The screaming stopped after what seemed like only a second or two. The large double doors slammed shut, echoing through the live room. There was a loud, low clicking sound, more like a large piece of metal sliding into place.
Fenway couldn’t tear her gaze from the professor’s dead body, his eyes boring into her soul. With effort, she blinked. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, running down the side of her face.
Two shots.
Okay.
She’d forgotten to count to thirty, but things seemed to have calmed down.
She took a deep breath and pulled herself up into a crouch. Walking low and awkwardly, she pushed through the swinging iron gate and then got on all fours and crawled toward the defense table. Jennifer Kim and Evans Dahl were both sitting on the floor, the petite well-dressed woman and the large rumpled man with the same dazed looks in their eyes.
“Were either of you hit?” she whispered.
Dahl shook his head. Kim tilted her head and blinked three times.
“Were you hit, Jennifer?”
Kim pursed her lips and gave a slight shake of her head.
Fenway scooted over to the dead body of Virgil Cygnus. Near his temple was a bullet wound, a dark red hole that the shadow of the table partially concealed. She put two fingers on his neck at the jugular. Fenway wasn’t surprised at the absence of a pulse.
He was about to name names.
Fenway raised her head and sniffed. Maybe a faint smell of nitroglycerin, but with the new paint and varnish competing in her nose, it was hard to say for sure. She looked up, but the defense table blocked her view, making it hard to determine if gun smoke still hung in the air.
With her back to the judge’s bench, she looked to her left. On Fenway’s side of the defense table, ada Kim, Evans Dahl sat on the floor, only a foot or two away from Cygnus’s body. Turning her head, she saw her father, sitting with his legs sprawled in front him in front of the prosecution’s table. He put a hand on his chest and took a deep breath, then turned his head and caught Fenway’s eye. A look of relief spread over his face.
Fenway pulled herself up to her knees so she could survey the whole courtroom. No one holding a gun. No one threatening anyone. No one even standing up. Fenway set her jaw—there wasn’t an immediate threat.
“Has anyone been hit?” Fenway called out.
In the gallery, several people began to struggle to their feet.
Judith Cygnus, the professor’s wife, had fallen in the center aisle, and now was struggling to get to her feet. Xavier Go, the lead actor in the last Shakespeare play Cygnus would ever direct, disentangled himself from Amanda Kohl—the Desdemona to Go’s Othello—and the young man hurried over to help the new widow to her feet.
Cynthia Schimmelhorn stood in the rear of the gallery near the center aisle, leaning on the backs of the row of chairs in front of her. Even after the gunshots, nary a hair was out of place in her elegantly styled updo, her silvery hair pulled back out of her face. Likewise, her makeup, a subtle application of subtle reds and pinks that accentuated her northern European features, was prefect.
A white man stood with his hands on his hips in the middle of the aisle a few feet away from Schimmelhorn. Wearing a fitted charcoal gray suit, white dress shirt, and a garish multicolored tie, he was slender and of medium height, but had the wiry, strong build of an acrobat. Fenway tried to remember where she had seen his face before.
“Charlotte?” Ferris called.
“I’m here,” said a voice from between two rows on the defense side of the gallery. Charlotte stood, a little tentatively, but when no one seemed to fire another shot, she rushed through the swinging gate and Ferris swept her into a desperate embrace.
Piper popped her head above the row of chairs behind where Charlotte had been sitting. Fenway nodded at her and she raised her hand an inch or two.
“Take a look around, everyone,” Fenway said. “Is anyone still on the floor? Is anyone injured?”
Two rows in front of Cynthia Schimmelhorn and the man in the dark suit, a brunette woman who looked to be in her late forties pulled herself up so that her eyes were visible over the back of the chair in front of her. “Is it—is it over?” she said.
Judith Cygnus stiffened at the sound of the woman’s voice. Xavier, who was helping her into a seat, flinched, then looked up. He shot a glance over at Amanda, who narrowed her eyes.
“Xavier, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Professor Nedermeyer.”
Ah—Leda Nedermeyer. The head of the English department at Nidever—and, supposedly, Professor Cygnus’s lover for over a decade. About five foot five and rail-thin, she wore her wavy light brown hair in a chin-length asymmetrical cut that looked a decade too young for her. With a frazzled look in her eye as she looked around the courtroom, she pulled herself up to a standing position and wrapped her off-white cardigan closer around her front. It made sense that Nedermeyer would not only be at his arraignment but sit near the back, away from her lover’s wife.
Near where the shots came from, maybe.
Another movement at the rear of the courtroom, but this one from the far end of the prosecution’s side. That corner was shrouded in shadow, and the figure was dressed in black slacks and a dark gray sweater. Her dark, straight tresses hung in front of her face. She moved into the side aisle, almost catlike, and then walked to the side door. She pulled the handle but the door didn’t move.
“Rose,” Fenway called, more like a statement than anything.
The woman froze, and looked up at Fenway. Yes, that was Rose Morgan, all right. Fenway hadn’t expected to see her ever again, not after Cygnus had almost killed her, and certainly not after she’d picked up the usb stick and fled into the night. But here she was, in the flesh. With the man who threatened her life dead on the floor.
Rose nodded. “Hi, Coroner.”
Fenway opened her mouth to say how surprised she was to see her, then thought better of it. “Are you okay? Were you hit?”
“I’m fine. Not a scratch.”
“Anybody back there with you?”
“With me?”
“On the floor, maybe? Anyone between the rows there?”
Rose craned her neck, looking between several of the rows. “Not that I can see.”
Fenway nodded. “Good.”
“Ferris!” the man in the charcoal suit barked. “Is this your idea of a joke? Do you think this is how you cut and run?”
Nathaniel Ferris, standing in front of the prosecutor’s table, pulled away from Charlotte and narrowed his eyes at the man. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, Bryce.” He took three steps toward him.
Ah, yes. Fenway remembered him now. Bryce R. Heissner, chief operating officer of Ferris Energy—Fenway had seen his picture on the website. Obviously here to see what would happen to the founder and chief executive.
“Shooting a gun in a courtroom!” Heissner snarled. “I can’t even believe the depths you’ll go to.”
“Mr. Heissner,” Fenway said sharply, “we’re trying to see who’s been shot. You’re not—”
“This is all Nathaniel’s doing,” Heissner said.
“I had nothing—” Ferris began.
“Gentlemen!” Fenway belted, and both her father and Heissner were quiet. “I’ll ask again—do you see anyone else injured or hurt?”
“We’re all fine,” Xavier said.
“Wait,” Ferris said. “Anyone else?”
“Professor Cygnus,” Fenway said. “He was shot.”
Judith Cygnus and Leda Nedermeyer both gasped. Where they were sitting, neither of them notice see the professor’s lifeless body, partially blocked by the defense table.
Judith Cygnus stood and took four cautious steps forward. Her husband lay in front of her, his legs splayed at an unusual angle. Judith’s hand clasped over her mouth. Fenway rushed toward her and caught her as she sank onto the floor, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Virg—oh, dammit, Virg,” she keened, bringing up her other hand to her face too, burying her face in her palms.
Fenway looked up. Leda Nedermeyer was standing now, her hands halfway in front of her like they were floating unattached to her body, like she didn’t know what to do with them. “Vir—Professor Cygnus is dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” Fenway said.
“I swear,” Heissner growled, looking at Nathaniel Ferris, “if you are behind this, you’re sure as hell going down with the ship. I promise you that.”
“A man is dead, Bryce,” Cynthia Schimmelhorn said softly. “Stop making this about your righteous indignation.”
“Did anyone see the shooter?”
Cynthia Schimmelhorn looked around the room, craning her neck, and the others followed suit. No one spoke.
“No one?” Fenway asked again.
Schimmelhorn turned in the aisle and faced the double doors. She pushed the crossbar on the left door, but nothing happened.
“We’re locked in,” said Leda Nedermeyer.
“It appears so.” Cynthia Schimmelhorn tried the right door, but it, too, held fast.
“Lockdown protocol,” Piper said. “Gunshots fired in a public building. We’re in active shooter mode.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Charlotte asked.
ada Kim cleared her throat. “It means that the doors automatically lock until there’s no more indication of a threat.”
“The side door too?” Charlotte said, walking to the metal door near the prosecution table and trying the handle. It didn’t budge.
“The side door too,” Piper replied. “And that one’s a steel door.”
Fenway looked up and took the full layout of the courtroom. She’d noticed the full use of mahogany and brushed nickel before, but she took in the details this time.
The front of judge’s bench was a large sheet of dark wood, decorated simply with outlines of rectangles in mahogany trim, each about a foot high and two feet wide. Fenway couldn’t tell if the rectangles were separate panels or not.
The bench sat on an elevated dais that looked like it extended all the way to the wall behind it. The jury box was along the right-hand wall and the clerk’s station, a small desk made from the same mahogany, was place slightly left of center. The witness stand, also elevated, was on the left side, the prosecution’s side.
A side door, which Fenway assumed would lead to the holding area and to the judge’s chambers, was in the wall on the prosecution’s side. Next to the side door, two steps, about five feet wide, on the far side of the witness stand, led up to the dais.
On the right side, on the other side of the defense’s table, matching steps between the low wall of the jury box and the outside edge of the judge’s bench led up to the dais. Behind the jury box stood two flagpoles, one with the United States flag, trimmed with gold on the outside edge, and the California state flag. The desks for the prosecution on the left and the defense on the right matched, solid craftsman-style dark mahogany tables with three brown-leather-padded straight-backed chairs behind each.
The gallery divider that separated the front area of the courtroom from all the seating was ironwork, edged at the top and bottom in the same rich dark wood. The gate in the middle, about four feet wide, swung both ways.
Fenway turned and surveyed the gallery. The large double doors were in the middle at the rear of the courtroom, a large clock on the wall with art-deco numerals underscoring the aesthetic. But the green exit sign above it and an industrial-looking push bar mechanism didn’t match the design of the rest of the room.
Neither did the two large white metal grilles stationed in the wall, three feet above the floor and at a distance of about five feet on either side of the double doors. The grilles were roughly two feet square. Fenway blinked. They resembled the in-wall speaker enclosures in the “concert hall” room at her father’s mansion, but larger. Maybe they were vents or doors for electrical panels. The back aisle was clear of chairs all the way across. At the end of the back aisle, on the defense’s side, an archway in the side wall led to—what? A closet? An exit? Another room? Maybe somewhere the killer could hide? She’d have to check it out.
With the modern architecture aesthetic, Fenway expected church-pew style seating, but instead there were a dozen rows of individual chairs on each side. Fenway counted. There were eight chairs on each side of the first three rows, then it expanded to ten in the last nine rows—and were eleven in the eighth row.
The last two rows on each side were interrupted by a large square column, finished in the same dark wood to match the chairs and the bench. The column measured perhaps four feet on each side.
A hundred twenty seats on each side, give or take. And just about every one of them had been filled for Professor Cygnus’s arraignment.
The courtroom looked rich and expensive, but Fenway wondered if the rest of the furniture and decorations were simple veneers and faux nickel as well.
She raised her head and scanned the courtroom again. Two shots from the back of the courtroom, almost directly behind where she’d been sitting. But she’d leaned over, and there was that odd snap at the same time. She shook her head. It had all happened so fast. Was she sure about what she heard and saw? She wasn’t that familiar with the acoustics of the room. She’d have to piece things together.
Judge Didi Miller had called a recess, with many of the gallery-goers in the aisle, either going out or coming in, meaning only a handful of people had been sitting.
Had there been anyone sitting behind her in any of the dozen rows? Charlotte and Piper, and possibly Leda. Other than that, she didn’t know. She was paying attention to what Cygnus was saying, not what was happening behind her.
“All right—where did the shots come from?” asked Ferris, stepping into the aisle.
Fenway shook her head. Only her father could be a murder suspect and think he could command a room where another murder had just taken place.
“Dad,” she said sharply, “I think I can take it from here.”
He turned to look at her, eyes wide with surprise, then his gaze softened as he nodded.
“This is ridiculous,” Cynthia Schimmelhorn said. “We all went through a metal detector before entering the courtroom, yet someone got a gun in here. Are the police officers really so lax?”
Fenway bristled. She knew the guards, and she knew they were competent. If there was a flaw, it was in the design of the system, or the implementation of the protocols—but not in the way that the guards had executed the implementation.
The shooter had been accurate. Professor Cygnus’s had been killed by a head shot. The information he promised—naming who was behind the money trail, the phantom oil tankers, and the multibillion dollar conspiracy—would never be delivered.
As angry as she was at Schimmelhorn’s statement against the officers’ competence, one thing was certain: someone had gotten a gun into the courtroom.
For all she knew, the killer could still be in the room. “Are you sure no one saw the shooter?” she said.
Everyone looked around. Then Schimmelhorn said, cautiously. “I might have. I was sitting in the last row.”
“On which side of the courtroom?”
“Oh—the right side, where I am now. Behind the defense. And the gun sounded right next to me. It was chaos right afterward, of course, but I did see a man in a black sweatshirt run out.” She shrugged. “But I don’t know if he was the shooter.”
“Show me where you were sitting.”
Schimmelhorn took several steps to her right, hesitated, then paused at a chair on the aisle side, right next to the large square column. “Here.”
“And was the shot on the left side of you or the right side?”
Schimmelhorn closed her eyes. “It was behind me—but I’m not sure which side.”
“In the back aisle,” Fenway said.
Leda Nedermeyer narrowed her eyes at Cynthia Schimmelhorn. “I’m not sure about that,” she said quietly. “I didn’t see the shooter either, but I don’t remember anyone like that behind the last row.”
Schimmelhorn glared coldly. “Professor Nedermeyer, I hate to disagree with you, but I know what I saw.”
“Yes, yes,” Nedermeyer said, nodding. “Of course. I could be wrong. There was quite a crowd.” Her eyes glassed over for a moment.
Fenway studied the last two rows of chairs, interrupted by the columns. Witnesses often didn’t recall accurately, especially during chaos. But no one seeing the shooter? That would have only happened if the big column had blocked the view to the center aisle.
Fenway looked at ada Kim, standing motionless, and Evans Dahl, still sitting on the floor near the body. Maybe it was just the shock of someone standing between them being shot in the head, but she had to make sure they were okay before she started her investigation.
“Mr. Dahl? Ms. Kim?”
Evans Dahl grunted. Kim was silent.
“Jennifer?” Fenway repeated. Kim continued to stare, dumbfounded and horrified, at the body of Virgil Cygnus.
“Jennifer!” Fenway said sharply.
Kim jumped as if shocked. “Sorry—sorry. No—I’m not injured. I didn’t get hit.”
Fenway tried to give Kim a reassuring smile but she had gone back to staring at Cygnus’s twisted, unmoving body.
Fenway turned to Evans Dahl, whose legs were in an awkward position on the floor behind him. He took off his round-rimmed glasses and wiped the sweat off his face on his suit jacket sleeve.
“You weren’t shot either, right, Mr. Dahl?”
“No—but I did something to my leg.”
Fenway crouched next to him. “The left one or the right one?”
“Left,” Dahl said, wincing. “My ankle, actually.”
“Does it hurt right now?” Fenway held her hands out in front of her, about eight inches above his ankle.
“A little. Kind of a throbbing pain.”
“What about numbness or tingling?”
“None.”
“Can you move it at all?” Fenway asked.
Dahl moved his foot and grimaced.
“Did you hear a noise when you fell?”
Dahl gave Fenway a game smile. “Well, there was the gunshot.”
Fenway nodded. “But nothing from your ankle? A pop or a crack or anything like that?”
“I don’t think so, but, you know, I had a lot of other things to pay attention to.”
Fenway asked him a few more questions, then gingerly pulled his sock down to the top of his shoe. He grimaced every time Fenway touched the area. His ankle started to yellow a half shade.
“I think it’s a sprain, Mr. Dahl, but from what I see, and from what you’ve told me, I don’t think it’s broken. It’ll bruise pretty bad—you can already see it starting to discolor. If you can’t put weight on it in the next half hour or so, we may need to take you to the hospital.”
He swore under his breath and blinked hard behind his glasses. “I hate hospitals.”
“If you have someone to help you get into a car, this might be something they can take care of at one of those medical clinics,” Fenway said. “Although they might send you to the er anyway.”
“You used to be a nurse, right?”
“That’s correct.”
Dahl nodded. “Can I move to a seat? Maybe something where, uh—” He motioned with his head to the professor’s body lying next to him.
Fenway bit her lip. It wasn’t ideal to move him. If he had broken a bone, any weight at all on the ankle could worsen the damage—and the pain. But sitting that close to a corpse wasn’t ideal either.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s get some help.”
She got to her feet, then looked around the room and caught Xavier’s eye. “Xavier—can you help me lift Mr. Dahl?”
Xavier looked left and right, then nodded, stood, and walked up the aisle through the gate. Fenway crouched on Dahl’s left side, throwing his arm around her shoulders. Xavier did the same on the other side, and together they hefted the defense attorney upright. Dahl held his left foot off the ground and winced. Amanda hurried over and held open the gate while Evans Dahl was led, half-hopping, half-hobbling, to the aisle seat in the second row on the prosecution’s side. He sat down heavily and Xavier disentangled himself quickly and took several steps back.
“Are you all right, Mr. Dahl?” Fenway asked.
Dahl turned to his left and carefully lifted the leg with the injured ankle on to the seats next to him. “I think so. I’ll keep it elevated, shall I?”
“Sure,” Fenway said. Ice would be best, and maybe ibuprofen, but she had neither. She straightened up and turned halfway toward the rest of the room. “Anyone have ibuprofen? Advil?”
Amanda raised her left hand, as if she were in class, and with her right hand dug in her purse until she produced a small travel-sized pill pack that she gave to Fenway.
“Thanks, Amanda.” She tapped two pills out to Evans Dahl and was about to ask for some water, but Dahl tipped his head back and dry-swallowed the ibuprofen.
Nathaniel Ferris turned around in the center aisle, trying to get eye contact with everyone he could. “Anyone else injured? No?”
Fenway stepped in front of him. “I got this, Dad.”
“Right, sorry.”
“What do we do now?” Rose said from the corner. “We’re on lockdown? Until when?”
“I don’t know,” Fenway said. “It’s possible the shooter ran out with the rest of the gallery in the confusion.” She raised her head and watched Rose in the shadows behind the large column on the prosecution’s side. Could Cynthia have mistaken Rose’s dark hair for a hood? Cynthia Schimmelhorn seemed like the kind of “nice white lady” who wouldn’t care about the difference.
Fenway shut her eyes tight. No. That was jumping to a conclusion about Cynthia Schimmelhorn that might lead Fenway down the wrong path.
“Well, I did see the shooter run out,” said Cynthia Schimmelhorn, under her breath. Defensiveness glinted on Schimmelhorn’s face. Maybe it was unfair to jump to conclusions, but Fenway planned to examine Rose more closely anyway.
“So the shooter could be anywhere,” piped up Amanda.
“I suppose,” Fenway said, “but since no one else has been shot, and no one’s holding a gun on us, I think the danger has passed—at least for the time being.”
“But,” Leda Nedermeyer said carefully, “if the shooter didn’t leave, it means he’s still in here with us.”
“Or she,” Xavier said. “There’s twelve—no, thirteen of us in here. And only four men. If the shooter’s in here, it’s more likely to be a woman than a man.”
Amanda elbowed him and gave him a disapproving look out of the corner of her eye.
“What?” Xavier said. “It’s a numbers game.”
“It’s not any kind of game,” Fenway said. “We’re in lockdown. We have no choice but to wait until the all-clear.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” said Professor Nedermeyer.
“I’m sorry,” Fenway said, “but it’s the best I’ve got.”
From her spot in the center aisle, she looked around at the motley group and wondered if any of them would make good witnesses.
A little voice in her head said maybe a couple of them would make good suspects, too.
Her father, waiting for arraignment on his own murder charge, might be a decent suspect. But Fenway knew him well enough to know that this wouldn’t be a tactic he would employ to get out of a murder charge. He’d use the legal system to his advantage and a high-priced lawyer like Imani Ingram. Exactly what he was doing, in fact.
Charlotte might do something like this, though. In spite of her annoying Barbie-doll exterior, Charlotte was not only savvy, but quite a good shot. She been sitting behind Fenway, too. Fenway had seen the targets that Charlotte brought home after a couple of hours at the gun range. Charlotte was also a realist and might be able to gauge her husband’s chances at being convicted better than he would. Still, she wasn’t sure how much sense that made.
Fenway turned and looked at the two lawyers, Evans Dahl with his leg elevated, and Jennifer Kim, struggling to her feet. She knew that neither ada Kim nor Evans Dahl had pulled the trigger, but it didn’t mean they didn’t have someone do it for them. What were the chances that either of them behind the shooting? It didn’t make sense. The courtroom was their bread and butter. Besides, Kim was one of the good guys, fighting for truth and justice, even if she did piss off Fenway now and then.
The Ferris Energy contingent—Schimmelhorn and Heissner—was an unknown quantity. From what Fenway knew, Schimmelhorn had taken Cygnus’s Shakespeare class years ago, and she loved him like a surrogate father. And as for Heissner, he was here for Nathaniel Ferris, not for Cygnus. Unless there was something in their past Fenway didn’t know about, neither of them had a motive. But both of them had been behind Fenway at the time of the shooting, so it could have been one of them.
Xavier Go and Amanda Kohl—Othello and Desdemona in Cygnus’s production—still, in spite of what happened with their director arrested for murder, seemed to be romantically involved. But Fenway had heard that Othello had not gone well after the arrest. Two women ahead of her in line at the grocery store had been discussing how poor the performance Saturday night had been. The student-actors would certainly be disappointed, if not downright angry. Would either Xavier or Amanda be upset enough at Cygnus that they’d want revenge?
And of course Professor Cygnus had both a wife and a mistress. Both seemed genuinely shocked that Cygnus had been shot and killed. But, as Fenway knew, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Judith Cygnus fit that category. Yes, she was battling cancer and losing, and yes, she looked frail. But perhaps she wasn’t as weak as she let on.
Leda Nedermeyer didn’t seem the type either, but love and hate were closely related—and if she’d been waiting for ten or fifteen years to be with the man she loved, there was no telling what she might do.
Rose Morgan was the major wild card. She was a liar, a cheat, and a fraud, as Fenway had uncovered. Rose had worked directly with the money launderers to keep an eye on their enterprise at Central Auto Body as the owner laundered several million dollars. If Cygnus had named names instead of getting shot in the head, there would likely be questions for Rose Morgan. There might be an end to her employment, or even a threat to her life. So perhaps keeping Cygnus from blabbing names was in Rose’s best interest. There was a difference, though, between keeping two sets of books and committing murder. Especially a brazen shooting in a crowded courtroom.
No way was Piper involved in the shooting. She was the one who uncovered the whole conspiracy to begin with. And Fenway trusted her completely.
Twelve people in the courtroom. Fenway made thirteen. And she knew for sure that she hadn’t fired the shots.
If the shooter—or the person who had hired the shooter—was in the room, at least three of them would make excellent suspects. Cygnus’s wife, his lover, and Rose Morgan.
She supposed her father and Charlotte had to be included in the suspect pool too, although she couldn’t think of why Cygnus would be targeted by either of them. Unless he was about to give up something about the conspiracy that would point the finger at one of them.
Less compelling were the two Ferris Energy board members, as well as Xavier and Amanda, Cygnus’s student-actors. Though their motives might simply be unknown for the moment.
The remaining three people were in law enforcement: Fenway was, Kim was, and Piper was. No, not Piper—not anymore. As of Friday at five o’clock, Piper was no longer Fenway’s right-hand for computer forensics, payment tracing, any of that. She was in her father’s employ now, doing all that work to try to prove his innocence.
This was all conjecture. The guards or McVie or one of the sheriff’s deputies might have captured the shooter. Maybe one of Fenway’s sergeants, Dez or Mark, would have rushed over from the Coroner’s Office and assisted with the arrest.
Fenway itched to know more. She pulled out her cell phone to see if McVie could tell her what was going on.
If she had heard him correctly when they were both on the floor right after the shooting.
And if he had caught the shooter. Perhaps it was the man in the hoodie Cynthia Schimmelhorn had seen.
No service.
She swore softly under her breath.
“So,” Cynthia Schimmelhorn said, “we’re stuck here until we get some sort of all-clear signal?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Fenway. She was torn—she itched to know more, to start collecting information. Yet without contacting McVie or Dez—or someone from the outside world—she hesitated taking the first step. She walked back to her old seat in the front row.
Conversation in the courtroom was bubbling at a low volume. She examined the chair she’d sat in. The seat and back were a dark wood veneer, which saved money compared to real wood chairs, but would look awful in six months. She clicked her fingernail against the chair’s legs. Aluminum treated for a brushed nickel look. She tried to pick up the chair, but the chair leg was snapped to the leg of the chair next to it. She’d have to pop out the chair on the side before she could pick up one in the middle.
She glanced over at Judith Cygnus, who had moved from the front row and was now sitting a few rows behind Fenway on the end. Her cheeks were stained with tear tracks but she blankly stared forward now. She turned her gaze toward the rear of the gallery, with Xavier and Amanda one seat apart from each other, Xavier filming Amanda with his smartphone, Amanda performing a monologue, although trying to keep her voice down while doing it. Rose Morgan stood behind them, her dark eyes watching Cynthia Schimmelhorn, who, along with Bryce Heissner, skulked near the double doors, their conversation low.
Fenway looked across at Evans Dahl, red-faced with his leg up. She could do nothing else for him, not at the moment. She hoped the ibuprofen would at least take the edge off the pain.
At any second, they could announce an all-clear.
The moment of the shooting flooded into Fenway’s head.
Cygnus’s voice. I think the district attorney will be very interested to know who’s behind the murders and behind all of the money that’s been laundered.
It was a pedantic statement from a stage director milking every last drop of dramatic tension from the moment. And it had been his last statement.
Then the two shots.
And the odd snap. Had that been a ricochet?
But it had been so loud.
She played the moment and cleaved the milliseconds in her mind, but nothing came clearer.
She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The shooter might have escaped, but she couldn’t know for sure.
Should she be keeping her eye on everyone in the room? She was only one person, and there were twelve others. She could ask Jennifer Kim and Piper Patten too, but she didn’t want anyone to be more on edge than they already were. Fenway had no idea how long they would be locked in.
At least she could gather some evidence and ask some questions. It would keep her mind off the professor’s dead body on the floor in front of the defense table.