“Quiet!” he demanded as the courtroom dissolved into chaos.
“Quiet!” he shouted again, but panic had taken over. People who had come to watch were trying to hide, throwing themselves onto the floor between the benches, some on top of others who had gotten there first. Elliott aimed the gun toward the back and fired off a round. Everyone froze.
“Now,” he said, holding the gun steady, “I want everyone to listen to me very carefully.” His voice was surprisingly calm. “Very slowly, and starting with the first row, I want everyone to leave-
everyone sitting out there,” he said, nodding toward the spectators’ benches. “Now,” he said. “Very slowly, just like you were leaving church after a wedding or a funeral. One row at a time.”
They did as he told them, one row at a time, looking back at him, afraid he might change his mind before they got out the door. When they were all gone, he turned to the twelve terrified people in the jury box. Gesturing with the gun, he ordered them into the jury room.
“You go with them,” he said, nodding at both the court clerk and the court reporter.
When they were out of the room, he turned to the bailiff and ordered him to take the defendant back to the jail.
“Go with him, Danny,” I said when he appeared reluctant to leave me alone.
There were only three of us left: Bingham, Loescher, and me-
the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney.
Elliott moved across the front of the courtroom and leaned against the empty jury box, the gun dangling down from his hand.
“Shall we bring the jury back in and have a trial of our own?”
Elliott asked, looking at Loescher. “Or do you think I’ve ade-quately prosecuted the case against Calvin Jeffries and my wife?”
Cassandra Loescher was one of the few who had not panicked when Elliott began brandishing the gun. She had risen straight to her feet and stayed there, glaring at him as if he had offered an insult instead of a threat to her life. She refused to answer, and when he repeated the question her only response was to look at him with even greater contempt.
Her silence made him angry and I tried to get his attention.
“What do you want, Elliott?” I asked, taking a tentative first step in his direction. He warned me away with his eyes.
“You can’t get out of here,” I told him, trying to sound calm and self-assured. “And even if you could, what then? Would you go kill your wife? Is that what this was all about-to get out of the hospital so you could kill her yourself?”
“Kill her?” he exclaimed feverishly. “I don’t want her to die; I want her to live forever. I told you all before,” he cried, as he waved the gun in the air, a dark, menacing look in his eyes. “I came to court to make the record, the record of what happened, the way you do when you want to appeal a case you should never have lost. Kill her? I want her to live knowing that everyone knows what she is and what she did!”
I was too angry, too tired, too worn out by everything that had happened to feel any fear.
“Then why are you doing this? You made your record-you changed the past. Everyone knows. What else is left to do?”
His eyes were on fire. “To finish what I started twelve years ago.”
“What you started…?”
“When I came to your office that day, when I was going to…”
Then I knew, not just what he was going to do, but what he had always intended to do, and in a strange way it made sense.
“Don’t,” I said reflexively, but I knew there was nothing I could do, nothing that was going to make him change his mind. It was too late. It had always been too late.
He pointed the gun right at me. “It’s time for you both to go,”
he said, glancing up at the judge and then across to the prosecutor.
Loescher turned to go, but Bingham refused to leave. “It’s my courtroom,” he insisted.
Elliott seemed surprised. “Jeffries would already be out the door,”
he remarked. He looked at me to see if I agreed and then looked back at Bingham. Stretching his arm straight, until the gun was as close to my head as it would go, he asked him again to leave.
“I would be very grateful if you would go.” He said it with a kind of respect, the way he must once have thought every judge was supposed to be addressed.
Bingham, still reluctant, looked at me.
“It’s all right,” I assured him. “I’ll be fine. You better go.”
We were alone, and Elliott took a position in front of the bench, just below where Bingham had been sitting. Gesturing with the gun, he had me move to the far end of the counsel table, closest to the empty jury box and farthest from the double doors at the back. We stood like that, facing each other, and for what seemed like forever did not say anything at all. Everything in that quietest courtroom was now so quiet I could have sworn I could hear the thoughts that were passing through Elliott Winston’s mind.
“There’s no reason to do this, Elliott.”
He looked up at the clock. “Four forty-four. We’ll wait one more minute: four forty-five.”
I stood there, helpless, staring at the barrel of the revolver, and from somewhere deep in my subconscious recalled the story Anatoly Chicherin had told me about Dostoyevsky waiting in front of a firing squad, waiting for the order to fire, knowing with absolute certainty it would be the last word he would ever hear.
“Don’t do it,” I begged. “What happened twelve years ago was an accident. It wasn’t a crime.”
For an instant he looked like the Elliott Winston I had known at the beginning, the bright, eager young man with the wife he loved and the children he adored, his whole life in front of him, certain that nothing bad would ever happen.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t a crime?” He smiled. “It wasn’t what I intended.”
I heard the clock strike four forty-five. “Don’t,” I begged again.
The gunshot exploded in my ear, and then there was nothing but silence, silence everywhere. Then I heard it: the sound of feet running, rushing, and the sound of voices, a huge, animal roar, and then the sound of the door at the back of the courtroom behind me crashing open.
I looked up just in time to see Elliott, tranquil and unafraid, smile at me as he lowered the gun which he had just fired into the air.
“Don’t,” I begged again, turning toward the door as the police began their assault. No one heard me, but it would have done no good if they had. The sound of that single gunshot had been the signal for Elliott’s own execution. He lay there, at the base of the bench, his eyes open, blood trickling past that strange smile that was still on his mouth.
Two police officers tried to help me out of the courtroom.
“Elliott Winston didn’t come to my office to kill me,” I told them. “He came to kill himself. This time he let someone else do it for him.”
The two officers exchanged a glance. Neither one of them had any idea what I was talking about.
Thirty-one
Though I had told her all about it before, I told her again, trying to remember everything just the way it had happened.
“Bingham meant it when he said it was his courtroom,” I said as the Porsche moved easily through a wide sweeping turn. Jennifer’s eyes were fastened on the road. Her hair flew back behind her as we picked up speed.
“He had everyone back in court the next morning. ‘Mr. Antonelli,’ he said, ‘do you have any other witnesses you wish to call?’
” ‘No, your honor,’ I replied. ‘The defense rests.’
“Then he looked at Cassandra Loescher. ‘Does the prosecution have any rebuttal witnesses it wishes to call?’
“She shook her head. ‘No, your honor.’
“He turned back to me. ‘Does the defense have any motions it wishes to make at this time?’