"Now," Stu said, his voice purposely low and calm, "the next thing is to report to you on what happened up at Ralph's on the night of September second, and I guess that falls to me, since I'm our elected law enforcement officer."
He had quiet again, but like the applause that had greeted Brad's closing remarks, this wasn't a quiet Stu liked. They were leaning forward, intent, their expressions greedy. It made him feel disquieted and bewildered, as if the Free Zone had changed radically over the last forty-eight hours and he didn't know what it was anymore. It made him feel the way he'd felt when he had been trying to find his way out of the Stovington Plague Center - a fly caught and struggling in an invisible spider's web. There were so many faces he didn't recognize out there, so many strangers...
But there was no time to think about it now.
He described the events leading up to the explosion briefly, omitting Fran's last-minute premonition; with the mood they were in, they didn't need that.
"Yesterday morning Brad and Ralph and I went up and poked through the ruins for three hours or more. We found what seemed to be a dy***ite bomb wired up to a walkie-talkie. It appears that this bomb was planted in the living room closet. Bill Scanlon and Ted Frampton found another walkie-talkie up in Sunrise Amphitheater, and we assume the bomb was set off from there. It - "
"Assume, my ass!" Ted Frampton shouted from the third row. "It was that bastard Lauder and his little whore!"
An uneasy murmur ran through the room.
These are the good guys? They don't give a shit about Nick and Sue and Chad and the rest. They're like a lynch-mob, and all they care about is catching Harold and Nadine and hanging them... like a charm against the dark man.
He happened to catch Glen's eye; Glen offered him a very small, very cynical shrug.
"If one more person yells out from the floor without bein recognized, I'm gonna declare this meeting closed and you can talk to each other," Stu said. "This is no bull session. If we don't keep to the rules, where are we?" Ted Frampton was staring up at him angrily, and Stu stared back. After a few moments, Ted dropped his eyes.
"We suspect Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross. We have some good reasons, some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence. But there's no real hard evidence against them yet, and I hope you'll keep that in mind."
A sullen eddy of conversation rippled and disappeared.
"I only said that to say this," Stu continued. "If they happen to wander back into the Zone, I want them brought to me. I'll lock them up and Al Bundell will see to it that they're tried... and a trial means they get to tell their side, if they got one. We're... we're supposed to be the good guys here. I guess we know where the bad guys are. And being the good guys means we have to be civilized about this."
He looked out at them hopefully and saw only puzzled resentment. Stuart Redman had seen two of his best friends blown to hell, those eyes said, and here he was, taking up for the ones who did it.
"For what it's worth to you, I think they're the ones," he said. "But it's got to be done right. And I'm here to tell you that it will be."
Eyes boring into him. Over a thousand pairs, and he could feel the thought behind each one: What's this shit you're talking, anyway? They're gone. Gone west. You act like they were on a two-day bird-watching trip.
He poured a glass of water and drank some, hoping to get rid of the dryness in his throat. The taste of it, boiled and flat, made him grimace. "Anyway, that's where we stand on that," he said lamely. "What's next, I guess, is filling the committee back up to strength. We're not goin to do that tonight, but you ought to be thinkin about who you want - " A hand shot up on the floor and Stu pointed. "Go ahead. Just identify yourself so everybody'll know who you are."
"I'm Sheldon Jones," a big man in a wool-plaid shirt said. "Why don't we just go ahead and get two new ones tonight? I nom'nate Ted Frampton over there."
"Hey, I second that!" Bill Scanlon yelled. "Beautiful!"
Ted Frampton clasped his hands and shook them over his head to scattered applause, and Stu felt that despairing, disoriented feeling sweep over him again. They were supposed to replace Nick Andros with Ted Frampton? It was like one of those sick jokes. Ted had tried the Power Committee and had found it too much like work. He had drifted over to the Burial Committee and that had seemed to suit him better, although Chad had mentioned to Stu that Ted was one of those fellows who seemed able to stretch a coffee break into a lunch hour and a lunch hour into a half-day vacation. He had been quick to join yesterday's hunt for Harold and Nadine, probably because it offered a change. He and Bill Scanlon had stumbled on the walkie-talkie up at Sunrise through sheer luck (and to give Ted his due, he had admitted that), but since the find he had acquired a swagger that Stu didn't like at all.