FYI — THE CONTACT AT THE SERVICE IS MR. ANDREW JONES. I TRUST HE WILL VOUCH FOR THE VERACITY OF MY STATEMENTS. IF YOU WISH TO CONVERSE FURTHER, DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM 67 YEARS OF AGE, RETIRED FROM INTELLIGENCE (AS I LIKE TO PUT IT), AND A RATHER FAMOUS WINDBAG. I WISH YOU MUCH LUCK IN YOUR SEARCH FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE. I MISS THE CHASE MYSELF.

CONQUEROR

I read the message, then reread it. “Much luck in your search?” Was that as loaded a line as it sounded?

And was I now a player — the fifth Horseman?

Chapter 83

I WENT TO COURT EVERY DAY the following week, and like so many other people, I got hooked on the trial. Jules Halpern was the most impressive orator I had ever watched in a courtroom, but Catherine Fitzgibbon was effective as well. The verdict would depend on whom the jury believed more. It was all theater, a game. I remembered that as a kid I used to regularly watch a courtroom drama with Nana, called The Defenders. Every show began with a deep-voiced narrator’s saying something to the effect of, “The American justice system is far from perfect, but it is still the very best justice system in the world.”

That may be true, but as I sat in the courtroom in Washington, I couldn’t help thinking that the murder trial, the judge, the jury, the lawyers, and all the rules were just another elaborate game, and that Geoffrey Shafer was already planning his next foray, savoring every move that the prosecution made against him.

He was still in control of the game board. He was the gamemaster. He knew it, and so did I.

I watched Jules Halpern conduct smooth examinations that were designed to give the impression that his monstrous, psychopathic client was as innocent as a newborn baby. Actually, it was easy to drift off during the lengthy cross-examinations. I never really missed anything, though, since all the important points were repeated over and over, ad nauseam.

“Alex Cross …”

I heard my name mentioned and refocused my attention on Jules Halpern. He produced a blown-up photograph that had appeared in the Post on the day after the murder. The photo had been taken by another tenant at the Farragut and sold to the newspaper.

Halpern leaned in close to the witness on the stand, a man named Carmine Lopes, a night doorman at the apartment building where Patsy Hampton had been murdered.

“Mr. Lopes, I show you Defendant’s Exhibit J, a photograph of my client and Detective Alex Cross. It was taken in the tenthfloor hallway soon after the discovery of Detective Hampton’s body.”

The blowup was large enough for me to see most of the detail from where I was sitting in the fourth row. The photo had always been a shocker to me.