“This is impressive,” he said, rubbing his chin. “I actively monitor for intrusions, and I never saw this. A deep, deep, deep Trojan horse, created by a master coder.”
“Can you figure out the coder’s identity?” I asked.
“I might. Give me that flash drive you got in the mail. We’ll launch it, see what happens.”
Before he did, Rawlins wrote tracking code designed to attach itself to any file the malware created. Then he plugged the drive into his server and launched it.
The mock firing-squad execution of Gretchen Lindel played, followed by the warning to me that the next time all the blondes would die. There was a screen flash before the video closed, just as there’d been when I uploaded it.
Rawlins stood there, drumming his fingers on his workstation, head swiveling as he studied the array of screens around him.
“C’mon,” he said. “Something happened there. Where are you?”
My cell phone buzzed. I took it out, saw Naomi was calling.
I answered. “Any news?”
My niece’s voice was strained. “The jury has contacted Larch.”
I closed my eyes, thinking, Hung jury, wondering whether my family could take another trial.
But then Naomi said, “They’ve reached a verdict, Uncle Alex. You need to come to the courthouse.”
Chapter 85
I tightened the knot on my tie in the car as Sampson turned the corner toward the courthouse. From two blocks away, we could see the media mob waiting, anxious, no doubt, because it was pushing four that Friday afternoon and they were right up against deadline for the East Coast evening news broadcasts.
“The offer’s still there to go in through the prisoner-transfer door,” Sampson said. “Chief okayed it.”
“No,” I said. “I want them to see me.”
I glanced over and saw Sampson rubbing at the scar on his forehead.
“You okay?”
“I will be when I take my meds,” he said, pulling up across the street from the courthouse and putting his hand on my forearm. “We’ll all be right behind you, no matter what happens.”
But instead of being encouraged by his support, I climbed from the squad car with my mind reeling through all the counterattacks the assistant U.S. attorneys had made in their closing arguments, especially at our theory of the holographic gun images.
The glue could have come from their makeup, they said. The silicone came from something they’d all touched, probably the masks they wore or, as Watkins had suggested, the grime on the old factory floor. Wills had also hammered home how absurd it was to believe that two people would willingly die and another would willingly be wounded and crippled in order to frame me.
“Alex!”
Anita and Naomi were climbing out of a cab behind us.
“Let’s be as disciplined as we were on day one,” Anita said. “No one talks on the way into court.”
As we’d done the first day of the trial, we walked together toward the crush of cameras and klieg lights that flared and trained on us. The reporters’ shouting canceled out the protesters’ shouting, so all I really heard as we pushed on through the mob was a garbled roar of desperation and hatred.
Reaching the courthouse was a relief, but I felt distant going through security. I tried to focus on the officers wishing me luck, but I was thinking that my life as I knew it might be over in a matter of minutes and I’d be condemned to an eight-by-twelve, a target for every con who had it in for a cop.
My phone buzzed, alerting me to a text from Bree: ETA five minutes! Love you! Believe in you!
But on the way up the elevator and walking toward Judge Larch’s courtroom, I felt hollow, separate, and alone.
Nana Mama was already there in the front row with Ali, Jannie, and my dad. I ignored everyone else gathered in the court and went to them. My grandmother took my hand and squeezed it.
There was so much fear and anxiety in my children’s faces that I had to fight to smile and say, “Be strong, now.”
“You too,” my father said. “We’ve been praying.”
I went to the defense table as nervous as I’d ever been in my entire life. I glanced past Anita and saw the prosecutor Nathan Wills fiddling with his phone. His assistant was looking down, studying a document.
Behind them sat Soneji’s son, Dylan Winslow, who had a smirk on his face. Kimiko Binx was perched beside him, dressed in black and shooting me dark glances. Claude Watkins was rolling his wheelchair down the aisle.
Before he parked beside Binx, he looked at me with open loathing, and in a voice loud enough for the reporters and other spectators to hear, he said, “You’re not getting away with this, Cross. If there’s any justice left in the world, you’re going down for a long time.”
Anita put her hand on mine. I didn’t need it. I wouldn’t give Watkins the satisfaction of reacting or replying.
“All rise,” the bailiff said. “Judge Priscilla Larch presiding.”
The judge looked better, far less pale than she’d been at closing arguments. Larch was wearing a new pair of glasses too, ones that made her seem less, well, birdy. She banged her gavel, called the court to order, and asked the bailiff to bring in the jury.
In the course of my career, I’ve sat in the cheap seats watching juries come back with verdicts at least fifty times. In every case, I’ve searched the faces of the jury members for clues to their decision, but I have been surprised by the outcome almost as often as I’ve been right in my predictions.
Juror five hobbled in. He looked tired and grim, as did several other jurors who filled the seats around him. The remaining members of the panel appeared upset but resigned to the verdict.
Juror eleven, the PR executive, had been voted foreperson. She came in last, wearing a sharp blue suit with a pink blouse. She gave me a glance as she climbed into her seat in the jury box, swallowed hard, and looked away with such uncertainty that I was shaken inside.
“Madam Foreperson, have you reached a verdict?” Larch said.
Juror eleven stood. “We have, Your Honor.”
The judge accepted a copy of the verdict from the bailiff, opened it, and showed no reaction before saying, “Dr. Cross, please rise.”
As Anita, Naomi, and I got to our feet, I heard the courtroom doors open behind me. I glanced back and saw Bree and Damon rush to seats beside Sampson and his wife, Billie.
Everything felt surreal as I heard Larch say, “On count one, in the death of Virginia Winslow, murder in the first degree, how do you find?”
Chapter 86
Juror eleven would not look at me. No one in the jury would look at me.
“We find the defendant, Alex Cross,” she said as she finally turned her hard gaze my way, “not guilty.”
There were gasps, cheers, and a war whoop behind me. My knees went rubbery, and I almost started to cry when Nana Mama said, “I knew it!”
Naomi grabbed my left arm, Anita my right.
“What?” Dylan Winslow yelled angrily, jumping to his feet. “He shot my mom in cold blood!”
“Not guilty!” Ali shouted at him, standing up. “Not guilty!”
Judge Larch pounded her gavel and then shook it at Ali and Soneji’s kid. “One more outburst out of either of you, and you’ll be banned from my court. Clear?”
Dylan was fuming and red-faced, but he slammed his butt back down on the bench beside Binx. Ali grinned with satisfaction and sat more slowly.
Turning back to the jury, Judge Larch said, “On count two, in the death of Leonard Diggs, the charge is murder in the first degree. How do you find?”