by Leigh Adams
“Is he?” Frank said.
“Maybe there’s nothing in it, but it still looks fishy. Evans wins the case and Richard Hamilton does everything he can to make sure Reggie ends up in Richmond. It’s just the kind of thing you could make a conspiracy theory out of.”
Frank looked thoughtful. “You could make a conspiracy theory out of it,” he said, “and that would at least make some kind of sense. Think about all the problems they’ve had. They ditched the first detective team on the case. Then they lost a ton of forensics. Maybe Ozgo isn’t guilty.”
“Maybe,” Kate said.
“You should pay attention to it,” Frank said. “I think you should investigate it. Take your month and go find out what you can. You do detective work in that job of yours. You find out who or what has been messing with computer security systems.”
“It’s not the same thing. It isn’t even close to the same thing.”
“I think it’s as close as you need to get,” Frank said. “Jack and I are both right. If you don’t have something to focus on in the next few weeks, you’re going to go crazy, and you’re going to drive all of us crazy. The Ozgo case is right there, right in front of you. The trial starts today. Go take your mind off Almador. Write an article. Publish it under a pseudonym if you think you’ve got a chance of going back to your job and don’t want to make waves. Do something.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Kate said.
Frank got up. “I’m very definitely out of my mind some of the time,” he said. “But I’m not now, and I’m going to be late for the senior center.”
“I could wear one of those Sherlock Holmes hats and carry a magnifying glass.”
“You can’t sit on your hands for a month, Kate. You’re just not capable of it.”
***
She spent nearly an hour doing purposeful things that she usually didn’t have time for. She loaded the dishwasher. She walked through the townhouse picking up dirty clothes from wherever Jack had left them and then loaded the washing machine. She ran the vacuum over Jack’s bedroom floor and then over Frank’s. Frank had left clothes on the bedroom floor, too. Kate put those in the washing machine with Jack’s things and then threw in soap and started the thing up. Then she went back to the living room and started vacuuming again.
Twenty minutes later, she was sitting on the living room couch, feeling at loose ends. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t come up with a single thing to occupy her. She was feeling too anxious to read. She was feeling far too anxious to play games on her phone. Even solitaire was beyond her. She kept mixing up the suits. Red cards looked like red cards. Black cards looked like black cards.
After another twenty minutes, she gave it up.
She grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.
It was a bright, cold day and far enough from the usual rush hour so that there was not much going on except Evans’s campaign vans still prowling from one street to the other and blaring their message over and over again.
Kate was a good ten miles into her trip before she admitted to herself where she was going: to the Fairfax County General District Court and the trial of Kevin Ozgo for the kidnapping of Chan Hamilton. Despite her destination, the project still felt ludicrous. Above all the other objections, there was the obvious problem: This was the first day of a famous trial. People had probably come from three states and farther just to see if they could view the spectacle. There wasn’t going to be anywhere to park, and there wasn’t going to be a seat left if she even got through the door.
“Making an idiot of myself,” she muttered under her breath.
When she started to get close to the courthouse and the traffic started to get more and more snarled, she turned off onto a side street and went looking for parking. Most of the lots were packed solid.
Since Kate didn’t want get towed, she circled, going from one side street to another, from one parking lot to another.
Kate was just thinking about giving up when a miracle appeared: a municipal lot—one of the small, cramped ones, tucked between two buildings that both looked about ready to fall down—nowhere near full. If she was ever going to start believing in fate, she was going to do it now.
The streets around this particular parking lot were deserted. Where the streets closer to the courthouse had been frenzied under the onslaught of the unusual volume of traffic, this street was so empty and silent it could have been part of an abandoned city.
Kate braved the spooky atmosphere and marched in the direction of the noise, the craziness, and the traffic. Once she got out on the main road, she could hear it. Horns were blaring. A lot of horns were blaring. Then she got closer and could hear people shouting. Whistles blew.
Another turn and another turn and another turn and there she was, turning onto the street in front of the courthouse itself.
The street was a solid block of people, cars, media vans, and police vehicles. Officers were on foot trying to direct pedestrian traffic. They had given up trying to clear the road so that regular traffic could get through. People were so closely packed together that they moved as units, with some people, mostly in suits, weaving their way through, trying to ignore the insanity around them.
This is where this ends, Kate told herself. I’m never getting through that.
By now, though, she had been caught up in the crowds. She was crushed in a crowd, but she managed to catch a glimpse of Evans by himself up near the courthouse door. The crews in the media vans turned their attention on him and began shouting. Cameras came up on shoulders. Photographers and cameramen rushed into the street and began whirring away in Evans’s direction.
“Mr. Evans!” someone shouted. “Mr. Evans, do you expect to be successful in this prosecution?”
“Mr. Evans! What do you say to the rumors that you’ve been bought and paid for by Richard Hamilton?”
“Mr. Evans!”
Kate watched as Evans went his way without giving any indication that he had heard a thing, but when he got to the courthouse steps, he climbed halfway up and then stopped, turned around, and faced the cameras.
He had a politician’s face and a politician’s smile, more so in person than he did on billboards and television.
She was now all the way up to the edge of the courthouse steps. She had no idea how.
“Mr. Evans!” someone was shouting. This turned out to be a woman reporter in a red dress and red high heels, holding a microphone up to her mouth. “Mr. Evans! The defense says that there was a third person in the house on the night of the fire and you’re not pursuing that because Richard Hamilton wants a quick conviction. Do you have anything to say to that?”
“Ozgo is guilty in this case, and I will prove it in the next few days.”
“Do you expect to get a conviction?” somebody else shouted.
“I expect to get a conviction.”
“Mr. Evans! What do you say to the rumors that you’ve been bought and paid for by Richard Hamilton?”
For the first time, Kate saw a flicker of real emotion on Evans’s face. The man was furious. A single vein that ran along the edge of his jaw swelled as if it was going to burst.
“I have,” Evans said, “the best conviction rate of any district attorney in the history of Fairfax County. Part of the reason I have that rate is that I have always been very careful about who I charge and when I charge them. The evidence in this case has been thoroughly examined on every level of law enforcement. The forensics have been checked and double-checked, both by our people here—and our people here are excellent—and by Dr. Henry Lee, who graciously agreed to come down from Connecticut and look them over. There is no doubt whatsoever that we have the right person on trial. And there is no doubt whatsoever that Ozgo will be convicted in this courtroom and that he will go away for the longest possible sentence. What’s more, I consider what I have just said to be a promise to the people of the great state of Virginia, and I’m willing to stake my life, my reputation, and my future prospects on it. And that’s all
I’ve got to say.”
“Mr. Evans!” six people said at once.
Evans had turned his back on the lot of them and resumed his ascent of the courthouse steps.
From Kate’s vantage point at the foot of the courthouse steps, she was actually in a better position to see him than some of the reporters. And the steps were right there. There was no reason she shouldn’t walk right up them.
But there probably wasn’t any point. The seats would all be full. Most of them must have been reserved, and the few left for ordinary citizens had probably been snapped up hours ago.
At just that moment, there was another stir in the crowd and then noise that went beyond insane. The media had been eager to interview Evans, but this was more than eagerness. This was bloodlust.
Kate turned back and saw what the rest of them had seen before her. There was Chan Hamilton herself, and she was not alone. Her father was with her, and with her father was a security detail that would have been too much for a visiting dignitary with a price on his head.
The security detail managed to keep the crush of reporters and camera people away from Chan and Richard Hamilton. It was probably a good thing, because the crush was getting closer, even if getting closer meant they would smother their quarry to death. Kate backed up onto the first of the courthouse steps, appalled.
“Mr. Hamilton! Mr. Hamilton! Miss Hamilton! Mr. Hamilton!”
“You’ll notice,” a voice said in Kate’s ear, “that there’s no sign of Kevin Ozgo. That’s because Ozgo wasn’t able to make bail.”
The man standing beside her was good looking but a little strained. He had a tiny scar on the right side of his nose in the shape of a crescent moon. He was staring at Richard and Chan Hamilton and the circus.
“Excuse me?” Kate said.
The man pulled his eyes away from what was going on in the street. “I’m trying not to be cynical. It’s very, very hard at the moment.”
“I don’t understand how they think. These media people, I mean,” Kate said. “They get so crazy, and what’s the point? They’re not going to get any closer than they would if they’d taken their time about it, and I’ll bet people don’t say anything except what they intended to say anyway.”
The man turned his full attention on her. “Do you really think so? That people only say what they mean to say in these situations?”
“Richard Hamilton isn’t going to say anything else,” Kate said. “He never says anything unless he wants to. And he isn’t going to let Chan say anything at all, if you ask me.”
“True,” the man said. “But not everybody is Richard Hamilton, and not everybody has Richard Hamilton to look out for him. There is, for instance, Ozgo.”
“Has he been talking to the media?”
“Not on purpose, no. He’s been quoted in the media quite a bit. I take it you haven’t been following the case?”
“Not really,” Kate said.
“That’s a little odd, isn’t it? Here you are, in the middle of the frenzy, and you’re damned good at getting yourself into strategic places. Most of your fellow spectators were rounded up and penned in half an hour ago.”
“Yes, well, I’m not really sure how that happened.”
“You didn’t come here to see if you could get yourself a seat to watch the trial?”
“Not on purpose,” Kate said.
This was at least half the truth. And, yes, the man was very good looking. He got better looking the longer Kate watched him.
The man had turned his attention back to the circus. Richard and Chan Hamilton and their circle of protectors had reached the courthouse steps. None of the media people had gotten any closer to them than they had been before.
Chan and her father mounted the courthouse steps without haste and without hesitation. They stared past everything as if none of it was there. Richard Hamilton looked like a very cold man. Chan looked practically catatonic. A moment later, they entered the courthouse doors at the top of the steps. The reporters fell away from them and returned to the street.
“How about this,” the man said. “I happen to have two reserved seats, and one of them isn’t going to be used today. Why don’t you come along and sit by me?”
Six
Kate didn’t know how long it had been since someone tried to pick her up and didn’t know how she felt about it. The man was attractive, and he wasn’t being too pushy. On the other hand, Kate hadn’t been interested in getting involved with someone for years. A bad marriage and a life with little room to breathe had taken care of that.
Kate tried to brush it all away. Nothing was going on at the moment but some good luck. She could tell, as soon as they had approached the doors to the courtroom, that if she hadn’t run into someone with reserved seats, she would never have gotten in at all. The reserved seating was toward the front, but it only took up two rows of seats on one side and one on the other. The rest of the seats were up for grabs for the first people who could get to them, and there were an infinite number of people who wanted them.
“It’s the speedy and public trial thing,” the man said, watching Kate watch the crowd.
“What?” Kate asked.
The man held out his hand, formally. “I’m Thomas Abbot. People call me Tom.”
“I’m Kate Ford.” Kate shook Tom’s hand.
Tom looked behind them at the already filled seats. “The Constitution says an accused person must be afforded a speedy and public trial. Trials are public events. They can’t be closed to the public, and they can’t be closed to the press except under very, very unusual circumstances. So when a trial starts up, seats in the courtroom are open to any member of the public who wants to come and watch.”
“They’d have to hold the thing in a football stadium if they wanted to let in anybody who wanted to come and watch.”
“I don’t think they necessarily want to let in anybody who wants to watch,” Tom said. “It’s just that they have to, as far as they are able. And there’s no saving your seat once you get it. At least not for the next day. All members of the general public who got in today and want to come back tomorrow have to go through the same waiting up and camping out they did today.”
“And will they do that?” Kate asked, looking behind her at the crowd.
Tom shook his head. “No,” he said. “In my experience, the first day or two draws crowds who are not members of the press. But no matter how sensational the trial is, the crowds drop off after a while. They don’t come back again until the jury goes out. Everybody wants to hear the verdict. But, not to put too fine a point on it, most trials, even most dramatic trials, are largely dead boring. There’s a lot of technical detail. There’s a lot of nailing down small points that are hard to connect before the prosecutor or the defense attorney sums up the case at the end. Even the juries start to nod off after a while. That’s why judges always make such a point of telling them that they can ask for clarifications any time they want.”
Kate shook her head. “Do you really think this trial is going to get boring?”
“Sure it will,” Tom said. “Reggie Evans has a lot he has to establish. He’s going to have to call arson experts. He’s going to have to go into the nature of accelerants, their chemical composition, how they’re used. What effect the accelerant used in this case had on the course of the fire. Then there’s the ransom request, the way it was transmitted, the identifying marks on the paper . . . Anyway, most people don’t care about that sort of thing. They’re not even all that interested in what goes on with dead bodies. The technicalities of determining time of death and cause of death. You’ve got to have something dramatic to get the public’s attention. Maggots and worms. Sex after death. Something.”
Kate shuddered. “At least there’s no sex after death here. I don’t think I could handle that.”
“There’s almost everything else, though,” Tom said. “Money, power, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I’ve been watching this case from the beginning, and it’s always bo
thered me.”
“Because it’s so sensational?”
“No,” Tom said. “Because it feels stage-managed.”
“Stage-managed? But I don’t understand. Do you mean you don’t think it’s real? That somebody made it all up?”
“Not stage-managed like that,” Tom said. “Obviously the house burned down. And somebody tied up Chan and put duct tape on her mouth. There’s even an unauthorized video up on YouTube to prove it. But there’s something wrong here. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“Are you a reporter?” Kate asked. “Is that how you got assigned seats?”
“I’m a cop,” Tom said.
Kate was startled. “Are you a witness? Are you going to testify?”
“No.”
“But then what—?”
“That’s the bailiff,” Tom said, pointing to an elderly black man with a voice as deep and resonant as the voice of God.
“All rise,” the bailiff said.
Kate got to her feet along with the rest of the crowd.
***
Tom’s assigned seats were better than anything Kate could have hoped to snag on her own. They were in the second row behind the prosecutor’s table, which gave her a clear view not only of Chan Hamilton but of Richard Hamilton sitting beside her. Kate looked back and forth between the two of them as the judge and the lawyers droned on and on about the seating of jurors and other things Kate had to admit were just plain boring. She let herself focus in. Chan was wearing three charm bracelets going up her right arm, each crammed full of silver charms, each with a theme: musical instruments on one (piano, violin, drum set with drumsticks); animals on another (bear, deer, elephant); and stars on the third (Star of David, five-point star, eight-point star). Richard Hamilton’s fine silk suit was grey but with a navy-blue stripe so thin and so widely spaced that it would have been invisible to most people. Richard Hamilton was a man who did not like to be conspicuous, but Kate already knew that.
Meanwhile, her initial impression of Evans was being confirmed. He was striding back and forth in front of the judge’s bench, raising his voice here, dropping his voice there. It was an act—that much was clear.