“Just get us there,” Howie said. “I’ll ride in back with Marcy.”
Once Alec was behind the wheel and all the doors were closed, the yells from the crowd and the bus were muted. Ahead of the Escalade, the police cars and the blue bus were pulling out, moving as slowly as a funeral cortege. Alec fell into line. Howie could see the reporters sprinting up the sidewalk, oblivious of the heat, just wanting to be at the Chicken Coop when Terry arrived. The TV trucks would already be there, parked nose to tail like a herd of grazing mastodons.
“They hate him,” Marcy said. The little eye makeup she had put on—mostly to hide the bags beneath them—had run, giving her a raccoon-like aspect. “He never did anything but good for this town, and they all hate him.”
“That will change when the grand jury refuses to indict,” Howie said. “And they will. I know it, and Samuels knows it, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. In some cases, Marcy, you have to struggle to find even one reasonable doubt. This case is made of them. No way can the grand jury indict.”
“That isn’t what I meant. Are you sure that people will change their minds?”
“Of course they will.”
In the rearview mirror he saw Alec grimace at that, but sometimes a lie was necessary, and this was one of those times. Until the real killer of Frank Peterson was found—if he ever was—the people of Flint City were going to believe that Terry Maitland had gamed the system and gotten away with murder. They would treat him accordingly. But for now all Howie could do was focus on the arraignment.
3
As long as Ralph was dealing with prosaic day-to-day affairs, things like what was for supper, a grocery run with Jeannie, an evening call from Derek at camp (these were less frequent now that the kiddo’s homesickness was abating), he was more or less okay. But when his attention centered on Terry—as it had to now—a kind of uber consciousness set in, as if his mind was trying to reassure itself that everything was just as it always had been: up was up, down was down, and it was just the summer heat in this badly air-conditioned car that was producing fine droplets of sweat under his nose. Each day was to be relished because life was short, he understood that, but too much was just too much. When the mind’s filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.
When the little procession reached the Flint County courthouse, Ralph snuggled in behind the sheriff, noting every hot point of sun on the rear bumper of Doolin’s cruiser: four points in all. The reporters who had been at the county jail were already arriving, streaming into a crowd twice the size of the one that had been waiting at the county jail. They were crammed shoulder to shoulder on the lawn flanking the steps. He could see various station logos on the TV reporters’ polo shirts, and the dark circles of sweat under their arms. The pretty blond anchor from Channel 7 out of Cap City arrived with her hair in a tangle and sweat cutting trenches in her showgirl makeup.
Sawhorses had been set up here, too, but the ebb and flow of the jostling crowd had already knocked some of them askew. A dozen cops, half city police and half sheriff’s department, tried their best to keep the steps and the sidewalk clear. Twelve weren’t enough, in Ralph’s estimation, not nearly, but summer always depleted the ranks.
The reporters jostled for the prime spots on the lawn, unapologetically elbowing the spectators back. The blond anchor from Channel 7 tried to make a place for herself in front, flashing her locally famous smile, and was thwacked by a hastily made sign for her pains. The sign featured a crudely drawn hypodermic needle below the message MAITLAND TAKE YOUR MEDICINE. Her cameraman shoved the guy with the sign backward, shouldering an elderly woman off her feet in the process. Another woman caught her and fetched the cameraman a good one upside the head with her purse. The purse, Ralph noticed (he was currently helpless not to), was faux alligator, and red.
“How did the vultures get here so quick?” Sablo marveled. “Man, they scurry faster than cockroaches when someone turns on the light.”
Ralph only shook his head, looking at the crowd with mounting dismay, trying to see it as a whole, and unable to in his current state of hyper-vigilance. As Sheriff Doolin exited his car (brown uniform shirt untucked on one side above his Sam Browne belt; roll of pink fat peeking through the gap) and opened the rear door so that Terry could get out, someone began shouting, “Needle, needle!”
The crowd picked it up, chanting like fans at a football game.
“NEEDLE! NEEDLE! NEEDLE!”
Terry stared at them, one lock of his neatly combed hair coming loose and hanging down above his left eyebrow. (Ralph felt he could count every strand.) There was a look of pained bewilderment on his face. Seeing people he knows, Ralph thought. People whose kids he taught, people whose kids he coached, people he had to his house for end-of-season barbecues. All of them rooting for him to die.
One of the sawhorse barricades clattered into the street, the crossbar sliding away. People surged onto the sidewalk, a few of them reporters with mics and notebooks, the rest local citizens who looked ready to string Terry Maitland up from the nearest lamppost. Two of the cops on crowd control rushed over and pushed them back, none too gently. Another replaced the barricade, which left the crowd free to break through at another location. Ralph saw what looked like two dozen cell phones taking photos and video.
“Come on,” he said to Sablo. “Let’s get him the fuck inside before they clog the steps.”
They exited the car and hurried toward the courthouse steps, Sablo motioning Doolin and Gilstrap forward. Now Ralph could see Bill Samuels standing inside one of the courthouse doors, looking dumbfounded . . . but why? How could he have not expected this? How could Sheriff Doolin not have expected it? Nor was he himself blameless—why hadn’t he insisted they bring Terry around to the rear doors, where most of the courthouse staff entered?
“Get back, folks!” Ralph shouted. “This is the process, let the process work!”
Gilstrap and the sheriff started Terry toward the steps, one holding each arm. Ralph had time to register (again) Gilstrap’s horrible plaid coat, and to wonder if the man’s wife had picked it out. If so, she must secretly hate him. Now the prisoners in the short bus—who would wait there in the day’s strengthening heat, stewing in their own sweat until the star prisoner’s arraignment was disposed of—added their voices to the auditory melee, some chanting Needle, Needle, others just yipping like dogs or howling like coyotes, pistoning their fists against the mesh covering the open windows.
Ralph turned to the Escalade and raised his open palm to it in a Stop gesture, wanting Howie and Alec Pelley to keep Marcy where she was until Terry was inside and the crowd settled down. It did no good. The streetside back door opened and then she was out, dipping one shoulder and eluding Howie Gold’s grasping hand as easily as she had slipped away from Betsy Riggins in the county jail’s lobby. As she ran to catch up with her husband, Ralph noted her low heels and a shaving cut on one calf. Her hand must have trembled, he thought. When she called Terry’s name, the cameras swung toward her. There were five in all, their lenses like glazed eyes. Someone threw a book at her. Ralph couldn’t read the title, but he knew that green jacket. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee. His wife had read it for her book club. The cover came loose and one of the flaps fluttered. The book hit her shoulder and bounced off. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Marcy!” Ralph shouted, leaving his place by the steps. “Marcy, over here!”