Pop Goes the Weasel

largest in the building. Closest to the double set of public doors was a gallery that held around a hundred and forty spectators. Then came the “bar area,” where the attorneys’ tables were situated. Then the “judge’s bench,” which took up about a quarter of the room.
    The trial began at ten in the morning, and it was all a rattle and hum to him. The lead prosecutor was Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Marie Fitzgibbon. He already yearned to murder her, and wondered if he possibly could. He wanted Ms. Fitzgibbon’s scalp on his belt. She was just thirty-six, Irish Catholic, single, sexy in her tight-assed way, dedicated to high-minded ideals, like so many others from her island of origin. She favored dark-blue or gray Ann Taylor wardrobes and wore a ubiquitous tiny gold cross on a gold chain. She was known in the D.C. legal community as the Drama Queen. Her melodramatic telling of the gory details was meant to win the sympathy of the jury. A worthy opponent indeed. A worthy prey as well.
    Shafer sat at the defendant’s table and tried to concentrate. He listened, watched, felt as he hadn’t in a long time. He knew they were all watching him. How could they not?
    Shafer sat there observing, but his brain was on fire. His esteemed attorney, Jules Halpern, finally began to speak, and he heard his own name. That piqued his interest, all right. He was the star here, wasn’t he?
    Jules Halpern was little more than five-four, but he cut quite a powerful figure in a court of law. His hair was dyed jet-black and slicked back tightly against his scalp. His suit was from a British tailor, just like Shafer’s. Shafer thought, rather uncharitably, he supposed, Dress British, think Yiddish . Seated beside Halpern was his daughter, Jane, who was second chair. She was tall and slender, but with her father’s black hair and beaked nose.
    Jules Halpern certainly had a strong voice for such a slight and small fellow. “My client, Geoffrey Shafer, is a loving husband. He is also a very good father, and happened to be attending a birthday party for two of his children half an hour before the murder of Detective Patricia Hampton.
    “Colonel Shafer, as you will hear, is a valued and decorated member of the British intelligence community. He is a former soldier with a fine record.
    “Colonel Shafer was clearly set up for this murder charge because the Washington police needed this terrible crime to be solved. This I will prove to you, and you will have no doubt of it. Mr. Shafer was framed because a particular homicide detective was going through some bad personal times and lost control of the situation.
    “Finally — and this is the most essential thing for you to remember — Colonel Shafer wants to be here. He isn’t here because he has to be; he has diplomatic immunity. Geoffrey Shafer is here to clear his good name.”
    Shafer nearly stood up in the courtroom and cheered.

Chapter 80
    I PURPOSELY, and probably wisely, skipped the first day, then the second and the third day, of the courtroom circus. I didn’t want to face the world press, or the public, any more than I had to. I felt like I was on trial, too.
    A cold-blooded murderer was on trial, but the investigation continued more feverishly than ever for me. I still had the Jane Does to solve, and the disappearance of Christine, if I could open up any new leads. I wanted to make certain that Shafer would not walk away a free man, and most important, I desperately wanted finally to know the truth about Christine’s disappearance. I had to know. My greatest frustration was that because of the diplomatic shenanigans, I had never gotten to question Shafer. I would have given anything for a few hours with him.
    I turned the southern end of our attic into a war room. There was an excess of unused space up there, anyway. I moved an old mahogany dining table out from the shadows. I rewired an ancient window fan, which made the attic space almost bearable most days — especially early in the morning and late in the evening, when I did my best work up there — in my hermitage.
    I set up my laptop on the table, and I pinned different-colored index cards to the walls, to keep what I considered the most important pieces of the case before me at all times. Inside several bulky and misshapen cardboard boxes, I had all the rest of it: every scrap of evidence on Christine’s abduction, and everything I could find on the Jane Does.
    The murder cases formed a maddening