“Did you coerce Dr. Cross in any way to go find Watkins?”
She leaned forward to the mike. “I didn’t have to. He wanted to go.”
“But you wanted him there as well, correct?”
“Well, Claude did, that’s right.”
“Why’s that?”
“Claude’s an artist — visual and performance. He thought it would be interesting and telling to see what Cross would do if he were confronted with one Soneji after another.”
Under further questioning, Binx continued her tale in mostly accurate fashion until she had us moving deeper into the factory and reaching a large rectangular room. At that point, she began to lie through her teeth.
Wills said, “When you went inside, was Claude Watkins at the far end of that long room wearing the Soneji disguise?”
“Yes,” Binx said.
“Was Mr. Watkins armed?”
“No.”
“No nickel-plated revolver in his hand?”
“No. Claude had his hands open, and he turned his palms to show Cross.”
Chapter 53
I leaned over to Naomi, whispered, “That is categorically false.”
My niece patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll get our chance.”
Wills said, “What happened next?”
“Cross aimed his gun at Claude and told him to drop the gun and get down on the floor.”
“Did he?”
“He didn’t have a gun, but Cross didn’t seem to care. I knew he was going to shoot Claude, so I hit Cross’s gun hand. Claude took off and tried to hide.”
“What was Dr. Cross’s state before you hit him?”
“He was acting weird, creepy.”
“In what way?”
“Sweating, looking like he was loving the fact he was aiming down on Claude, you know, like he dug it.”
Wills crossed to a blown-up diagram of the factory floor and pointed at the far left end of the rectangle. “Watkins was here before he ran?”
“Yes, in front of that alcove.”
“What happened then?”
For the first time, Binx looked over at me. “Cross went crazy.”
“Objection!” Anita cried.
“Overruled,” Judge Larch said. “Continue.”
Binx testified that Virginia Winslow stepped out of the shadows of an alcove in the middle of the far long side of the factory room and that I then shot Soneji’s widow without provocation.
“Was Mrs. Winslow armed?” Wills asked.
“No way,” Binx said. “She hated guns.”
“Tell us why she was part of this performance in the first place.”
“Virginia told me that she couldn’t get away from Soneji’s legacy, so she’d decided to try to make art out of it, a bitter commentary, you know?”
“And Dr. Cross shot her?”
“Right in the chest. I couldn’t believe it. I started screaming, but he didn’t care. He just kept shooting, Claude, and then Lenny Diggs.”
“All of them unarmed?”
“Yes. And after he shot Lenny, he was swinging his pistol around and yelling for more.”
“What exactly was Dr. Cross yelling?”
“Like ‘Who’s next? C’mon, you bastards! I’ll kill every single Soneji before I’m done.’”
Wills looked at the jury. “‘I’ll kill every single Soneji before I’m done.’”
Juror five was shaking his head. Juror eleven was shaking hers.
Wills rubbed his hands together as if he were washing them and said, “Thank you, Ms. Binx, that must have been difficult. Your witness, Ms. Marley.”
Chapter 54
Anita had been scribbling notes on her legal pad. She looked up and said, “Your Honor, the defense asks the Court’s leave to delay our cross-examination of Ms. Binx pending an ongoing line of inquiry we are following.”
“An ongoing line of inquiry?” Wills asked.
“Right,” Anita said.
Judge Larch didn’t like that. “How much of a delay are you asking for?”
“I would think tomorrow afternoon would work, Your Honor.”
Larch got a sour look on her face, but then seemed to think of something that brightened her mood. She said, “Ms. Binx, you are excused for the day. Ten minutes’ recess before Mr. Wills calls his next witness.”
The judge banged her gavel, got up fast, and hurried for the door, no doubt dreaming of that first puff.
Larch came back in a much better mood exactly ten minutes later. She returned to the bench, popped a mint, and said, “Mr. Wills?”
“The prosecution calls Claude Watkins to the stand.”
I heard a creak as the double doors to the courtroom swung open. I turned to see a man in a wheelchair being pushed by Gary Soneji’s son, Dylan. Claude Watkins was in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair, a stubble beard, and a buff upper body. A blanket hid his withered legs.
Dylan left him at the bar, and Claude Watkins rolled the chair over in front of the witness stand.
The prosecutor looked at Judge Larch and said, “I’d like to treat the witness as hostile. He has been highly uncooperative.”
Larch glanced at the man in the wheelchair, who looked fuming mad.
“You going to answer questions under oath?” she asked.
“Depends on what’s asked,” Watkins said, not looking at her.
She ordered the bailiff to administer the oath, which he did without enthusiasm.
“How are you, Mr. Watkins?” Wills asked.
Watkins sneered at him. “About as good as you can be when you’re confined to a wheelchair and have to use a catheter to take a piss.”
“How did you wind up in that chair?”
Watkins’s face bunched up in loathing before he pointed at me and said, “He put me in it. Cross. Shot me for no good reason.”
“Objection,” Anita said.
“Overruled,” Judge Larch said. She popped another mint into her mouth.
Wills said, “Can you take us through the events of March twenty-ninth?”
Watkins grudgingly said he’d gotten interested in Soneji and then me by accident. But the more he read about me, the more he was convinced I was “borderline out of control” when it came to the mass murderer.
He testified that he decided to entice me into a situation that could result in an “interesting and revealing piece of performance art.” He would lure me to an abandoned factory where he’d confront me with one Soneji after another.
“So you could see his reaction?” Wills asked.
“Oh, hell no. I wanted everyone in the world to see Cross’s reaction.”
Beside me, Anita cocked her head to one side.
Wills squinted as if he’d heard something new from the witness and said, “How were you going to do that?”
“By filming it, of course,” Watkins said.
“What?” Wills said.
“What?” Naomi whispered.
Anita said, “What the hell is—”
“You had to have found them,” Watkins said. “I mean, you had to have searched the factory and found the smartphones with the add-on lenses, right?”
Anita and the prosecutor’s assistant both shot to their feet.
Anita said, “Judge, there has been no mention of any such cameras or phones in discovery.”
“Because we found no cameras or phones,” Wills said.
Watkins looked like he wanted to spit in disgust. “I put them there myself. What is this? A cover-up? I was wondering why you weren’t badgering me about them from the get-go. I’m telling you, we got the whole thing from three different angles!”
Chapter 55
The courtroom erupted. Judge Larch banged her gavel, demanding order. She told the jury to ignore Mr. Watkins’s testimony for the time being and ordered both prosecution and defense into chambers along with the U.S. marshals who worked in her courtroom.