Fighting Chance(9)

Except for the eyes. The eyes had been—absolutely literally—unbelievable.

John-Ray broke out into a huge grin. “I did it before,” he said, almost hooting. “I did it twice before, and I can prove it.”

I did it twice before, and I can prove it.

They’d found the girl’s body in an abandoned building in North Philadelphia, torn up by the feral cats that roamed that part of the city the way coyotes once roamed the frontier towns of the Old West. She was only barely recognizable. To be absolutely sure, they had had to rely on DNA.

Half the country was calling for Russ to be jailed along with the kid, just for agreeing to defend him. The other half—well, he didn’t remember what the other half had been doing. Donna and Bennis had both insisted that even the worst criminals deserved a defense. He had told them so himself.

And he still believed that. He really did. The system worked only if everybody got representation, if the government was required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, if you dotted all the is and crossed all the ts.

What he didn’t believe, anymore, was that there was no such thing as a bad boy, or that no one who was under the age of eighteen should be tried as an adult or put away for life. He knew now that there were “children” out there who weren’t really children. They were on a ramp up to becoming truly horrible, and the only way you could stop them was to lock them up early and lock them up irrevocably.

A lot of people railed against Martha Handling’s sentencing practices, but Russ Donahue did not. He knew what she was up to. He even admired her for it. He thought she was a woman of principle.

This morning, he thought even women of principle could run late, and he found it very annoying.

The court was a big, bland room with the judge’s bench set up very high. There was the United States flag and the flag of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. There was Stefan Maldovanian sitting next to him at the defense table and Stefan’s aunt Sophie and brother, Petrak, in the seats just behind.

Petrak Maldovanian leaned forward and said into Russ’s ear, “Where is Father Tibor? Father Tibor is supposed to be here.”

This was true. And, Russ reminded himself, Stefan Maldovanian was not a John-Ray Croydon. He hadn’t raped or murdered anyone. He’d just gotten himself caught trying to shoplift DVDs out of a Good Times Movies store at the King of Prussia Mall.

“I think maybe he’s had an accident,” Stefan said. “He promised he would be here. Father always does what he promises.”

This was absolutely true. Russ thought it was too bad that Stefan Maldovanian didn’t always do what he promised, since the last thing he’d promised was to stay away from the Good Times Movies store at the King of Prussia Mall. That was after the first time he’d been caught shoplifting, when the store decided not to prosecute.

“Let me go look,” Russ said, getting up. “Maybe he got lost in the maze.”

“Where is the judge?” Petrak asked. “Isn’t she supposed to be here?”

“She’s here somewhere,” Russ said. “Her first case ran. She must have heard it.”

“It’s after eleven o’clock,” Petrak said.

Russ gave no answer to that, and made his way out of the courtroom and into the hall.

He felt enormously relieved, as if there had been rocks sitting on his chest, and now they were gone.

6

Dr. Janice Loftus was lost, and not only lost, but agitated. She was so agitated, she was finding it hard to think straight. If there was one thing Janice had always taken pride in, it was her ability to outthink anybody in any room anywhere, including men and the kind of university administrator who liked to rule by bullying.

At the moment, she was in some back corridor somewhere, and the clock on the wall and the watch on her wrist both said it was after eleven o’clock. Somewhere in the building, the hearing on Petrak Maldovanian’s brother must have started. Janice wasn’t sure where. When she’d first decided to drive Petrak to the courthouse, she had a vague idea of serving as a Moral Witness. She’d thought of herself as sitting at the very back of the courtroom, looking up at Martha Handling, staring in a way that Martha could not ignore. Janice remembered Martha from Bryn Mawr. She’d been a fascist in those days, too.

What bothered her most about finding out that the hearing was closed was that the possibility hadn’t occurred to her first. The Authorities were always closing hearings and meetings and everything else they had a hand in. They would close trials themselves if they thought they could get away with it. They usually couldn’t, because the right to a public trial was right there in the Constitution. Janice didn’t think much of the United States Constitution. She did think it sometimes had its uses.