"My God, do you imagine us taking one?" Mann frowned; Warner's anger was
rumbling too loudly. "We're here for acquittal. My girl didn't do it.
It's that simple, and that's where we stand."
Hunter nodded gravely, courteously, unmoved.
In the night, Terence Mann had felt he was not asking himself the right
questions. If as prosecutor he could frame them, allowing rational
objections from himself as defender, perhaps as witness (or accused?)
he might find answers acceptable to himself as judge, jury, and
appellate court. But under torment of insomnia the many selves of the
mind may abandon the congress of reason and start a rat-race. And
now--well, this was full tide; he could not let counsel stand there
wondering what ailed him. "That's it, then. Let the defendant be brought
in."
As they returned to their places he sketched on the doodle-pad two
egg-shaped boxers: tangled eyebrows for Cecil Warner, for Hunter too
much forehead and shovel chin.
A police matron appeared, and a court officer. A hush, then a murmur,
each voice swelling but slightly, the crescendo joining others in one
uproar that expresses no more than the human need to make a noise under
stress. Heads turned, weeds under water. Mann heard the s-whispers,
water over sand: _Callista Blake--Callissssta_ ...
She walked with a barely noticeable limp--polio in childhood, Mann
recalled from the record. She was also very slightly hunchbacked, her
thin pale arms seeming too long. As Warner escorted her to the defense
section, Judge Mann saw she wore no make-up, though powder might have
hidden the narrow scar that ran from her left ear to her jaw. Dark blue
suit and white blouse were neat, unobtrusive, severe. A natural curl
held her black hair in lines of grace above a skin of porcelain white.
She was ignoring Warner's arm, and walked alone.
She was nineteen.
Her eyes were the blue of undersea. Mann searched for other compensating
beauty--hard to find. High cheekbones, large nose, small abrupt chin,
high forehead modified by the curls but still too high. The extreme
whiteness of skin made one think of marble, or heart disease. The
medical report declared that apart from the unimportant deformity she
was quite healthy. And the State's psychiatrist was prepared to testify,
following the quaint barbarism of the once useful McNaughton Rule, that
Callista Blake was legally sane. As the jargon had it, she knew the
difference between right and wrong, the nature and consequences of her
acts.
With no word yet, Callista Blake rejected sympathy, dared the world to
pity her, indicated a readiness to spit in its eye.