Maureen shuddered. She had never seen Al like this.
“Sir,” Sheriff Allen insisted, “if you don’t calm down, I’ll have no choice-”
“This isn’t over!” Al shrieked. He was inside the circle of loggers now, right in their faces. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done here. You’ll pay!”
“That’s it,” Allen said. He slipped a pair of cuffs over Al’s right wrist, then whipped his arm behind his back. “I’m putting you under protective custody until you calm down.”
“I will get back at you!” Al screeched, even as Allen hauled him away in the driving rain. His voice raised bumps on Maureen’s flesh. “This isn’t over. Doc will be avenged. You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”
Chapter 62
On Sunday, the town of Magic Valley was angry, confused, disoriented. By Monday morning, it was bedlam.
Ben spent the remainder of the weekend trying to make some sense of the tragedy, trying to figure out what had happened and why. Doc was dead-horribly so-and the logger who had mowed him down had somehow vanished. Ben managed to see a photo of the man the sheriff was circulating. Ben knew he had seen that logger before, but he couldn’t place him at first. It was not until dinnertime that the light finally dawned.
He’d seen the man in the courtroom, the first day of trial. He’d seen him talking to Slade.
The man who killed Doc was a friend of Slade’s-more than likely an employee. That put an entirely different perspective on everything.
Meanwhile, the overtaxed coroner’s office collected Doc’s remains and did their best to reassemble them. A funeral was scheduled. Ben thought it likely it would be a closed-casket ceremony.
Ben pleaded with the remaining Green Rage members to stay the hell out of sight. Al had gone into town for groceries and had almost been lynched. It seemed the town was taking the exact opposite of the reaction Ben would’ve expected; instead of being more sympathetic to the environmentalists, they were more hostile. Troublemakers, Ben heard passersby sniff. Only got what they asked for. Never would’ve happened if they hadn’t barged in and started making trouble.
After the Al incident, the others agreed to remain either in the courthouse or at their new camp. But given the current climate, Ben wasn’t sure even that was safe enough. He was only sure of this: this town was now a powder keg, a smoldering cauldron of hate and hostility.
And in the midst of all this turmoil, he was supposed to try a murder case. More accurately, he was supposed to put on a defense.
Except he didn’t have one. Not anymore. Not after the meeting with Vincenzo. He had Molly, an alibi witness-but no theory. No way to make it stick. No way to make the jury believe it.
He spent most of Sunday preparing Molly to take the stand. To his relief, she was a fine witness-attractive, earnest, simple. Ben didn’t see how even those with an axe to grind against Green Rage could find fault with her.
He tried not to let it show, but Ben knew perfectly well that if Zak had any hope at this point, it rested with her. He walked her through her testimony over and over again. He was pleased to see she was willing to put in the time.
“I don’t care how long it takes,” Molly said, brushing her long brown hair behind her ears. “I want to be there for Zak. I’ll do whatever it takes to help him.”
“I appreciate that,” Ben said. “Very much.” He had worried that if word got back to her about Zak’s many affairs, as revealed in the courtroom, her ardor for him might diminish. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to have happened.
“Zak has done so much for us,” Molly said quietly. Her tone made him believe every word-just as he hoped the jury would. “This is my chance to pay him back a little.”
By the end of the day, she was ready to take the stand. It wasn’t much, perhaps, but she was all he had. Ben just hoped it was enough.
Monday morning, ben met Christina outside the courtroom. “Ready to go?”
She nodded grimly. “So is Molly.”
If Ben had a friend other than Christina in this courtroom, he didn’t know who it was. Except for Molly, the Green Rage team had wisely decided to stay away. Nonetheless, the gallery and the hallways outside were packed, filled to the brim with angry, hostile spectators. Ben felt as if he were walking the gauntlet just trying to get to court.
By the time he arrived, Zak was already there, and Zak had already heard the latest news. There was no possible way Ben could console the man. He didn’t even try.
All too soon Judge Pickens brought the court back into session. “Would the defense like to call its first witness?”
“We call Molly Griswold to the stand.”
Molly made her way to the front of the courtroom. She was dressed in a simple but attractive dress, pastel blue and pink. Like something a teenager might wear to Sunday school. Which was exactly the image Ben wanted to convey to the jury.
After taking the oath, she took her seat in the witness box. Ben had her introduce herself, say where she was from, and establish that she was a member of the Green Rage team.
“Do you know a man called George Zakin?” Ben asked.
“Of course. I’ve known Zak as long as I’ve been in Green Rage. He’s our team leader.”
“Do you consider yourself his friend?”
“Sure. He’s been very kind to me.”
“Are you close?”
“I think so, yes.” She bowed her head slightly. “We were … intimate. For a time.”
“Molly, I’m going to ask you to turn your mind back to July thirteenth.” Ben couldn’t rid himself of an anxious pins-and-needles feeling. Too much rested on this witness. Every question intensified the nervous gnawing in the pit of his stomach. “Where were you around midnight?”
“I was at the Green Rage camp. In the forest.”
“Asleep?”
“No. There had been a late strategy meeting. It went way overtime. It was just ending around midnight.”
“Who else was at the meeting?”
“All the team leaders. Zak, Maureen, Al. Rick and Deidre. Doc.”
“So Zak was there-at midnight.”
“That’s right.”
Ben drew himself up. “Molly, another Green Rage member, Rick, has testified that Zak left the camp about then, carrying a Sasquatch suit and a bomb. Do you recall anything like that?”
Molly looked directly at the jury. Her wide brown eyes seemed earnest and unblinking. “It’s true that he left the camp. But he wasn’t alone.” She drew in her breath. “I was with him.”
Several eyebrows rose in the jury box. Until then, they probably assumed Molly was on the stand as a character witness. Now they realized what she had to say was far more important.
“And the gear?”
“Didn’t exist. I’ve seen the suit, but Zak didn’t have it with him that night. And he certainly didn’t have a bomb.”
“Was he carrying a back pack?”
“No.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely.”
Ben nodded. Thank goodness. This was working like a charm. So why wasn’t the gnawing in his stomach subsiding? “Where did the two of you go?”
“Not far from camp. About a mile down a trail-in the total opposite direction from where the tree cutter exploded.”
“Why did the two of you leave camp?”
“Actually, it was my idea.” She paused, then glanced at the jurors, just as Ben had told her to do. “I wanted to talk to him-alone. So we had to leave camp.” She smiled. “Tents don’t afford much privacy.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Just us. Personal things. Our plans for the future. Probably boring to anyone else. But we had a lot to discuss.”
“Did he mention any anger or hostility toward Dwayne Gardiner?”
“Never.”
“Did he say anything about planting a bomb?”
“Absolutely not.”
“How long were the two of you together?”
“A little over three hours.”
Ben paused, letting the jury drink it all in. “Three hours? That would be from a little after midnight to a little after three?”
“That’s correct.”
“So you were with him at the supposed time of death. Around one A.M.”
“That’s true. We saw the flames and heard the explosion from a distance. We didn’t know what it was at the time, but in retrospect, it’s obvious that it was the bombed tree cutter.”
“Did Zak ever leave you, Molly? Even just for a moment?”
“No. Not once.”
“And you and Zak were never anywhere near the explosion?”
“That’s right. Zak wasn’t there.” She looked directly at the jurors. “He didn’t kill that man. I know it.”
Internally, Ben treated himself to a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you, Molly. No more questions.”