The People vs. Alex Cross (17 page)

“Judge, that’s the rightful role of the government,” Wills said.

“We’re seeking swift truth and justice here, Mr. Wills,” Larch said. “If the cameras are there and they do show what happened that day, we’ll all see it together. At the same time. Here. In my chambers.”

The marshals left. The judge ordered that the jury be sequestered and given lunch. We ate down the hall, all of us wondering how the cameras could have been missed, and me worrying about the confidence with which Watkins had revealed them. What would they show?

An hour later, word came that three smartphones with extender lenses had been discovered where Watkins said they’d be: in recesses cut into the factory’s support beams, hidden with thin pieces of sheet metal.

An hour after that, Larch’s marshal entered her chambers with three evidence bags, each holding an iPhone 6s. They were dusty and their batteries were dead. Between the group of us, we had enough cords to recharge the devices.

One by one, they blinked on. Claude Watkins was asked to provide the security codes for the phones, which he did. They all used his birthday.

U.S. Marshal Avery, a thin woman with an intense bearing, wore gloves to enter the codes. Then she attached the first phone to a laptop computer, and the laptop to a screen on the wall of Judge Larch’s chambers.

Fifteen minutes later, as the last of the three videos played, there was dead silence in Judge Larch’s chambers. I felt
steam-rolled and had no doubt I was heading to a federal pen for a long, long time.

“Compelling, Judge,” Wills said, triumphantly. “The government wishes to introduce these into evidence immediately.”

Anita said, “Your Honor, you cannot allow these videos to be introduced until we’ve had time to analyze them.”

“I’d say the videos speak for themselves,” Wills said. “The important parts, anyway. To ignore them would be a travesty of justice, Your Honor.”

“Allowing them into evidence without giving us the chance to examine them would be a gross miscarriage of justice, Your Honor,” Naomi said.

Judge Larch sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and puffed on an electronic cigarette.

“Your Honor?” Wills said.

“I’m thinking,” Larch said. “You’ve heard of that, right, Counselor?”

The prosecutor was taken aback but said, “Of course, Your Honor. I’ve been known to think myself every once in a while.”

The judge opened one eye and fixed it on Wills. “I’ll allow the videos to be introduced.”

“What?” Anita cried. “Judge—”

“Ms. Marley,” Larch said curtly. “The prosecution wants the videos introduced. If you can impeach their value and credibility, you’ll be free to do so at the appropriate time.”

“With all due respect, Your Honor,” Anita began, “these will bias the—”

“For a few days, perhaps,” Larch said, putting her e-cig on her desk. “If they’re fake, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you? And maybe you’ll make Mr. Wills look like a fool for being so impetuous.”

“Your Honor?” the prosecutor said, looking as if he’d sniffed something unpleasant.

“I’ve given you lots of rope, Mr. Wills,” she said. “Try not to hang yourself with it.”

Wills blinked and said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

NANA MAMA SAW
the devastated look on my face when we returned to the courtroom. She came to the rail.

“You okay, son?”

“It’s bad, Nana.”

“The truth will out. Just stay fixed on that.”

I nodded but felt like the weight of the world was on me when Judge Larch gaveled the court back into session and announced to the jury that she was admitting the videos. She also cautioned them that the government had decided not to analyze the videos before they were shown to the jury.

“In that light, keep an open and skeptical mind,” she said. “The defense will have its say about these videos, I’m sure.”

As Marshal Avery called up the videos on a screen facing the jury, Nathan Wills was so pleased he jigged a little as he crossed to the witness box. Claude Watkins was again sitting there in his wheelchair.

“Mr. Watkins,” Wills said. “Have you seen this footage?”

“No.”

“They’re all black-and-white, three or four minutes long. We’ll watch them simultaneously. You’ll see the scene from three angles at once.”

The deputy marshal hit a key on her computer. The screen, divided into three frozen feeds, lit up.

On the left, there was an elevated, look-down perspective on the dimly lit rear of the factory where the shooting had occurred. It was a long and largely empty assembly-line space with dark storage alcoves off it on all four sides.

From the perspective, I figured the smartphone had been placed atop an alcove in the middle of the long south wall of the room. On the opposite wall, a mural was lit by soft spotlights.

The middle of the screen showed the feed from a smartphone camera that had been hidden almost directly across the room, above the opposite northern alcove, and aimed back at the floor area, though you could see the bottoms of the three spotlights.

On the far right of the screen, we were afforded a view from above the west alcoves. That angle showed the full length of the factory floor and the spotlight beams bisecting it right to left.

The deputy hit Play and all three feeds started. The people in the courtroom saw me enter the space at the east end of the factory floor, carrying my service weapon and leading Binx along by her handcuffs. Exactly the way I remembered it.

At the west end of the room, Claude Watkins stepped out. He was dressed as Gary Soneji, and in a cracking, hoarse voice he said, “Dr. Cross. I thought you’d never catch up.”

“Freeze them,” Wills said. “Show feed three only.”

A moment later, the screen was filled with Watkins in disguise standing there, palms turned out.

“No gun,” Wills said. “Absolutely no gun.”

It was the second time I’d seen the image and the second time I got furious thinking that, if I wasn’t guilty, I was being railroaded by pros.

“That’s fake,” I whispered to Naomi. “I don’t know how they did it, but that is wrong.”

Before my niece could answer, the screen unfroze. The three videos showed me raising my service pistol, aiming at Soneji, and moving toward him, shouting, “Drop your weapon now or I’ll shoot!”

Watkins’s right hand moved, but there was nothing there, and nothing like the clatter of a gun dropping that I remembered.

“Facedown on the floor!” I shouted. “Hands behind your back!”

Soneji started to follow my orders but then Binx came up from behind and hit my gun hand with both her fists. The blow knocked me off balance, and my gun discharged before a fourth spotlight went on, blinding me.

Then the lights died. I threw myself to the factory floor. I stayed there several moments, peering around, before I lurched to my feet. Gun up, I ran hard to the nearest alcove on the north wall.

I shouted, “I’ve got backup, Gary. They’re surrounding the place!”

Leaving the alcove, I moved west along the north wall of the factory to the next anteroom, the one directly beneath the mural. The camera on the opposite roof caught me from behind and gave the viewer a decent look inside the north alcove,
where large rolls of canvas were stacked on tables made of plywood and sawhorses.

From deep in that alcove, Virginia Winslow, disguised as her late husband, stumbled out of the darkness. Stooped and far forward on the balls of her feet, she took two sharp, halting steps before straightening up. The camera zoomed in on us. Her right hand started to rise.

“Stop,” Wills said.

The screen froze on Gary Soneji’s widow with her palms almost turned up.

“No gun,” Wills said.

The videos started again.

Mrs. Winslow opened her mouth and raised her hand. I shot her. She fell and Binx screamed.

It went on like that for several more minutes, with Wills stopping the videos to show Watkins dressed as Soneji and me shooting him, then taking cover behind two old oil drums. The prosecutor froze the video one last time to show Leonard Diggs unarmed and up on the roof above the north alcove just before I shot him. Before the videos mercifully ended, you could hear Binx sobbing.

I blew out some air and looked over at the jury. Juror five had recoiled in his chair and was studying me like I was a war criminal. Juror eleven covered her mouth with a well-manicured hand and shook her head in horror.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON
, I could see outright suspicion on the normally guarded face of Gayle King, co-anchor of the CBS morning news.

As a sound tech hitched me up to a microphone in our house, King came over and said, “Five minutes, Dr. Cross?”

“I look forward to it, Ms. King.”

“Call me Gayle. And we’re agreed? No ground rules?”

“Ask away,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Your grandmother?” King said. “She’s something.”

“She is that.”

She smiled, but I saw some pity in it. She walked away.

Bree came over and handed me water. “You’re sure about this?”

“Anita and Naomi seem to think it will humanize me. And there’s nothing else we can do until Anita’s experts have a go at those videos.”

At the close of court proceedings, Judge Larch had granted
Anita’s motion to adjourn through the following Monday morning to do just that.

“Your FBI friends?” Bree asked, adjusting my tie.

“Mum,” I said. “Not surprising. I would think the U.S. Attorney’s Office got Rawlins analyzing the videos for the prosecution.”

“Well, that would be good, right? He’ll find the flaws.”

Before I could answer, King said, “Dr. Cross?”

“Good luck,” Bree said and kissed me on the cheek.

The journalist gestured to a chair across from her. I mirrored her posture, sitting on the first third of the chair, back straight, chin up, and facing her with my hands relaxed, open, and resting on my thighs. Two small spotlights lit us. King put on reading glasses.

“You’re on,” one of the camera operators said.

The morning news anchor got right to it and pulled no punches, noting that the introduction of the video in court the day before had to have been a devastating blow.

“Understandably, we weren’t happy about it, Gayle,” I said. “But we’re confident the video’s been doctored and we intend to prove it.”

“How many times have you drawn and fired your service pistol in the course of your career, Dr. Cross?”

“Norman Nixon says at least thirty-four times, counting this case,” I said.

“And killed eleven now in the line of duty?”

“In all those cases, I acted in accord with proper police protocol. Until the shootings I’m on trial for, I had never pulled the trigger first. But I was at close quarters in that situation. When I saw the guns, I gave them one chance to drop them and then fired to save my own life.”

“You still maintain the three victims were armed?”

“I do.”

King said, “The prosecution paints you as an ‘out-of-control’ cop.”

I controlled my temper, said, “Every time an officer fires his weapon in the course of duty, there’s a diligent investigation. I’ve gone through the process more than most officers, but in every instance I have been cleared.”

“What do you say to those who characterize those earlier cleared cases as having been whitewashed?”

I LOOKED DIRECTLY
in the camera with the red light glowing and said, “Read the investigative documents yourself, Gayle. I’ll give them to you, and you can post them on the CBS website where anyone can read them. I’m confident that you’ll agree with the shooting boards’ assessments.”

“I like that,” King said, and she paused. “Are you above the law, Dr. Cross?”

I had to fight not to let my hands curl into fists and said, “No, Gayle, I am not above the law, and I’m frankly insulted at the characterization. I have spent my life in service to the law as a homicide cop and an FBI agent. I have more than twenty meritorious citations for my actions with both agencies and not one reprimand for excessive violence or any other disciplinary action. Not one.”

King’s eyes locked on mine. She said, “Did Gary Soneji deserve to die ten years ago?”

I thought about that and said, “Personal opinion?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“Then my opinion is yes.”

King’s eyes went wide. “Yes?”

“Soneji bombed people with impunity. He kidnapped and tortured others. He used a baby as a human shield while trying to bomb Times Square. I chased him into the New York subway system when he was wearing an explosives vest. He tried to kill me. I did everything I could to make sure the vest did not go off, including killing him. So, yes, if I’ve ever met someone who deserved to die, it was Gary Soneji.”

“Are you obsessed with him?”

“No more than you’ll be obsessed with me when you move on to your next story. Look, being a detective is my job, not a crusade or a vendetta. I do my best. I move on.”

“‘I do my best. I move on.’ I like that,” she said, and she smiled and took off her glasses. “Virginia Winslow and Leonard Diggs. Did they deserve to die?”

“No,” I said. “But they made decisions that led me to make decisions as a police officer that ended their lives. I still don’t have a crystal-clear rationale for their actions other than their wanting to frame me.”

“In the video, none of your victims are seen carrying guns.”

“In person, they were all holding nickel-plated revolvers,” I said.

She chewed on one arm of her reading glasses. “And you, what, believe that Claude Watkins’s followers somehow erased the images of them?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“If you watch that video, you look like the coldest of killers, Dr. Cross.”

“Or the biggest of patsies.”

King put her glasses back on, referred to her notes. “With all the shootings across the country involving white cops killing black kids, isn’t it ironic that there was no real federal involvement in this issue until the U.S. Justice Department put a black cop on trial?”