Rough Justice

exhaustion.

'No. The crowd's too big.' Judy peeked from behind an overweight cop. 'Officer, what's happening?'

'Just got here myself, lady,' the cop said. His nose was red and leaky. 'They called for crowd control.'

Marta yanked down her hood so she wouldn't be recognized and shoved past a reporter in her way.

* * *

Bennie dashed the last hundred feet to the crowd. It was the final kick. She gave it all she had. Her legs hurt. Her lungs ached. She reached the Criminal Justice Center just in time to spot Judy's yellow hat disappear midway through the crowd, with Marta pushing ahead of her.

65

Marta stood near the front of the crowd, riveted at the sight. Elliot Steere was free. He stood joking with reporters on the sidewalk in front of the Criminal Justice Center. Cameras snapped his fake grin. TV lights bleached his features white as a cadaver. He was free. She was too late.

Judy pushed next to Marta from behind. 'Oh, God,' she moaned, instantly sick at heart. Tears welled up in her eyes. Her body sagged with defeat. Steere had gotten away with murder. Judy wiped her eyes with a wet, snowy mitten.

Marta was too horrified to speak. She could see only her own fury. The man had used her. Used the court. Killed people. She seethed as he smiled for the press and raised his arms in victory. Steere would go free and prosper. It couldn't happen. It couldn't be permitted. Then Marta remembered.

The pritchel. A long iron spike with a tip as lethal as a dagger. Did she still have it? She slipped her hand into her pocket and felt the cold metal. The pritchel. She held it, feeling its heft even through her glove. It struck Marta as the perfect solution. She was already ruined. She had already killed. She had nothing more to lose. She stepped forward in a sort of trance, leaving Judy and the world behind.

Back at the middle of the crowd, Bennie began pushing harder. 'Excuse me!' she said, elbowing past a cop. She spotted Steere at the front of the crowd, being interviewed by reporters on the sidewalk. So he'd been acquitted. At least Marta and Judy hadn't been able to interfere with the trial. But where were they?

Bennie scanned the crowd and spotted Judy's yellow ski cap among the black police hats. Where was Marta? She would be furious at seeing Steere walk. Bennie felt panicky without knowing why. She jostled her way forward from the right side where the reporters were fewer.

Marta stopped two rows from Steere. Snow fell on his fine overcoat and sprinkled his padded shoulders. She was so close she could see the hand stitching on his lapels. She gripped the pritchel in her pocket. Her heart pumped in her chest. Adrenaline pounded in her ears, drumming behind Steere's voice.

'I always knew the jury would find me innocent,' Steere was saying to a TV reporter holding a black bubble microphone. 'Never doubted it for a minute.'

Bennie pushed through the crowd and finally spotted Marta. There. Right near Steere. Marta was standing still, a faraway look in her eyes. What was she doing? Bennie would have shouted to her but the crowd was too loud. 'Comin' through!' she said, pushing her way to Marta.

Marta stood a foot from Steere, her face obscured by her hood. She imagined the pritchel piercing his chest. Staining his camel-hair topcoat with hot red blood. She waited for the right moment. The TV reporter was still in the way. Marta inched forward, the drumming louder in her ears, waiting for the reporter to move.

Bennie saw it then. What was happening. Marta was closing in. She must have a weapon. Would she really kill Steere? Oh God. She had to be stopped. She couldn't do that. Bennie couldn't let her. She bulldozed through the crowd.

The TV reporter moved suddenly aside. Steere looked around for the next interview, smiling. The path in front of him was momentarily clear. Marta's world froze. The crowd stood still. The reporters fell mute. The motor drives stopped whirring. The only sound was the drumbeat pounding in Marta's ears. She stepped into the breach and drew her hand from her pocket.

'MARTA, NO!' Bennie shrieked.

The scream broke Marta's trance. The world came screaming back to life. What had she been thinking? Was she crazy? Strong arms grabbed her. It was Bennie, alarmed. She wrenched the pritchel from Marta's hands and searched her eyes for sanity.

Suddenly sirens blared at the edge of the crowd. Cops shouted. Reporters yelled. Cameras clicked. Video cameras whirred. A phalanx of cops and detectives charged through the crowd toward Steere. 'Mr. Steere!' shouted one of the detectives, pointing. 'We have a warrant for your arrest.'

Steere started to edge away, but a ring of black-jacketed cops blocked his path. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, at least for the time being. His expression remained composed as they shackled him, and the cacophony of the reporters drowned out his requests for his lawyer.

66

It took Emil Gorebian all day to interview lawyers, police, and the employees at the election commission. He sat tapping at his keyboard in the press room at City Hall. It had finally stopped snowing. Leftover sun struggled through the dirty window next to him.

Emil was hardly tired even after such a long day. He wasn't old enough to retire, he was still going strong. He had the entire story in his head and it poured out as smoothly as olive oil. It would be all over the front page in the next edition. His first exclusive in ten years.

Emil tapped away. Elliot Steere and Jen Pressman had been lovers. They used the organ donor scheme to file absentee ballots with forged signatures. They paid Eb Darning to forge and file the ballots, but Eb began blackmailing them and had to be silenced. Emil had spent all day reading election records and reviewing absentee ballots filed in the last election. There had been at least two others who were paid to file the fake absentee ballots, and he figured there were many more. Gorebian would explain the scheme in a sidebar, so readers could understand.

Emil kept tapping. The best part of the story was that the forged votes hadn't been filed against the mayor, they'd been filed in his favor. Almost ten thousand votes filed on his behalf. Elliot Steere and Jen Pressman were trying to set the mayor up, so they could leak the driver's license file right before the election and pin the voter fraud on him. Pressman had planned to betray the mayor and go her merry way. Steere would have defeated his biggest enemy and the price of historic properties would soar. The Philadelphia