After closing his shirt, Devine reaches for his oxygen mask, then jerks sideways on his chair, as though a disc in his back suddenly caught painfully. After a moment, he leans to one side and slides his right hand beneath his buttocks. Then his left hand rips the oxygen mask from his face, and he heaves himself to his feet.
For a couple of seconds I think he must have sat on a bee, or maybe a spider. But then he starts to jerk spasmodically, his movements clearly uncoordinated. Several people in the audience cry out, but I only stare at Devine the way you stare at an audience volunteer during a Las Vegas magic show, trying to ascertain the nature of the profound change in him.
“Is he having a heart attack?” Rusty cries. “A seizure?”
Devine’s eyes are wide open, and there’s only panic in them. As my father rises from his chair, Devine doubles over and falls to the floor with a heavy thud. Dad hurries toward him.
“Everyone back in your seats!” Judge Elder commands, his voice booming through the courtroom like the voice of the law itself.
The bailiff has drawn his gun and is scanning the crowd with fear in his eyes. A stunned FBI agent restrains my father, but Judge Elder orders the agent to stand aside. The agent hesitates until Kaiser appears and pushes him out of the way. Dad slowly gets to his knees beside the fallen Double Eagle, but I don’t know what he can do. From where I stand, Will Devine looks as dead as a veal calf after the bang stick has been put to its skull. As I stare at his motionless body, Tim and Joe and two more of our bodyguards sprint into the space between the audience and the bench to cover Annie, Mia, Mom, and Jenny.
“Sit down!” Judge Elder shouts into his microphone. “The officers in the room will lead an orderly evacuation of the court.”
For a second it strikes me as strange that Judge Elder is talking about evacuation. After all, if a witness has a heart attack in a crowded courtroom, the best course is to keep everyone in place so that paramedics can quickly evacuate the patient. But Joe Elder senses malevolence behind this act. I suppose the closest parallel would be a Mafia trial. When a star witness against a Mafia don drops dead in the witness box, you don’t assume natural causes.
As Dad works over Devine, I notice Kaiser examining the chair in the witness box. Taking out a penknife, he carefully runs it over the blue upholstery, then stops about eight inches from the chair back.
Looking left, I see that Devine, if he’s not dead, soon will be. Dad is leaning over his mouth, where a white foam now covers the old Double Eagle’s lips.
“What was it, Dad?”
“Cyanide, I think. Notice the cherry color of his lips?”
Now I do . . .
“There’s still a heartbeat, but it’s faint.”
“Get me an evidence bag!” Kaiser cries above the general clamor.
Turning again, I see that the FBI man has cut open the chair seat, exposing springs, and from within removed a small metal cube, which he places on the rail of the witness box.
“What is that?” I ask, moving closer.
“Careful, Penn,” he warns. “There’s a needle sticking out of it.”
He’s right. I see a sliver-thin hypodermic protruding from the dull metal cube.
“We do need to clear the courtroom,” Kaiser says, “but I don’t want anybody in here to get out and away without being questioned.”
Before I can respond, someone yells, “They shot him! They used a silencer! They’re still shooting!”
For one pregnant moment, everyone in the room goes still. In this surreal slice of time, a face seems to zoom out of the crowd toward me. I don’t know it well—as I do so many in this crowd—but something in its eyes triggers a primal reaction in my central nervous system.
What do I see? Every other set of eyes within my field of vision radiates fear and confusion. These eyes radiate . . . triumph.
“That’s Snake Knox,” I whisper.
Then a woman shrieks and pandemonium erupts, starting a general stampede for the single accessible exit. I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a hurricane. A few clever souls run for the door to the judge’s chambers, but the bailiff blocks it with his drawn pistol. At this point, Tim and his men have begun physically covering the Cage women and Mia with their bodies.
“Goddamn it!” Kaiser curses, furiously scanning the mob. “Somebody triggered that device! Somebody in this room! It could be Knox himself.”
“It was,” I confirm, catching Kaiser’s arm. “I just saw him. I saw Snake.”
“What?”
But already the man I believed to be Snake Knox has been swallowed by the panicked mob.
“Dr. Cage!” Kaiser calls. “What’s Devine’s condition?”
“Heart just stopped.”
“Can you believe it?” says a resigned voice from below and behind me.
Quentin has rolled his wheelchair up to me. He’s staring down at Will Devine’s body, and my father is looking back at him.
“Believe what?” Kaiser asks, motioning for his agents to break through the crowd and come to him.
Quentin slowly bobs his head at the corpse on the floor. “Snake Knox just silenced another Double Eagle. He cut it fine this time, but he pulled it off.”
“John,” I say, reaching out for Kaiser’s arm again.
“Are you okay, Penn?” he asks, looking at me strangely.
“He’s here, John.”
“What?”
“Snake Knox was here. Twenty feet away from us.”
The FBI agent goes still. “Are you sure?”
“Ninety percent. Nothing else about him looked like Snake. But the eyes were his.”
“What was he wearing?”
“I don’t know.” I close my eyes, trying to let go of everything but that hypercharged moment of eye contact. “Dark suit, maybe. Expensive. And dyed-black hair. Really black. He looked like . . . like Ronald Reagan.”
Chapter 57
Twenty minutes after the death of Will Devine, our defense team gathered in my office at City Hall, which is adjacent to the courthouse. Quentin’s pleas to the judge have resulted in my father being allowed to remain with us until after the jail has been searched for any similar devices, and also for explosives. Two deputies stand guard outside my door, in my secretary’s office—probably trying to hear anything they can, at the order of Sheriff Billy Byrd—but the real security is provided by Tim Weathers and four of his associates. Annie and Mia are waiting down the hall in our lounge, where there’s a refrigerator, a microwave, and plenty of snacks—though I doubt either of them feels like eating. Walt Garrity brought my mother and sister up here before even we arrived, which for the first time puts all the principals of our side in one room.