Shadows (19 page)

Susan had her
hands between her knees. She raised a hand in apology,
saying,
“
No problem. I understand.
”

The morning dragged. From
where she sat, she could see the clock above the serving line
inside the cafeteria. Slowly, the thin hands beat out the seconds.
Minutes dragged into hours.

Most of those involved in
the trial arrived just before nine. Several of the witnesses sat
silently beside her under the watchful eye of Deputy Mitch
Michelson.

The quorum members walked
silently through the floor, taking their place inside the mayor's
office. Hammond walked past her into the office without making eye
contact, ignoring her entirely.

With the door opening and
closing several times within a matter of minutes, Susan got a feel
for the layout of the room. She'd been in the mayor's spacious
office before. There was a desk at one end, and a lounge area for
informal discussions at the other. Although the office was open
plan, these two areas were separated by the secretary's desk, set
proudly in the middle, right in front of the door.

The layout had changed.
From what she could tell, the lounge was gone. Two desks had been
pushed together at the far end of the room. Five chairs sat behind
the desk, along with five microphones to record the proceeding. A
single chair sat in front of the joined desks, set back about ten
feet. There were additional chairs lining the wall, but that was
all she could make out.

At a little after nine
thirty, the sheriff and the mayor walked out of the sheriff's
office with Charlie behind them. He was being led by one of the
deputies. Chains clinked around his ankles and he struggled to keep
up with the pace of the deputy. His eyes were down. His hands were
locked in shiny, chrome handcuffs. He saw Susan, but there was no
sense of recognition in his eyes. He looked awful, as though he
hadn't slept since he'd been imprisoned. Susan had been in the
sheriff's office on several occasions, but only ever as a visitor
and not a guest of the sheriff, as prisoners were known. She knew
there was a wall-screen in the main cell, showing the poisonous
view of the outside world. The constant glare would have made it
impossible to get a good night's sleep.

She wanted to say something
to Charlie, to give him some encouragement, but the look on the
deputy's face caused her to pause. Charlie shuffled past her
without looking at her. It seemed all he could focus on was the
handcuffs before him.

Susan wiped the tears from
her eyes.

As the trial got underway
she could hear murmurs from within and different voices talking at
various times, but she couldn't make out any distinct words. If the
hours before the trial had dragged, the trial itself was torture.
Minutes seemed like hours. Witnesses were called, one by one, but
for long stretches of time there were no witnesses within the
office, just Charlie, the quorum and two deputies. Outside the
office, Deputy Michelson seemed more interested in her than anyone
else. She could feel him staring at her for hours on
end.

The morning stretched into
the afternoon, and still Susan hadn't been called to give her
testimony. As much as possible, she tried not to allow any
prejudice to blur her thinking, but she invariably found herself
rehearsing questions and answers, trying to preempt any possible
variation that might arise, not wanting to say anything that would
make things worse for Charlie. She resolved to be truthful, but
wanted to focus on his character, his desire to help people, like
the sheriff. She was unsure whether she should mention the secret
level below the IT server room. Would that help his cause or merely
muddy the waters?

A little after four in the
afternoon the sheriff walked out of the office alone.

“
Sheriff?
”
Deputy Michelson asked, getting to
his feet, clearly surprised to see the sheriff emerging by
himself.

“
They're
calling for you, son,
”
he said to the deputy as he walked
away.

“
I ... I
don't understand,
”
Susan said, watching as the deputy
disappeared inside the door to the mayor's office. Sheriff Cann
walked in the other direction. He was crying.

“
What's going
on?
”
she asked, catching up to him. She couldn't figure out
why the quorum would want to talk to a deputy that hadn't been
involved in the case. Why hadn't she been called?

The sheriff
stopped and turned toward her, wiping his eyes as he said,
“
I'm sorry, Sue. I did everything I
could.
”

“
But they
haven't heard from me,
”
she cried.
“
They can't
decide anything without hearing from me, can
they?
”

The sheriff
spoke with slow deliberation.
“
Charlie waived his
right to defense.
”

“
What? Why
would he do that?
”

“
Because he
doesn't want to draw you any deeper into this
mess,
”
the sheriff replied.

“
You can't do
this,
”
Susan protested.
“
You can't send
Charlie to clean.
”

“
I
know,
”
the sheriff said with a weary voice.
“
I couldn't and I won't. I resigned. I'm so sorry, Sue.
There was nothing more I could do. The quorum is demanding that
murder be paid for with a cleaning.
”

“
There must
be something we can do!
”
she
cried.

“
Honey,
”
the sheriff said.
“
I've spent my whole life upholding the will of the Order.
There's a reason we prescribe laws in advance of a crime. It's to
avoid any bias. Without the rule of law, there's only chaos and
anarchy. There's nothing more I can do. When men take the law into
their own hands, there's nothing but injustice.

“
I don't have
to like what happened in there, but I have to live with it,
anything less would be just as wrong. Anything else would cause far
more lives to be lost. Charlie understands that. I understand that.
You need to accept that.
”

Susan stood there shaking
her head.

“
They're
going to let you see him tomorrow morning,
”
the sheriff
continued.
“
You'll get five
minutes before the cleaning.
”

Susan dropped her head in
her hands and sobbed.

The old sheriff put his
arms around her and she buried herself in his chest.

Behind them, the door
opened again. Deputy Michelson was the first person to emerge.
Instead of a bronze badge, he now wore a golden badge on his chest.
He marched over toward Susan and the old sheriff with his hand out,
signaling that they should stop and remain where they were. He had
one hand resting on his revolver, which Susan thought was an
unusually callous gesture toward her and former Sheriff Cann.
Neither of them represented a threat, let alone a threat that would
warrant the use of lethal force. They were both in tears. That they
were shattered by the decision was plain to see. There was no need
for such an overt show of force other than to allow the new sheriff
to exercise his position over the older man, reinforcing the change
in authority. He clearly wanted to avoid either of them making a
scene as the verdict was read.

One of the deputies walked
out of the office and stood on the dais, holding a paper scroll in
front of him. The sheer amount of paper rolled up at either end of
the scroll was absurd by the silo's standards. Paper was a scarce
resource. A full twenty chits would only get you a meager scrap,
perhaps half a page. Aficionados like Charlie saved for months to
buy small notebooks, and here was more paper in once place than
Susan had ever seen in her life.

“
Hear,
hear,
”
the deputy began, calling attention to himself
in a manner that echoed down through dozens of generations within
the silo.
“
In the matter of the court verses Charlie
Pritchard in the murder of Barney McIntyre, the quorum has reached
a majority decision of three-to-two, finding the defendant guilty
of first-degree murder. The prisoner will be sent to clean at
dawn.
”

Susan held her hand over
her mouth, trying not to cry out in anguish.

Another deputy escorted
Charlie back to the sheriff's office as the acting bailiff rolled
up the scroll. Charlie was still bound in leg irons and handcuffs.
He didn't look up, and Susan understood why. As Sheriff Cann had
said, he was protecting her. He'd accepted his fate and could only
fight to protect her from being drawn in as well. It must have
broken his heart as much as it broke hers to be so close and yet so
far apart.

Susan stood there with the
old sheriff, wrapped safely in his arms as the members of the
quorum left. Not one of them looked up, none of them dared make eye
contact with either her or Sheriff Cann, not even Mayor Johns, who
was probably the other dissenting voice. They were subdued, leaving
as though they were scurrying away in defeat, which Susan found
peculiar. Conscience, it seemed, could not rewrite justice so
easily.

Susan wanted to yell at the
quorum, to scream at them, to call them cowards, to curse them as
murderers, to banish them with cries of liar and hypocrite, but she
didn't want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her driven into
a rage. They'd already condemned themselves in the eyes of those
that stood by. No one was fooled by this prostitution of justice.
Besides, they still held the power to prevent her seeing Charlie
one last time. No, for his sake she chose to remain silent. She
would have her day, she determined, but not today. She didn't know
how, but she swore she would find a way to expose them to the silo
as the vile impostors they were. Somehow, she'd find a way to
expose this miscarriage of justice.

“
I know what
you're feeling,
”
the old sheriff said, and he
probably did, she figured.
“
I feel the same way:
cheated.
”

“
What will
you do?
”
she asked.

“
Me? Oh,
don't worry about me. With good legs and a physique like mine, I'll
get a job porting.
”

She grabbed at his waist,
tickling him, forcing him to let go of her to escape her torment.
She appreciated his humor. He was trying to help her deal with what
had happened.

“
Sheriff,
”
she said in a serious tone, refusing
to call him anything other than the title he deserved.
“
Thank you.
”

The old
sheriff nodded, softly adding,
“
I need to go get my
stuff.
”

The dinner service was
starting, with the odd shift worker coming in for an out-of-sync
breakfast. People milled around the cafeteria, eating, drinking,
talking and laughing. Susan sighed. She wasn't hungry, but she was
thirsty, bordering on dehydrated. She grabbed a drink of water and
sat down alone at the table closest to the sheriff's office. No one
sat with her. When the tables filled up, patrons stood, leaning
against the support pillars or against the wall, but no one sat at
the table with her. Was it out of some misplaced fear of being seen
associating with her? Perhaps. Was it pity or some vague notion of
compassion, giving her some privacy? Maybe for some. Or was it to
shun her as an outcast? She suspected that was the case for those
that spoke in hushed whispers around her.

Susan hadn't seen the old
sheriff leave, but he must have, probably while she was in the
bathroom. She was so engrossed in the wall-screen that he could
have walked past without her noticing. There was something
strangely hypnotic about the plume of smoke rising endlessly from
the devastated mound of rocks and boulders, particularly as night
fell and a full moon rose, shining in all its golden
splendor.

Susan was numb. Time was
immaterial. Before she knew it, one of the kitchen staff was wiping
down the tables and turning off the lights. He left her to herself,
working around her with a mop, quietly swishing the matted knot of
rope fibers across the floor with a steady rhythm.

“
How are you
doing?
”
came a gentle voice from behind her.

“
Hey,
Mom,
”
Susan replied, acknowledging her but unconsciously
ignoring the question, not taking her eyes off the massive screen
before her.

“
Don't think
about what's out there, Sue. It'll drive you
mad.
”

Susan nodded. She wanted to
agree with her mother, but the words that came out sounded strange,
as though they'd been spoken by Charlie, not by her.