Katherine said, “I’m going to be blunt. Golden’s a very shrewd and experienced attorney. Maybe we can get one of his witnesses to recant. Most likely Jackson, but not Moran, who’s a tough nut. And Bales is even tougher. He’s going to come across like a knight in shining armor.”
Tommy said, “Okay.”
Katherine let loose a heavy breath. “I recommend we take the deal.”
Tommy bounced up to his feet. “What?”
“Look, I don’t like it, but it’ll keep you out of the electric chair. It’ll buy us time.”
“I’m not pleading. Get it out of your head, because I’m not taking their deal.”
“Thomas, please listen. We’ve got one day left. The second we walk into that courtroom, the offer’s moot. It’ll be withdrawn. I’d like to approach the other side and try to bargain off the charges of committing homosexual acts and consorting with enlisted troops. If we plead on murder and rape, I think we can get them to go for it.”
“I don’t care.”
She reached over and grabbed Whitehall’s leg. “You’ll still be alive. I’ll dedicate my whole life to getting you an appeal. I won’t stop, Thomas. I’ll never stop. You know I won’t.”
“So what? We’ll both waste our lives over this thing? I won’t permit it.”
Katherine looked over at me. Her face was beseeching. She was pleading with me to intervene, to do my best to convince her client to take the rap.
I said, “Good call, Tommy.”
“What?” Katherine roared.
“He’s making the right call. It’s an obvious frame-up.”
“Can you prove that?” Katherine asked, knowing damn well I couldn’t.
“Nope,” I admitted.
“Then what in the hell are you doing? A few days ago you thought a deal was the right way to go. You helped convince me.”
I knew that and I felt bad about it, too. But I couldn’t tell Katherine I was working an angle with my CIA buddies. Granted, there were no sure bets, but if something broke we could be off to the races. So all I said was, “I changed my mind.”
I looked up at Tommy. Katherine was still holding his leg. He was staring down at me.
I said, “We’re going to break this thing. Maybe not before the trial, but we’ll get it eventually. I don’t care if I have to resign my commission and come over and do it myself. We’re going to break this thing.”
“You’d do that?” Tommy asked.
“I’d do that,” I assured him.
And I would. I’d just decided that. For one thing, a lot of people had been killed and something had to be done about that. And one of those people had died to save me, and it might sound corny, but didn’t I owe her something? For another, I’d had plenty of clients convicted, but I’d never had one where I was so thoroughly convinced he was being railroaded. I didn’t approve of Tommy’s lifestyle choices, but he’d been a damned good soldier. And as the judge said, if a soldier can’t get justice, then I was wearing the wrong uniform.
Also, Bales and his buddies had beaten me to a pulp. And like I mentioned earlier, I’m a vindictive guy.
Besides, I’m so stubborn I’m stupid. Anybody who knows me will tell you that.
Tommy said, “I, uh-”
But before he could finish the thought, Katherine suddenly erupted. “Don’t listen to him, Thomas!” She was glaring at me through a pair of blazing green eyes. “This isn’t about Thomas, is it? This is about Georgetown, right?” She spun and looked back at Whitehall. “He’s never forgiven me for being number one in the class. He came in second and he’s never gotten over it. Don’t listen to him. This isn’t about you. It’s about him trying to outdo me. Don’t listen to him.”
Whitehall’s eyes were roving from her face to mine. And mine was exploding with surprise.
“God, you gotta be kidding,” I blurted.
I mean, it was true she’d beaten me out – by one-tenth of a decimal of a hundredth of a point. By such an infinitesimal fraction the law school actually had to recompute both our grade points something like ten times. They actually had to go back and retotal three years’ worth of exams and papers and moot courts. Know what the spread was? Katherine got one more multiple-choice answer right than I did. That’s right – one lousy question. No kidding. And you know the worst part? She probably guessed on that one question: one lousy throw of a dart in a pitch-dark room.
Did that give me the gripes? Well, yeah, actually it did. At the time, anyway. I mean, had it been Wilson Holbridge Struthers III, the guy who lived in the library, the guy everybody agreed was the biggest legal geek who ever haunted the halls of Georgetown Law, I could’ve lived with that. It wasn’t, though. Struthers limped in at third place. It was Katherine Carlson. Of all people.
I took three deep breaths. I wasn’t going to let her provoke me. I was going to keep my cool and reason through this. Georgetown law school was a long time ago. Whitehall had said at the start that he wanted to make the tough choices, and, well, he was getting his chance. Maybe not the way he’d envisioned, but I had at least warned him it could come down to this.
With as much calmness as I could muster, I said, “I still wouldn’t take the deal.”
And Katherine contemptuously snapped, “Look, Thomas, you won’t have a death sentence hanging over your head. And let me tell you, getting a death sentence overturned is almost impossible these days. The courts have lost their patience with death sentence appeals. I’m no expert on it but I’ve done some research. Only one in twelve gets overturned. Plus, even the civil courts are accelerating death sentences, and this is a military court. These uniformed stooges could give you a chair appointment a year, maybe even six months from now.”
Thomas said, “Both of you, stop this right now.”
Katherine and I looked at each other in surprise.
His face was perfectly calm. “It has nothing to do with either of you. I won’t plead.”
Katherine said, “Why, Thomas?”
“Because I’m innocent. Because my love for No wasn’t wrong or evil. Because I won’t.”
He and Katherine stared at each other a long time. It was one of those moments where electricity flowed through the air, where words would only have gotten in the way. Finally Katherine got up and started shaking the cage and yelling for the guard.
The big goon showed up, weaving back and forth, and it was pretty damned obvious he’d broken into the goodies. He was so drunk he kept diddling with the keys. Finally he got the door open and Katherine stormed out.
I looked at Tommy. “I guess I have to go.”
“Yeah, sure. Keep me informed, will you?”
I assured him I would before I solemnly shook his hand. Then I walked out. I walked slowly. I was in no hurry to catch up with Katherine.
It was a long, tense car ride back to base.
CHAPTER 33
At two o’clock in the morning, there was another knock on my door. I rolled out of bed and hobbled over, again checked the peephole to make sure there wasn’t somebody on the other side who wanted to hurt me. Like another bruise was going to make any discernible difference at this point. Silly me.
Carol Kim and a shadowy figure I couldn’t make out were standing on the other side, so I opened it. The other person was Buzz Mercer, looking tired and perplexed.
I was wearing nothing but my Army-issue OD green battle shorts, so I demurely grabbed a fluffy white robe from the closet and escorted my visitors to the pair of chairs by the window. I fell onto the bed.
“Did you get it?” I asked, which was a fairly stupid question, because what else would they be doing in my room at this hour?
Carol opened a valise and withdrew a series of color photographs, maybe thirty in all.
“Look through these,” she said, handing me the stack. “Are any of them the person you’re talking about?”
