Pop Goes the Weasel

something I want to say. I’ve been holding it in for months.”
    The press closed in; the scene was becoming smothering and claustrophobic. Cameras flashed on all sides. Now that the trial had ended, there was nothing to prevent picture-taking inside the courtroom. Shafer was aware of the rare photo opportunity; of course he was. He spoke again, so that everyone gathered around us could hear. It was suddenly quiet where we stood, a pocket of silence and foreboding expectation.
    “You killed her,” he said, and stared deeply into my eyes, almost to the back of my skull. “You killed her.”
    I went numb. My legs were suddenly weak. I knew he didn’t mean Patsy Hampton.
    He meant Christine.
    She was dead.
    Geoffrey Shafer had killed her. He had taken everything from me, just as he’d warned me he would.
    He had won.

Chapter 101
    SHAFER WAS A FREE MAN, and he was enjoying the bloody hell out of it. He’d wagered his life. He had gambled, and he had won big-time. Big-time! He had never felt anything quite like this exhilarating moment following the verdict.
    Shafer accompanied Lucy and the children to a by-invitation-only press conference held in the pompous, high-ceilinged grand-jury room. He posed for countless photos with his family. All of them hugged him again and again, and Lucy couldn’t stop crying like the brain-dead, hopelessly spoiled and crazy child she was. If some people thought he was a drug abuser, they’d be shocked by Lucy’s intake. Christ, that was how he’d first learned about the amazing world of pharmaceuticals.
    He finally punched his arm into the air and held it there as a mocking sign of victory. Cameras flashed everywhere in the room. They couldn’t get enough of him. There were nearly a hundred reporters wedged into the room. The women reporters loved him most of all. He was a legitimate media star now, wasn’t he? He was a hero again.
    A few gate-crashing agents of fame and fortune pressed their cards at him, promising obscene amounts of money for his story. He didn’t need any of their tawdry offers. Months before, he had picked out a powerful New York and Hollywood agent.
    Christ, he was free as a bird! He was absolutely flying now. After the press conference, claiming concern for their safety, he sent his wife and children ahead without him.
    He stayed behind in the court law library and firmed up book-deal details with Jules Halpern and representatives from the Bertelsmann Group, now the most powerful book-publishing conglomerate in the world. He had assured them that they would get his story, but of course they weren’t going to get anything close to the truth. Wasn’t that the way with the so-called tell-all, bare-all nonfiction published these days? The Bertelsmann people knew this, and still they’d paid him dearly.
    After the meeting, he took the slow-riding lift down to the court’s indoor car park. He was still feeling incredibly high, which could be dangerous. A set of twenty-sided dice was burning a hole in the pocket of his suit trousers.
    He desperately wanted to play the game. Now! The Four Horsemen. Or better yet, Solipsis — his version of the game. He wouldn’t give in to that urge, though, not yet. It was too dangerous, even for him.
    Since the beginning of the trial, he had been parking the Jaguar in the same spot; he did have his patterns, after all. He’d never bothered to put coins in the meter, not once. Every day there was a pile of five-dollar tickets under the windshield wiper.
    Today was no exception.
    He grabbed the absurd parking tickets off the windshield and crumpled them into a ball in his fist. Then he dropped the wad of paper onto the oil-stained concrete floor.
    “I have diplomatic immunity,” he said aloud, and smiled as he climbed into his Jag.

Chapter 102
    SHAFER COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. He had made a very serious and perhaps irreversible mistake. The result wasn’t what he had expected, and now his whole world seemed to be falling apart. At times he thought it couldn’t have been any worse had he gone to prison for the cold-blooded murder of Patsy Hampton.
    Shafer knew that he wasn’t just being paranoid or mad. Several of the pathetic wankers inside the embassy watched him every bloody time he stepped out of his office. They seemed to resent and openly despise him, especially the women. Who had turned them against him? Somebody surely was responsible.
    He was the white, English O. J. Simpson. A weird, off-color joke to them.