High Crimes

“You know something,” Devereaux said, looming over her, “you really piss me off royally. What the hell you think you were doing, arranging a meeting like that, asking me to wire you, and not telling me where you were going? I woulda gone with you.”

“He insisted I go alone,” Claire said feebly.

“They always do,” Devereaux scowled. “You gotta stop being so casual about your safety. I got news for you.” He turned around to the others. “For all of youse. You know your realtor from Pepper Pike?”

“Our witness? What’s-his-name, Fahey?” Grimes said. “Don’t tell me...”

“Yeah. He was killed in a car accident this morning.”

Claire bolted upright. Her head almost exploded with a searing pain. “Oh my God.”

“Whoever wanted him out of the way are the same folks who wanted you out of the way,” Devereaux said. “Similar modus vivendi.”

“Operandi,” Grimes said.

“Right. It seems to be the modus operandi of Kubik v. the United States.”

The phone rang at almost three-thirty in the morning.

Claire rolled over, remembered the pain she was in, and grabbed the phone before the machine could get it.

She didn’t wait for the man’s voice, or for the breathing.

“Missed, motherfucker,” she said, and slammed it down.

She woke up late — ten after nine. Court was already in session. She felt the jolt of pain, and then a jolt of realization in her stomach. “Oh, God,” she exclaimed, and leaped out of bed.

No, she remembered. This morning the armorer from Fort Bragg was taking the stand to testify for the government about the integrity of the computer armory records he supervised. Grimes was doing the cross. She never liked to miss a moment of testimony, but this wasn’t a tragedy. And she’d needed the sleep.

Devereaux and Jackie were seated at the breakfast table, talking. Annie was in Devereaux’s lap, sketching with a marker on a drawing pad. Claire could smell freshly brewed coffee.

“Hey, killah,” Devereaux greeted her.

Annie stared at her scraped-up mother with wide, tear-filled eyes, and she started to cry.

42

She was able to cover her scraped cheek fairly well with a concealer, but a large, garish, purple-yellow bruise had emerged around her left eye that even the most industrial-strength cover-up she had wouldn’t hide unless she troweled it on.

Tom noticed it immediately as he was brought to the defense table. “What the hell happened to you?” he said, gaping.

“I slipped and fell,” she said. “Living in a strange house, you know. Happens.”

He looked unpersuaded.

The fact was that they were losing the case. Despite Claire’s powerful cross-examinations of both Hernandez and La Pierre, the two witnesses had still done the job the prosecution had called them to do. The jury no doubt believed not only that Tom had machine-gunned eighty-seven mothers, children, and old men, but that he had visited upon them acts of sadism that could only have been devised by a disturbed mind.

By the afternoon session of the third day of testimony, Henry Abbott, the next eyewitness, was ready for cross-examination. Claire looked around the courtroom, located Ray Devereaux sitting in a spectator seat with his hands folded over his great belly, and smiled. He was wearing one of what he called his courtroom suits, in case he had to take the stand, and looked ill at ease.

She got slowly to her feet and approached the witness stand. Henry Abbott, dressed in a navy-blue suit and crisp white shirt with a silver-striped tie, looked relaxed and confident. He gazed at her with dead eyes. He exuded neither hatred nor contempt. He looked blankly through her, as if she were some invisible bag lady on the street.

“Mr. Abbott,” she said, “I’m Claire Chapman. I’m the lead defense counsel.”

He blinked and gave the barest nod.

“Mr. Abbott, did you see the accused shoot those eighty-seven people?”

“Yes, I did.”

Claire turned her head slightly so that she was out of the line of sight of the jury, then gave Abbott a brief smile. “So you saw the victims react to the impact of the bullets?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe their reaction?”

“Their reaction? Some of them screamed and cried, some of them fell to the ground and tried to cover their heads. The mothers shielded their children with their bodies.”

Very good. He was well prepared. “And you saw their reaction to the bullets’ impact?”

“Yes.”

“Which was—?”

“Some of them flew backward. They twitched, fell, crumpled in bizarre positions.”

“And you believe the accused was the only one who could have fired those bullets?”

“He was the only one that did.”

“But can you state positively that the bullets that struck those victims came from the accused’s firearm?”

“As I say, he was the only one firing.”

“But did you see the bullets exiting his machine gun?”

“I couldn’t see the bullets in flight, if that’s what you mean. I’m not Superman.”

A few chuckles came from the jury box. Abbott was unshakable. He had been thoroughly briefed.

“Mr. Abbott, how many rounds are in an M-60’s ammunition belt?”

“One hundred.”