The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

“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 a

bout 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.