Herndon had never started the day with anything like this before. Did he know something Ben didn’t? Was there some reason he foresaw the possibility of an outburst?
“Mr. Padolino,” the judge said, leaning back in his chair, “please call your next witness.”
“With pleasure.” Padolino rose, smoothed the crease in his jacket, then addressed the court. “The District calls Miss Shandy Craig.”
“What?” Ben hadn’t meant to say it aloud, wasn’t really even conscious he was speaking. He turned, along with everyone else sitting at counsel table, to face the rear of the gallery. Sure enough, lovely Shandy rose to her feet.
She was not surprised.
“I don’t believe it,” Glancy said, under his breath.
Christina, Marie, the rest of Glancy’s staff, and everyone in the gallery who knew the players seemed equally stunned, including a few of the people sitting at Padolino’s table. Well, that’s the best way to keep a secret, Ben thought grimly. Tell no one.
Shandy started down the nave of the gallery, composed, her chin slightly raised, moving without hesitation. Marshall Bressler was seated in his wheelchair toward the front on the defense side. As she approached, he turned his wheels outward slightly, blocking her progress.
Shandy stopped. The two made eye contact. Even without telepathic powers, Ben felt confident he knew what message was being communicated by the senator’s administrative assistant to his young protégée.
You traitor.
Shandy calmly sidestepped him, passed through the swinging doors, and was sworn in by the bailiff.
Ben had assumed-had hoped, really-that Shandy’s testimony would focus on the discovery of Veronica Cooper’s body. Unfortunately, he was incorrect.
“Was there anything unusual about the hiring process?” Padolino asked.
“Well,” Shandy replied, “I couldn’t help but notice that all the other applicants for the vacated intern position-there were four of us-were about my age, and I don’t want to seem egotistical, but no one there was hard on the eyes.”
“During the interview process, were you asked any… unusual questions?”
Ben and Christina looked at each other. Here we go again.
“It wasn’t so much his questions as the remarks he made in between. I didn’t get the joke some of the time. But I did think he was making remarks that were sexually suggestive. He’d laugh and his eyebrows would dance up and down.”
“Perhaps he was just trying to learn a little something about you,” Padolino suggested. “So he could assess your qualifications for the job.”
“Well, at one point he asked if I was wearing a thong. You know, underwear. I had a hard time seeing how that fit into a congressional intern’s job description.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really. I think he wanted to talk to me more, but he was pressed for time. As you know, the video had just hit the airwaves the day before. He had reporters practically beating down his door, he had a committee about to go into session and, he said, ‘many other important meetings.’ So he gave me the job and I went to work. I was in the committee room when the meeting began at nine.”
Ben slowly released his breath. That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t good, but they could survive it. If that was where it stopped.
“Could you please explain to the jury why you were at the meeting for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the day in question?”
“Of course.” Shandy shifted slightly to face the jury, adjusting her skirt to keep her knees covered. Now that Ben thought about it, she was dressed much more conservatively than she had been in the past. Padolino had coached her well. “As I said, it was my first day on the job, my first day working for Senator Glancy. He told me to follow him around all day long, just to get the lay of the land. That didn’t last long-his office was so overrun by the media that the senator’s PR adviser, Amanda Burton, paged me and instructed me to return to the office. But I was at the committee meeting for a good long while.”
“And were you there between the hours of nine and ten?”
“I was.”
“A previous witness, Senator Tidwell, has testified that he saw Senator Glancy leave the conference room during that time.” He paused, making the jury wait for it. “Did you?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
Ben closed his eyes. There it was. The clincher. Verification from Glancy’s own staff member, albeit a new one. Ben had interviewed Shandy after he took the case, of course, as he had every member of Glancy’s staff and everyone else on the prosecution’s witness list. She had given no indication of any sexual misconduct by the senator, during her job interview or later. And she certainly had said nothing about seeing the senator leave the committee meeting-even though she knew that meeting was key to his alibi.
“Did you see where he went?”
“I did not. I just looked up one moment and he was gone. But I had a hunch.”
Ben tensed, ready to spring. This wasn’t speculation yet, but it sounded as if it might be on the verge.
“And what was the basis for this hunch?”
“I knew how Senator Glancy got to the meeting. Because he brought me along. We didn’t come the usual way, through the marble corridors like the other senators. We took what he called his ‘secret passageway.’”
“And that was?”
“A back stairwell. Through a rear door in his private office he could enter the emergency stairway, wind through some maze-like hallways, and end up in the committee room, without ever once emerging in any of the public areas of the building. He said it was very exclusive-only a few of the senators even knew about it. He also told me about his hideaway and how you could get to it via these back passageways without being spotted.”
Ben felt Christina kicking him in the shins under the table. She knew where this was going as well as he did.
“Did this behavior strike you as… unusual?”
“He said he wanted to avoid the press, which under the circumstances I could understand. So when he disappeared during the meeting, I assumed he went the same way he had come.”
“What did you do?”
“I followed him.”
Ben felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach. Was it possible? Could Padolino finally have what he needed most? An eyewitness?
“What did you do?”
“I entered the stairwell through the door we had used to get to the committee room and tried to thread my way to his hideaway. But remember-this was my first day, and I’d only been in this place once. I got lost. There are very few exit doors. So I wasted a lot of time wandering around, not really knowing where I was.” She paused. “I probably never would’ve found them-if I hadn’t heard the noise.”
“The noise? Could you please be more specific? What did you hear?”
“I heard two voices, a man and a woman, even though the door was closed. But that wasn’t the main noise.”
“What was the main noise?”
Shandy took a deep breath. “The sound of two people… doing it. You know what I mean. Making love.”
Jaws dropped in the jury box. And elsewhere as well.
“What did it sound like?”
“It’s a little hard to describe, but-we’ve all heard it. It’s a pretty distinctive sound. There was… jeez…” She rubbed her brow for a moment. “Rhythmic grunting. Low-pitched. The sound of someone being knocked against the wall at a steady rhythm. Some crying out.”
“Crying out? As in pain?”
“No. As in… you know. Orgasmic ecstasy.”
“Are you sure?” Padolino asked. “The two might sound alike. And if you couldn’t see them-”
“Yes, I’m sure. And no, actually, they don’t sound anything alike. I’m no tramp, but I know an orgasm when I hear it.”
Ben cast a quick look at Glancy, who was remarkably stone-faced. He couldn’t tell what was going on in that brain, but the wheels were definitely turning. And he
didn’t want to know what Marie was thinking.
“How long did these… noises go on?”
“Oh, I’d guess around two minutes. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to go. I couldn’t decide. Then I heard the man speak.”
“What did he say?”
“Objection,” Ben said. “Hearsay.”
“You must be joking,” Judge Herndon said. He was hunched forward over his bench, hanging on Shandy’s every word. “The witness will answer the question.”
“It was more of a whisper, actually,” Shandy explained. “But I could make it out, just barely. He said. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Because it’s the last time for you. Forever.’”
The buzz in the gallery had been growing for the past several minutes, but at this point it reached a distracting crescendo. Herndon banged his gavel several times. “Don’t make me clear this courtroom!”
That quieted the crowd. No one wanted to risk missing what came next.
“Was there anything more?” Padolino asked.
“Yes. I heard the woman give out a little gasp, and then there was this-this-really strange sound, almost like air being sucked in. I heard a sudden thud-as if one of the parties had hit the floor. After that, the room was silent.”
“What did you do then?”
“I turned back the way I had come and found the committee room, in a lot less time than it took me to stumble upon those two. Amazing how much better your brain works when you really don’t want to be caught somewhere. I came back later, trying to get a break from all the chaos upstairs. I assumed they would both be gone but… that was when I found her. Veronica Cooper. Dead.”
Padolino nodded sympathetically. “Thank you, Miss Craig. Pass the witness.” Padolino looked pointedly at Ben.
He wasn’t the only one in the courtroom looking that way. Ben had learned to watch the expressions on the jurors’ faces surreptitiously and frequently-and what he was reading now he didn’t like at all. What he was reading was that every juror on the bench thought Glancy was a murderer-and a disgusting, perverted, cradle-robbing, sex-addicted murderer at that.
“Will there be any cross?” Judge Herndon asked.
Ben rose to his feet. “Oh yeah.”
Once they got Shalimar to put away the crossbow, Loving and Daily escorted her to a nearby Georgetown all-night coffeehouse so they could exchange notes.
“Why do you think vampires were responsible for Beatrice’s disappearance?” Loving asked.
She drank deeply from her coffee cup-almost an entire cup at once. If Loving had done that, he’d never get to sleep, but it didn’t seem to be a problem for her. Or maybe vampire hunters didn’t sleep nights. “I was going to school in Philadelphia-Bryn Mawr-but I have friends in DC, and they kept an eye on my little sister for me. Told me she was changing, going out almost every night, dressing in black, wearing turtlenecks even though it was hot as blazes out. Then she started disappearing, not coming back to her apartment, sometimes for days. At first I just assumed she had a new boyfriend. But one of my friends managed to get a look under the collar of her sweater-and found two unhealed puncture wounds. Bite marks.”
“And before that you had no hint that your sister was… gettin’ into some seriously weird stuff?”
“None at all. Last time I saw her, she was an All-American straight-A student. The next-she’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Except without the laugh track.”
“So what did you do?”
“What choice did I have? I came up here as soon as possible. But it was too late. She was gone. She hasn’t been seen since.”
“My daughter disappeared, too,” Daily said, clenching his fists. “Now she’s in the ICU unit of the hospital. If I’d only been smarter. Moved a little faster.”
“I kept saying the same thing. Blaming myself. But that didn’t help. So I dropped out of school and started spending all my time looking for Beatrice, learning about these vampire cults. I went from one vamp club to the next-gay vamp bars, straight vamp bars-places where they actually serve blood over the counter, like it was a cocktail. You wouldn’t believe how many of them there are. No one ever wanted to talk to me-so I had to get tough. That’s when I became a vampire hunter. Whether they’re real vampires or pretenders, the mythos of the vampire hunter-Van Helsing, Captain Kronos, Kolchak, whoever-terrifies them.”
“And that’s what brought you to Circle Thirteen tonight?”
“Took me forever to get a lead on that place. But I was told there were some vampires in there.”
“Some? It’s a regular Vampapalooza. But it’s all up here.” Loving tapped a temple. “I mean, they’re not really hell demons or ‘vampyrs’ or whatever the politically correct term would be. Undead Americans? They’re just basket cases trying to convince themselves they’re special by affecting this Bela Lugosi fetish.”
“You mean… they’re normals?”
“Well, I don’t think you’re gonna see any of them on the cover of Sanity Fair. But I’m pretty damn sure they’re not walking corpses.”
Shalimar’s chin sagged. “Then it’s a dead end.”
“Maybe not. Someone I talked to said women sometimes disappeared-said they were chosen by the minions of someone called the Sire for… the Inner Circle. She also mentioned a place called the Playground.” He paused. “Shalimar, I think we should team up. We’re all looking for the same girl. Maybe if we pool our knowledge-”
He was interrupted by the sound of Daily’s cell phone ringing. “Yes?”
Less than ten seconds later, Daily snapped it shut. “It’s Amber. She’s awake.”
Loving hurriedly tossed some money on the table, pulled a card out of his wallet, and slid it across the table to Shalimar. “Here’s my number. Call me tomorrow.”
“You’ll ask Amber if she knows anything about Beatrice?”
“Promise. I’ll tell you anything we learn.”
Daily was obviously anxious. “I’ve got to go.”
“I know. I’m coming with you.” Loving slid out of the booth. “Thanks for talking with us.” He gave her a wink. “Look forward to working with you, Buffy.”
Despite the fact that Loving was already halfway across the coffeehouse, Shalimar rose to her feet. “Don’t call me Buffy!”
Even though it broke protocol as well as one of his primary rules for courtroom decorum, Ben had to talk to his client. He leaned over and whispered into Glancy’s ear. “Is any of what she said true?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” Glancy shot back. “I’ve told you before. The only time I left the conference room was when I went to the restroom. And I wasn’t gone more than ten minutes.”
“Just asking.” Ben rose. He wondered if Christina might not be a better choice to cross this witness. He would be forced to tread the line between being firm and appearing to beat up on a helpless young woman. But thanks to his prior objection, the witness was his now, whether he liked it or not.
“Point of clarification, Miss Craig. Did you ever see the faces of the two people who were allegedly in the hideaway?”
“I never saw their faces, no, but I think it’s obvious-”
“To be blunt, ma’am, I don’t care what you think. I want to hear what you know. Did you see their faces?”
Shandy grasped that the tone of the questioning had changed and resigned herself to answering questions succinctly. “No.”
“Were you able to positively identify either of them?”
“I’d never met Veronica Cooper. But I thought the male voice sounded a lot like Senator Glancy.”
“Whom you had just met that morning, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“And what does that mean exactly, when you say you ‘thought it sounded like him’?”
“Well, the voice was low and deep. Kinda slow talking.”
“That would be true for half the men over thirteen on this planet.”
“It’s not just that.” She began fidgeting with h
er well-shaped fingernails, which Ben could only take as a good sign. “I thought he had sort of an Oklahoma accent.”
Ben wasn’t giving any ground. “And what exactly would that be? Like how I talk?”
“Well… I don’t really hear it in your voice.”
“Why not? I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost my entire life.” Of course, he was educated at a private school in a big city, but for that matter so was Todd Glancy.
“No, it was more like the senator talks. Kinda slow and… you know. Drawn out. Lots of extra syllables.”
“Give me an example.”
Shandy glanced toward Padolino, obviously hoping he could bail her out, but there was nothing he could do. “Well… like when he said ‘forever.’ It was more like he was saying, ‘Fuhr-eve-uhhhh.’”
“And that’s supposed to be Oklahoma? It sounds more like Gone With the Wind.”
“Your honor,” Padolino said. “He’s badgering this poor girl.”
Herndon shook his head. “They don’t call it cross-examination because it’s supposed to be fun. You may continue, Mr. Kincaid.”
“It would be fair to assume that anyone engaged in an intimate encounter might speak slowly and dramatically, don’t you think?”
“Well…”
“And you said you could barely hear the voices. The fact is, you couldn’t positively identify either of the two people involved. Not then and not now.”
“But I’m sure it was Senator Glancy and that poor girl. Why do you think I followed him in the first place?”
“Good question. Why did you?”
“Because I knew Veronica Cooper was in the building.”
Now Ben was confused. “I thought you said-”
“I said Senator Glancy told me she hadn’t come in that day. But he was lying. I’d asked the front desk clerk about her when I entered the building and he told me she was there. Well, that’s no surprise-we all know she was there now. But why would Senator Glancy lie about it? Unless maybe he was planning to meet her in secret.”
“Move to strike,” Ben said. “Supposition without foundation.”
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