A dozen grim-faced members of the press, including some well-known reporters, were gathered in the back parking lot. Someone had alerted them; someone had tipped them off that I was coming out this way.

I looked back at the gray metal door, but Geoffrey Shafer didn’t come out behind me. He had retreated and disappeared back into the basement.

“Detective Cross,” I heard a reporter call my name. “You’re losing this case. You know that, don’t you?”

Yes, I knew. I was losing everything. I just didn’t know what I could do to stop it.

Chapter 98

THE FOLLOWING DAY was taken up with my cross-examination by Catherine Fitzgibbon. Catherine did a good job of redressing some of the harm done by Jules Halpern, but not all of it. Halpern consistently broke up her rhythm with his objections. Like so many recent high-profile trials, this one was maddening. It should have been easy to convict and put away Geoffrey Shafer, but that wasn’t the case.

Two days later, we got our best chance to win, and Shafer himself gave it to us, almost as if he were daring us. We now realized that he was even crazier than we’d thought. The game was his life; nothing else seemed to matter.

Shafer agreed to take the stand. I think I was the only one in the courtroom who wasn’t completely surprised that he was testifying, that he was playing the game right in front of us.

Catherine Fitzgibbon was almost certain that Jules Halpern had advised, begged, and warned him not to do it, but there Shafer was anyway, striding toward the witness stand, looking as if he had been called up there to be ceremoniously knighted by the queen.

He couldn’t resist the stage, could he? He looked every bit as confident and in control as he had the night I arrested him for Patsy Hampton’s murder. He was dressed in a navy-blue double-breasted suit, white shirt, and gold tie. Not a single blond hair was out of place, nor was there any hint of the anger that was boiling just under the surface of his meticulously groomed exterior.

Jules Halpern addressed him in conversational tones, but I was sure that he felt uneasy about this unnecessary gamble.

“Colonel Shafer, first, I want to thank you for coming to the witness stand. This is completely voluntary on your part. From the very beginning, you’ve stated that you wanted to come here to clear your name.”

Shafer smiled politely and then cut off his lawyer with a raised hand. The lawyers on both sides of the bar exchanged looks. What was happening? What was he going to do?