Crescent City Connection

home stood a better chance of working out, she thought. At least he knew what he was dealing with—or, more important, whom.
    She went to get Steve another beer and when she came back, Billy Hutchison’s picture was on the screen. Steve said, “Listen to this.”
    Suzanne Nickerson, the current fave anchorwoman, was reading a letter to the press, purportedly from a group calling itself The Jury:
    “It is impossible for an ordinary, honest person to get justice in America today. Those who are successful in court are those who are able to buy their freedom—or conversely, another person’s conviction.
    “Corporate America can buy ‘justice’. Billy Hutchison can buy ‘justice’. You and I cannot. Justice is not the concern of the American judicial system today—it has bigger fish to fry. It is interested in maintaining its pathetic, perverted self. It is interested in its own sick values—and we do not necessarily mean the values of the fat-cat judges and the incompetent bureaucracy—we mean as well the values of the juries so blinded by fame and money that they no longer have a conscience.
    “Someone must draw a line somewhere. Billy Hutchison killed a woman. Is there no justice for that woman? The woman was his wife. Is there no justice for all the abused and murdered wives of all American men who believe they are entitled to whatever crimes they wish to commit within a marriage?
    “And yet, all that is beside the point. We can do no good for Mrs. Hutchison or for her many sisters. We can only vent our own frustration. This time, we have declined to let a guilty man go free.
    “Yes, this is vigilante action! Yes, we have taken the law into our own hands! Why? Because someone must. Because we are tired of talk, tired of frustration, tired of rage.
    “In America, we each have a right to be tried by a jury of our peers. Yet juries today are composed of those people too weak and too poorly connected to get the judge to excuse them, people whose jobs are considered so unimportant they can be spared, retired people—those at the bottom rung of society—in short, people who hope the glitz and glamour of a Billy Hutchison will rub off on them, not people who have the slightest idea of justice.
    “And so we have appointed ourselves a Jury of Mr. Hutchison’s peers. A Jury of your peers. We have committed this crime—knowing full well that it is a heinous crime by American standards of so-called “justice”—because it is the only way.
    “The only way to bring a criminal to justice. And the only way to force an overhaul of our legal system.”
    The letter, Suzanne Nickerson said, was signed simply “The Jury.”
    “My God.”
    “Yeah. Creepy. I heard it earlier.”
    “Creepy because it’s what you think. In your heart of hearts you agree.”
    “I’m telling you, it gives me goose bumps.”
    “Jacomine—”
    “Oh. come on. You’re not going to blame this one on Jacomine.”
    “He used to say, ‘bigger fish to fry.’”
    “Not much, as you people say, to go on.”
    “No. Anyway, it’s too literate for him.”
    “Yeah, but his trick is having people around him.”
    “Don’t you start, too. Let’s go to bed.”
    “Can’t. I have to walk Napoleon.”
    “You know what? They’re right. There’s no justice.”
    * * *
    Lovelace’s head was splitting, and it cost her to pry her eyelids open. Someone was in the room with her, and it wasn’t Michelle. Michelle didn’t snore.
    But Lovelace was still too woozy to be frightened. That came in a moment when she saw that it was a strange room. She felt her heart speed up, heard its pounding even before she remembered that she’d been kidnapped, that it was her kidnapper sleeping in the next bed, fully clothed, lying on top of the bedclothes.
    As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she could see him, could see everything perfectly well. They were in a cheap motel room and there was a crack in the curtains. Light from the parking lot illuminated the room—and, unfortunately, Lovelace’s sorry condition.
    My hands
, she thought, and flexed them, looked down at them. They were numb, bound with duct tape.
    She wiggled her toes. Also numb; feet bound.
    Like her companion, she was dressed and lying on the made-up bed, still in the jeans and shirt she’d been wearing that morning when she left for class. At least she thought it was that morning. The poisoned Coke was the last thing she remembered, so she probably hadn’t awakened since