The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross #25)(5)
“Don’t look at them,” Marley said. “They’re mine.”
I didn’t look their way, but in my peripheral vision I picked up the two assistant U.S. attorneys stowing their briefcases under the prosecution table. Nathan Wills, the lead prosecutor, looked like he’d never met a doughnut he didn’t eat. In his mid-thirties, pasty-faced, and ninety pounds overweight, Wills had a tendency to sweat. A lot.
But Anita and Naomi had cautioned me not to underestimate the man. He’d graduated first in his class from Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley and clerked at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before joining the Justice Department.
His assistant, Athena Carlisle, had a no less formidable background. A descendant of sharecroppers, Carlisle came from abject poverty in Mississippi and was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She’d won a full scholarship to Morehouse College, graduated at the top of her class, and then attended law school at Georgetown, where she’d edited the Law Review.
According to profiles of the prosecutors that had appeared the week before in the Washington Post, both Wills and Carlisle were ambitious in the extreme and eager to prosecute the federal government’s case against me.
Why the U.S. government? Why the high-powered U.S. Attorney’s Office? That’s how it’s worked in Washington, DC, since the 1970s. If you’re charged with a homicide in the nation’s capital, the nation is going to see you punished.
I heard shuffling and voices behind me, turned, and saw my family taking their seats. Bree smiled at me bravely, mouthed, I love you.
I started to say it back to her but then stopped when I saw a sullen teenage boy in khakis and a blue dress shirt with too-short sleeves enter the courtroom. His name was Dylan Winslow. His father was Gary Soneji. His mother had been one of the shooting victims. Dylan came up to the bar, not ten feet away from where I stood, pushed back his oily dark hair, and glared at me.
“Frickin’ hell’s in session for you, Cross,” Winslow said, his smile smug and malicious. “Honestly, I can’t wait to see you go down in flames.”
Ali jumped up and said, “Like your dad did?”
I thought Winslow was going to go ballistic and attack my younger son. Damon did too, and he stood up behind Ali.
Instead of taking a swing at Ali, the teen smiled even more malevolently.
“That’s right, kid,” he said coldly. “Exactly like my dad did.”
“All rise!” the bailiff cried. “Superior Court of the District of Columbia is in session. Judge Priscilla Larch presiding.”
A woman in her mid-fifties, with thick glasses and dyed-black hair pulled back in a severe hairdo, Judge Larch stood four foot ten. She was so short she looked almost comical climbing up behind the bench.
But I was not laughing. Larch had a richly deserved reputation for being a hanging judge.
After striking her gavel twice, Judge Larch peered out through those glasses and in a smoker’s voice growled, “The People versus Alex Cross. This court will come to order.”
CHAPTER
4
Six weeks earlier …
JOHN SAMPSON TRIED to remain calm, tried to tell himself that he would be okay with whatever decision awaited him on the other side of wooden double doors on the fifth floor of the Daly Building in downtown DC.
But Sampson couldn’t remain calm. He smelled his own sweat and was almost consumed by anxiety.
His stomach did a flip-flop when the secretary at last nodded to him around five p.m. and said, “He’ll see you now, Mr. Sampson.”
“Thank you,” Sampson said. He got to his feet and, like the therapists had taught him, widened his stance to counter the occasional bouts of vertigo he’d suffered since the gunshot wound to his head.
Sampson walked to the door, trying to exude confidence. He opened it, stepped in, and spotted Bryan Michaels sitting behind his desk, signing documents. Silver-haired and in amazing physical condition for a man in his mid-fifties, DC’s chief of police looked up, smiled perfunctorily, and waved Sampson to a seat.
“If it’s okay, sir, I’d rather stand,” Sampson said.
Chief Michaels’s smile disappeared, and he set his pen down as Sampson approached and stood at ease. The chief leaned back in his chair and studied the big man for several long, disquieting moments, glancing more than once at the scar on the left side of the detective’s forehead.
“You shot well in qualifying, I see,” the chief said at last.
“Not a stellar performance, but I passed, sir.”
“You did,” Michaels said. “And you almost matched your personal best in the physical tests.”
“I’ve worked very hard to be here, Chief.”
Sampson caught Michaels glancing again at the scar on his forehead.
“You have worked hard, John,” Michaels said in a tone that instantly troubled Sampson, made him feel lost and, well, about to be discarded.
The chief went on. “But I also have to use my best judgment in deciding whether or not to return an officer to the field after the kind of trauma you sustained. And I have to ask myself if you will be a liability to other officers in times of crisis.”
Sampson had wondered the same thing, but he said nothing, just gazed at the chief without expression. A beat went by, then two.
Chief Michaels broke into a smile, stood, and offered his hand. “Welcome back, Detective Sampson. You’ve been greatly missed.”