“Good God!” He sank back in his chair, rubbed a trembling hand over his bald spot, and then lurched to his feet, rushed over and locked his office door. The fear spread like a mutating virus. He could barely breathe. He staggered back to his desk and hit his intercom button again. “Sheila, bring me in some water and some aspirin, please.”
A minute later Sheila knocked on the door. “Mr. Rider,” she said through the door, “it’s locked.”
He quickly unlocked the door, took the glass and aspirin from her and was about to shut the door again when Sheila said, “Are you okay?”
“Fine, fine,” he replied, hustling her out the door.
He looked down at the paper Rufus wanted him to file with the United States Supreme Court. Rider happened to be a member of the largely ceremonial Supreme Court Bar, solely by virtue of the sponsorship of a former colleague in the military who had gone on to the Justice Department. If he did exactly as Rufus asked, he would be the attorney of record in Harms’s appeal. Rider could envision only personal catastrophe resulting from such an arrangement. And yet he had promised Rufus.
Rider lay down on the leather sofa in one corner of his office, closed his eyes and commenced a silent deliberation. So many things hadn’t added up the night Ruth Ann Mosley had been killed. Rufus didn’t have a history of violence, only a constant failure to follow orders that had enraged many a superior, and, at first, had bewildered Rider as well. Harms’s inability to process even the simplest of commands had been finally explained during Rider’s representation of him. But his escaping from the stockade never had. Confronted with no defense, factually, Rider had made noises about an insanity plea, which had given him just enough leverage to save his client from possible execution. And that had been the end of it. Justice had been served. At least as much as one could expect in this world.
Rider looked once more at the notice from the Army, the stark lie of the past now firmly revealed. This information should have been in Harms’s military file at the time of the murder, but it wasn’t. It would have constituted a completely plausible defense. Harms’s military file had been tampered with, and Rider now understood why.
Harms wanted his freedom and his name cleared and he wanted it to come from the highest court in the land. And he refused to entrust the prospect of freedom to the Army. That’s what Harms had said to him while the country-western music had covered his words. And could he blame him?
All things good were in Rufus’s corner. He should be heard and he should be free. But despite that, Rider remained immobile on his couch of worn leather and burnished nails. It was nothing complex. It was fear — a far stronger emotion, it seemed, than any of the others bestowed upon humankind. He planned to retire in a few years to the condo he and his wife had already picked out on the Gulf Coast. Their kids were grown. Rider was weary of the frigid winters that settled into the low pockets of the area and he was tired of always chasing new pieces of business, of diligently recording his professional life in quarter-hour increments. However, as enticing as that retirement was, it wasn’t quite enough to prevent Rider from helping his old client. Some things were right and some things were wrong.
Rider rose from the couch and settled behind his desk. At first he had thought the simplest way to help Rufus was to mail what he had to one of the newspapers and let the power of the press take over. But for all he knew, the paper would either toss it as a letter from some crazy, or otherwise bungle it such that Rufus might be put in danger. What had really made up Rider’s mind as to his course of action was simple. Rufus was his client and he had asked his lawyer to file his appeal with the United States Supreme Court. And that’s what Rider was going to do. He had failed Rufus once before; he wasn’t going to do it again. The man was in dire need of a little justice, and what better place for that than the highest court in the land? If you couldn’t get justice there, where the hell could you get it? Rider wondered.