half the criminal trials in which he was involved. Of the cases he had lost, the longest prison term imposed on one of his clients was a five-year stretch at Dannemora.
Was that a long enough sentence for someone to want to extract this depth of revenge upon release? Powell imagined it was possible, depending on the person.
Their initial canvass of the scene and the neighborhood had produced nothing. Once again, a ghost had floated through the crowded streets of New York City, committed murder, and floated out.
“Let’s run the people whose cases he lost,” Powell said. “Maybe someone thought he didn’t provide a vigorous enough defense and had it in for him.”
“You mean like in Cape Fear?”
Powell just stared at him.
“Cape Fear? The movie?”
The last movie Desiree Powell had seen was Jaws. She hadn’t been to the movies, or Rockaway Beach, since. “Right,” she said. “Exactly. Just like Cape Fear.”
Powell glanced at the crime-scene photos. This was a monster, this guy. A real boogeyman. And he was currently walking the streets of her city, breathing her air, which was just unacceptable.
Not for long, she thought.
Not for long.
The courtroom seemed dreamlike, an alien landscape populated with strange apparitions. Yes, the bench was where it always was. The defense and prosecution tables were just about where they always had been. The court reporter sat at her station, machine on its tripod, her nimble fingers at the ready.
Michael had entered this room hundreds of times, had held the lives of both victims and defendants in the balance, had navigated the rocky shoals of justice with skill and precision and no small measure of luck. But each of those times he had been in control.
Be wise, Michael. I will contact you soon.
Michael ransacked his memory, trying to place the voice he had heard on the phone. He could not.
My full name is Aleksander Savisaar. I want you to call me Aleks. I am telling you this because I know you are not going to contact the authorities.
He did not recognize the man’s name, either. Was it someone he had once prosecuted? Was it a relative of someone he had put in prison, or upon whom the state of New York had imposed the death penalty? Was this about vengeance? Money? Was this someone with a grievance against the legal system taking it out on him?
The lot of anyone in a district attorney’s office, or anyone in any branch of law enforcement, was to be ever vigilant. You spend your working life locking up criminals, only to have these people one day get out, many times holding you responsible for their miserable lives.
Had he neglected or failed to see this coming, and now his family was going to pay for it?
With all these questions unanswered, Michael was certain of one thing. The man who had called him was responsible for the atrocity of Viktor Harkov’s brutal murder.
Michael glanced into the gallery. At the back of the courtroom he saw the two detectives from the 114 who had initially been given the task of investigating the murder of Colin Harris. It would be so easy to cross the room, lean over, and tell them what was happening.
Be wise, Michael. I will contact you soon.
A few moments later, the jury was led back into the courtroom. Judge Gregg summarized what he had said earlier.
Normally, Michael would watch the defendant at a moment such as this. Instead, he looked at the faces of the jurors, the faces of the gallery, the faces of the police officers and officers of the court scattered around the room. He even watched the court reporter.
Was one of these people watching him?
“Mr Roman,” Judge Gregg said. “You may continue.”
Michael Roman stood, walked around the table, and began to speak. He was certain he apologized to the jury for the interruption. There was no doubt he gave a brief recap to where he had been. Unquestioningly, he picked up essentially where he had left off.
He just didn’t hear any of it. Not a word. Instead, his focus was on the people around him. Faces, eyes, hands, body language.
There was a man, perhaps fifty, sitting in the front row of the gallery. He had a scar on his neck, a military buzz cut, thick arms.
There was a woman, two rows back. Forties, too much make-up, too much jewelry. She wore long fake red fingernails. One nail was missing on her left hand.
There was a young man at the back of the gallery, a stocky kid in his twenties with an earring in his left ear. He seemed to be tracking Michael’s movement across the courtroom with a particularly close scrutiny.
Michael looked at the faces of the people in the jury. He had an ideal juror – all lawyers did, both defense and prosecutors. You always wanted to go with a juror who would be sympathetic to your case. Contrary to popular belief, lawyers did not want anyone on the jury who was free from bias or prejudice. Just the opposite. You wanted someone who held the right bias and prejudice. As a prosecutor, Michael wanted the Con Ed worker, the bus driver, the tax-paying citizen over forty. He wanted the person old enough to have grown weary of crime and criminals and excuses. The last person he wanted was the twenty-three-year-old inner-city school teacher, ever the true believer. For Michael, the less idealistic the juror, the better.
As he scanned the jury, he tried to remember what they had discussed during the voir dire. What a lot of people didn’t know was that the seemingly extemporaneous banter with a prosecutor or defense attorney was as telling, or more telling, than the direct questions. As a rule, this all came to Michael in toto during a trial. But today was a little different, wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember a thing.
Had Aleks, the man on the phone, the man who had kidnapped his family, gotten to someone on the jury? One of the alternates? One of the gallery? Had he gotten to one of the officers of the court?
Who was watching him?
“Mr Roman?”
Michael turned. The judge was talking to him. He had no idea what he was saying, what he had said. Moreover, he had no idea how long he had been gone. He turned and glanced at the jury. They were all staring at him, fidgeting, waiting, anticipating his next word. What had his last word been? It was every lawyer’s nightmare. Except today, it was nothing compared to Michael Roman’s real nightmare.
“Your honor?”
Judge Gregg motioned him to the bench. Michael turned, looked at the defendant.
Patrick Ghegan was smiling.
TWENTY-EIGHT
In his mind, in the realm of both near and distant future, often-times centuries into the future, he could not see himself. Not in the sense in which one sees oneself in a mirror or a store window, or even the slightly ethereal vision of one’s face in a body of still water, looking back in a dream, only to be disturbed by a breeze, rippling away.
No, his vision of himself as the deathless one was more in the realm of a god. He had no physical presence, no matter composed of flesh and blood and sinew, no muscle, no bone. These were things organic, things of the earth. He was of the ether.
They say that he was found, swaddled in a white altar cloth, lying in the cemetery next to a crumbling Lutheran church in south-eastern Estonia, thirty-three years ago. They say one winter morning, a gray wolf scratched the rector’s door, and led the man to the baby in the graveyard. The elderly priest took the baby six miles to the Russian orphanage at Treski. They say the wolf sat outside the gate of the home, day and night, for days, perhaps weeks. One day, one of the Russian workers brought the boy, who had begun to regain his strength, to the gate. The say the wolf licked the boy’s face, just once, and disappeared into the forest.
They say that, pinned to the brilliant white cloth had been a piece of yellow paper, a note card with a single
