Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

Chapter

91

Pinkie slid into the same booth we’d used before at the Bench, the restaurant by the courthouse. I sat opposite him while Nana Mama and my aunts took a table next to us. I’d tried to invite Patty Converse, but she’d left the courtroom before Varney ended the morning session.

“I thought things went better for Stefan today,” Pinkie said.

“I did too,” I said. “For the first time since the trial began, I saw some of the jurors really thinking about the evidence against him.”

My cell phone buzzed. An e-mail alert. The waitress came over to take our orders. I asked for the patty melt with a salad instead of fries and another cup of coffee. I’d been up for so many hours at that point that I was feeling woozy again.

“If Stefan did it, he would have been covered in Rashawn’s blood,” Pinkie said.

“Unless Frost is right and he washed off somewhere else and buried his clothes,” I said.

“But why not the saw?”

“I know. It’s not logical. But sometimes murder and its aftermath are not logical events. It twists people into something unrecognizable.”

“You’re kind of raining on Naomi’s parade.”

“Not at all,” I replied, happy to see the waitress bringing my coffee. “I think she’s going to mount a vi

gorous defense on Stefan’s behalf.”

“I can hear a but coming.”

“But I’ve worked on enough of these cases to know that when the evidence to convict a child killer is formidable, the defense had better be able to do more than just poke holes in the prosecution’s narrative.”

“Like what?” Pinkie asked.

“Like find the real killer,” I said. “We do that, Stefan walks. If not, even with some of the lab results we got back, he risks conviction.”

“I swear on my dead daddy’s grave that Finn and Marvin were in on it,” Pinkie said.

I glanced over at the booth where I’d spoken with Bell the week before, said, “Well, unless the police find some evidence that links Bell and Davis to the killing, you’re swearing in vain.”

“Finn tried to kill Pedelini, who all but admitted to you before he was shot that he was looking the other way for payoffs.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I’d have to see the test results on Davis’s rifle, but there is the possibility that Davis was shooting at me and hit Pedelini. We were fairly close and it was a long shot across that cove.”

The waitress returned with our orders, and we dug in. My head ached, and I had to force the food down.

After we’d finished, I was surprised that Nana Mama wanted to stay for the afternoon session. She’d been taking naps in the afternoon the past few months.

“I feel like something big is going to happen in that courtroom this afternoon,” she said, holding my elbow as we walked back to the courthouse. “And I don’t want to miss it.”

“You having premonitions now?” I asked, amused.

“I’m no swami or seer,” she snapped. “I just get feelings sometimes, and this is one of them.”

“Okay. This something big you’re feeling—is it good or bad for Stefan?”

My grandmother peered up at me with a confused expression on her face, said, “I can’t tell you one way or the other.”