She’d ducked her head to go into the boat. Thunder crashed across the lake so loud that I saw Ben wince at the sheer volume. I also saw Finch. He was tense and staring at the boat. The man’s reaction to Gerletz entering the boat just didn’t make sense.
Or at least it didn’t make sense then.
Because five seconds later Gerletz came scrambling out of the boat onto the deck like she’d been thrown there. She looked through the dark maw of the cabin door, then called back to us. This time her voice was high, anxious-sounding.
“Greg. Come up here quick.”
With the boat securely tied I had no difficulty in climbing up onto its broad deck. I shot a questioning look at Gerletz.
“You better take a look at what’s in the cabin,” she said.
With the electric storm lighting the boat like a strobe I took a single cautious step through the doorway.
I stopped dead and whispered, “Oh, Christ.”
Outside Finch was groaning, “No, no, no, no…”
There in the gloom, lit only now and then by the flicker of lightning, were a group of faces. As I looked at them, they looked back at me, their eyes seeming to glow in the storm light.
“Valdiva,” called one of the men back on the jetty. “What the hell’s going on?”
I stepped back onto the deck. “There’s a bunch of kids in there.” I took a breath. “They’re outsiders.”
Twelve
This is when the impossible happened. When the town of Sullivan learned that the old ex-cop, Finch, had been hiding outsiders on the boat, it exploded. There’s no other word for it. As far as the public was concerned Finch became enemy number one. Not content with arresting him and locking him in the town’s four-cell jail, they wrecked his house and smashed up his car. Someone even went down to the bottom of his yard, where he kept his dog. They burnt the kennel, then shot his animal as it cried for its master. Man, you could have taken a knife and carved the mood of savagery that hung over the town.
Just twenty-four hours after the outsiders had been found, Finch stood trial in the courthouse. It sickened me. OK, Finch had risked infecting himself and thereby others on the island, but it was that volcanic eruption of public fury that got me. I know the people were scared, but it was how they dealt with it that turned my gut. As I sat on a patch of grass outside the courthouse that Monday afternoon I told myself there’d be a lynching. Hundreds of people seethed like a boiling lake outside the doors. Already some children had thrown stones. One cop wound up with a busted cheekbone. The fury had infected everyone from ninety-year-olds down to toddlers.
Ben sat beside me. He looked restless, uneasy. “They want Finch’s blood, don’t they?”
I nodded. “I think they’re going to get it, too.”
“So what’s the point of a trial? They’re going to find him guilty anyway.”
“They already have,” I told Ben. “Now they’re deciding the punishment.”
“Jeez… he was only trying to help the poor devils.”
I knew Ben had been down to the boat where the outsiders had been secretly hiding out and that had now become their prison that morning. I asked him what was going to happen to them.
“It’s already happened,” he replied. “The Caucus didn’t waste any time.”
I shot him a questioning look. The mood the townspeople were in, I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot the strangers dead just like they killed Finch’s dog.
Ben noticed the expression on my face. “Don’t worry, they haven’t been harmed. At least not yet. Old man Gerletz took the boat to the far end of the lake. They’ve been put down on the shore there.”
“Where they’ll be left to starve, no doubt.”
“Gerletz dumped some food with them. So they’re OK for now.”
“ For now being the key phrase. Jesus, there might be bread bandits out there.”
Ben shrugged. “Orders from the Caucus.”
“Yeah, orders from the Caucus. What will they end up deciding next?”
“They’ve already ordered that the boat they were using be burnt out in the lake so as not to risk contamination.”
“But Finch could be contaminated. What’s the point in going to all that trouble when it might already be too late?”
Ben just shrugged again. “People are frightened; they’ve got so desperate they’ll do anything if they think it will save them.”
“From what I saw of the outsiders, they just looked like a couple of ordinary families. They had kids with them.”
“But you don’t know that. What would happen if you got that sixth sense of yours going? And you knew they were infected? You’d have waded into them with an ax, wouldn’t you?”
I looked at him, burning with anger for a moment; then it passed. “I guess you’re right, Ben.”
“This way the town has at last done its own dirty work instead of leaving it up to you.”
He was right again. Even so, it seemed so unfair. Those outsiders might have been free of the virus or whatever. They might have lived here and never developed Jumpy in twenty years. Just then, over at the courthouse, shouting rose into a roar. The doors opened and a bunch of cops and Caucus members left the building. They climbed into cars and screeched away.
“I guess they’ve made their decision,” Ben said, looking as if an unpleasant taste had found its way onto his tongue. “My guess is they’ve passed a death sentence.”
It turned out they had. But not in the way you might have thought.
I said to Ben, “Are you covering this story for the paper?”
“No, the editor’s handling this one himself.”
It was one of those times when you’re curious to find out what’s happening, but deep down you just don’t want to know. Finch had been found guilty. Whatever punishment they were going to impose on the guy, you knew it was going to be bad. Ben had used the word draconian . I wasn’t all that sure what draconian meant, but it sounded like a hard, evil word.
The crowd’s agitation infected Ben. He stood up, began to pace ’round, running his hands through his hair.
The crowd… no, for crowd read MOB… was beginning to yell. “Bring him out! Bring out Finch!”
I guessed they’d made up their own minds to tear him to crud there and then.
Then something started happening. A something that made me uneasy. I stood up to watch. Outside the courthouse is an open area. It’s called the Peace Garden. There are sculptures of children holding hands, a fountain, fenced areas of grass with flowering cherry trees. There’s also a kind of raised stage made from brick that probably is around waist high. In the past it’s been used for music recitals. Last Christmas the local children performed a carol service there. Standing in a tight pack, perhaps it would accommodate a choir of around twenty. There were concrete steps leading up to the stage at both ends where processions, or orchestras, or bands, could enter and leave without having to clamber up onto the thing.
Until a few minutes ago some kids had been there shouting abuse at the courthouse; now the cops came out of the building and cleared the stage. Then they formed a cordon around it to keep people off.
Ben swallowed. His hands were shaking worse than ever. “Jesus, I guess they’re going to bring out Finch and shoot him there.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” I suggested. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”
“No.” His voice had a trembling quality to it, but he’d made up his mind. “No. I’m going to see this out. Then I’m going to write a story for the newspaper. I’m going to shame Sullivan for this.”
But the people of Sullivan had no symptoms of shame, or even second thoughts. A cheer went up. The crowd began to applaud another group of guys who’d emerged from the courthouse. For some reason they carried a table. By the time they reached the raised stage in the Peace Garden I could see it was a hefty antique piece of furniture. A good eight feet long, it had six legs that looked nearly as thick as tree trunks. With some sweating and cussing they managed to lift it up onto the stage. Moments later a couple of other guys appeared with a board, or what appeared to be a board, but then I realized it must have been a door that had been removed from of one of the offices inside the building.