Free Adjourned by Lee Goldberg Page B

of his drink and then stirred it with his swizzle stick.
    "Mr. Macklin, are you at all familiar with California history?"
    "Slightly," Macklin said wearily, lifting his glass to his lips.
    "In the mid-eighteen hundreds, San Francisco was being eaten alive by crime. The police, the courts, the city government, they were all thoroughly infected by corruption and did nothing. The citizenry took to the streets themselves, hunting down criminals, conducting trials, and then strictly punishing the offenders." Fitz took another sip of his drink and regarded Macklin solemnly. "Popular opinion then, and now, is quite supportive of those vigilantes. An opinion leader of the era, a seaman-turned-lawyer named Richard Henry Dana, said the vigilantes rescued the city, restoring morality and good government."
    Fitz smiled, meeting Macklin's gaze. "He said the vigilantes were"—his voice took on a high, melodramatic tone as he quoted from memory—"'the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken to only when vice, fraud and ruffianism have entrenched themselves behind the forms of law, suffrage and ballot, and there is no hope but in organized force whose action must be instant and thorough.'"
    Macklin saw the judge's hand tighten into a fist on the table. "Mr. Macklin, I believe that same environment, that same laxity of the law, exists today. It sickens me. And until now I've felt helpless to stop it. Your desire for due process proves what I suspected before, that you aren't a murderer, but a man of principle trying to restore order."
    Macklin looked around the room, afraid someone might have overheard. None of the patrons seemed to be paying any attention to them. "Can we take a walk? I really don't feel comfortable talking here."
    Fitz laughed self-consciously. "Of course. Forgive me. I wanted to at least meet here, on familiar ground, where I could feel comfortable. This was the only place I could think of besides home, and that's always out. I never bring work home. That is my sanctuary. I will not let it be touched by matters like this."
    Macklin nodded somberly. His home could never be a sanctuary, not now. Every facet of his life had been irrevocably touched by the disease that took his father first, then Cheshire. Slowly but surely, he knew, it was infecting him as well.
    They left the restaurant and were struck by a strong gust of wind that whipped up their hair as they made their way to the escalator. They didn't talk as they rode it down to the second floor of the parking garage.
    Macklin breathed through his mouth. The garage was thick with car exhaust fumes trapped inside the structure by the raging winds. Their footsteps echoed through the dark garage as they walked silently between aisles of parked cars to Fitz's metallic blue two-door '79 Buick Regal. Fitz unlocked the passenger door, motioned Macklin inside, and then walked around and got in as well.
    "There, now we have some privacy." Fitz put his key in the ignition, twisted it to the alternator setting, and then turned on the stereo. Classical music played softly over the speakers. "First, I need to know a little more about you. How did you become a vigilante?"
    Macklin told his story, beginning with his father's death and ending with his surveillance of Wesley Saputo, glossing over Cheshire's murder without knowing why. He kept the encounter with Mordente to himself, as he had with Shaw. He thought it was pointless to scare either of them.
    "I see," Fitz said quietly. "What kind of material evidence have you collected?"
    Macklin handed Fitz the envelope. "These memos and a strip of film that shows Orlock with a child the police later found raped and strangled."
    Fitz lifted the flap and thumbed through the items in the envelope, his face hardening.
    When the judge got to the film strip and held it up to the interior light, Macklin spoke up. "Shaw tells me he can make out Crocker Orlock in the background. He says that isn't enough to prove Orlock's