At the curb in front of the jail, waiting to make the trip: two police cars with flashing lights, a short blue bus, and Howie’s gleaming black SUV. Standing on the sidewalk next to the latter, and looking like a chauffeur in his dark suit and darker shades, was Alec Pelley. On the other side of the street, behind police department sawhorses, were the reporters, the camerapersons, and a small crowd of lookie-loos. Several of the latter were carrying signs. One read, EXECUTE THE CHILD KILLER. Another read, MAITLAND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL. Marcy stopped on the top step and stared at these signs with dismay.
The county jail corrections officers halted at the foot of the steps, their job done. Sheriff Doolin and ADA Gilstrap, the men technically in charge of this morning’s legal ritual, escorted Terry to the lead police car. Ralph and Yunel Sablo headed for the one behind. Howie took Marcy’s hand and led her toward his Escalade. “Don’t look up. Don’t give the photographers anything but the top of your head.”
“Those signs . . . Howie, those signs . . .”
“Never mind them, just keep moving.”
Because of the heat, the windows of the blue bus were open. The prisoners inside, most of them weekend warriors bound for their own arraignments on an array of lesser charges, caught sight of Terry. They pressed their faces against the wire mesh, catcalling.
“Hey, faggot!”
“Did you bend your dick getting it in?”
“You’re bound for the needle, Maitland!”
“Did you suck his cock before you bit it off?”
Alec started around the Escalade to open the passenger door, but Howie shook his head, motioned him back, and pointed to the rear door on the curb side instead. He wanted to keep Marcy as far as possible from the crowd across the street. Her head was lowered, and her hair obscured her face, but as Howie led her to the door Alec was holding open, he could hear her sobbing even in the general tumult.
“Mrs. Maitland!” That was a leather-lunged reporter, calling from beyond the sawhorse barricade. “Did he tell you he was going to do it? Did you try to stop him?”
“Don’t look up, don’t respond,” Howie said. He wished he could tell her not to listen. “This is all under control. Just get in, and off we go.”
As he handed her in, Alec murmured in his ear. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Half the city police are on vacation, and FC’s fearless sheriff can barely manage crowd control at the Elks Barbecue.”
“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.