Mystery fiction; Trials (Murder) -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction
The loaded questions--they came out too, Grandfather roaring. Terence
hadn't minded. "No, sir, I don't exactly see that ahead of me." No word
of what he did see. Later they met at the University Club and began a
more relaxed acquaintance over a few drinks. Then an invitation to
Terence's apartment that became an evening of Chopin and Bach. Music was
an aspect of Mann's life unsuspected, discovered by Warner with the
abruptness of an opened door. The lawyer vanished; the hands were
"beyond technique"; the keyboard voice spoke with the authority of
intense feeling governed by insight.
And Warner recalled another meeting with someone else, in an almost
empty bar, a few days after the election that confirmed Terence Mann in
office. Idle for the afternoon and in a cool beery mood, he had glanced
down the damp mahogany and noticed a sagging red-veined blob, the face
of Boss Timmy Flack of the Third Ward--who, in a way, _was_ the
politics of Winchester, the half-submerged and partly useful human
force, neither honest nor demonstrably a crook, The Man You Went To See.
Himself honored and ancient, professionally secure, in any case seldom
giving a damn what others said of him or of the company he kept, Warner
had moved down the bar and bought Timmy another drink before The Man
could buy him one. "Hear tell we got a new judge."
"Uh-huh."
"Happy, Timmy? Civic virtue and so on?"
"Shit."
"If not happy, what are you going to do about it?"
"You needling me, Counselor?"
"Little bit."
"What the hell's anybody going to do, now he's in? The son of a bitch
doesn't _want_ anything!"
Which was certainly not true, but just as certainly true in Timmy's
sense. And Cecil Warner understood that he now feared Terence Mann only
because Terence's mind demanded demonstration, when a demonstration of
relative truth may be more arduous than any labors of the gods.
"Yes, she might have stumbled and fallen in. The State contends this is
not probable. You will of course hear all the evidence that has led us
to this conclusion. The State contends that Callista Blake followed Ann
Doherty, searched her out, found her there helpless on the path, dragged
her the rest of the way into the water. Perhaps even held her under, the
way you might drown an unwanted kitten."
Chilled by the voice in spite of forty courtroom years, Warner saw
Callista gazing down at her fingertips, frowning slightly as if bothered
in the midst of concentration by an irrelevant uproar in another room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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