Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“You want me to write it just that way. You’re a lawyer.”

“Write it just that way. And you’ll want to identify me quite clearly. You’ll want to leave no doubt about who I am. I will help you do that. Your cup is empty. More?”

Isobel declined. “Why am I wearing a blindfold?” she said. She had recovered her composure. She had seen enough of him to go on.

“Do you believe we live in a just society?” He asked it with a studied calm, a kind of forced serenity. Very much like a teacher too much in love with his subject-like one of her professors at Oxford who’d dry up and die without Dante or Francis Bacon. “Do you, Isobel?”

“What is that to the price of eggs? You haven’t answered my question-the blindfold.” She pressed the point to see if he thought she had seen something of him underneath her blindfold. He went on with his own question.

“Do you believe what your government tells you?” he asked. “Your church? Your media? Do you believe what your own newspaper prints?”

“I don’t have a bloody church.” It surprised her to hear her father’s voice jumping from her mouth. “The newspaper sometimes gets it right. Politicians lie, most of them. But what’s that got to do with the price of bloody eggs? And why, damnit, can’t I see you, straight out?”

“You will hear the names of people who will soon be dead. I’m going to kill them. You will know why they died. When the public reads about them, they’ll know too. These people are premeditative mass murderers. They did a cost-benefit analysis and made a decision to kill my family for money. I do not believe that they deserve to live.”

“Let’s take that as given. I’m still at a loss. Why is identifying you so important, and seeing you forbidden?”

Leonard said, “I am a lawyer, Ms. Gitlin. So long as you do not actually see me, and I believe you have not, you cannot actually know it is me. You believe I am Leonard Martin. That’s fine with me. But you can’t know it, and so long as you swim in that stream of uncertainty-the high waters of doubt, as a law professor once put it-you avoid the label of accessory. New York’s press shield law notwithstanding, the FBI would draw and quarter you.” He let that sink in, then continued. “Do you think I’m crazy? I think you know that I’m not. And here’s my point. I don’t want the story spun in that direction. I know how these things work. Think ahead.”

Instead, Isobel focused on the very immediate present. A self-proclaimed killer was asking her to think about murders he planned to commit and to speculate on how they’d be handled in the press. It all seemed very singular. She’d let herself drift for half a second. He was still talking.

“You know how it works. Let’s say a CEO gets killed by someone-someone who is not me. Someone I never heard of. And let’s say this CEO had nothing to do with purposely selling hundreds of thousands, millions, of pounds of poisonous meat. Someone-not me-kills a banker in Cleveland, a software entrepreneur in San Jose, a guy who makes widgets somewhere. You pick one. What happens when they start speculating about it? ABC, CBS, NBC-all of them? All of them-CNN, FOX-you know, ‘the most trusted names in journalism.’ What happens when they start calling in the experts? You want to improve your ratings? Bring me into it. Stir Leonard Martin, or whoever I am, into the soup. You should know. The media devour people. Look what’s happened to you, and you haven’t killed anyone, have you?”

Isobel said nothing.

Now his voice roughened, found an accusatory note. “How do the media handle stories like that? However they want. If they call it terrorism, that’s it. The country says ‘terrorism, sure, must be.’ Why? ‘I heard it on the news.’ If they say it was a terrorist, then it was. Who is to say otherwise?” He was no professor now. He mumbled again. This time she thought she heard “weapons of mass destruction.” Anger and misery flooded his voice. She could see his trembling hands on the table and she imagined anguish in his eyes. “I’m no terrorist,” he said. “Killing Hopman, MacNeal, Ochs, and Grath was not terror. It was a just and rational act. My family can’t get justice. They were murdered as certain as if they too had been shot. These people chose to do it, they made a conscious decision to kill, and so have I. I won’t be marginalized. For that I need your help, your cooperation, your honesty. I won’t let them hang a Halloween mask on me, and most importantly, I won’t have acts I do not commit attributed to me. Have you got the logic?”

Isobel felt helpless. Apparently, it showed.

“They have reason to make me mad or evil.”

“ They? Which people are you talking about?”

“The people who run the news. They’ll turn me into Freddie Krueger. That’s good for a couple of rating points, don’t you think? They’ll talk to the local cops. Ask about that screwball; that’s what they’ll call me. They’ll line up two or three police chiefs-a fat white guy, a black career cop, a woman from somewhere. Great television. What does your now-famous local police chief say? At best he says he can’t rule anything out. At worst he claims to have seen the evidence and brands me a certified madman. Livens things up all around, don’t you think?”

“You want credibility. You want me to protect your image.”

“I want you to write the truth. Only the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” asked Isobel with a hard edge to her voice, the edge of her own anger? Her fear?

“The truth is,” Leonard said, “that the public wants criminals to get caught and the cops want to catch them. And nobody seems to care very much exactly who gets caught. The truth is that if I did it, it’s just me. If someone else did it, then it’s not me. That’s all the truth I need.”

“You’re asking me to take part in a conspiracy-”

“The hell I am! I’m acting alone. There’s no conspiracy. There cannot possibly be one. That would require two or more people acting in concert. You and I are not partners. I have no partners. We already talked about that. Christ, you’re blindfolded, brought here against your will. How could you be my co-conspirator? If I conspire with anyone it’s with the spirit of my wife, my daughter, my grandsons. And it’s not about the other people, or their survivors. I’m not avenging them. I speak for no one but me, and I act only for myself. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no anarchist. I’m not waging an anticorporate crusade. I have nothing against the capitalist world. The system’s been very good to me. I am, after all-if I am who you think I am-a rich man. This is only about justice for my family, for me.”

“Justice or satisfaction?”

“What’s the difference?”

“I can’t be any part of this.” Isobel shook her head. She felt like stamping her foot. “You can’t just kill people.”

“Really?” he sipped his tea, looking into Isobel’s face, sadly, as if he’d tried and failed to make a fundamentally obvious point. She could not see him, but she thought of her father scolding her twenty years ago, despairing as she withheld any sign of understanding his point of view.

Leonard said, “Eight hundred and sixty-four people were killed. Was anyone arrested? Was anyone indicted? Did anyone go to trial? Is anyone in prison? You can’t just kill people? Of course you can.” His voice drifted off. “You can’t just kill people?” he said.

“I’m sorry for your loss. What about Nina and Ellie and her boys? Let me tell your story. That will build public awareness. The people you’re talking about, who want to shape the story their way? They’ll have to deal with public opinion informed by the truth as you want it presented. Your personal story can be your greatest asset.”