John Sandford - Silent Prey

A thought sparked in the chaos of Bekkers mind.

The jury.

He caught it, mentally, like a quick hand snatching a fly from midair.

Bekker slumped at the defense table, the center of the circus. His vacant blue eyes rolled back, pale and wide as a plastic baby-dolls, wandering around the interior of the courtroom, snagging on a light fixture, catching on an electrical outlet, sliding past the staring faces. His hair had been cut jailhouse short, but they had let him keep the wild blond beard. An act of mercy: the beard disguised the tangled mass of pink scar tissue that crisscrossed his face. In the middle of the beard, his pink rosebud lips opened and closed, like an eels, damp and glistening.

Bekker looked at the thought hed caught: The jury. Housewives, retirees, welfare trash. His peers, they called them. A ridiculous concept: he was a doctor of medicine. He stood at the top of his profession. He was respected. Bekker shook his head.

Understand... ?

The word tumbled from the judge-crows mouth and echoed in his mind. Do you understand, Mr. Bekker?

What... ?

The idiot flat-faced attorney pulled at Bekkers sleeve: Stand up.

What... ?

The prosecutor turned to stare at him, hate in her eyes. The hate touched him, reached him, and he opened his mind and let it flow back. Id like to have you for five minutes, good sharp scalpel would open you up like a goddamn oyster: zip, zip. Like a goddamn clam.

The prosecutor felt Bekkers interest. She was a hard woman; shed put six hundred men and women behind bars. Their petty threats and silly pleas no longer interested her. But she flinched and turned away from Bekker.

What? Standing? Time now?

Bekker struggled back. It was so hard. Hed let himself go during the trial. He had no interest in it. Refused to testify. The outcome was fixed, and he had more serious problems to deal with. Like survival in the cages of the Hennepin County Jail, survival without his medicine.

But now the time had come.

His blood still moved too slowly, oozing through his arteries like strawberry jam. He fought, and simultaneously fought to hide his struggle.

Focus.

And he started, so slowly it was like walking through paste, trudging back to the courtroom. The trial had lasted for twenty-one days, had dominated the papers and the television newscasts. The cameras had ambushed him, morning and night, hitting him in the face with their intolerable lights, the cameramen scuttling backward as they transferred him, in chains, between the jail and the courtroom.

The courtroom was done in blond laminated wood, with the elevated judges bench at the head of the room, the jury box to the right, tables for the prosecution and defense in front of the judge. Behind the tables, a long rail divided the room in two. Forty uncomfortable spectators chairs were screwed to the floor behind the rail. The chairs were occupied an hour before arguments began, half of them allotted to the press, the other half given out on a first-come basis. All during the trial, he could hear his name passing through the ranks of spectators: Bekker Bekker Bekker.

The jury filed out. None of them looked at him. Theyd be secluded, his peers, and after chatting for a decent interval, theyd come back and report him guilty of multiple counts of first-degree murder. The verdict was inevitable. When it was in, the crow would put him away.

The black asshole in the next cell had said it, in his phony street dialect: They gon slam yo nasty ass into Oak Park, mman. You live in a motherfuckin cage the size of a motherfuckin refrigerator wit a TV watching you every move. You wanta take a shit, they watchin every move, they makin movies of it. Nobody ever git outa Oak Park. It is a true motherfucker.

But Bekker wasnt going. The thought set him off again, and he shook, fought to control it.

Focus...

He focused on the small parts: The gym shorts biting into the flesh at his waist. The razor head pressed against the back of his balls. The Sox cap, obtained in a trade for cigarettes, tucked under his belt. His feet sweating in the ridiculous running shoes. Running shoes and white socks with his doctors pinstripeshe looked a fool and he knew it, hated it. Only a moron would wear white socks with pinstripes, but white socks and running shoes... no. People would be laughing at him.

He could have worn his wing tips, one last timea man is innocent until proven guiltybut he refused. They didnt understand that. They thought it was another eccentricity, the plastic shoes with the seven-hundred-dollar suit. They didnt know.

Focus.

Everyone was standing now, the crow-suit staring, the attorney pulling at his sleeve. And here was Raymond Shaltie...

On your feet, Shaltie said sharply, leaning over him. Shaltie was a sheriffs deputy, an overweight time-server in an ill-fitting gray uniform.

How long? Bekker asked the attorney, looking up, struggling to get the words out, his tongue thick in his mouth.

Shhh...

The judge was talking, looking at them:... standing by, and if you leave your numbers with my office, well get in touch as soon as we get word from the jury...

The attorney nodded, looking straight ahead. He wouldnt meet Bekkers eyes. Bekker had no chance. In his heart, the attorney didnt want him to have a chance. Bekker was nuts. Bekker needed prison. Prison forever and several days more.

How long? Bekker asked again. The judge had disappeared into her chambers. Like to get her, too.

Cant tell. Theyll have to consider the separate counts, the attorney said. He was court-appointed, needed the money. Well come get you...

Pigs eye, they would.

Lets go, said Shaltie. He took Bekkers elbow, dug his fingertips into the nexus of nerves above Bekkers elbow, an old jailers trick to establish dominance. Unknowingly, Shaltie did Bekker a favor. With the sudden sharp pulse of pain, Bekker snapped all the way back, quick and hard, like a handclap.

His eyes flicked once around the room, his mind cold, its usual chaos squeezed into a high-pressure corner, wild thoughts raging like rats in a cage. Calculating. He put pain in his voice, a childlike plea: I need to go....