Hide & Seek - James Patterson [78]
“Hear ye! Hear ye! All people having business with Part Forty-four in this court, give attention and ye shall be heard. The Honorable Judge Andrew Sussman presiding.”
It was the court clerk’s big moment onstage. Every eye in the crowded room was on him. Good. That meant they were finally off me.
The trial was beginning.
My murder trial.
CHAPTER 92
STRANGE AS A five-legged station wagon! Norma Breen said to herself. Nuts! Crazy! It doesn’t add up. There’s a piece missing here somewhere.
Why had one gunshot, fired as Maggie Bradford was falling, been enough to kill that sorry bastard husband of hers? But it had, hadn’t it. Not much question about that.
She was looking for the hundredth, or maybe the thousandth time at the police photographs of the murder site, taken just after Will’s body had been discovered.
The body was lying facedown.
Bad luck, Will …
Or did you plan to have some bad luck? Did you shoot yourself, you sorry fuck? Is that your game?
He had been running away; that much was obvious from the footprints. Maggie had chased him and they had struggled. She had shot him in the head. He had fallen.
End of story, end of Will Shepherd.
Beginning of this current knotty mystery.
Norma felt a tingle travel up her spine. Something didn’t mesh. Something just wasn’t tracking for her. What the hell was it?
What was the missing piece of this goddamned five-and-dime jigsaw puzzle?
She would have to run some more experiments. Call in some favors too. Keep all those balls in the air. She would find something to set Maggie Bradford free.
To kill again?
CHAPTER 93
IRONY OF IRONIES. I thought so anyway. The prosecutor loved my music—at least he used to.
I had met Dan Nizhinski once at a party at Nathan Bailford’s house. He was there with his wife, an ordinary-looking woman who wore huge, oval-rimmed glasses and no makeup. I remember wondering why so attractive a man would marry this woman, but when we got a chance to talk, I liked her a lot. The Nizhinskis told me they were both fans. Hoopty-doo!
Well, I didn’t like Dan Nizhinski now. He was tall and looked very scary, and the way he addressed the jury was like a beloved teacher speaking before a class of his best students.
“He’s good,” I whispered to Nathan.
“So are we,” he answered, but his confidence did not spill over onto me.
The jury was made up of a corporate secretary in her early twenties; a high school principal; two housewives; three retirees, one of whom was an ex-army colonel; a freelance writer; two self-employed businessmen; a clerk in a Ford dealership; and an actor, “currently unemployed.”
Six men, six women. Different backgrounds. With the power of God, they would somehow set me free. Or so I hoped.
My biggest fan, Dan Nizhinski, was talking about me again. Not exactly singing my praises though.
“You will hear evidence that the defendant, Maggie Bradford, did plan, over a period of several weeks, the murder of her husband, Will Shepherd.
“You will hear that this calculated murder was accomplished in a particularly cold-blooded fashion, as Will Shepherd ran for his life, as he tried to escape.
“You will discover that Will Shepherd was no ideal husband, but whatever his sins were, they were not enough to justify murder.
“And you will be presented with such a body of overwhelming evidence that there will be no doubt in any of your minds, as there is none in mine, that Maggie Bradford is guilty of murder in the first degree and should be punished to the full extent of the law.”
Dan Nizhinski headed for his chair at the prosecutor’s table, then stopped and returned to the jury, as though what he were about to say had just occurred to him, though I’d bet he had rehearsed the movement, and the speech, many times.
“One further thing. I forgot one thing. The murderess we are dealing with here is not an ordinary woman—”
“Objection! Your Honor,” Nathan Bailford stood up and bellowed. “The district attorney has put a label on my client. She’s not a ‘murderess.’”
“Sustained.”
“—Her name is Maggie Bradford, and it