Grantville Gazette - Volume V (21 page)

"The only thing that he couldn't really help me with was history and social sciences, which was his own field," Natalie said. "That was sort of funny. But people as individuals just won't follow patterns. There can be some general patterns of how they behave—that's sociology—but no one individual will necessarily do what's expected. Something else crosses a person's mind and he goes off on some tangent. Even so, what he did show me was a lot of help. Enough for me to get a grip on my classes again. When I had 'having to remember ever single little detail' down to just one course or so every semester, that was manageable."

She stood up. "Anyway, that's why I suggested that they let Arnold take a look at this stuff. He sees patterns, too, but in a different way than people in math and statistics see them. Maybe there is some kind of other connection in this graft scheme, something that the rest of us have been missing."

"This letter that Noelle sent is very interesting," Carol said, "even though it's from way last spring. Combined with the fact that Jim Fritz was right in what he showed your brother. I wouldn't put it the way he did, but these orders from Franconia are, in fact, the 'wrong shape.' Way too much of some items as compared to any reasonable expectation of need. Even including the bypass project at Forchheim. Let me run some computations, since I still have a working computer."

"Thanks," Joe Stull said. "And thanks for the loan of your statistician, Tony, since Carol really belongs to your department rather than to mine."

"If the two of you don't mind," Carol said, "Natalie would like to talk to Arnold about this. She says that in a way she sees things in shapes and patterns almost the same way Jim Fritz does. That's why she went into math in the first place. The difference, of course, is that she can deal with people too, even if sometimes she's not the most tactful person on the planet, so she was able to go into teaching. But she says that Arnold sees things in a lot of different ways."

"I don't see why not, myself" Tony said. "But let us talk to Ed Piazza first, and go at it through the proper channels."

"Don't expect some kind of a magic bullet," Carol warned.

"I don't just want to get Horace," Ed Piazza said. "I want to get him for the scam. I want to make an example to end all examples. I want to throw the fear of God into anybody who is feeling tempted to go and do likewise. In other words, I'm not content with the equivalent of a mail fraud conviction. Go ahead and take Drachhausen down on the attempted rape charge. But for Horace and the Cunninghams, hold off. Let Carol finish the year or so we figured it would take to get to the bottom of it all. Have Gordon Fritz go on keeping his eyes open at the Grantville Research Center. Go on collecting data from Franconia and Erfurt. Continue collating it all together. We can afford to be patient for a while."

"Can you explain this 'patterning' to me?" Carol asked with some exasperation.

Arnold Bellamy looked a little frustrated. "It's seeing underneath what you see on the surface."

"Can you give me a concrete example of it. Something that I would understand?"

He twisted his pencil in his fingers for a few minutes. "In the spring of Natalie's junior year, I accompanied her to a program of the mathematics honor society on campus. You must understand that at the time, while I was getting my secondary certification, I had very little money, almost all of which came from tutoring. Natalie had suggested that if she mentioned to others how much I had assisted her and said that I was right there, I might find some additional pupils."

I just bet that's what Nat was thinking. Carol kept this opinion to herself.

"In any case," Arnold said, "she was standing at the end of the buffet table, looking like herself. That is, her hair should have been trimmed three weeks earlier, part of her dress was too loose, part of her dress was a little too tight, and while it was sensible of her to have worn winter boots with grip soles, considering the weather, all of the other women present were wearing heels."

"Quite recognizable," Carol said.

"The woman next to her was the wife of Professor Cornaro. She was generally considered to be an attractive woman. I began to ask myself why, and look for the underlying patterns. Finally, I decided that Mrs. Cornaro's configuration was designed to display clothing well. Her shoulders were comparatively broad, her body had few protrusions, and the proportions of the upper and lower torso did not interrupt the line of the fabric."

"I see." Carol was having some trouble maintaining an appropriately solemn face, but she managed.

"Then I looked at Natalie in more detail, and began to diagnose the structural pattern of her body that underlay the poor fit of the clothing she was wearing. I was making reasonably good progress on doing this when the cocktail hour ended and people sat down for the meal."

"Too bad the analysis had to be cut short," Carol cooed.

"I did, in fact, get three new people to tutor, so the evening worked out very well," Arnold continued. "But thereafter I found that I had increasing difficulty in maintaining a properly professional attitude when I worked with Natalie. Having, ah, once visualized her component parts."

"I'm sure you did your very best to maintain an appropriate detachment," Carol said deadpan. As a matter of fact, she
was
sure of it. Arnold being the kind of guy he was.

"The results of having done it once were occasionally seriously embarrassing. I found that I was continually tempted to repeat the process, although there was no real need for me to do so once I had the data. But that is the essential procedure I am trying to apply to this mass of economic data, for each section of the evidence," Arnold said. "To look at the surface and see whether or not it conforms to the substratum. If not, to determine what the contours of the substratum are."

"Honestly," Carol said to Ron that evening, "it had to be the most convoluted description of the process generally known as 'undressing her with his eyes' that I have ever heard in my life."

Ron Koch shouted with laughter. "We all know that the honorable Arnold Bellamy would never have been known to do such a thing. Of course we do."

"Having been known to do something is a different thing from having done it," Carol said. "That's what evidence is about."

Being patient might have worked. By the late winter of 1635, they were indeed very close to being able to spring the trap on Horace Bolender and his associates.

Except that Horace attempted to contest Fran's divorce suit and obtain custody of Dustin and Damien.

Which resulted in Fran calling Laura Jo and spilling the beans in regard to Horace and Dan having set up Sheryl with Drachhausen.

Upon which Laura Jo sent the younger children down to Kamsdorf to stay with Sheryl and called Preston Richards.

She didn't even try to bargain for a reduced sentence in exchange for turning state's evidence.

As Tony Adducci commented more than once, when you came right down to it, if country music didn't say it all, it said all that was necessary. And it dealt with people and their emotions and feelings. It was never about economic development scams any more than it was about Catholic canon law. He had found another clear exception to the principle that country music said it all.

And he still hadn't found a song that matched, "
Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.
"

"The court will adjourn until one o'clock P.M." Judge Maurice Tito rose from the bench.

In the courtroom, an elderly man rose, pulling himself up by the handle bars of his walker. "Your Honor, may I have the privilege of speaking with you and the parties' attorneys in chambers before the court resumes its session? The matter concerns both a point of law and a point of fact which appear to me to be relevant to the case currently before the court."

Tito looked down. It was rare for Thomas Price Riddle, Esquire, to make such a request. The frail father of Chief Justice Charles Riddle had been eighty years old when the Ring of Fire occurred. He was training most of Grantville's new lawyers, but he almost never took an active part in judicial proceedings. This morning he had attended in his capacity as mentor and shepherd to several of the students who were reading law under his guidance, to watch Laura Koudsi, the first of his students to complete her training from start to finish since the Ring of Fire, handle her first divorce case. There was no apparent reason for him to intervene in
Murphy v. Murphy
, so whatever concerned him must be urgent.

"Request granted, Mr. Riddle" he said briefly.

In the greater privacy of his chambers, he asked, "What's bothering you, Tom?"

"Some of this morning's testimony. In relation to other information in regard to the case that is general public knowledge. At least it is general public knowledge if a person has lived in Grantville long enough."

"In what way?"

"Do I have your permission to begin with something that may seem quite irrelevant at first?" Tom Riddle asked. "And that you all"—he included the two attorneys in his gesture—"bear with me for a while if I seem to be a maundering old man?"

"I've never heard you maunder, Tom, but I will certainly bear with you as long as you wish," Tito answered. He was all too well aware that his own background for the job he held was far less comprehensive in the way of legal education than that of Grantville's senior lawyer. Ten years on the Fairmont police force and teaching several courses in criminal justice to aspiring candidates for law enforcement jobs at the Tech Center did not equate to full preparation to handle civil cases and domestic issues. He relied heavily on digests and summaries.

As had Sheldon Francisco during the two previous years, before he moved to the State of Thuringia-Franconia's Department of Justice. Sheldon had taught a couple of courses in business law at the Tech Center before the Ring of Fire. Neither of them were lawyers. Just, in this world, judges.

Grantville's legal system was to a considerable extent a thing of baling wire and binder twine, duct tape and expedients. The town had not been the county seat. No courthouse. No associated personnel. At the time of the Ring of Fire, the town had exactly one practicing lawyer, Chuck Riddle. Mike Stearns had appointed him chief justice for the NUS, now the state. As such, he could not really provide guidance to the judges in Grantville's own court system, since the court over which he presided was the only avenue of appeal for the decisions its judges handed down.

Thomas Price Riddle, the intervener, was the chief justice's father. Martin Riddle, the prosecuting attorney, was his son. Martin had been in his third year of law school. The legal counsel to Ed Piazza, the president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, was Chuck's daughter Mary Kathryn, who had been in her first year of law school. It was practically incestuous. It was also unavoidable until such time as Grantville produced more lawyers. With the result that Tom Riddle, aged eighty and already unwell, did his best to become a law school faculty. Which he had been doing, now, for four years. To a dozen or so students, most of whom had other full-time jobs, and who, half-trained or not, were subject to being called away for months at a time for such projects as the special commission sent to Franconia in 1633.

"As a younger man, as you know, I practiced law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for some years."

The other three nodded. One of the additional obligations that Tom Riddle had assumed was presiding over some of the inevitable courts-martial that had occurred during the past four years. He had provided advice and counsel to the judges and attorneys alike during others.

"That is not directly relevant," Riddle continued, "except that those years of practice took me for quite some time to Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas. Occasionally to nearby installations, including the Rock Island Arsenal. I was in the Middle West long enough to become familiar with the legal systems prevailing there. These were not always the same as West Virginia law, by any means. And under the 'full faith and credit' provision . . ."

As the older man spoke, Maurice Tito's stomach cramped, clenched, and began to sink down toward his knees. He had a premonition that whatever came next was not going to be good. He nodded his head.

Laura Koudsi looked totally bewildered.

Johann Georg Hardegg looked totally apprehensive.

Riddle continued. "The newspaper coverage of the shooting at the Central Funeral Home during Juliann Stull's funeral in July included a statement by Patricia (Fitzgerald) Murphy to the effect that the first time Dennis Stull proposed to her was in 1965."

Tito nodded.

"You were not in Grantville in 1965. Your family lived in Fairmont, and if I recall correctly, you were about eight years old?"

"Yes," Tito said. "I turned eight in October of that year. Although at that time my family was living in Clarksburg. We didn't move to Fairmont until I was fourteen."

"My hypothesis applies, though. You have no family connections in Grantville other than those arising through the fact that you married Renee Warner. And in 1965, you were neither old enough nor in a position to be aware of most of what was happening in Grantville." Riddle leaned back in his chair.

"Perfectly true," Tito said.

"Attorney Hardegg, representing Francis Murphy, was certainly not in Grantville at the time, considering that he was born in 1598 in Saalfeld in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg."

Johann Georg Hardegg inclined his head.

"And," Tom Riddle smiled at his former student, "Laurie here would not be born for another thirteen years."

She blushed a little. She realized that she probably knew even less about the gossip that had been current in Grantville in 1964 and 1965 than Maurice Tito did. Her parents, in fact, were more or less the judge's contemporaries, and thus probably not fully conversant with the gossip of the time. Her father Simon was Tito's own age and her mother Dina wouldn't have been more than five or so.