It was late in the afternoon when Ramón Luza drove them back to Reseda. The sun was falling rapidly behind the rolling hills that lay like huge muscles in the land between the freeway and the ocean. The drive back was strangely quiet—a subdued stillness, like the calm after the storm.
“When she was a little girl,” Josefa recalled, “Sunday was always her favorite day. She loved more than anything to put on her prettiest dress and mantilla and go to mass. When we were poor, you know, before we came here from Mexico, we didn’t have pretty dresses for her to wear, but I always managed to find cloth to make a bright ribbon for her hair or a little hankie to pin to her dress. I always managed that, didn’t I,’Miliano?”
“Yes, Josefa, always,” her husband quietly confirmed.
“I’ll never forget the day I bought her her first American dress after we came here. We were living out in East L.A., you know, and’Miliano had found a good job and Ramón got himself a paper route and I was taking in ironing, so we were getting along pretty well. We went to mass at a little church called Santo Tomás and Gloriana always just wore her regular school clothes on Sunday because that’s all we had for her. But’Miliano and I talked it over, about buying her a dress, you know, and we decided it would be our first luxury in this country. Even Ramón put in part of his paper-route money. Ramón, you remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mamma,” her son answered softly.
“I took her on Saturday down to the May Company,” Josefa continued, her eyes glowing with memory. “I told her we were going to just look, so that later when we could afford it, we would know what to buy. I let her try on three dresses: a blue, a green, and a yellow. She looked best in the yellow one—because of her coloring, you know. After the saleslady put the dresses back on the rack, I took Gloriana to the lunch counter and bought her a Coca-Cola. Then I made her wait there because I said I left something in the dress department. I went back and bought the little yellow dress and I hid it in with some other packages I had. The next morning when she had bathed for mass and came out to get dressed, the yellow dress was on the chair where she had put her other clothes. We all watched her when she found it. She held it up to her and she cried, and she was so happy. And then I cried. And then’Miliano cried. You did cry, didn’t you,’Miliano?”
“Yes, Josefa, I cried.”
“She was so proud to go to mass that day. Like a little angel. A little angel.” Josefa Luza looked out the window at the passing landscape. Long, angular shadows stretched inward with the last rays of a disappearing sun. Some of the shadows looked like church steeples. “You know,” she said solemnly, “it is really very strange how much Gloriana was drawn to the church. I honestly believe she would have become a nun someday. I mean, to her it was more than just something she played at; it was—it was like something she felt. Even as a very little girl she had shown a genuine closeness to the church. More than one of the sisters told me this. She loved the mass and she loved the holy altar. And particularly she loved the confessional. One time she said to me, ‘Mamma, the confessional is so cool and dark; I feel so close to the Holy Mother when I am in there.’ Always when she had a problem, she would go to the church to solve it. Even when she was just deep in thought about something, she reached out to the church in some way. She had a habit of always putting her hand up and touching a cross she wore around her neck. That is why now she clutches at her throat when she is excited. You saw how she did that; she has never stopped reaching up for her cross, even though it was lost the night she was attacked—”
Robert Cloud turned cold at the sound of Josefa Luza’s words. For he suddenly remembered other words, words spoken to him by Carol Carter, the woman who had once been married to Weldon Whitman:
“I saw him once more after that. When he was paroled from Folsom, he came over one evening to see me. Just to say hello and chat a few minutes, nothing intimate. We had a nice little visit. He even gave me a present, a little silver cross and chain; not expensive, but very thoughtful, very nice of him …”
Cloud had turned now and was staring at Josefa Luza. “What kind of cross was it, Mrs. Luza?” he asked the woman in a controlled voice. Josefa Luza frowned.
“What kind?”
“Yes. Can you describe it for me?” Cloud saw Ramón’s eyes flick suspiciously to the rearview mirror.
“’Miliano can describe it better,” Josefa said. “It once belonged to his mother, God rest her soul.’Miliano, tell Mr. Cloud what Gloriana’s cross looked like.”
The elder Luza sighed quietly. “It was silver, originally made in Oaxaca around the turn of the century. It was smooth on the top and bottom, and had a Florentine scroll engraved completely around its outside edge.”
“It was very beautiful, very delicate,” Josefa said. “Gloriana loved it dearly. Since she has been at the hospital, we have given her several others to replace it. We even gave her one that looked like the one she had lost. But she will have none of them. She throws them away and begins feeling at her throat as if searching for the real one. It is a very strange thing.”
Cloud said nothing. But when he glanced up, he caught Ramón’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror again.
When they arrived back at the little house in Reseda, Cloud said goodbye to Emiliano and Josefa Luza on the sidewalk. Ramón waited until his parents were in the house, then turned to Cloud.
“Why did you want the cross described to you?” he asked directly.
“No particular reason—”
“You are lying,” Ramón accused. His face was a mask of contempt. “You promised the truth, and already the lying begins.”
Cloud looked down at the sidewalk. His mind was in a turmoil; he felt very indecisive.
“I do not think you are interested in the truth,” the young Chicano said tightly. “I do not think you care about what has happened to my sister, or whether that bastard Whitman goes unpunished for it. I think I made a mistake taking you to see Glory Ann.”
“You didn’t, Ramón,” Cloud said urgently; it was essential to him that he be believed.
“Then why won’t you tell me what you know about Glory Ann’s cross?” Ramon challenged. “You know something about that cross; I can feel it.”
“I may know something,” Cloud admitted, “but I’m not sure. And until I am sure, it would do no good to talk about it.”
“Do no good for who, Mr. Cloud?” the young man asked coldly. “For my sister? Or for Weldon Whitman?” Ramón tilted his head slightly and his eyes narrowed. “Which side are you on, Mr. Cloud? The side of truth or the side of Whitman?”
Cloud parted his lips to speak—but no words came. He had no answer for Ramón Luza, and he could not face the angry young man’s accusing eyes any longer. Swallowing dryly, he turned away from him and walked back to his rented car.
It was fully nighttime as Cloud drove the Ventura Freeway back toward Los Angeles. His face was troubled; he drove hunched forward, gripping the wheel almost tensely. He followed the wide, fast freeway east to the interchange, then turned south on the San Diego Freeway. As that road wound and curved its way through the deep canyon that separated the San Fernando Valley from the West Los Angeles area, Cloud several times looked out to his left at the darkness as if straining to see into it. He knew that the darkness covered the high hills above Hollywood, the hills that overlooked the city’s billion twinkling lights; the hills that had once been prowled by the Spotlight Bandit. He thought about the dreadful terror that had been implanted in Glory Ann Luza’s mind during the hours of her captivity in those hills.
Cloud left the freeway at Wilshire and drove west into Santa Monica. He cruised along Montana Street until he found the address where Carol Carter liyed. He parked and hurried across the street to the L-shaped building, to the last apartment on the second floor. As he rang her bell, he remembered that the last time he had visited her, she had been anxious about her boyfriend coming over at seven-thirty. It was almost that time now. He started to ring again, but before he could do so, the door was opened. In the four inches allowed by the safety chain, he saw Carol Carter’s broad, solemn mouth.
“Miss Carter, I’m Robert Cloud,” he said quickly, as if afraid she might close the door again. “I was here some time ago—”
“I remember you,” she said. They stared at each other in silent for a moment, then she said, “Wait a second—” She closed the door, removed the chain, and opened it again.
“I’m sorry to show up unannounced like this,” Cloud apologized. “I know your boyfriend comes over at seven-thirty, but if I could just have a couple of minutes—”
“Don’t worry about the time,” she said simply. “There is no boyfriend at the moment. Come in.”
He followed her into the little living room, looking at her back and realizing that he had forgotten how boldly wide her shoulders were, how delicately thin her waist. She was wearing faded jeans and a body shirt with the sleeves pushed up. Her feet were bare. The soft slide of straight blond hair that fell on either side of her head was darker tonight and looked damp. He saw that she had a towel on the arm of the chair where she sat. She picked it up and started patting the ends of her hair.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ve just washed my hair and I don’t want to catch cold.” She waited until he had sat on the couch opposite her, then said, “What was it you wanted?”
Cloud took a deep breath. “I came here to ask you to show me the cross and chain you said Whit gave you the last time you saw him.”
“Why do you want to see it?”
“I visited Glory Ann Luza this afternoon. She’s in the state asylum up at Camarillo.” He described the girl’s condition and the doctor’s prognosis.
Carol winced and shook her head briefly. “How awful. But what does that have to do with the cross Whit gave me?”
“One thing that Glory Ann does during her hysterics is clutch at her throat for a cross that she used to wear. A cross that was lost when the Spotlight Bandit made her strip naked in his car up in the hills.”
“Oh. I see.” Carol Carter stopped drying her hair and put down the towel. She and Cloud stared meditatively at each other.
“The last time I was here,” Cloud said, “you admitted that maybe Whit could have committed the sex crimes. You said that when you knew him he seemed to be getting worse and worse; you said that if he kept on as he was going at that time, maybe he could have eventually turned into a criminal sex pervert. But you didn’t believe he had. Do you remember telling me that?”
“Yes,” she said, “I remember.”
“The cross and chain should tell us whether he turned out like that or not,” Cloud said.
Carol Carter studied him. He was tired, tense, his knuckles white as he clasped his hands together. He was obviously fighting a battle inside himself.
“I could always say I don’t have them any longer,” she told him.
Cloud shook his head. “That wouldn’t do either of us any good.” He locked eyes with her. “Get it for me,” he said.
She hesitated, finally nodded briefly. “All right.”
Cloud did not move while she was gone. He did not unclasp his hands, did not sit back and relax, did not even look around the room.
Carol returned and stood in front of him. Her right hand was closed tightly. Cloud stared at it, wondering what answer it contained.
“Is it a silver cross?” he asked quietly. “With its top and bottom surfaces smooth? And a Florentine scroll around its sides?”
Carol said nothing. She simply opened her hand and held the cross and chain out to him. Cloud unclasped his hands and took it. It was exactly as Emiliano Luza had described it.
Cloud did not know how long he sat bent forward staring at the cross. His next conscious realization was that Carol was taking the cross from him and putting it on the coffee table; and she was gently forcing a glass into his hand and telling him to drink.
“It’s gin with a little soda. It’ll help you to unwind. Sit back now, relax—”
He allowed himself to be coaxed back until he was resting properly on the couch. “It all begins to make sense now,” he said listlessly. “Whit encouraged me to try and prove that Doris Calder was lying—but he was never interested in me trying to do the same with Glory Ann.” Cloud raised the glass to his lips and drank half of its contents. His face was etched with bitterness, his mouth drawn down cruelly. “It Was the same whenever I mentioned you. He always had some reason to get me off the subject. But what he was really doing was trying to keep me away from that,” he bobbed his chin at the cross and chain lying on the coffee table. “The only piece of hard evidence that could conclusively connect him to the Luza girl. Jesus, what a fool I’ve been!”
“No more so than a lot of other people,” Carol said. “Myself included.” Her fingers played nervously with the towel. “A moment ago you said I didn’t believe it. You were right. I didn’t want to. I kept wanting to give him that last benefit of the doubt in my mind; that last little bit of a chance. That’s all he ever seemed to need, you know; just a chance.”
“Sure,” Cloud said wryly. “Just a chance. The Whitman mystique.” He grunted softly and drank some more of the gin. Then, frowning, he stood up and began to pace. “What doesn’t make any sense is the Calder thing,” he said, perplexed. “I’m convinced that Doris Calder was mistaken when she said Whit made her blow him. I know she was lying. So if Whit did do the Luza crime, but he didn’t do the Calder crime, then there would have to have been two Spotlight Bandits.” He turned almost fiercely to Carol. “That expartner of his! You know, I’ve always suspected that the ex-partner Whit won’t tell me anything about had a lot more to do with this case than—” He suddenly set the glass down and put both hands to his temple. “Christ, I feel like my head’s going to explode—”
“Listen, you have got to relax,” Carol Carter said firmly. She took his arm and dragged him from the room. “I want you to lie down and rest while I fix you something to eat.” She led him to her tiny bedroom and sat him down on the side of the bed. As she bent to peel off his coat, her damp hair brushed his face. It smelled fresh and clean, and the touch of it was pleasantly cool.
“Look, this is my problem, not yours,” he said. “Let me go back to my hotel—”
“Shut up and lie down.” She pushed him sideways onto the bed and lifted his feet up. Quickly she removed his shoes. Then she sat down beside him and loosened his tie. The room was only partly lighted by a ceiling lamp in the short hallway outside the door. As Cloud looked up at her, the right side of her face was in shadow. He could only see half of her too-big, too-full mouth, but that was enough to tell him that it was even more solemn than usual.
“What happened to the boyfriend?” he asked. Carol pulled the. unknotted tie from around his neck and held it, both hands resting on his chest. She looked intently at him without answering. Cloud reached up and touched her cheek with his knuckles. “Tell me, Carol,” he said quietly, calling her by name for the first time.
“It just didn’t work out,” she said. Her fingers toyed with the necktie on his chest. “When we started talking marriage—I mean, really making plans—I felt that I had to tell him who I had been married to the first time. As soon as I did, he became a different person. He said he couldn’t understand how I could have been married to a criminal pervert like Whit.” She looked away, and in the dull light, Cloud saw a tear streak halfway down her cheek. “I tried to explain that the marriage was a long time ago,” she said, “and that Whit had been a different person then; but when I said that, it just made matters worse. He accused me of sticking up for Whit and insinuated that maybe I still cared, for him. He reminded me that he had a sister about the same age as the girl in the Spotlight Bandit case, and asked how I would feel if the victim had been his sister.” She paused to shake her head, as if she could not believe her own words. “It was completely irrational, the whole thing. He kept making it seem very current and personal, instead of so far in the past. It was crazy.”
“He was crazy,” Cloud said.
She turned her face back to him. “The last thing he said was that he was sorry, but that—that he would have felt—dirty—every time he touched me …”
Ignorant fucking bastard, Cloud thought. He took the necktie from her hands and tossed it on the floor. He put his palms on her cheeks and drew her face down and kissed her gently on the mouth.
“There’s nothing dirty about you,” he whispered.
He held her face like that and kissed her again and again, feasting on the too-full lips that he found had suddenly become enormously attractive to him. Her damp hair slid down and made a cool, silky tent for their locked mouths.
Taking her by the shoulders, he rolled her slowly over his body onto the bed and quickly sat up so that their positions were reversed. “There’s nothing dirty about you, Carol,” he told her again. He deftly undid the front of her jeans and slipped them down and off her legs. His hand brushed one breast as he searched for the entry to her body shirt.
“Between my legs,” she whispered eagerly. “It unsnaps—”
His fingers found the way: three snaps that opened at the crotch; he pulled them apart all at once and pushed the shirt up to expose her white naked hips. He pressed his face into her and began to kiss and lick softly and wetly, and she came almost at once.
He got up and quickly undressed. Waiting, she spread her legs for him. He climbed back onto the bed and thrust himself into her, feeling her climax again. Then he began a smooth, rhythmic fucking motion that made her draw her breath in sharply. He threw his head back as a throbbing, rushing ejaculation gushed out of him, and he fell forward to press his mouth against her wonderful big wide lips again.
“God, that was good,” Carol said through labored breathing as he lay on top of her.
“It was,” he said back.
And it had been too. Except for one thing. At the precise moment he climaxed, the thought came to his mind, from out of nowhere, that Weldon Whitman had once ejaculated into this very same woman.
She was gone when Cloud awoke the next morning, though not by long. She had slipped out of the apartment at eight-ten in order to be at work by eight-thirty; and he awoke at quarter of nine. He was famished, having not eaten since breakfast the previous day. Getting up, he prowled naked through the tiny apartment. On the breakfast bar he found her note: Juice and milk in the fridge, powdered doughnuts in the breadbox. Be home at 5:20. Hope you’re here. It was unsigned.
Cloud sat down naked at the breakfast bar and ate nine doughnuts and drank a quart and a half of milk. While he was wolfing down the food, he thought about Glory Ann Luza and Doris Calder. He was now convinced that Whitman might have committed the crime against Glory Ann Luza; the cross and chain proved that. But Cloud still did not believe that Whitman was Doris Calder’s attacker. Which meant that there had to be a second Spotlight Bandit. And if there was a second Spotlight Bandit—Whitman’s ex-partner, probably—then it was possible that the other bandit, and not Whitman, might have commited the Luza crime.
Whitman’s possession of the cross still had to be explained, Cloud knew; but first the matter of the second bandit had to be settled. And Robert Cloud knew just the person who could probably settle it.
Finished eating, walking back through the living room, Cloud noticed the silver cross and chain on the coffee table. He picked it up, took it into the bedroom with him, and put it in the pocket of his coat, which was still hanging on the doorknob where Carol had hung it the night before.
After he was dressed, Cloud went back to where Carol had left the note. He scribbled on the bottom of it: I took the cross, signed it Rob, and left it in the same place. He left the apartment at nine-thirty.
An hour and a half later, in his hotel room, Cloud had showered, shaved, and put on fresh clothes. He transferred the cross and chain to a pocket of the suit he had changed to, and put all his other clothes in his suitcase. Before leaving the room, he telephoned across the boulevard to the airport terminal and booked a seat on the three-thirty commuter back to Sacramento. Then he went downstairs and checked out.
Still driving the rented car, he got on the inbound Santa Monica Freeway and headed for downtown Los Angeles. It was nearly noon when he reached the Civic Center. He drove around for ten minutes trying to find a parking place, and finally said to hell with it and pulled onto a lot clearly marked County Employees Only. Let them tow it away if they want to, he thought as he walked across the street to the Hall of Justice. If it wasn’t there when he got back, he’d tell the rental company it had been stolen. Only after he was in the building and on the elevator did he remember that his suitcase was in the car. He swore softly to himself.
He got off on the floor where the district attorney’s offices were located and hurriedly made his way to the chief prosecutor’s office. The secretary was just getting up to go to lunch when he entered.
“Excuse me, is Mr. Klein in?” he asked before she could get away from her desk. She looked at him curiously.
“Mr. Klein hasn’t been the chief prosecutor for a year.”
Cloud’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “I’m from out of town,” he explained. “I didn’t know he wasn’t here any longer. Did he go into private practice?”
“Oh, no. Mr. Klein was appointed to the bench. He’s serving as municipal court judge in Huntington Park.”
Cloud thanked her and left. In the lobby downstairs, he called the airport again; he changed his reservation from three-thirty to five o’clock. Then, remembering that he was illegally parked, he hurried back to the lot. He was relieved to see that his car was still there.
It took him forty minutes to drive to Huntington Park. When he got there, he realized that he was only a few blocks from Rancher Bob’s Sausage Company, where he had tried to find Emiliano Luza during his first unsuccessful search more than a year ago. The Weldon Whitman web, he thought. It crossed and recrossed.
He parked in front of the Huntington Park municipal court, went into the low building, and found the courtroom that had Klein’s name posted next to the double doors. Entering, he found a few people sitting in the spectator section outside the rails, and a uniformed bailiff reading a paperback novel at his duty desk. Cloud went over to the bailiff.
“Excuse me. My name is Robert Cloud. I’m a former reporter with the Ledger. Judge Klein and I were acquainted a few years back when he was the D.A.’s chief prosecutor. I’d like to see him if he has a few minutes.” “Have a seat, please, and I’ll tell him you’re here,” the bailiff said. He put his paperback in a desk drawer and went through a door leading to the judge’s chambers. In a moment, he was back. “This way, please.”
Cloud followed him into a book-lined office where, in one corner, a black judge’s robe hung from a coat tree, and behind a neat and orderly desk, sat G. Foster Klein. The bailiff left and closed the door.
“Well, well, the crusading magazine writer,” Klein said deprecatingly. He had not changed much, Cloud thought: he still sat board-straight, his black hair was still slicked back unpretentiously, and there was still about him that very definite aura of crispness, sharpness, alertness. Someday, undoubtedly, he would become as much a legend on the bench as. Carl Lukey had been when he sentenced Weldon Whitman to die twice. “To what do I owe this rather unpleasant surprise?” Klein asked.
“I’d like to talk to you about the Whitman case,” Cloud said. “May I sit down?”
“By all means,” the dapper little judge said elaborately. “Although I really can’t see what there is to discuss about the Whitman case. You and your associates seem to be doing a splendid job of subverting justice. You’ve managed to keep Whitman alive for—how many years?”
“Your Honor, I didn’t come here to antagonize you or argue with you,” Cloud said quietly. “I came here to discuss a case which you yourself prosecuted. Despite our differences, I do respect you, and I think you want justice in the Whitman case as much as I do.”
“That’s extremely flattering, Cloud, considering some of the things you’ve written about me,” Klein said acidly. “Now, what is it you want?”
Cloud swallowed dryly. “I want to know how much, in your opinion, the outcome of the Whitman case would have been affected if evidence had been presented showing the existence of a second Spotlight Bandit?”
Klein’s face registered sudden surprise. “Why do you ask that?” he demanded.
“Because I think such a person existed,” Cloud said. He immediately noted the effect his words had on the little judge: Klein was almost stunned by what Cloud had said.
He knows! Cloud thought.
Cloud leaned forward urgently. “There was another bandit, wasn’t there?”
“Suppose there had been?” Klein said, quickly composing himself. “It doesn’t change anything. Whitman was rightfully convicted and he is rightfully on Death Row.”
“How can you be so sure of that if there was another man involved?” Cloud challenged.
“Because I know who that other man is,” Klein snapped impulsively. “And I know which crimes he committed.”
Cloud sat back in his chair and stared at Klein. The little judge immediately looked distressed, obviously upset by the impulsiveness, of his words. Both men seemed embarrassed by the secret that had just passed between them. It was Klein, almost self-consciously, who resumed the conversation.
“The other man was a former criminal associate of Whitman. They served time together in Folsom. We picked him up on other charges about a year after Whitman went to Death Row. It was while we were preparing for trial on the other charges that we learned of his implication in the Spotlight crimes. The man was eventually sent back to Folsom. He’s a three-time loser serving a fifty-year sentence. Chances are he’ll never be released.”
Cloud wet his lips. “Which of the Spotlight crimes did he do?”
“He committed the car theft in Pasadena. He was an accomplice of Whitman’s in the Redondo Beach menswear store stickup.” Klein paused for the briefest of instants. “And he did the Doris Calder crime.”
“But not the Luza crime?”
“No,” Klein said emphatically.
“How do you know?”
“The man confessed,” Klein said. “We had him on a dozen other counts, including two technical kidnapping charges. We made a deal not to ask for a death penalty if he’d wipe the slate clean. There was no reason for him not to confess to the Luza crime if it was his.”
“Why did Doris Calder lie and say it was Whitman who attacked her?” Cloud asked.
“She didn’t lie,” said Klein. “She mistakenly identified Whitman. He and this other man strongly resemble each other. It was an honest mistake.”
“Well, tell me something, Judge,” said Cloud, sitting forward again. “Why haven’t you done anything about that honest mistake?”
“Such as?” Klein asked, his voice suddenly crisp again.
“Such as getting Whitman off Death Row! Such as getting him a new trial!”
“A new trial!” snorted Klein. “If he had been convicted of only one crime, I would get him a new trial. But he was convicted on nineteen separate counts. I don’t believe he deserves to be tried again simply because he didn’t commit the crimes in two of those counts.”
“One of those crimes,” Cloud said tensely, “happens to one of the capital offenses that got him put on Death Row!”
“Which is exactly where he belongs,” Klein said adamantly. “He was rightfully convicted of the Luza crime and sentenced to death for that.”
“He might not have received the death penalty for the Luza crime if the jury hadn’t had the Calder crime to back it up—”
“Nonsense,” Klein said dogmatically. “That jury would have sent him to the gas chamber if the Luza crime had been the only one he was charged with. And even if they hadn’t, he would have wound up there sooner or later anyway.” Klein emphatically poked a finger in the air at Cloud. “No one has ever deserved a death sentence more than Weldon Whitman. In executing him—unlike most of them we gas—we will be preventing the taking of an innocent life.”
“That is not justice,” Cloud accused.
“Oh, yes, it is,” Klein insisted. “Very much so. As a matter of fact, it’s the best kind of justice. Preventive justice. Like preventive surgery. Cut out the cancer before it kills the body.”
Cloud stood and faced Klein coldly across the desk. “I want a new trial for Weldon Whitman.”
“You’ll never get it,” Judge Klein assured him.
“I’ll expose you. I’ll take this conversation to the papers.”
“I’ll deny it. The papers won’t use it then and you know it.”
Cloud’s expression darkened in outrage. He whirled from the desk and stalked to the door. “I’ll have the Whitman Foundation file a show-cause suit. I’ll subpoena Doris Calder to court and make her admit it.” He jerked open the door to leave.
“Just a moment, Cloud!”
Klein’s voice was like a gunshot. It stopped Cloud as effectively as a bullet would have.
“Turn around and look at me,” the judge ordered. “I want to see your face when I tell you why you won’t get a new trial for Weldon Whitman.”
Cloud turned, his hand still on the doorknob. His eyes met Klein’s flat, unyielding stare.
“You won’t be subpoenaing Doris Calder, and you won’t be making her admit anything,” Klein said tonelessly. “Doris Calder is dead, Cloud. She committed suicide six months after your magazine article about her was published.”
Robert Cloud’s face drained of color. His hand slipped away from the doorknob.
“She was conscience-stricken,” Klein said. “She began to believe that she had mistakenly identified Whitman—and this was before we found out that she really had. I tried to convince her that even if it were true, Whitman still deserved to go to the gas chamber for what he did to the little Luza girl. But no matter what I said, she continued to brood about it. She and her son Billy had been terribly humiliated by that magazine story of yours. When Billy came back from the Marines, he and Doris changed their names and moved to a neighborhood where they weren’t known. That should have solved their problems, but it didn’t. Doris just couldn’t get it out of her head that she might be helping send an innocent man to the gas chamber. It gradually became an intolerable mental problem, one she finally couldn’t cope with. One night she simply ended it with a lethal overdose of sleeping tablets.”
Judge G. Foster Klein leaned forward and placed his small hands on the desktop. His face was at once aggrieved and accusing. He said nothing further to Cloud, merely reached over briefly to press a button on his desk. A moment later his bailiff entered.
“Show this person out of my chambers and out of my courtroom,” Klein said.
“This way, please,” the bailiff said to Cloud.
Cloud’s shoulders sagged noticeably. He turned and mutely followed the bailiff.
He was escorted as far as the hall; the courtroom door was closed behind him. He stood there for a moment, staring vacantly, oblivious to the few people who walked past him. Finally he made his way slowly down the hall and out of the building. Instinctively he walked back to where he had parked the rented car. He unlocked it and got in. He started the car and put both hands on the steering wheel. But he made no effort to drive away. It suddenly occurred to him that he did not know where to go.