Act of God (60 page)

As he combined the acetylsalicylic acid crystals with the sulfuric acid, warmed them in cooking oil, and carefully added the
sodium nitrate, he spoke about Joshua Clune.

“That young man saw
something
on the night of the bombing. He almost certainly saw the man who planted the bomb. He identified a windbreaker and a seaman’s
cap, owned by the defendant, as being consistent with what he saw the delivery man, as he called him, wearing. He says he
saw the defendant. Now, whether you accept his testimony or not, he gave it, under oath, and to the best of his ability.”

As he dumped the aspirin mixture into a bowl of crushed ice, and waited for the bright yellow crystals to form, Brian detailed
the trace materials found in the defendant’s possession.

“How many coincidences must we have before they stop being coincidental?” he asked.

As he pulverized the yellow crystals into powder, he talked about redirected anger and frustration.

“How do we get rid of real anger? We vent it, that’s how. But the defendant couldn’t take it out on his wife, because he loved
her. So he looked around for something that would serve as a surrogate target, and give him that needed sensation of triumphing
over his humiliation. Because that’s what Corey Latham’s anger was all about, humiliation. His wife had taken something away
from him, without his permission, and he was powerless to do anything about it. She had destroyed his seed, without a second
thought, and he was furious. Carl Thorson told you how furious he was. So furious that he couldn’t simply forgive his wife
and forget it ever happened, as he would like you to believe. No, he had to do something with that anger. And we know what
he did with it. He redirected it at Hill House.”

And finally, as he mixed the powder with the proper measures of wax and Vaseline, he turned to religion.

“You heard the defendant, ladies and gentlemen. He said it himself. In a conflict between God’s will and man’s law, God wins.
He as good as told you, not just that he did it, but why he did it. Who knows what he thought, in his anger and frustration?
Who knows what twisted logic his mind must have followed to convince himself that God wanted him to destroy Hill House, and
that he’d get away with it? We may never know. But what we do know, what all those grieving people over there in the spectator
section know far too well, is the result.”

He picked up the plastique he had created, and held it out to the jury. “Make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen, Corey
Latham did it,” he said slowly, deliberately. “And this is what he did it with. Make him pay for it. Find him guilty as charged.”

The jurors stared in fascination at: the yellowish blob. The Hill House survivors wept softly. Brian Ayres took his seat.
Dana McAuliffe sighed. Court was adjourned for the day.

Abraham Bendali cleared his throat. It was Thursday, and it was November. The skies were heavy with rain, and the trial of
Corey Latham was drawing to an end.

“Ms. McAuliffe, are you prepared to begin your closing argument at this time?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Dana replied.

“You may proceed.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Dana rose, buttoning the jacket of her burgundy suit as she walked slowly toward the jury.

“It occurred to me during the prosecutor’s argument yesterday what he and I are really doing here,” she began, looking each
juror right in the eye. “We’re spinning.”

She noted confusion in several of the jurors’ expressions.

“That’s right, we’re spin doctors,” she told them. “We’ve taken identical pieces of information, and we’ve twisted them and
turned them, and painted them, and dressed them up until
we think we’ve got them supporting our particular position. Now you may ask, how is that possible? How can the identical information
be interpreted in two such totally opposite ways? And of course our answer would be: because there are always two sides to
a story. And just like politicians who want your vote, we try to put the most convincing slant we can on our side of the story.
Because, in a way, we’re asking for your vote.”

Understanding replaced confusion and Dana even caught a slight nod from John Quinn.

“Do we have two sides to this story?” she asked. “You bet we do, and they’re about as opposite as they can be. Yesterday,
the prosecutor told you the state’s side. Today, I’d like to speak for Corey Latham. And don’t worry, I’m not going to divert
your attention from the facts by standing up here and making a bomb while I talk. On the contrary, I want your total concentration
to be on what I’m saying. Because it’s the cold, hard facts that should decide this case—not some sleight of hand.”

The jurors, with perhaps a modicum of relief, seemed to relax in their seats.

“The prosecutor has suggested that the police followed the evidence where it led them. But I suspect it was just the opposite.
After all, there they were, Seattle’s finest, working for a solid month on the biggest case in the city’s history, with nothing
to show for it. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, sad and frustrating though it may be, not every crime has a resolution.
Sometimes, there’s just not enough evidence to make an arrest or to get a conviction. But they couldn’t let that happen here.
No, this crime was different, and the public and political pressure on the police to solve it was enormous. Then one day,
from out of the blue, an anonymous letter conveniently arrives. And from that moment on, this case had nothing to do with
following the evidence, and everything to do with finding the Navy officer the letter referred to, and selecting the evidence
that would best fit around him.”

With a twinge of regret, Brian noted that the jury seemed just as caught up in his opponent’s presentation as they had been
in his. Karleen McKay’s eyes were fairly popping.

“Did they have a perfectly good candidate already at hand in Jack Pauley?” Dana asked. “Of course they did, but somehow he
just seems to have slipped through the cracks of a shoddy investigation. And he’s just the one we happened to find out about.
There could be others. But no, the police zeroed in on Corey Latham, decided they could make him into a viable suspect, and
stopped looking.”

Here, Dana paused deliberately, and Allison Ackerman smiled to herself, thinking that the defense attorney’s sense of timing
was sheer perfection.

“Now, on the surface, finding those trace materials, reputedly from the bomb, in Corey’s car and in his garage might seem
significant,” she acknowledged, “except that, when you look a little deeper, you find a reasonable and corroborative explanation
for every single one of them. What I find significant here are the ingredients they
didn’t
find. No traces of methyl, no wax, no Vaseline. Are they trying to suggest that Corey was sloppy, or that he was very selective
in how he cleaned up after himself?”

She shook her head. In the jury box, Stuart Dunn frowned. “The prosecutor refers to all these coincidences as reasons to convict,
when in reality, coincidences are all they are,” she continued. “Cliché or not, Corey just happened to be in the wrong place
at the wrong time. And when there’s an avalanche coming down on top of you, there’s not a whole lot you can do to get out
of the way.”

Dana paced up and down a few steps and then stopped.

“And look what they did to Joshua Clune,” she declared. “They grabbed him off the street, locked him up in a cell, and scared
him half to death. I wouldn’t be surprised if they threatened to throw away the key if he didn’t do what they wanted him to
do. So Joshua, who couldn’t identify my client from either the
newspaper or the television just six weeks after the crime, eight months later positively picks him out as the person he saw
bring the bomb to Hill House.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and noted Rose Gregory nodding as well.

“Now, did Elise Latham have an abortion?” Dana continued. “Yes, she did. No one contests that. Was Corey angry about it? Yes,
he was, and understandably so. Because she didn’t just kill his baby, she tried to deceive him about it. When he found out,
he got angry, very angry, justifiably angry. But by everyone’s account, he went to counseling, he forgave his wife, and he
came to terms with his grief. And the prosecution offered absolutely no evidence to the contrary. Not a single witness suggested
that he was still dealing with anger in January, much less by February. And speaking of Elise, she was sleeping right beside
Corey on the night the bomb was planted. She told you herself that she was a light sleeper, and that she would have awakened
if he’d gotten out of bed. And what did the police do? They ignored her, because to accept her word would have destroyed their
flimsy case, and they couldn’t allow that to happen. In desperation, the prosecutor even tried to suggest, without a shred
of evidence to back it up, that Corey had somehow managed to drug her cocoa. But the plain fact is, she didn’t wake up, because
Corey never
got
up. It’s just that simple.”

For a moment, Dana seemed to debate with herself over something and then come to a decision.

“I could keep on going,” she suggested, “and detail all the flaws in the state’s case. But this trial has already lasted long
enough. It’s time for you to do your job. And as you go into the jury room to debate the fate of Corey Latham, I ask you to
remember that the prosecution was unable to produce a single piece of reliable evidence that ties my client to this crime.
Not one. Everything they gave you was coincidental, speculative, or just plain fabricated. And you can’t simply say it doesn’t
matter
because you think he did it, or you want him to have done it, or if the police say he did it, then he must have done it. It
has to be ’I have listened carefully to all the evidence presented, and I have determined, past any reasonable doubt, that
he is guilty.’ If you cannot do that, then Corey Latham is not guilty.”

She stopped for a moment then, and looked at each juror in turn.

“The bombing of Hill House was a terrible crime,” she told them. “A great many people died for no rational reason, and the
anguish we all feel about that is as valid now as it was the day it happened. But you must find a way to set aside that anguish,
to shut out public opinion, and to avoid outside pressure. Most of all, you must resist the urge to convict Corey Latham out
of hand, simply because you believe
someone
should pay for what happened, because that would be just as terrible a crime.”

At this point, Dana seemed to square her shoulders for what was to come next.

“I have to say a word now about the messenger.” she said with quiet dignity. “We usually say, if you don’t like the message,
don’t shoot the messenger. But in this case, given all the recent publicity which I’m sure you could not have avoided seeing
and hearing about, I would ask you not to discount the message because of what you may think about the messenger. Whatever
I may have done in my personal life has no bearing on the matter before you. In the final analysis, trials aren’t about judging
the attorneys, they’re about judging defendants.”

She sighed.

“I’ve come to know Corey pretty well since this all began, and to know him is to understand that he could never have committed
this crime. Not just because it goes against everything he believes in, but because it goes against everything he is. Now
I realize that you don’t know him as I do Rather, you know what the witnesses told you about him, you know what the attorneys
told you about him, you even know what Corey’s told you about
himself. But you don’t really know him. So you must judge him based solely on the information you’ve been given, and on your
instincts. I’ve sat here watching you for the past six weeks, probably just as closely as you’ve been watching us. And you
know what I think? I think Corey can trust your instincts. I think he can trust them with his life.”

Thoroughly drained, Dana sank into her chair because this was what it had always been about—pushing everything else in her
life aside to pull out the best that was within her in defense of her client. It was what she had always been about. She wondered
why it felt so hollow.

A
llison Ackerman arranged for a neighbor to take care of her animals. Then she packed her suitcase, as she had been instructed,
although she had no idea how many days she would be away. Since it was the first time she had actually served on a jury, she
had no idea about a lot of things. For example, how disturbing it was to have an actual person’s life in her hands.

Her mystery novels usually ended with the apprehension of the guilty party. They rarely got to trial. They never dealt with
the issues or the emotions of jurors. And neither had she. She wished now that she could make some kind of an excuse, or get
sick perhaps, or just plain quit. But of course she couldn’t. She was stuck in this mess for the duration, whatever that meant,
and she would have to make the best of it.

Stuart Dunn could barely contain his excitement as he packed his bag. This was the American justice system in action, and
he was a part of it. What a tale he would have to tell his students.