A Fatal Frame of Mind (29 page)

“I didn’t lead us anywhere,” Shawn corrected him. “I made up some nonsense about a line of poetry, and they invented meanings for every word. It’s what Kitteredge has been doing for years.”

Gus still wasn’t convinced. There had been such an elegant complexity to Kitteredge’s theories that he hated to give it all up for the sad reality of coincidences and misunderstandings. But the more he worked it through, the less persuasive the evidence became, and by the time they were halfway across the Atlantic he thought back on his belief in the Cabal with the same sort of embarrassed nostalgia that accompanied memories of his once firm faith that Phil Joanou would eventually surpass Steven Spielberg in the directing hall of fame.

But there was still one piece to the puzzle that Gus couldn’t figure out. He’d mentioned it to Shawn in the cell, but the answer he got back didn’t make him feel any better.

“So if there’s no Cabal, and Polidori is just a crook with an antiques business, who killed Clay Filkin?” he said.

“It’s still possible it’s Kitteredge,” Shawn said. “He did have the bloody murder weapon in his pocket. Although our lives are going to be a lot easier if he didn’t do it. I don’t think the penalties are quite as harsh for helping an innocent man escape.”

Gus had been so busy assuming he’d never see his home again that he’d forgotten what was waiting for him there. “I’m sure he didn’t,” Gus said. “Someone must have framed him. And whoever it was must have stolen the painting as well.”

“I hope you’re right,” Shawn said. “And I hope we can figure it out before we get back to Santa Barbara. Because if we can’t, we’re going to have to blame it on the Cabal. And I don’t think anyone else is going to buy that.”

Gus groaned. “If only that picture hadn’t been stolen,” he said. “If Kitteredge had been allowed to look at it for as long as he wanted, we never would have gotten involved like this.”

Shawn was about to respond, but then he stopped himself. A smile spread over his face. “We kept thinking it was the Cabal that stole the painting.”

“But there was no Cabal.”

“So who had a reason to steal it?” Shawn said.

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “Anyone who wanted a painting worth millions of dollars.”

“Maybe,” Shawn said. “Or maybe it was someone who didn’t.”

G
us had always liked this courtroom. When he’d been here before, either as a witness or as just a spectator, he’d always taken time to admire the high beamed ceiling, the bright white plaster walls, the oaken benches, and the murals of Santa Barbara’s founding painted on the back wall.

But now that he was sitting at the defendants’ table, waiting with Shawn and Kitteredge for their arraignment to be over, he couldn’t remember why he’d been so enthusiastic about it. All he wanted was to get out as quickly as possible.

Whether that was going to happen would be determined in the next few moments. They had been brought straight from the airport to the courthouse for their arraignment. The district attorney had offered them some time to meet with their state-appointed attorney first, but Shawn had merely slipped him a list of names and sent him away. Gus had expected Kitteredge to say something, but he’d been completely silent since they’d been arrested in London. It was as if learning that the Cabal had never existed had sucked all the life from his body.

Now the courtroom was packed with the people Shawn had asked the lawyer to fetch. Lassiter was sitting right behind Gus, his badge gleaming brightly on his belt, flanked by Henry Spencer and Chief Vick. It took Gus a moment to recognize the thin man sitting a few rows back, because he’d seen Hugh Ralston, the museum’s executive director, only that one night. But Flaxman Low he spotted right away. And there were two uniformed officers he thought were the ones who’d wanted to hire them for the bachelor party.

Gus had sat silently through the first parts of the proceedings except for the moment when the white-bearded judge came in and he was ordered to rise. He’d only half listened as the prosecutor, a sharkish young woman named Sarah Willingham, had laid out the charges against them, although that half was enough to convince him that they’d all be going away for a long time.

Now it was all coming to an end. The judge would ask them a simple question, they’d claim innocence, and the prosecutor would request that they be sent to jail until trial. Since they’d already proven themselves flight risks, the judge would grant her request. And then his life would be over and he could die. At least he’d be able to change into a comfortable prison jumpsuit. The tuxedo was now so filthy and sweaty that it had hardened into an armor Tony Stark would envy.

The judge pulled his attention away from the prosecuting attorney and turned it toward the defense table. “How do the defendants plead?”

Their lawyer started to stand up, but Shawn put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down, then leapt out of his chair. “That’s a very complicated question, Your Honor,” Shawn said.

Gus looked up at Shawn. What was he doing? Why would he want to drag this out any longer than necessary?

“No, it’s not,” the judge said. “It’s a simple binary. Yes or no. Up or down. Guilty or not guilty.”

“But who among us can be said to be truly innocent?” Shawn said. “I say, none of us. Certainly not her,” he added, jerking his thumb at Sarah Willingham.

She jumped to her feet. “Your Honor, I object.”

Shawn glanced at her, and he
saw
. Saw the sealed Wet-Nap sticking out of her jacket pocket. The spot of barbecue sauce on the sleeve of her white silk sleeve. And, sitting in her open purse, a small bottle of hand cream—the kind placed in hotel bathrooms. Then he glanced at the judge. And saw a small red spot in his otherwise meticulous white beard.

The judge gaveled for order. “She is not being charged with any crimes. You are. How do you plead?”

“Your Honor,” Shawn said. “At this time I’d like to call my first witness.”

“Objection!” Willingham said. “This is an arraignment. You don’t call witnesses at an arraignment.”

“In that case, I’d like to send out for some lunch,” Shawn said, staring at the judge. “You don’t happen to know a good barbecue place, do you?”

The judge’s face reddened under the white beard as he banged his gavel. “The defendant will sit down.”

“Okay, don’t tell me,” Shawn said. “I’ll ask around. I’m sure
someone
saw you having lunch today.”

Gus sank his head in his hands. He was pretty confident that the judge at an arraignment couldn’t actually sentence them to death, but Shawn seemed to be doing everything he could to find out. After a long moment when the judge hadn’t spoken or gaveled, Gus looked up again.

The judge was glaring at Shawn. Sarah Willingham was glaring at the judge. And the defense attorney was desperately trying to figure out what was going on. Apparently, whatever Shawn had seen was something he wasn’t supposed to.

The judge banged his gavel again.

“One witness,” the judge said. “And then a plea.”

“Your Honor, I object to these proceedings,” Willingham said.

“If you’d done that before lunch, I wouldn’t be getting away with this,” Shawn said sweetly, then turned to the courtroom. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury—”

The judge gaveled again. “Once again, there is an arraignment, not a trial. There is no jury here.”

“Fine, whatever,” Shawn said. “Ladies and gentlemen whose opinion means nothing to this court, I’d like to introduce you to my first witness.”

Shawn tapped their lawyer on the shoulder, and the man produced a small metal and plastic rectangle. Shawn took it and held it up for the onlookers to see. “I present to you Izzy the iPod,” Shawn said.

“Your Honor, this is ludicrous,” Willingham complained in a voice that suggested she knew he wouldn’t do anything about it.

“Now you may be wondering what a simple iPod has to tell us about the terrible crimes we’re accused of,” Shawn said. “Let’s find out. I’m going to put Izzy in shuffle mode.” Shawn worked the central wheel, then looked at the screen. “What have we got? ‘Killing Me Softly.’ ‘Innocent Bystander.’ ‘Run Like a Thief.’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour.’ ‘The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.’ ‘Free the People.’ Do you see what it’s saying, aside from the fact that my lawyer apparently doesn’t own any songs recorded after my birth?”

“Who cares?” Willingham said.

“It’s trying to tell you something,” Shawn said. “About a murder, and the innocent bystanders who were caught up in it. How they had to flee to England where they caught a group of murderous smugglers, and now they should be set free.”

Gus still wasn’t sure what Shawn was doing, but he noticed that the judge seemed to be intrigued. At least he did until the prosecutor spoke.

“Your Honor, that’s a list of songs generated at random by a computer algorithm,” Willingham said. “Any meaning we might find there is simply a product of the human brain’s need to find patterns in any set of data.”

“Exactly!” Shawn shouted. “Which is exactly what my former client Langston Kitteredge spent the past decades doing. Only he’s smarter than we are, so he didn’t do it with iPod songs. He took bits and pieces from all sorts of books and paintings and kept messing them around until they fit in a pattern.”

“And he became so enamored of this pattern he let it replace any sense of reality,” Willingham said. “That’s called paranoid schizophrenia, and if the professor wants to claim it was this mental illness that caused him to murder Clay Filkins, he only has to enter the plea. And this would be a good time to do it, since we’re in the middle of his arraignment.”

For a moment, Gus had been feeling pretty good about what Shawn was doing. He hadn’t had any idea what it was all about, but it definitely seemed to have a direction. Now it looked like he had played right into the prosecutor’s hands. Because if Kitteredge did plead not guilty by reason of insanity, that still left Gus and Shawn guilty of accessory and obstruction and who knew what else.

“No pleas just yet,” Shawn said. “I’d like to call my first witness.”

“You just called your first witness,” Willingham said. “That iPod.”

“An iPod can’t be a witness,” Shawn said. “That’s ludicrous. Now if it were a Walkman, maybe. At least there’s a person in there.”

“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said.

“I’ll allow it,” the judge sighed.

“I call Flaxman Low to the stand,” Shawn said loudly.

L
ow stood up and strode to the docket, where he took aseat. Gus glanced over at Kitteredge to see if he’d acknowledge his old friend, but he just stared down at the table.

“I remind the witness he is still under oath,” Shawn said.

“What oath?” Willingham said. “He never swore an oath.”

“I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” Low said. “Can we get on with this now?”

“
Now
I remind the witness he is still under oath,” Shawn said. “Mr. Low. May I call you Flaxman?”

“If you’d like,” Low said wearily.

“Really?” Shawn said. “How about Flax? Or Man? If I were you, I’d go with Man. It doesn’t sound like something you’d eat to boost your fiber.”

“Your Honor!”

The judge didn’t even bother to overrule Willingham but just waved at Shawn to continue.

“So, Flaxy, you’ve known the defendant Longbow Crispirito for a long time,” Shawn said.

Behind him, Gus heard the sound of a hand slapping a forehead and wondered if that was Henry or Lassiter. Maybe both. It had taken all of his self-control to keep from doing the same thing.

“I’ve known Langston Kitteredge for many years,” Low said.

“And you’ve known about his belief in a conspiracy involving King Arthur’s sword, and some artists no one has ever heard of?” Shawn said.

“We have had many discussions about his belief that William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had found Excalibur, and that a secret organization had been searching for it ever since,” Low said.

“Would you say he was convincing?” Shawn said.

“I wouldn’t have spent so much time on the subject if he hadn’t been,” Low said. “I believe you’ve had the experience yourself. Once he started weaving facts together, it was impossible to see where he was wrong. And while you may want to claim that this was nothing more than your iPod hypothesis, a search for patterns in unrelated data, I don’t see that anyone has disproved his main thesis.”

At this, Kitteredge did look up briefly, then returned his gaze to the tabletop.

“So if the professor said he had proof that Rossetti had painted a final picture and it had all these great clues in it, people would believe him, even if no one had ever seen the thing,” Shawn said.

“He’s the authority,” Low said.

“Which means that if someone else painted that picture, but Kitteredge said it was the real thing, whoever had it could sell it for jillions of dollars,” Shawn said.

“It’s hard to imagine a forger good enough to fool my friend Langston,” Low said.

“Even if he was only allowed to see the picture for a few minutes before it was stolen?” Shawn said.

“Your Honor.” Willingham didn’t even bother to get out of her chair this time. “What does this have to do with the defendants’ plea?”

“What does barbecue sauce have to do with hotel sheets?” Shawn said. “It’s one of life’s mysteries.”

The judge banged his gavel. “Just hurry it up.”

“Yes,” Low said. “Langston’s word would be enough to establish the piece’s provenance. But if you’re suggesting that he was used to artificially inflate the value of a forgery, you’re forgetting the fact that the picture was never sold. It was donated to the museum by an anonymous donor who received nothing in return.”

“But if something happened to the painting, Kitteredge’s pomegranate would still stand,” Shawn said.