Pop Goes the Weasel

RETIRED FROM INTELLIGENCE (AS I LIKE TO PUT IT), AND A RATHER FAMOUS WINDBAG. I WISH YOU MUCH LUCK IN YOUR SEARCH FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE. I MISS THE CHASE MYSELF.
    CONQUEROR
    I read the message, then reread it. “Much luck in your search?” Was that as loaded a line as it sounded?
    And was I now a player — the fifth Horseman?

Chapter 83
    I WENT TO COURT EVERY DAY the following week, and like so many other people, I got hooked on the trial. Jules Halpern was the most impressive orator I had ever watched in a courtroom, but Catherine Fitzgibbon was effective as well. The verdict would depend on whom the jury believed more. It was all theater, a game. I remembered that as a kid I used to regularly watch a courtroom drama with Nana, called The Defenders . Every show began with a deep-voiced narrator’s saying something to the effect of, “The American justice system is far from perfect, but it is still the very best justice system in the world.”
    That may be true, but as I sat in the courtroom in Washington, I couldn’t help thinking that the murder trial, the judge, the jury, the lawyers, and all the rules were just another elaborate game, and that Geoffrey Shafer was already planning his next foray, savoring every move that the prosecution made against him.
    He was still in control of the game board. He was the gamemaster. He knew it, and so did I.
    I watched Jules Halpern conduct smooth examinations that were designed to give the impression that his monstrous, psychopathic client was as innocent as a newborn baby. Actually, it was easy to drift off during the lengthy cross-examinations. I never really missed anything, though, since all the important points were repeated over and over, ad nauseam.
    “Alex Cross …”
    I heard my name mentioned and refocused my attention on Jules Halpern. He produced a blown-up photograph that had appeared in the Post on the day after the murder. The photo had been taken by another tenant at the Farragut and sold to the newspaper.
    Halpern leaned in close to the witness on the stand, a man named Carmine Lopes, a night doorman at the apartment building where Patsy Hampton had been murdered.
    “Mr. Lopes, I show you Defendant’s Exhibit J, a photograph of my client and Detective Alex Cross. It was taken in the tenthfloor hallway soon after the discovery of Detective Hampton’s body.”
    The blowup was large enough for me to see most of the detail from where I was sitting in the fourth row. The photo had always been a shocker to me.
    In it, Shafer looked as if he had just stepped out of the pages of GQ . In comparison, my clothes were tattered and dirty. I had just come off my crazy marathon run from the zoo, and I had been down in the garage with poor Patsy’s body. My fists were clenched tightly, and I seemed to be roaring out anger at Shafer. Pictures do lie. We know that. The photograph was highly inflammatory, and I felt it could instill prejudice in the minds of the jurors.
    “Is this a fair representation of how the two men looked at ten-thirty that evening?” Halpern asked the doorman.
    “Yes, sir. It’s very fair. That’s how I remember it.”
    Jules Halpern nodded as if he were receiving vital information for the first time. “Would you now describe, in your own words , what Detective Cross looked like at that time?” he asked.
    The doorman hesitated and seemed slightly confused by the question. I wasn’t. I knew where Halpern was going now.
    “Was he dirty?” Halpern jumped in and asked the simplest possible question.
    “Er, dirty … sure. He was a mess.”
    “And was he sweaty?” the defense lawyer asked.
    “Sweaty … yeah. We all were. From being down in the garage, I guess. It was a real hot night.”
    “Nose running?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Were Detective Cross’s clothes ripped, Mr. Lopes?”
    “Yes, they were. Ripped and dirty.”
    Jules Halpern looked at the jury first, then at his witness. “Were Detective Cross’s clothes bloodstained?”
    “Yes … they sure were. That’s what I noticed first, the blood.”
    “Was the blood anywhere else, Mr. Lopes?”
    “On his hands. You couldn’t miss it. I sure didn’t.”
    “And Mr. Shafer, how did Mr. Shafer look?”
    “He was clean, not mussed at all. He seemed pretty calm and collected.”
    “Did you see any blood on Mr. Shafer?”
    “No, sir. No blood.”
    Halpern nodded, then faced the jury. “Mr. Lopes, which of the two men looked more like someone who might have just committed