wanted Ms. Fitzgibbon's scalp on his belt. She was just thirty-six, Irish-Catholic, single, sexy in her tight-assed way, dedicated to high-minded ideals, like so many others from her island of origin. She favored dark-blue or gray Ann Taylor wardrobes and wore a ubiquitous tiny gold cross on a gold chain. She was known in the DC legal community as the 'Drama Queen'. Her melodramatic telling of the gory details was meant to win the sympathy of the jury. A worthy opponent indeed. A worthy prey as well.
Shafer sat at the defendant's table and tried to concentrate. He listened, watched, felt as he hadn't in a long time. He knew they were all watching him. How could they not?
Shafer sat there observing, but his brain was on fire. His esteemed attorney, Jules Halpern, finally began to speak, and he heard his own name. That piqued his interest all right. He was the star here, wasn't he?
Jules Halpern was little more than five-four, but he cut quite a powerful figure in a court of law. His hair was dyed jet-black and slicked back tightly against his scalp. His suit was from a British tailor, just like Shafer's. Shafer thought, rather uncharitably he supposed, Dress British, think Yiddish. Seated beside Halpern was his daughter, Jane, who was the second chair. She was tall and slender, but with the father's black hair and beaked nose.
Jules Halpern certainly had a strong voice for such a slight and small fellow. 'My client, Geoffrey Shafer, is a loving husband. He is a very good father, who happened to be attending a birthday party for two of his children half an hour before the murder of Detective Patricia Hampton.'
'Colonel Shafer, as you will hear, is a valued and decorated member of the British Intelligence community. He is a former soldier with a fine record.'
'Colonel Shafer was clearly set up for this murder charge because the Washington police needed this terrible crime to be solved. This I will prove to you, and you will have no doubt of it. Mr. Shafer was framed because a particular homicide detective was going through some bad personal times, and lost control of the situation.
'Finally, and this is the most essential thing for you to remember, Colonel Shafer wants to be here. He isn't here because he has to be. He has diplomatic immunity. Geoffrey Shafer is here to clear his good name.'
Shafer nearly stood up in the courtroom and cheered.
Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel
CHAPTER Eighty
I purposely, and probably wisely, skipped the first day, then the second, and the third day of the courtroom circus. I didn't want to face the world press, or the public anymore than I had to. I felt like I was on trial too.
A cold-blooded murderer was on trial, but the investigation continued more feverishly than ever for me. I still had the Jane Does to solve, and the disappearance of Christine, if I could open up any new leads. I wanted to make certain that Shafer would not walk away a free man, and most importantly, I desperately wanted finally to know the truth about Christine's disappearance. I had to know. My greatest frustration was that because of the diplomatic shenanigans, I had never gotten to question Shafer. I would have given anything for a few hours with him.
I turned the southern end of our attic into a war room. There was an excess of unused space up there anyway. I moved an old mahogany dining table out from the shadows. I rewired an ancient window fan and it made the attic space almost bearable most days.
Especially early in the morning and late in the evening, when I did my best work up there - in my hermitage.
I set up my laptop on the table, and I pinned different-colored index cards to the walls, to keep what I considered the most important pieces of the case before me at all times. Inside several bulky and misshapen cardboard boxes I had all the rest of it: every scrap of evidence on Christine's abduction; and everything I could find on the Jane Does.
The murder cases formed a maddening puzzle, created over several years, that was not given to easy solutions. I was trying to play a complex game, against a skillful opponent, but I didn't know the rules of his game, or how it was played. That was Shafer's unfair advantage.
I had found some useful notes in Patsy Hampton's detective logs, and they led me to interview the teenage boy, Michael Ormson, who'd chatted online with Shafer about The Four Horsemen. I continued to work closely with Chuck Hufstedler of the FBI. Chuck felt guilty about giving Patsy Hampton the original lead, especially since I'd come to him first. I used his guilt.
Both the Bureau and Interpol were doing an active search of the game on the Internet. I'd visited countless chatrooms myself, but had encountered no one, other than young Ormson, who was aware of the mysterious game. It was only because Shafer had taken a chance and gone into the chatroom that he'd been discovered. I wondered what other chances he'd taken.
Following Shafer's arrest at the Farragut, we'd had a little time to search his Jaguar, and I also spent nearly an hour at his home - before his lawyers knew I was there. I spoke to his wife, Lucy, and his son, Robert, who confirmed that he played a game called The Four Horsemen. He had been playing for seven or eight years.
Neither the wife nor the son knew any of the other players, or anything about them. They didn't believe that Geoffrey Shafer had done anything wrong.
The son called his father 'the straight arrow of straight arrows'. Lucy Shafer called him 'a good man', and seemed to believe it.
I found role-playing-game magazines as well as dozens of sets of game dice in Shafer's den, but no other physical evidence concerning his game. Shafer was careful. He covered his tracks well. He was in intelligence, after all. I couldn't imagine him throwing dice to select his victims, but maybe that helped to account for the irregular pattern of the Jane Does.
His attorney, Jules Halpern, complained loudly and vigorously about the invasion of Shafer's home, and had I uncovered any useful evidence, it would have been suppressed. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time, and Shafer was too clever to keep anything incriminating at his home. He'd made one big mistake; he wasn't likely to make another. Was he?
Sometimes, very late at night as I worked in the attic, I would stop for a while and remember something about Christine. The memories were painful and sad, but also soothing to me. I began to look forward to these times
