William Bernhardt - Dark Justice

“I don’t have one,” Ben answered. “I’m just a lawyer representing a client.”

“Your newfound friends aren’t very popular around here; I hope you know that. Those yellow ribbons are in the windows for a reason. Once people find out you’re with Green Rage, you’ll be a pariah, too. I doubt if Emma will let you stay at her place any longer.”

Ben tried not to react. She knew where he was staying. “I’ve been invited to stay at the Green Rage camp.”

She twisted her neck. “Don’t think I’d recommend that, Kincaid. That campsite has been hit twice already, and I suspect the next attack is just a hairbreadth away.”

“Attack? By whom?”

“Don’t know. If I did, I’d file charges against them, wouldn’t I?”

“So you make it a point not to know.”

Her face turned stern. “Are you accusing me of something, Kincaid?”

“No.” Not yet, anyway. “Well, I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. I probably need to stay in town. I’m sure I can find someplace.”

“You know you’re not going to make any money off this case, don’t you? Those tree-hugging hippies don’t have much cash. What little they do have, they spend on bomb ingredients.”

“Maybe I just need the practice.”

“Or maybe you don’t care about money, ’cause you’ve got a rich mommy back in Oklahoma.”

Ben’s eyebrows knitted together. “How do you know-”

“What do you take me for, Kincaid-some rank amateur? I may not live in a big city like you, but don’t mistake me for a rube or you’ll be very, very sorry.” Her face relaxed. “I had you checked out the second I heard you were taking the case. It’s all part of the game.”

“The game? Sounds more like invasion of privacy to me.”

She dismissed his remark with a wave of the hand. “Do you know anything about the logging industry, Kincaid?”

“I know they cut down a lot of trees.”

She leaned back in her chair, pushing her feet against her desk. The hem of her already short skirt slipped up her thighs. “They do a hell of a lot more than that. The logging industry made this town. Without logging, Magic Valley wouldn’t exist.”

“You mean this area would all just be a huge, untouched, virgin forest? That’d be a shame.”

“What I mean is, there’d be several thousand people with no way to make a living. Once upon a time, this area was one of the most poverty-stricken, economically depressed parts of the country. Starvation and malnutrition were rampant. Logging changed all that.”

“I really don’t see what this has to do-”

“Everyone who lives here is indebted to the logging industry. Everyone. It’s our lifeblood. It runs through our veins.” She sat upright. “So you can imagine how we feel when a pack of would-be anarchists who don’t even live around here stroll into town and start spiking trees and blowing up equipment, trying to shut the logging operations down. From our perspective they’re like vampires.”

“I really don’t see the connection with the Gardiner case.”

She shrugged. “You’ve chosen sides, Kincaid.”

“All I’ve done is-”

“You may not realize it yet, but you’ve made your choice. A very dangerous one. And I suspect you’ve done it because you’re basically a good-hearted person who’s only heard one side of the story.”

“I’m here to try a lawsuit. Not to get involved in local politics.”

“Let me do you a favor, Kincaid.” She scribbled an address on her notepad. “My father has worked for WLE Logging all his life. He’s one of the top foremen at their sawmill just north of here. I’ll tell him you want to make a visit.”

“That’s not nece-”

“I think it is. You need some perspective. After all, you’re an officer of the court. And you’ve aligned yourself with people who are avowed lawbreakers.”

Ben bristled. “If they break the law, it’s for a reason. In the great American tradition of civil disobedience.”

“As best I recall, Thoreau never blew anyone up.” She tore the top sheet off her notepad. “Look, if you’re going to jump into the boiling cauldron, you ought to at least have some clue what’s cooking.” She handed the address to him.

Ben reluctantly took the piece of paper. “Could we possibly talk about the case now?”

Granny grinned, damn near irresistibly, Ben thought. “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you arrest my client for this murder?”

“Because he did it.”

“Could you give me a little more?”

“He had motive, means, and opportunity. Call me simpleminded, but I think that’s enough to bring charges.”

“The motive, I assume, would be Zak’s hostility toward the loggers and the logging industry at large.”

She did not quite look him in the eye. “At the very least. And he certainly had the means. Those Green Rage nuts make no secret of the fact that they’re stockpiling bomb components. To the contrary, they advertise the fact to terrorize the loggers. Every time I turn around they’ve torched another tree cutter or eighteen-wheeler. Those people are insane.”

“It isn’t insane to want to keep the forests from being flattened.”

“Oh, yeah? And how about dressing up in a Sasquatch suit?”

Ben reddened a bit. “I don’t know that the Sasquatch sightings had anything to do with Green Rage. For all I know, it could be a logger plot to make Green Rage look ridiculous.”

Granny leaned back and laughed. “Yeah, right.”

Ben tried to bring the conversation back to the case. “What about opportunity?”

“In case you don’t know it, your man admits he was in the forest around the time of the murder, although he says he was just smooching with some Green Rage floozy. I agree that he was in the woods-planting the bomb that killed Dwayne Gardiner.”

“Even if Zak planted a bomb on the tree cutter, and Gardiner had the misfortune to set it off, that wouldn’t be first-degree murder. It’s just bad luck that Gardiner was around when the bomb went off.”

“I disagree with you. First of all, planting bombs is a felony, and if someone gets killed in the perpetration of a felony, he can be charged with felony murder, which is a first-degree murder charge in this state. But it doesn’t matter.” She paused, allowing Ben to wonder for just a moment. “Because the autopsy report showed that Gardiner had been shot.”

“What? But I thought-”

“Yes, the body was caught in the explosion and burned. We almost didn’t do an autopsy, especially since the fire didn’t leave much to be examined. But being the dutiful soldiers we are, we did the tests. And it turned out the man had been shot.”

“Then he was already dead.”

“We don’t think so. The gunshot appears to have caught the poor man in the shoulder. I’m sure it hurt like hell, but it wasn’t fatal. It was the explosion that killed him. Nonetheless, the fact that he had been shot just before the explosion tells me there was a second person present-a second person with the express, premeditated intent to kill him.” She folded her hands on the desk. “And that, Charlie Brown, is why Zakin has been charged with first-degree murder.”

Ben couldn’t argue with her logic. He would’ve drawn the same conclusions himself. “Anything else linking Zak to the murder?”

“Tons. Footprints. Fingerprints. You name it.” She leaned forward. “Seriously, Ben-and I’m just talking lawyer-to-lawyer now-I don’t want to jinx your good deed for the day, but you’re gonna lose this case. We’ve got that murderous zealot dead to rights. And let me tell you, when the sentence comes down, it’s not going to be pretty. Judge Perkins has a reputation.”

“I’ve heard.”