The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [304]
“Ah! Maxon, Darrow,” Mr. Picton said. “Good of you to come so late on a Sunday evening.”
“Quite a conference you’ve got going here,” Mr. Darrow said, glancing around at us all and nodding a polite greeting. “Having trouble planning your summation, Mr. Picton?”
“Summation?” Mr. Picton said, playing at surprise. “Oh! Great jumping cats, do you know, with all that’s happened today, I’m afraid I completely forgot about closing arguments! But then, I’m not entirely sure we’re going to need them.” He pulled out his pipe and clamped it between his teeth, looking very pleased with himself.
Mr. Maxon—who’d had a lot of run-ins with Mr. Picton in court, and was in a position to know when the man was up to something—started to look even more jittery than he had when he came in. “What is it, Picton?” he asked, pushing his pince-nez down tighter on his skinny nose. “What have you got?”
“What can he have?” Mr. Darrow asked with a chuckle. “The state’s closed its case in chief, Mr. Picton. I hope you didn’t make the mistake of saving anything for last-minute theatricals. Judge Brown doesn’t seem like the kind of man that’ll go for them.”
“I know it,” Mr. Picton answered. “And your colleague Maxon, there, knows I know it. So whatever I’ve ‘got,’ it must be something fairly good to warrant my asking you here tonight—don’t you think so, Maxon?” Mr. Maxon, unlike Mr. Darrow, seemed to take this statement straight to heart; and, pleased by that fact, Mr. Picton looked over to me. “Stevie? I wonder if you’d just run down and tell Henry to have Mrs. Hatch—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hunter—brought up from her cell.”
“Got it,” I said, making for the door.
As I went out I heard Mr. Picton continuing, “Doctor, why don’t you stay in here with the three of us? The rest of you might just have a seat in the outer office—we don’t want to overwhelm the defendant, after all…”
After bolting down the hall, I dashed onto the marble stairs, taking them two at a time on my way down to the guard’s station in the entryway. Running to it without looking up, I began to say, “Mr. Picton wants—”
Then I saw who I was talking to. It wasn’t the guard Henry at all, but one of the other big men what’d watched the courtroom doors all through the trial.
“Where’s Henry?” I asked.
The man looked at me with a sour expression. “What’s it to you, kid?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. But what it is to Mr. Picton is he’s got orders for him.”
Looking even more irritated, the guard nodded toward a doorway behind him. “Henry’s downstairs. Guarding the prisoner.”
I heard the statement; I accepted it with a simple nod of my head, and never thought twice about it. But now, looking back across the gap of so many years, I find myself once again wishing desperately that something could have made me see what was going on.
“Well,” I told the guard, “Mr. Picton wants he should bring the prisoner up to his office.”
“What, now?” the guard asked.
“I don’t figure as he meant next Thursday,” I said, turning around and heading back to the staircase. “If I was you I’d get moving—they’re all up there waiting.”
“Hey!” the guard called after me, as I started up the stairs. “Just remember, I don’t get paid to take orders from any kid!” Then he turned to go through the door behind him.
“You just took one, mug,” I mumbled, smiling as I got back to the second floor. “So go chase yourself.”
Back in Mr. Picton’s outer office I found that Cyrus, the detective sergeants, Mr. Moore, Miss Howard, and El Niño were all crowded around the closed oak door to the inner chamber. Cyrus had the aborigine up on his