He is.”
“And would you point to him, please.”
Beth’s arm snapped up even though her hand and the finger that pointed were trembling. She was pointing at Vincent Salas, who stared back at her with the mock deadpan expression of a man who knew the deck was stacked, and that he’d had a losing hand even before the cards were dealt.
“Let the record show…” Givens was intoning.
Jack Murray had known from the beginning that the case was hopeless. There had been his client, sleeping and drunk, a few miles from where the victim had been raped, and a few feet from empty beer cans of the brand that had been stolen from her when he’d fled the scene. There was his motorcycle parked nearby, a Harley- Davidson, just as the witness who’d seen him flee had described. There was Murray’s client, dressed as his victim had described. There were scratches on his face, and his victim had described how she’d scratched him.
Now there he was in court, with his dark hair and dark beard, as his victim had described. And the prosecution’s expert witness had already testified how Salas’s blood type was the same as that found at the scene of the rape. From the scratches on his face, no doubt. The ones Salas claimed had been made by a feral cat.
“Ah, the feral-cat defense,” Givens had muttered, barely loud enough for the jury to overhear.
Salas had even figured out a way to make things worse for him. He’d run from the law.
Not just from the law, but from Sheriff Wayne Westerley, who was a hero in the county and had won reelection to his office by a landslide two years ago. Murray had crossexamined Westerley yesterday. The sheriff, a handsome man to begin with, appeared in court wearing his tailored uniform, looking like a movie star, making Murray feel like the paparazzi. Westerley had sat there calmly while the flustered Murray leaped around as if electrified. The contrast wasn’t lost on the jury. When Murray had sneaked a peek at them, he had the distinct impression they thought he was needlessly badgering Westerley, who was merely stating the facts.
At least when Westerley was finished with his devastating testimony and walked past the jury on his way out, no one had asked for his autograph.
What I should have done, Murray thought, was go to engineering school. Built bridges or something. Or maybe done stand-up comedy. A couple of times he’d managed to make the jury laugh.
It helped some that after the guilty verdict, Maurice Givens had taken him aside out in front of the courthouse and told him not to worry, this had been his first murder trial; Murray was young and had the makings of a top- notch trial lawyer.
The next week, after sentencing, Givens again approached Murray outside the courthouse and slapped him on the back. “If the scumbag had anybody else for a lawyer-but me, of course-he’d have gotten fifty-five to sixty.”
Salas had been sentenced to thirty-five years in the state penitentiary in Jefferson City. If he managed to survive, it would seem like an eternity. Murray didn’t feel good about it.
“Don’t be downcast,” Givens had told him in parting. “We both know the bastard’s guilty.”
If Salas was downcast, it was difficult to know it. When he’d been sentenced, he’d worn the same stoic expression he’d displayed when found guilty, almost as if he were bored. Even when Murray visited him later in the lockup and they discussed the appeals process, Salas seemed disinterested. Both men knew where that short road would lead.
Murray told himself that what Givens had related to him outside the courthouse was true. Not just about him having the stuff to become a top-notch trial lawyer, but about Salas’s obvious guilt. The evidence had certainly been there. And Salas had certainly acted like a guilty man. Now it was time simply to go through the process of appeal. Automatic motions that would mean nothing.
Time to chalk this one up to experience and think ahead, Murray told himself. And not just to this evening, when he had a date with a sexy court stenographer.
In two weeks he was going to defend in court some members of an organization called Humane Commandoes, who’d blown up a chicken coop, chickens and all, for no apparent reason. The ACLU wouldn’t touch that one. The commandoes would have Murray as their lawyer.
It had been a small coop. Only a few chickens had died.
Murray figured maybe he had a chance.
30
New York, the present
Candice Culligan knew immediately upon entering the apartment that she wasn’t alone. Her senses informed her of what her mind didn’t yet know. Subtle movement in the air, a scent, a geometry unlike the one she’d left when she’d gone to work this morning, slight sounds of a frequency felt rather than heard.
After seeing what might have been the impression of a man on the duvet on her bed, Candice had become more cautious in everything she did. It was amazing what fear could do. The go-getter woman of supreme confidence had been replaced by someone meeker and milder. She’d come more and more to see her apartment as a refuge, a sanctuary from fear.
So powerful was the sum of these sensations that she actually turned to leave.
Her hand was reaching for the doorknob when she heard a man’s voice say, “You’re here now. You might as well stay for a while.”
For the rest of your life.
She was still frozen by fear when he moved in close to her. His breath was warm on the back of her neck. She hadn’t even had time to whirl and see who’d spoken.
He turned her around slowly, using only the tips of his fingers on one hand to guide her, almost as if they were dance partners. With the slight movement she felt some of her fear slip away.
Candice had shifted her attache case to her left hand to unlock and open her apartment door. Now, as she turned, she moved it to her right. It was leather, stuffed with legal briefs, heavy and with brass corners. A weapon. She drew her breath, planning to continue revolving her body, moving away from her assailant, coming up and around with the attache case. Fast. Hard. Visualize it and you can do it.
Make it count!
As she coiled her body and made the beginning of her turn, her eyes snapped to the knife he held before her face. It had a knobby wooden handle and a short, wide blade that curved in on itself and ended in a sharp point.
Visualize it.
What she found herself visualizing was the knife parting her flesh, loosing torrents of scarlet blood.
If it hadn’t been for the knife she might have made the initial moves of resistance. At least put up a struggle. But her resolution wilted within her and she heard herself whimper as she let her arm holding the attache case drop. She couldn’t make out her assailant’s features through her fear and tears, but she could see that he was smiling. He was smiling and she was paralyzed.
Goddamn him, he was smiling!
Her willpower seemed to flow from her in exact proportion to his sadistic amusement.
That’s all I am to him-something amusing.
He encircled her wrist with a powerful hand, squeezed, and she heard rather than felt her attache case drop to the floor.
“I brought a case of goodies, too,” he said. “It’s in the bedroom. Let’s go there and I’ll show you.”
He marched her slowly but steadily toward the short hall leading to her bedroom, guiding her by her aching wrist, the cool knife blade now resting against her throat.
She glanced back and got a glimpse at his face. He didn’t look like the man she’d mistakenly identified as her rapist years ago. Or, as far as she could tell, like the man who actually had raped her. And yet…
The mind could play such tricks.
His fingers dug into her arm and she whimpered again, and at the same time felt a hot coal of anger deep inside her. She wouldn’t let herself be led like this, like a goddamned lamb to slaughter.
I know tae kwan do. Took the concentrated course in selfdefense. I can beat this bastard in a fair fight.
But there was the odd little knife, and at that moment all she really knew was terror. One abrupt motion of
