A change of gravity

"Just one small matter, Your Honor," he said. "Shouldn't take much time at all. US Attorney's got a balky witness. This grand-jury, corruption investigation he's only been hinting at discreetly to the papers for about a year or so. Guy's lawyer says if they bring his client in, he's going to tell him to claim he'll incriminate himself if he talks. The US Attorney's granted him Use immunity but he says that isn't good enough. Says if it's not Transactional, the US Attorney'll use the testimony to get leads to other evidence, then turn around and use that to cut his client's head off. So the US Attorney the assistant's Mister Warmth, Arnie Bissell wants you to give him and his guy a hearing, tell them the USA doesn't lie to people and so Use is good enough and his guy has gotta talk."

"Bissell wants me to tell this lawyer and his client that the US Attorney's office never fibs?" she said, widening her eyes. "I do that and God'll surely strike me dead."

Robey laughed. "Bissell says it shouldn't take long ten minutes at the most."

"Ten minutes7." she said. "Why should it take any minutes? Just do it like always. Have him send up a written order and I'll sign the thing on the spot. Then have him threaten the guy. If he stays coy, then we'll have a hearing. What you and I want to do here this afternoon is get back to the late Mister Nick Hardigrew's Really Lousy Last Weekend."

"Mind telling me what you thought of what got put in this morning?"

Robey said. "When the girl said he had his hands folded in front of him, and his head down, like he's saying grace? And he stayed that way, all the way down?"

"I don't know," the judge said. "Either he was saying his prayers or else he'd gone into some kind of trance. Blissed-out completely. Or maybe he was paralyzed; panicked and froze when he realized what was happening. He had to've known it when his chute didn't open. And to've known what he had to do next. This wasn't his first jump. Why didn't he pop the back-up? I suppose at that velocity it's pretty hard to hear what somebody else's yelling at you, "Pull the reserve chute, for God's sake." So maybe he couldn't hear the others. But she said that she could hear them yelling -that's why she didn't yell herself.

Makes it seem as though he should've heard them too."

"Unless he didn't want to," Robey said. "Maybe what happened was what he intended to have happen. Nobody we've heard yet seems to really want to come right out and say it, but isn't that where they're leading us? That the reason why the main chute didn't open when it should've, when he was clear of the plane, was that he'd made sure it wouldn't.

That there wasn't anything wrong with the job the packers at the jump-center did. The reason it didn't open was that sometime between the time that they packed it and checked it and said it was fine was that he'd done something to it himself. Sabotaged it. So he knew it wasn't going to open. He'd made sure of it. All he had to do was just have the will-power to keep his hands together until the ground came up and hit him. Unless he'd sabotoged the reserve too, of. course, but we've got no evidence of that either."

"Suicide," she said, reflectively. "He meant it to happen. Not an accident at all. This whole on-and-off romance he'd been having with sky-diving, for how many years was it now, two or three? My notes're out on the bench."

"I think it was three," Robey said. "Which was another thing that didn't add up. He seems to've been sort of casual about it. The testimony Tuesday, didn't one of the witnesses from the jump-center testify this would've been his eighth or ninth jump? Seven or eight of them uneventful, before the one that killed him. Not that many, really, considering how long he'd been at it. It wasn't an obsession with him, like it usually seems to be with people who come back after the first time they try it."

"Yeah," she said, 'the fellow did say that. The majority never jump twice. They're thrill-seekers, kind of people who dare each other to do things, usually while they're having several beers. Young, most of them. Try it once and say "Oh-kay, that's it; now I've been there and done that." And then never do it again. The real sky-divers're the ones that get hooked and stay with it, like skiers. Jump every chance they get, ten or twenty times a year. Our absent party doesn't fit either profile.

"But still, he's qualified; he's allowed to jump without a buddy close enough to try to save him in mid-air. Which he has to be able to do if he's going to be able to kill himself. The day the chute didn't open just happened to be the day that he picked to do what he had in mind all the time.

"All right, find me a motive. Why make it look like an accident? There was no incentive in his insurance. Million-dollar policy for accidental death; isn't small-change, no, but his coverage'd been in effect for over twenty years. Suicide-exemption clause expired eighteen years ago. No motive there to fake an accident.