Despite, or perhaps because of, the armaments, this was always the most peaceful place in the house, and it had what Wesley now needed: a table and a chair, white Bainbridge board, paints, pens, brushes, rulers, scissors, a guillotine. Wesley took a sheet of 18 x 30 Bainbridge board and ruled off a section 8 inches wide, then cut it with a Stanley Sheetrock knife braced against a ruler. Not much room for a message, but it wasn’t going to be a long one. Black letters, white background. And where was Mohammed’s spoiled brat of a son’s hockey outfit? He’d seen it lying somewhere now the kid had discovered Allah didn’t intend for him to be a hockey star. The latest fad was high-jumping because of some champion at Travis High.
“Hey, Ali! Busy, man?” Mohammed asked, coming in.
“Yeah. I’m busy making you a martyr, Mohammed.”
“Turning me into one, you mean?”
“No, manufacturing you one out of someone less important.”
“You kidding?”
“Nope. Where’s Abdullah’s hockey gear?”
“Two rooms over. Tell me more, Ali.”
“Don’t have time right now, I have a lot to do. Just make sure your TV is tuned into channel six at nine this morning.” Wesley picked up a paintbrush, but didn’t dip it in the black paint. “I need privacy, Mohammed. Then they can’t prove that you were in the know, man.”
“Sure, sure!” Grinning, palms held out, Mohammed mockingly bowed himself out of the meditation room, leaving Wesley alone.
When Carmine walked into the station it seemed like a hundred cops were there to shake him by the hand, clap him on the back, beam at him foolishly. To the press Charles Ponsonby was still the Connecticut Monster, but to every cop he was a Ghost.
Silvestri was so happy that he lumbered to his door and gave Carmine a smacking kiss on the cheek, hugged him. “My boy, my boy!” he crooned, eyes glistening with tears. “You saved us all.”
“Oh, come on, John! Can the histrionics, this case went on so long it died of sheer old age,” Carmine said, embarrassed.
“I am recommending you for a medal, even if the Governor has to invent one.”
“Where are Ponsonby and Claire?”
“He’s in a cell with two cops for company – no way this bozo is going to hang himself, and there’s no cyanide capsule up his rectum either, we made sure. His sister’s in a vacant office on this floor with two women officers. And the dog. At worst she’s an accomplice. We haven’t any evidence to suggest she might be the second Ghost, at least not evidence that will impress Doubting Doug Thwaites, the pedantic old fart. Our holding cells are clean, Carmine, but not designed to accommodate a
“Has he talked?”
“Not a word. From time to time he howls with laughter, but he hasn’t said a thing. Stares into space, hums a tune, giggles.”
“He’s going to plead insanity.”
“Sure as eggs are eggs. But people insane according to the M’Naghten rules don’t plan a killing premises down to the last fine detail.”
“And Claire?”
“Just keeps saying she refuses to believe her brother is a multiple murderer, and that she’s done nothing wrong herself.”
“Unless Patsy and his team can find a trace of Claire in the killing premises or the tunnel, she’ll walk. I mean, a blind woman and her guide dog empty a bucket of dead leaves in the deer reserve and rake them nice and flat? A halfway competent lawyer could prove that she thought she was carrying deer chow to empty where brother Chuck had made them a feeding place. Of course we can always hope for a confession.”
“In a pig’s eye!” Silvestri said with a snort. “Neither of that pair is the confessing kind.” He shut one eye, kept the other open and fixed on Carmine. “Do
“I don’t honestly know, John. We won’t prove it.”
“Anyway, they’re being formally arraigned in Doubting Doug’s courtroom at nine. I wanted it in a less public venue and kept quiet, but Doug’s sticking to his guns. What a picnic! Ponsonby’s only item of clothing is a raincoat, and he refuses to put on a stitch more. If we force him and he gets a teensy-weensy bruise or cut, they’ll cry police brutality, so he’s going to court in a raincoat. Danny put the cuffs on him too tight, that’s bad enough. The cute bastard’s chafed himself raw.”
“I suppose every journalist who can get to Holloman in time will be outside the courthouse, including channel six’s anchors,” Carmine said, sighing.
“Why wouldn’t they? This is big news for a small city.”
“Can’t we arraign Claire separately?”
“We could if Thwaites would play ball, but he won’t. He wants both of them in front of him at once. Curiosity, I think.”
“No, he wants a preview that will help him make up his mind about Claire’s complicity.”
“Have you eaten, Carmine?”
“No.”
“Then let’s grab a booth at Malvolio’s before the rush.”
“How are Abe and Corey? De-skunked?”
“Yeah, and nursing grudges. They wanted to be with you down in that cellar.”
“I feel sorry about that, but they had to be de-skunked. I suggest you squeeze the Governor for a couple more medals, John. And a big ceremony.”
The Holloman courthouse was on Cedar Street at the Green, a short walk from the County Services building, yet one that the Ponsonbys could not make. A few enterprising journalists complete with photographers were outside the station entrance when Ponsonby was hustled out with a towel thrown over his head, his raincoat buttoned from neck to knees, where someone had secured it with a safety pin to make sure it couldn’t be jerked open. No sooner was Ponsonby on the sidewalk than he started to wrestle with his escorts, not to escape, but to rid himself of the towel. In the end he was put into the caged squad car unveiled, amid a blue blizzard of flashbulbs; no one was taking any chances on the light. His car had drawn away when Biddy came out, leading Claire. Like her brother, she would not allow anyone to cover her head. Her escorts were conspicuously gentle with her, and the vehicle that took her down the block to the courthouse was Silvestri’s official car, a big Lincoln.
The crowd around the courthouse was so huge that traffic had been entirely diverted from Cedar Street; a line of police with arms linked ebbed and surged in time to the pushing of the people they were trying to contain. Perhaps half the crowd was black, but both halves were very angry. The press were inside the cordon, cameramen with cameras at shoulder level, news photographers clicking away on automatic, radio announcers babbling into their microphones, channel six’s anchorman doing the same. One of the journalists was a small, thin black man in a bulky jacket; he inched forward amid smiles and murmured apologies, hands tucked inside his coat for warmth.
When Charles Ponsonby was removed from the squad car the journalists rushed at him, the thin little black man in their forefront. One thin black hand emerged from the jacket and went up to his head, jammed a strange hat on it, a hat supporting a strip of white cardboard that said in neat black letters WE HAVE SUFFERED. All eyes had gone to the hat, even Charles Ponsonby’s; no one saw Wesley le Clerc’s other hand come out holding a black Saturday night special. He put four bullets in Ponsonby’s chest and abdomen before the closest cops could draw their guns. But no fusillade cut him down. Carmine had jumped to shield him, roaring at the top of his voice.
And it was all there on TV, every single millisecond of the deed, from the WE HAVE SUFFERED hat to Charles Ponsonby’s look of amazement and Carmine’s suicidal leap. Mohammed el Nesr and his cronies watched it unfold, rigid with shock. Then Mohammed sagged back in his chair and lifted his arms in exultation.
“Wesley, my man, you have given us our martyr! And that big dumb-ass cop Delmonico saved you for a trial. Man, what a trial we will make it!”
“Ali, you mean,” said Hassan, not understanding.
