'So I want to apologize to my wife and children. I am so frightfully sorry for this hellish ordeal they've had to go through. To my son, Rob, and the twins, Tricia and Erica, I'm so sorry. If I had any idea what a circus this would become, I would have insisted on diplomatic immunity, rather than clear my name, our name, their name.'
'While I'm making heartfelt apologies, I'll make one to all of you for being a bit of a bore right now. It's just that - when you're accused of murder, something so heinous, so unthinkable, you want desperately to get it off your chest. You want to tell the truth more than anything else in the world. So that's what I'm doing today.'
'You've heard the evidence - and there simply isn't any. You've heard character witnesses. And now you've heard from me. I did not kill Detective Patsy Hampton. I think you all know that, but I wanted to say it to you myself. Thank you for listening,' he said, and bowed slightly in his seat.
Shafer was brief, but he was poised and articulate, and, unfortunately, very believable. He always held eye contact with the jury members. His words weren't nearly as important as the way he delivered them.
Catherine Fitzgibbon came forward to do the cross-examination, and she was careful with Shafer at first. She knew that he had the jury on his side for the moment.
She waited until near the end of her cross-exam to go after Shafer where he might be most vulnerable.
'That was very nice, Mr. Shafer. Now as you sit before this jury you claim that your relationship with Dr. Cassady was strictly professional, that you did not have a sexual relationship with her? Remember you are under oath.'
'Yes, absolutely. She was, and hopefully will continue to be, my therapist.'
'Notwithstanding the fact that she admits to having a sexual relationship with you?'
Shafer held his hand toward Jules Halpern, signaling for him not to object. 'I believe that the court record will show that she did not admit to such.'
Fitzgibbon frowned. 'I don't follow? Why do you think she didn't answer counsel?'
Shafer shot back. 'That's obvious. Because she didn't care to dignify such a question.'
'And when she hung her head, sir, and looked down at her lap? She was nodding assent?'
Shafer now looked at the jury, and shook his head in amazement. 'You misread her completely. You missed the point again, Counselor. Allow me to illustrate, if I may. As Charles the First said before being beheaded, “Give me my cloak lest they think I tremble from fear.” Dr. Elizabeth Cassady was deeply embarrassed by your associate's crude suggestion, so was my family, and so am I.'
Geoffrey Shafer looked at the prosecutor with steely eyes. He then acknowledged the jury again. 'And so am I.'
Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel
CHAPTER Ninety-Nine
The trial was almost over, and now came the really hard part: waiting for a verdict. That Tuesday, the jurors retired to the jury room to commence their deliberations in the murder trial of Geoffrey Shafer. For the first time, I allowed myself to actually think the unthinkable: that Shafer might be set free.
Sampson and I sat in the rear row of the courtroom and watched the twelve members depart: eight men and four women. John had come to court several times, calling it the 'best and sleaziest show this side of the Oval Office', but I knew he was there to give me support.
'The sonofabitch is guilty, he's mad as little Davey Berkowitz,' Sampson said as he watched Shafer. 'But he has a lot of good actors on his side: doting wife, doting mistress, well-paid lawyers, Silly Billy. He could get away with it.'
'It happens,' I agreed. 'Juries are hard to read. And getting harder.'
I watched as Shafer courteously shook hands with the members of his defense team. Both Jules and Jane Halpern had forced smiles on their faces. They knew, didn't they? Their client was the Weasel, a mass murderer.
'Geoffrey Shafer has the ability to make people believe in him when he needs to. He's the best actor I've seen.'
I said goodbye to John, then I snuck out the back way again. This time neither Shafer nor the press was lying in wait downstairs or in the rear parking lot.
In the lot, I heard a woman's voice and I stopped moving. I thought it was Christine. A dozen or so people were walking to their cars, seemingly unaware of me. I felt fevered and hot as I checked them all. None of them was her. Where had the voice come from?
I took a ride in the old Porsche and listened to George Benson on the CD player. I remembered the police report about Shafer's thrill-seeking ride ending near Dupont Circle. It seemed a strangely appealing prospect. I took my own advice not to try and guess how the jury would decide the case. It could go either way.
I finally let myself think about Christine, and I choked up. It was too much. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. I had to pull over.
I took a deep breath, then another. The pain in my chest was still as fresh as it had been the day she had disappeared in Bermuda. She had tried to stay away from me, but I wouldn't let her. I was responsible for what had happened to her.
I drove around Washington, riding in gently aimless circles. I finally reached home more than two and a half hours after I left the courthouse.
Nana came running out of the house. She must have seen me pull into the driveway. She'd obviously been waiting for me.
I leaned out of the driver's side window. The DJ was still talking congenially on Public Radio.
'What is it, old woman? What's the matter now?' I asked Nana.
'Ms. Fitzgibbon called you, Alex. The jury is coming back. They have a verdict.'
?CHAPTER One Hundred
I was apprehensive as I could be. But I was also curious beyond anything I could remember.
I backed out of the driveway and sped downtown. I got back to the courthouse in less than fifteen minutes, and the crowd on E Street was larger and more unruly than I had seen it at the height of the trial. At least a half-dozen Union Jacks waved in the wind; contrasting that were American flags, including some painted across bare chests and faces.
I had to push and literally inch my way through the crush of people up close to the courthouse steps. I ignored every question from the press. I tried to avoid anyone with a camera in hand, or the hungry look of a reporter.
I entered the packed courtroom just before the jury filed back inside. You almost missed it, I said to myself.
Judge Fescoe spoke to the crowd as soon as everyone was seated. 'There will be no demonstrations when this verdict is read. If any demonstrations occur, marshals will clear this room immediately.' he instructed in a soft but clear voice.
I stood a few rows behind the prosecution team and tried to find a regular breathing pattern. It was inconceivable that Geoffrey Shafer could be set free; there was no doubt in my mind that he'd murdered several times, not just Patsy Hampton, but at least some of the Jane Does. He was a wanton pattern killer, one of the worst, and had been getting away with it for years. I realized now that Shafer might be the most outrageous and daring of the killers I'd faced. He played his game with the pedal pressed to the floor. He absolutely refused to lose.
'Mr. Foreperson, do you have a verdict for us?' Judge Fescoe asked in somber tones.
Raymond Horton, the foreperson, spoke to Judge Fescoe. 'Your honor, we have a verdict.'
I glanced at Shafer and he appeared confident. As he had been for every day of the trial, he was dressed in a tailored suit, white shirt and tie. He had no conscience whatsoever; he had no fear of anything that might happen. Maybe that was a partial explanation for why he'd run free for so long.
Judge Fescoe appeared unusually stern. 'Very well. Will the defendant please rise and face the jury.' he said.
Geoffrey Shafer stood at the defense table and his longish hair gleamed under the bright overhead lighting. He towered over Jules Halpern and his daughter, Jane.
Shafer held his hands behind him, as if he were cuffed. I wondered if he might have a pair of twenty-sided dice clasped in them, the kind I had seen in his study.
; Judge Fescoe addressed Mr. Horton again. 'As to count one of the indictment, Aggravated, Premeditated Murder in the First Degree, how do you find?'
Mr. Horton answered, 'Not guilty, your honor.'
I felt as if my head had suddenly spun off. The audience packed into the small room went completely wild. The press rushed to the bar. The judge had promised to clear the room, but he was already retreating to his chambers.
I saw Shafer walk toward the press, but then he quickly passed them by. What was he doing now? He noticed a man in the crowd, and nodded stiffly in his direction. Who was that?
Then Shafer continued toward where I was, in the fourth row. I wanted to vault over the chairs after him. I wanted him so bad, and I knew I had just lost my chance to do it the right way.
'Detective Cross,' he said in his usual supercilious manner. 'Detective Cross, there's something I want to say. I've been holding it in for months.'
The press closed in; the scene becoming smothering and claustrophobic. Cameras flashed on all sides. Now that the trial was 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.
Suddenly it was quiet where we stood, a pocket of silence, 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 warned me he would.
He had won.
?CHAPTER One Hundred and One
Shafer was a free man, and he was enjoying the bloody hell out of it. He had gambled, and he had won big time. Big time! He had never felt anything quite like this exhilarating moment following his verdict. He'd wagered his life.
He 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. They hugged him again and again, and Lucy couldn't stop crying like the brain-dead, hopelessly spoiled and crazy child that 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 fist into the air and held it there as a mocking sign of victory. Cameras flashed everywhere. 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 business cards. 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 family ahead without him.
He stayed behind in the court law library and firmed up book deal details with Jules Halpern and the Bertelsmann Group, now the most powerful book publishing conglomerate around the world. He had promised them 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? Bertelsmann knew this, and still they'd paid him a fortune.
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. Better yet, Solipsis. His version of the game. He wouldn't give in to that urge, 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 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 smiled as he climbed into his Jag.
Book Five
Endgame
?CHAPTER One Hundred and Two
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 that it couldn't have been worse if he had 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 were watching him every bloody time he stepped from his office. They seemed to resent him 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. Guilty though proven innocent.
So Shafer mostly stayed inside his office with the door closed, sometimes locked. He performed his few remaining duties with a growing sense of irritation and frustration, and a sense of the absurd. It was driving him mad to be trapped like this, to be a pathetic spectacle for the embassy staff.
He idly played with his computer and waited for the game of The Four Horsemen to resume, but the other players had cut him off. They insisted that it was too dangerous to play, even to communicate, and not one of them understood that that was exactly why this was the perfect time to play.
Shafer stared out onto Massachusetts Avenue for interminably long stretches during the day. He listened to call-in talk shows on the radio. He was getting angrier and angrier. He needed to play.
Someone was knocking on the door of his office. He turned his head sharply, and felt a spike of pain in the back of his neck. The phone had begun to ring. He picked up and heard the voice of the temp he'd been given. Ms. Wynne Hamerman was on the intercom.
'Mr. Andrew Jones is here to see you.' she said.
Andrew Jones? Shafer was shocked. Jones was a director from the Security Service in London. Shafer hadn't known he was in Washington. What the hell was this visit about? Andrew Jones was a high-level, very tough bastard who wouldn't just drop by for tea and biscuits. Mustn't keep him waiting too long.
Jones was standing there, and he looked impatient, almost angry. What was this about? His steely-blue eyes were cold and hard; his face as rigid as that of an English soldier in Belfast. In contrast, his brilliant red hair and mustache made him look benign, almost jolly. He was called 'Andrew the Red' back in London.
'Let's go inside your office, shall we? Shut the door behind you,' Jones said, in a low but commanding tone.
Shafer was just getting over his initial surprise, but he was also starting to become angry. Who was this pompous asshole to come barging into his office like this? By what right was he here? How dare he? The toad! The glorified lackey from London.
'You can sit down, Shafer.' Jones said. Another imperious command. 'I'll be brief and to the point.'
'Of course,' Shafer answered. He remained standing. 'Please do be brief. I'm sure we're both busy.'
Jones lit up a cigarette, took a long drag, then let the smoke out slowly.
'That's illegal here in Washington,' Shafer goaded him.
'You'll receive orders to return to England in thirty days' time,' said Jones, who continued to puff furiously on the cigarette.' You're an embarrassment here in Washington, as you will be in London. Of course, over there the tabloids have recreated you as a martyr of the brutal and inefficient American police and judicial system. They like to think of this as DC Confidential, more evidence of wholesale corruption and naivete in the States
. Which we both know, in this case, is complete crap.'
Shafer smiled contemptuously. 'How dare you come in here and talk to me like this, Jones. I was framed for a heinous crime I didn't commit. I was acquitted by an American jury. Have you forgotten that?'
Jones frowned, and continued to stare him down. 'Only because crucial evidence wasn't allowed in the trial. The blood on your trousers? That poor woman's blood in the bathroom drain at your mistress's?' He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. 'We know everything, you pathetic fool. We know you're a stone-cold killing freak. So you'll go back to London - until we catch you at something. Which we will, Shafer. We'll make something up if we have to.'
'I feel sick being in the same room with you. Legally, you've escaped punishment this time, but we're watching you very closely now. We will get you, somewhere, some day soon.'
Shafer looked amused. He couldn't hold back a smile. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't resist the play. 'You can try, you insufferable, sanctimonious shit. You can certainly try. But join the queue. And now, if you please, I have work to do.'
Andrew Jones shook his head. 'Well actually, you don't have any work to do, Shafer. But I am happy to leave. The stench in here is absolutely overpowering. When was the last time you had a bath?' He laughed contemptuously. 'Christ, you've completely lost it.'
?CHAPTER One Hundred and Three
That afternoon I met with Jones and three of his agents at the Willard Hotel, near the White House. I had called the meeting. Sampson was there, too. He'd been reinstated in the department, but that didn't stop him from doing what had originally gotten him into trouble.
'I believe he's crazy,' Jones said of Shafer. 'He smells like a lavatory at boot camp. He's definitely going down for the count. What're your thoughts on his mental state?'
I knew Geoffrey Shafer inside and out by now. I'd read about his family: his brothers, a long-suffering mother, the domineering father. Their travels from military base to base until he was twelve. 'Here's what I think. It started with a serious bipolar disorder, what used to be called manic-depression. He had it when he was a kid. Now he's strung out on pharmaceutical drugs: Xanax, Benadryl, Haldol, Ativan, Valium, Librium, several others. It's quite a cocktail. Available from local doctors for the right price. I'm surprised he can function at all. But he survives. He doesn't go down. He always wins.
Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel Page 24