Reaper looked over at the jury, and smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’
The lights were dimmed in the courtroom as Jalicia played the jury the DVD recording of Prager’s forced mutilation at the hands of his son. She kept a close eye on them as they watched it. At certain points a couple of the female jurors covered their eyes. In the dock, two of the AB members nudged each other and snickered. To Jalicia’s disappointment, the jury didn’t catch it.
When it had ended and the lights rose again, she got out of her chair and approached Reaper.
‘As far as you’re aware, Mr Hays, none of the men in the dock today were present during what we just saw?’
‘Them being in prison, I guess not.’
‘As we established before the recess, though, the Aryan Brotherhood have contracted out murders to people on the outside. That’s correct, isn’t it?’
‘We outsource stuff like that, yeah,’ Reaper replied.
‘And is it your belief that the murder of Agent Kenneth Prager and his family was a task outsourced by the men here today?’
A mis-step. Gross was on his feet before she hit the word ‘task’. ‘Objection. It’s not a matter of what the witness believes. We’re supposed to be dealing in facts here.’
Before the judge could overrule, Jalicia switched into damage limitation mode. ‘Mr Gross is quite correct. I withdraw the question.’
Gross looked deflated that she hadn’t put up more of a fight.
‘Thank you, Ms Jones,’ the judge said.
Jalicia stepped towards Reaper again, noticing how his dark grey eyes tracked her every move. ‘Mr Hays, until you decided to testify in this case, you were a member in good standing of the Aryan Brotherhood, is that fair to say?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘But when you heard about the death of Agent Prager and his family you were sufficiently troubled by it to contact my office.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Listen, don’t get me wrong, Prager was a federal agent. And he was undercover, which makes it ten times worse. He was an enemy combatant — I believe that’s the phrase these days, ain’t it?’ Reaper looked at the jury. ‘But his wife, and their boy…’ He turned back so that he was facing the public gallery, Lock included. ‘No one in this court might understand this, ’cept maybe those six over there, but I joined the Aryan Brotherhood because we lived by a code. It wasn’t much, but it was something. You folks out there, living your little suburban lives, paying your taxes, saving up for that big-screen TV so you have even less excuse to talk to your wife or the miserable brats you’re raising to be good little consumers, none of you might understand this, but to join the Aryan Brotherhood meant something. The code of the Aryan Brotherhood meant something.’
Jalicia could sense that Reaper was rapidly losing the sympathy of the jury.
‘And that code included not harming women and children?’ she interrupted.
Reaper shifted on his seat. ‘Excuse me, but I was speaking. Isn’t that why I’m here?’
‘I’m sorry for interrupting you, Mr Hays, but if you could focus on the questions you’re being asked.’
Reaper shifted his attention to the window, where sunlight streamed in. ‘Pretty day. Don’t get to see much of the sun up in the Bay. Good place for a prison though. What’s that saying, “out of sight, out of mind”? You can’t get much more out of sight than Crescent City.’
Gross leaned over to one of his junior counsel and stage-whispered, loudly enough so that the jury would catch it, ‘Or out of mind, apparently.’
‘You said in your deposition that there was a letter you received a few days after the murders,’ Jalicia pressed on. ‘You said that in that letter-’
Gross was on his feet again. ‘Can someone remind Ms Jones that we are here to hear from her witness, not her?’
Before the judge could speak, Reaper interrupted, leaning as far forward in his chair as he could, lasering in on Jalicia. ‘You asked me what I believed before that scum-sucking commie over there’ — Reaper nodded at Gross — ‘broke in. Well, I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe, with all my heart, in the fourteen words. The words spoken by a true American patriot before the Zionist Occupation Government murdered him. The words abandoned and forgotten by so-called comrades-in-arms in that dock.’
Reaper was on his feet now, pointing at the six defendants. The two guards next to him struggled to get him to sit down, but it wasn’t a fair match. They were both big guys, but Reaper had ten years of six hours’ exercise a day on them.
‘The fourteen words are: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”,’ he bellowed, shoulders back, his torso military-straight.
He sat back down so hard that Jalicia could feel the floor beneath her feet vibrate. Then he started to cough violently. His shoulders hunched, he waved for his glass of water. One of the guards handed it to him.
As he raised the glass to his lips, it spilled from his grasp, bouncing off the edge of the dock and shattering on the floor. By now Reaper was doubled over, his right hand reaching up to massage his left shoulder, then moving across to his chest. Finally, he keeled over, taking one of the guards down with him, still struggling for breath.
Disbelieving silence gave way to whispers of confusion. As the noise level in the courtroom rose in volume, the judge banged his gavel. ‘Session adjourned. Clear the court.’
The six members of the Aryan Brotherhood in the dock craned forward expectantly. Across the room, Carrie held on to Lock’s arm.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ she whispered.
Lock shrugged. When it came to Reaper, it was anyone’s guess.
34
Streetlights flickered into life as Lock emerged from the front of the Medford courthouse. Looking up, he could see a police sniper on a nearby rooftop, framed by the fading sunset. Lock crossed to where Carrie was standing with her cameraman, a bearded woodsman type sporting a flannel shirt and dungarees who’d been drafted in from a local affiliate station. Lock pulled her a safe distance from him and the other assembled members of America’s media who clogged the sidewalk.
‘He’s fine,’ he told her.
‘What was it? He looked like he was having a heart attack in there.’
Lock shook his head. ‘They ran an ECT. It wasn’t a heart attack.’
‘So what was it?’
‘Some kind of anxiety thing.’
‘A panic attack?’ Carrie asked, disbelieving.
Lock shrugged. ‘The excitement must have been too much for him. First time outside prison in ten years, half a dozen men across the court wishing him into the ground — who knows?’
‘You think he faked it?’ Carrie asked.
It was the first thing that had crossed Lock’s mind, and he’d said as much to the paramedic who wanted to transfer Reaper to the nearest hospital for further tests. With Jalicia’s help, Lock had won the day, and they’d stabilized Reaper inside the court. But if Reaper had been faking, it was an Oscar-worthy performance.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘So what happens now?’
‘There’s nothing physically wrong with him so nine o’clock tomorrow morning he’s back on the stand.’
‘Where they gonna keep him?’
Lock lowered his voice a notch. He’d been asked by Jalicia to advise on security until the Marshals Service could put in place proper replacements for their fallen comrades. ‘A holding cell inside. It’s best not to move him, although that’s not what your buddies are going to be told.’ He nodded in the direction of the press pack. ‘We’re going to move a decoy out. Muddy the trail a little.’
‘What about the six defendants?’
‘They’re staying in a different part of the same building.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’
Lock took a step back, another sniper coming into focus on a different rooftop. A police helicopter buzzed low, chasing off a couple of television news helicopters that were hovering above the courthouse snatching some overhead footage before nightfall completely engulfed the scene. ‘Right now, everything’s risky.’