Fighting Chance(46)

Most famous at the moment, Janice reminded herself when she went into her office for office hours.

She didn’t know what she’d expected when she turned on her computer. She did know that the arraignment was supposed to be today. That had been on the news last night, even though cameras were not being allowed in the courtroom. Cameras in the courtroom were something Pennsylvania Justice strongly supported. The more a record existed of every phase of a case, the more likely it was that they could get innocent people out of jail once the injustice had been done.

At least, that was the theory. Janice was now fairly sure that Pennsylvania Justice supported cameras in the courtroom because Kasey liked to see herself on television. Some people just couldn’t get enough of being made a fuss of. You saw that with Kasey all the time. She had to be the queen bee at every party. She had to be the person who stood up at the microphone and announced policy at press conferences, and announced the results of investigations, too.

Somebody else might have given the spotlight to one of the people who did the really important work, but not Kasey. No matter how many hours the volunteer lawyers spent working on cases, no matter how many mountains of material the volunteer researchers looked through to find the kink in the armor of conviction, no matter how much work other people did, it was always Kasey up there, being the Public Face of the Organization.

Well, Janice thought, that kind of thing always ended badly. That kind of thing ruined organizations. It put an end to all the good work. Janice knew that for certain, because she’d seen half a dozen organizations come apart.

The first of the Web sites Janice managed to get to load was WTFX, which was, of course, Fox. Janice never watched the Fox News cable channel, because it was nothing but lies and propaganda, but she watched all the local channels in turn, because no single one of them ever seemed to have what she needed for weather.

She made a face at the Fox local anchor and tried again. This time, the Web site for WPVI actually managed to load.

And although ABC was nothing more than the usual patriarchal imperialism, it had a few things going on.

What was on WPVI was the arraignment, which was what Janice was looking for, but it wasn’t the arraignment she had been expecting.

She hated to admit it, but Kasey had made one relevant point. If that priest pleaded guilty, there would be no trial. And if there were no trial, that would be the end of any publicity Janice could get on the subject of the betrayal of juvenile justice.

Kasey Holbrook might be willing to use up all the leverage she had just to get a bit of publicity for herself, but Janice was not. The world was full of injustice, and it was going to stay that way if people didn’t get out and do something about it.

Janice had always had a picture of herself getting out and doing something about it.

She settled in to read the news story on the arraignment—it was the lead story; of course it was—certain that she was going to find a recap of the whole case. Instead, she found a long, rambling piece that made no sense to her at all, all about pleas and what you couldn’t plead to and how the judge had been very angry with Father Tibor Kasparian.

Of course the judge had been angry with Father Tibor Kasparian. Judges were always angry with priests when priests ended up in court. That was because priests and judges were icons of the patriarchy, and when one of them got arrested, it threatened the entire power structure.

Janice read through the piece all the way to the end. Then she read through it again. Then she rechecked the home page. There were no other stories about the case.

By then, she could feel the steam coming out of her ears, but she held it back. She needed to be calm. She needed to be clearheaded. She brought up CNN. It had a story about the case, too, and right on the home page, but like the one on WPVI, it said nothing about the background and nothing about Martha Handling.

Janice closed her eyes and tried to think. It seemed impossible, but there it was. They were missing the entire point. They were wandering around talking about trivialities, and the real story was right under their noses. They were doing that even though Janice herself had tried to tell them, just yesterday, what it was really all about.

The least she had the right to expect was a whole slew of stories that exposed Martha Handling for what she had really been. Janice had counted on those stories. Without those stories, there was no point at all to anything that had happened.

The steam was rising and rising. Janice thought her head was going to explode—literally, right there in the office, sending blood and bone and brains all over the office walls.

She hadn’t bothered to unpack her tote bag when she came into the office. It was sitting on the floor at her feet. She picked it up and got to her feet. She was supposed to log off the computer when she was finished with it, but she didn’t have time. She held down the Start button until the machine kicked off. Then she held down the Start button again until it started to reboot.