Angel of the Dark

For the last two weeks, Judge Federico Muñoz had banished the media from his courtroom. (It wouldn’t do to be seen as too camera-hungry, and William Boyce was so deathly dull he’d be a turnoff for viewers anyway.) Today, however, he had relented, allowing a select group of news organizations some spots in the gallery. Their cameras, like the eyes of the rest of the room, flitted between the defendants and the three men sitting side by side in the front row. By now, they were all household names in America.

Danny McGuire, the LAPD detective turned Interpol hero who’d spent two-thirds of his career pursuing the Azrael killers and who had helped orchestrate the Indian sting that finally caught them.

David Ishag, the swoon-worthy Indian tycoon who’d been slated as Azrael’s next victim till McGuire and his men plucked him from the jaws of certain death.

And at the end of the row, in a wheelchair, the tragic figure of Matthew Daley.

Daley was a writer, the son of Azrael’s first victim, Andrew Jakes, and at one time a key Interpol informant. He too had been present the night of the defendants’ arrest and was lucky to have survived the bullet from Mancini’s gun, which had lodged in the base of his spine. Despite this, Matt Daley had refused to testify against the female defendant, a woman he still referred to as “Lisa.” The rumor was that the poor man had been driven to the point of madness with love for her. Watching him gazing at her now, a hollow-eyed, sunken version of his former vivacious self, it was easy to believe.

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“Ms. Watts.” Judge Federico Muñoz paused just long enough to make sure that all eyes—and cameras—were trained on him. “I understand you are to open the case for the defense.”

“That’s correct, Your Honor.”

Ellen Watts and Alvin Dubray had agreed between them that Ellen would go first. The plan was to get the character assassination of each other’s client out of the way early so that they could close in on areas of common ground: weaknesses and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case, and the abuse suffered by both the accused as children. If they could sow enough reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind as to who had corrupted whom, and paint both defendants as mentally disturbed, they stood a chance of keeping them both from death by lethal injection. Realistically it was the best they could hope for.

Ellen Watts approached the jury, looking each of the group of twelve men and women in the eye.

“Over the past two weeks,” she began, “the prosecution has presented you with some pretty horrific evidence. Mr. Boyce has eloquently familiarized you with the facts surrounding four brutal murders. And I use that word advisedly—facts—because there are facts in this case, terrible facts, facts that neither I nor my client seek to deny. Andrew Jakes, Sir Piers Henley, Didier Anjou and Miles Baring all lost their lives in violent, bloody, terrifying circumstances. Some of those men have family and friends here today, in this courtroom. They too have had to sit through Mr. Boyce’s evidence, and I know there isn’t one of us whose heart does not go out to them.”

Ellen Watts turned for effect and bestowed her best, most sympathetic nod of respect toward the two of Didier’s ex-wives who’d flown over for the trial, as well as to the stooped but dignified figure of Sir Piers Henley’s eighty-year-old half brother, Maximilian. Behind him, two women in their late fifties, old girlfriends of Miles Baring’s who’d kept in touch after his marriage, glared at Ellen Watts with loathing, but the attorney’s concerned expression never faltered.

“I am not here to debate the facts, ladies and gentlemen. To do so would be foolish, not to mention an act of grave disrespect to the victims and their families.”

“Hear, hear!” shouted one of Miles Baring’s girlfriends from the gallery, earning herself a sharp look from Judge Federico Muñoz and a murmured ripple of approval from everyone else.

“My job is to stick to the facts. To put an end to the wild speculation and rumor surrounding my client, and to present to you the truth. The truth about what she did and what she did not do. The truth about her relationship with her codefendant, Frankie Mancini. And the truth about who she really is.” Ellen Watts approached the defendants’ table, inviting the jury to follow her with their eyes, to look at the woman whose life they held in their hands. “She’s been called the Angel of Death. A princess. A witch. A monster. None of these epithets is the truth. Her name is Sofia Basta. She’s a human being, a flesh-and-blood woman whose life has been one long catalog of abuse and suffering.” Ellen Watts inhaled deeply. “I intend to show that Ms. Basta was as much a victim in these crimes as the men who lost their lives.”

Most of the jury frowned in disapproval. Cries of “shame” rose up from around the courtroom, prompting Judge Muñoz to call for silence.

Ellen Watts continued. “The truth may not be palatable, ladies and gentlemen. It may not be pleasant and it may not be what we want to hear. But revealing the truth is my business in this courtroom, and in the coming days I will show it to you in all its ugliness.” Roused and passionate, she turned and pointed accusingly at Frankie Mancini. “It is this man, not my client, who orchestrated, planned and, indeed, carried out these murders. Knowing that Sofia was vulnerable, that she was mentally unstable, that she was lonely, Frankie Mancini cynically manipulated her, turning her into a weapon that he could use to further his own hateful ends. Convicting Sofia Basta of murder makes no more sense than convicting the knife or the gun or the rope.

“That’s all I’m asking of you today: to hear the truth. To let the truth in. Nothing will bring back Andrew Jakes, Piers Henley, Didier Anjou and Miles Baring. But the truth may finally allow them to rest in peace.”

Ellen Watts sat down to a silence so heavy you could almost hear it. Some of the jury members clearly disapproved of what she’d said. Others looked puzzled by it. But unlike William Boyce, Ellen Watts took her seat knowing that she at least had their full attention.

Judge Federico Muñoz turned to the other defense attorney. “Mr. Dubray. If you’d care to address the court…”

Alvin Dubray stood up, wheezing and waddling his way to the same spot in front of the jury that Ellen Watts had just vacated. He looked more than usually disheveled this morning, with his wiry gray hair sticking up wildly on one side of his head and his half-moon reading glasses comically askew. After a mumbled “very good, Your Honor,” he turned to the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen. I’ll keep it brief. I admire Ms. Watts’s respect for the truth. Indeed, I heartily endorse it. Unfortunately for Ms. Watts, however, the truth does nothing to exonerate her client. It is Sofia Basta who was the cynical manipulator. She, not Mr. Mancini, entrapped four innocent men and led them to their deaths. And let us not forget that these were successful, highly intelligent men of the world. If Ms. Basta was able to bamboozle these men, not to mention senior police officers around the globe and even one of her victims’ children”—he glanced at the broken figure of Matt Daley, slumped in his wheelchair in the front row—“how easy must it have been for her to control my client, a clinically certified schizophrenic with a lifelong history of emotional and psychological problems. The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that Ms. Basta is the cold-blooded killer here, not Mr. Mancini. Thank you.”

Alvin Dubray shuffled back to his seat. Danny McGuire watched him go. Danny noticed that at no time during his address had Alvin Dubray looked at his client or invited the jury to do so. Probably because the guy looks so fucking evil, and she still looks like a little lamb, lost in the woods. Danny remembered both Sofia and Frankie from their prior incarnations as Angela Jakes and Lyle Renalto. Today, as he watched them in court, his impressions of the two were remarkably similar to what they had been all those years ago. She still seemed innocent and gentle. He still projected arrogance and deceit. Alvin Dubray had been right on the money in one regard. Sofia Basta had “bamboozled” him. In fact, the word bamboozle barely scratched the surface of what she had done. As Angela Jakes, she had bewitched the former detective. And in a way, she was bewitching him still.

Judge Muñoz called for a twenty-minute recess before the defense teams started summoning witnesses to take the stand. Outside in the corridor, Danny McGuire approached Matt Daley.

“You okay?”

Danny still felt guilty for having suspected Matt of being the Azrael killer that fateful night in Mumbai. As he looked at him now, so weak and broken, not just physically but emotionally, the idea that he might have killed those men seemed ludicrous. Matt Daley couldn’t hurt a fly. Danny’s one consolation was that Matt himself never knew of his suspicions. Since the Azrael arrests, the two men had become friends again. Danny and Céline had even stayed with Matt’s sister, Claire, and her husband, Doug, when they vacationed in L.A., and the McGuire and Daley families had grown close.

“I’m fine. I’m worried about her, though.”

“Who?”

“Lisa, of course.” Even now, a full year after India, Matt Daley still referred to Sofia Basta as “Lisa” and still spoke about her with love and affection. As far as the trial was concerned, Matt Daley was in Ellen Watts’s camp all the way. Mancini was the bad guy, “Lisa” his confused, misguided victim. “Dubray’s a cold bastard. He’ll do her more damage than that wet fish Boyce for the prosecution. How can he stand up there and say those things?”

“He’s doing his job,” Danny McGuire said mildly. “None of us knows the truth yet. We won’t till we hear the witnesses’ testimony.”