Show of Evil

His fingers scratched across the disintegrating platform and he vanished into the black maw.

He did not scream. He did not utter a sound. He plunged soundlessly down, down, down.

It was a very long time before they heard the dull, faraway thump; the faint clatter of wood slats as they plunged down behind him. Then it was deathly still except for the wind rattling the dead limbs of the trees.

 'God almighty,' Flaherty whispered.

 'Save your prayers for somebody who deserves them,' Vail said. He turned and walked away from the gaping hole in the snow.

They followed the road back to the chopper, which was waiting with its rotors idling. Vail and Flaherty helped St Claire into the helicopter and climbed aboard behind him.

'Where's Stampler?' he asked.

 'Where he belongs,' Vail answered. 'In hell.'

The chopper lifted off and climbed towards the top of the ridge. Vail watched mine shaft five pass below them. He stared down at the black circle surrounded by fresh snow. It looked like the bull's-eye of a target. He watched it until the chopper swept over the top of the ridge and he could no longer see Aaron Stampler's grave.

EPILOGUE

The mixed aromas of ether, antiseptics, and disinfectant permeated the silent hallways of the hospital. Doctors and nurses consulted in hushed conversation at doorways. Visitors wandered from rooms, some smiling and encouraged, other teary-eyed and wan as they struggled to comprehend bad news. Elation and melancholy walked hand-in-hand, and the atmosphere was charged with emotion. Nothing seemed commonplace in these corridors where strangers were drawn together by the common bonds of disease, misfortune, and mishap.

Vail avoided everyone, speaking briefly when he could not avoid it, usually merely nodding to those he recognized as regulars or staff. He rushed to the hospital at the end of each day, first checking on Jane and Abel, then eating tasteless food in the cafeteria or standing outside the emergency door to grab a smoke.

Martin Vail had always detested hospitals because they reminded him of the blackest and most agonizing days of his past. They evoked images, in sharp and painful focus, of his mother as they put her in an ambulance and carried her out of his life forever, the intensive care unit where his father lay dead from a coronary, the pale blue room in which he said farewell to Ma Cat, the grandmother who had raised him, as she lay dying of cancer. Ironically, those images now had been replaced by relief and thanksgiving and by the sheer joy of knowing that Jane Venable and Able Stenner had been saved by the surgeons, nurses, and attendants in the emergency room at Chicago General.

A few days after the demise of Stampler, Jack Yancey died as the result of his stroke, and Vail officially became the district attorney. Dr Samuel Woodward, under fire for his role in the release of Stampler, held a press conference and, bolstered by half a dozen colleagues, weasled out of the situation with long-winded psychobabble.

During the weeks that followed, Vail kept a nightly vigil between the hospital rooms of Jane Venable and Abel Stenner, sleeping in the chair in Venable's room and going home only to shower and change clothes on his way to work. Sometimes he sat beside Jane's bed, holding her hand for an hour at a time, convinced that he was to blame for her pain and suffering, as well as Stenner's. After all, he would reason to himself, he had been the instrument of Stampler's bloody revenge, having provided in his plea bargain during Stampler's trial the method that was used ten years later to free the monster. Stenner was making a remarkable recovery. By the end of the third week he would be taking short walks down the halls with the help of a walker. Jane, who faced several weeks of torturous facial reconstruction, seemed in constant good spirits despite the painful injuries and the loss of her eye. Weak but ebullient, her face swathed in bandages from her forehead to her jaw and bruises tainting her nose and throat, she was indomitable. Aaron Stampler dominated their talks. Ironically, it was Jane who bolstered Vail's spirits during the long nights in the hospital as he fought with his conscience.

'Boy,' she said one night, 'I'll bet Aaron Stampler's sitting down in hell, laughing his buns off about now.'

 'What do you mean?'

'Because he's still getting to you, darling. He's reaching out of his grave and pulling your chain. He conned everyone, Marty. Everybody bought his lie, why should you be any different?'

'Because I helped manufacture the lie.'

 'He conned you, Marty. Admit it and forget it. Stampler isn't worth five minutes of bad time. You're a great lawyer. You did exactly what the law prescribes, you gave Stampler the best possible defence. You beat me fair and square, and believe me, I've thought a lot about the way you sandbagged me in the years since the trial. It was perfect. It was textbook stuff. The fact that the son of a bitch was guilty is beside the point.'

 'Beside the point?'