doesn’t
want to.” She paused for a moment. “Actually, I wanted this case,” she added. “You see, it’ll probably make me a partner,
even if we lose. But it’ll definitely make me a partner if we win. Now, does that make you feel better or worse?”

He laughed, in spite of himself, it seemed. “Better, I guess,” he said. “You’re a lot like Dana. You tell it like it is.”

“Don’t worry, whatever else goes down, neither one of us is going to lie to you,” Joan assured him, pleased by the comparison.
“We guarantee to give you the bad news right along with the good.”

“I’d like to be able to do something, you know, to help you with my defense,” he said. “But I don’t know what more I can say
other than I didn’t do it.”

“Trust me, you’re going to help,” Joan said. “When we go to trial, you’ll have the opportunity to get up on the witness stand
and make that very statement to the jury, just as persuasively as you know how.”

“The thing is, I look in the mirror, and I see the me I think I am, the me that everyone who knows me knows I am,” he
said, and she could hear the desperation in his voice. “Then I read the newspapers, and they’re describing someone I don’t
even recognize.”

“That’s not unusual,” she told him. “In fact, the media is famous for it. What they don’t know, they make up out of whole
cloth.”

He looked at her with anguished eyes. “But how is the jury going to know which one is the real me?” he asked.

“Okay, I went and saw him,” Joan reported to Dana.

“And?”

The associate shook her head. “I always thought I was a pretty good judge of character, that I could tell, just by looking
at someone, what was what. But this guy, I don’t know. I admit, I was absolutely convinced the son of a bitch did it. I was
going to go to the jail and meet him, and come back and tell you it was time to get the stardust out of your eyes.”

Dana chuckled. “And now?”