The Coming of Bright (24 page)

Suddenly a dull crack reverberated around the room. Vane fell over onto his side, off of his brother. The body of the younger brother started to flop like his brother’s had, convulsing, and blood started to pour from a wound on the side of his head. It pooled around his head like the halo of a fallen angel.

Jack stood over both brothers, holding the ivory gavel. He had swung it with every ounce of strength he could muster—with the grim resolve of a slaughterhouse knocker about to kill a thousand-pound bull. The blow had been more than strong enough to kill Vane, but the gavel had hit Vane’s head at an angle, deflecting enough of the force to keep him alive. He would merely have a nasty concussion and a hefty scar where the gavel tore off a piece of his scalp.

Victor sat up and wheezed, throwing spittle everywhere. He had petechial eyes. The bloodshot look of the strangled, of the dead, of the damned. He looked down at Vane, who had already stopped convulsing and was breathing normally. But still bleeding profusely.

“Don’t call the police.”

Nobody had called yet. Phones had to be off during meetings, Caesar hated the fucking things ringing while he was pontificating, and in the commotion of Vane’s attack, nobody had yet had the presence of mind to call the authorities. Strange for a professor of law to want to shun the law, but not very strange for a man whose brother lay bleeding before him.

“Jack, cover him up with his jacket and help me prop him up. We’ll take him to my house. Will—”

Victor turned to a Praetor in the shivering huddled group, William Basker, a new assistant professor at FLS known for applying game theory to contract law.

“—take a couple other people and clean up this mess. Don’t say a word of this to anyone. This is between my brother and me. We’ll deal with it.”

Zora came up to Victor, put her right hand on his forearm, her other hand on his hand. She motioned that she was going with him. Would not leave his side while he was most in need of her there, of companionship, of solidarity, of the transformative power of a warm touch and an earnest word, given and spoken in love. As she knew he would not leave hers.

He gently pulled away from her.

“No, my love, it’s better that I deal with Vane alone. Come in a few days. Vane will be fine by then. Wait a while. But come. I need to talk to you. And answer your question.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Victor was not in class the following day. Nor did he show up on Wednesday. Another Distinguished Professor took his place, played his proxy. A woman by the name of Magenta Brooks. She was 57. The H. S. Ward Professor of Law.

Professor Brooks shunned public humiliation of students. She was to law what Dr. Weaver was to psychiatry. A maverick without a cock. Thank God. She asked the class to call her Magenta. They would call her any color, or any name, she wanted. She spent the first fifteen minutes of Monday’s class explaining her title—she was proud of that title, and wanted everyone to know it. It wasn’t arrogance, it was education.

Back in the mid-20’s, there was a fraternal order that pretty much every rich connected man in the state of Texas belonged to. The Woodmen of the World. Yes, that’s what they actually called themselves. Like they were fucking lumberjacks. Jackasses would be closer to the truth. The only wood they ever knew was from a Tijuana Bible.

So where does H.S. Ward fit into this? Jesus, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s not presume to rush the story, to rewrite history. We’re not the Woodmen. But a lawsuit involving the Woodmen did reach the Texas Supreme Court, where all the justices were Woodmen themselves—each and every one of those jackasses had to recuse himself. The governor tried for months on end to find replacement justices, and guess what—he could not find a single qualified judge in the entire state who was not a member of the Woodmen. The Woodmen were like a plague of locusts, incredibly wealthy and marginally manly locusts, filling up the halls of power.

The governor’s solution to this dilemma? Appointing an all-female Supreme Court to hear one case and one case only—the Woodmen case. Hortense Sparks Ward was the Chief Justice of that Court. An all-female court in those days was a shock. Not so much of a shock—the fact that the Estrogen Court ruled in favor of the Woodmen. Imagine the blow to women’s rights in Texas if they had ruled against the most powerful fraternal organization in the state. It took until 1982 for a woman to serve on the regular Texas Supreme Court. If they had ruled against? For the Woodmen, hell selling ice cream would have been too soon.

Lucky for her—or should it be unlucky instead?—Zora had her very own Woodman. Had that jackass fatally impaired her judgment? After less than a week, she was starting to feel, despite herself, the invisible pull of the absence of Victor in her life. With him she had experienced every level, every form, every blossoming of intimacy that a woman can experience with a man, short of conjugal bliss.

Ah, conjugal bliss—she suspected it was a myth anyway. A myth she wished her life could be. He deserved her, and she him. He had suffered under her power as she had suffered under his. And, most importantly, he had made strides, real strides, to escape the shackles of the fatal flaw of every great man—hubris.

At the same time, she was too insecure in her womanhood to believe in his love without proof, absolute proof—proof that he was capable of the love she wanted to believe in. She could not be sure that behind his honeyed words did not lurk a bitter heart. He had once called her his Pandora, and she desperately wanted to pry him open, to peer inside his hesitating heart, to know his hidden alchemy as a man.

In answering her question about who he loved most in the world, would he be able to find a way to prove to her that there was more to his love than gilded words, than gilded touches?

Seeking and terrified to find, she arrived at his door that Friday. One pressing question before any others:

“Is Vane here?”

If he were, she would no longer be.

“No, he left yesterday.”

He had her at
No
. Halfway through his sentence, she was halfway to his living room. He continued talking, following her.

“We’ve come to an understanding. He won’t challenge me openly at meetings, and I’ll elevate him immediately to Patrician.”

“You’re fucking crazy Victor. Think about it. You get incapacitated, he’s Caesar. You disappear, he’s Caesar. You
die
, he’s Caesar. Next time it won’t be heat of the moment, it’ll be premeditated. And Jack won’t be there to hit him over the head.”

“I don’t think so. He’s not as dangerous as you think. A shitstorm of a temper, yes. It was worse as a boy. He tortured things, animals. He liked to wound birds and then tear off their heads. Our parents had to commit him to a facility. He’s better now. Now he only hunts animals.”

Victor laughed. Zora didn’t.

“
Sanguis caecus
. Don’t forget that.”

“Blood is blind, yes I know. And thicker than tequila. Better leave the wordplay to me. You know what a cunnilinguist I can be. Want a taste?”

He began to lick his lips, slowly, wetly. Trying to change the subject. Not to mention practice and perfect his special kind of linguistics.

“Victor, shut up. And stop licking yourself like a lecher.”

She was so far out of the mood that it would take a lot more than an arrow, Cupid’s or Victor’s, to get her back into it. He gave his lips one last hopeful wetting and then his tongue retreated inside his mouth.

“Now what’s this surprising news you have for me?”

“I have a letter I want you to read.”

“Fine—but I hope you hid your Japanese knives this time.”

“Truth be told, I did. It won’t be quite so easy for you to make my blood see the light of day.”

Really, how resourceful would I have to be? Your fountain pen alone would be more than enough. Fountain pen—fountain of blood.

Victor retrieved the letter from the kitchen counter and handed it to her. She unfolded it, immediately noticing the White House letterhead. At the top in royal blue was the Presidential Seal. Beneath that,
The White House
, and lower still,
Washington
. The letter was handwritten.

Dear Victor,

Your student’s letter was just the spark we needed. I’ve signed an executive order releasing Dorothy Krause from custody. Effective one week from today. You seem to believe she’s innocent and I trust your judgment. If we get too much blowback from the media, from families of the victims, we’ll turn her into a symbol. A pathetic creature who was railroaded and scapegoated by the system. Your student’s letter will be perfect. We’ll give Dorothy a human face. Offer up something poignant about the ill treatment of the homeless in the legal system. Use your pulpit as a law professor to support her release. I know I can count on you; you know you can count on me.

Always, Becky

Victor never ceased to amaze, and when it came to power, never ceased to sicken. Here he was, with the President of the United States writing to him like a schoolgirl with a crush. Zora guessed that President Heath probably wished she were standing in Victor’s house at that moment, in Zora’s place, eager to be squired and screwed by her Caesar. Oh, Caesar. Harder, Caesar. Fuck me, Caesar. When the Founding Fathers used Rome as their inspiration, that probably wasn’t what they had in mind. Come to think of it, they probably didn’t have a woman President in mind either. Well, screw them.

More troubling than the thought of Victor screwing the President—and it took a hell of a lot to be more troubling than that—was the release of the Gatekeeper. Zora had made it very clear in her letter that she did
not
support a full pardon for Dorothy, full liberty.

A tragically sick woman with a vile and violent mind who needs treatment instead of a cage.

Those were her words. Apparently President Heath had gotten a little ahead of herself in her desire to please her fantasy Caesar-
cum
-lover. Now she had unleashed a murderous madwoman, a bloodthirsty lunatic, upon the general public.
God, what an unholy bitch
. Zora was not thinking of the Gatekeeper this time.

“You’re not actually going to support this, are you? We both know she needs to be locked up somewhere, somehow.”

“It’s more complicated than that Zora. Rebecca has done me a tremendous favor—”

If he said anything
too
nice about the President, Zora might have to make a move toward the fountain pen.

“—and I’ve always had doubts about the case against Dorothy.”

“I don’t understand. She hoarded the hands and feet of her victims. She collected body parts, Victor. It should terrify the hell out of you that she’s going to be released. More people might end up dead. Minus their hands and feet. And eyes.”

Zora left unsaid her own role in the whole debacle. Like the President, she had been doing him a favor.
Fuck, how did he get such smart, talented women to do such idiotic things for him?
Zora had never even considered the possibility that the Gatekeeper might come out of this process a free woman.

“Listen, the role of the justice system is to serve justice. Not worry about what
might
happen. Justice means righting the wrongs of the past, not predicting the wrongs of the future. Nobody could prove Dorothy had any direct connection to the victims, there was no motive, there was no evidence of premeditation or even intent to kill.”

“Victor, wake up and smell the crazy. She’s psychotic. You don’t have to have a motive that people can understand when you’re psychotic. You don’t have to kill someone over money or jealousy. Maybe Dorothy thought her victims had nice fingers and she wanted to add them to her collection, maybe she thought they were possessed by demons, who the fuck knows. Doesn’t change the fact she needs to be put away for the rest of her life.”

“I have another saying for you.
Veritas caecans
. Know what that means?”

“Of course, Truth is blind. Although
Victor caecans
seems a lot more fitting right now.”

“Got you. It actually means, Truth is
blinding
. The truth of what happened to those people is hiding behind Dorothy, concealing itself behind the tragedy of her life. The President is right. Dorothy is a scapegoat. The truth doesn’t want you to see it, and so you don’t.”

“A scapegoat? Murdering people and then hacking them to pieces? Calling me a slave to my face? God Victor, even for a lawyer you like to coat shit in sugar a little too much. You like Latin, how about
Libido caecans
? I don’t think I need to translate that one for you.”

Victor was never one to let his libido go to waste, and even the word itself was enough to put him in a much less confrontational mood. The word was his cue, his code. Without giving her fair warning, he brought his body close to Zora’s. He rested his hands on her hips. Pressed inward with his fingertips. She tried to squirm away, still indignant, but his fingertips held fast.