Free Death Sentence by Brian Garfield Page A

bail. I fought it at the hearing—it was ridiculously low.”
    â€œDo they skip bail often?”
    â€œNot so often that I’m used to it.”
    He held the car door for her and then went around to get in. “Where to?”
    â€œDo you like German food?”
    He didn’t, especially, but he said he did and she gave him directions; they put the car in a multistory garage in the Loop and walked to the Berghoff.
    They ordered highballs and Paul lit her cigarette from a restaurant matchbook. When the drinks came they touched glasses. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
    â€œHappy New Year.” She drank and shuddered theatrically. “Hoo boy.”
    â€œA tough one?”
    â€œSome of them bother you more than others,” she said. “This one was a fairly vicious little bastard. I hate to imagine what he’s up to now.”
    In the restaurant light she had a softer prettiness than he’d remarked yesterday. Her cheeks were high and freckled; she had a short nose and wide grey eyes. Her bones were prominent and she was curiously rangy—that was what made her seem much taller than she was.
    She blew smoke through her nostrils. “I feel awkward. It’s not a habit of mine, making dates with strangers. I did it on impulse, you know.”
    He smiled to reassure her. “So did I.”
    â€œHave you ever been to a psychiatrist?”
    He was taken aback. “No.”
    â€œNeither have I. I wonder what a shrink would say about my ‘motivations.’ I’ve never had a loved one mugged. I’ve never even been burgled. But when I passed the bar exams I went straight into the DA’s office and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve never been able to picture myself as anything except a prosecuting attorney. I never had the slightest urge to defend the downtrodden and support the underprivileged. It’s strange because I don’t think of myself as a redneck. I’m not politically right-wing at all. I don’t know. Right now I’m in one of those agonizing reappraisals about the people I have to deal with every day. I’ve started asking myself whether there’s any possibility of a society surviving without the things we think of as the old traditional civilized values. Personal dignity, respect for the law.”
    She wanted a sympathetic ear; he didn’t interrupt.
    â€œI’ve never believed crime was an illness that could be cured by treatment. Maybe one day we’ll be able to go into them surgically and program new personalities and send brand new good citizens out into the world. I’d rather not live to see that either. But in the meantime I keep hearing about rehabilitation and reform, and I don’t believe a word of it. The law isn’t supposed to rehabilitate people or reform them. You can’t force people to behave themselves. You can only try to force them not to misbehave. That’s what laws are for. The humanitarians have forced us into this illogic of reforms and rehabilitations, and all they’ve succeeded in doing is they’ve created an incredible increase in human suffering.”
    â€œCrime isn’t a disease to be treated,” Paul suggested. “It’s an evil to be punished.”
    â€œIt’s more than that,” she said. “It’s not just an evil to be punished. It’s an evil to be prevented.”
    â€œBy deterrence?”
    â€œBy getting them off the streets and keeping them off the streets.” She lit another cigarette, inhaled, coughed, recovered and said, “Protections keep expanding for the rights of the accused. What about the rights of society to be free from criminal molestations?”
    She went on, “The ‘we’re all guilty’ approach used to mean something to me. You know: ‘As long as one man anywhere is not free, I’m not free.’ It’s a great argument for doing away with prisons. But