Peter Pan Must Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

chairs moving, a jumble of indistinguishable voices, someone coughing—most of which subsided after a few sharp raps of the judge’s gavel.
    The prosecutor glanced at the judge, a heavyset black man with a dour expression, who gave him a perfunctory nod. He took a deep breath and stared at the floor for several seconds before looking up at the jury.
    “Evil,”
he finally announced in a strong, formal voice. He waited for absolute silence before continuing. “We all think we know what evil is. History books and news reports are full of evil deeds, evil men, evil women. But the scheme you are about to be exposed to—and the ruthless predator you will convict at the end of this trial—will bring the reality of evil home to you in a way you’ll never forget.”
    He glared at the floor, then went on. “This is the true story of a woman and a man, a wife and a husband, a predator and a victim. The story of a marriage poisoned by infidelity. The story of a homicidal plot—an attempted murder that produced a result you may well conclude was worse than murder itself. You heard me right, ladies and gentlemen.
Worse than murder
.”
    After a pause during which he seemed to be trying to make eye contact with as many jurors as possible, he turned and walked to theprosecution table. Directly in back of the table, in front of the area assigned to courtroom spectators, sat a man in a large wheelchair—an elaborate device that reminded Gurney of the kind of thing in which Stephen Hawking, the paralyzed physicist, made his rare public appearances. It seemed to be providing support for all parts of the occupant’s body, including his head. There were oxygen tubes in his nose and no doubt other tubes in other places, out of sight.
    Although the angle and lighting left much be desired, the image on the screen conveyed enough of Carl Spalter’s situation to make Gurney grimace. To be paralyzed like that, trapped in a numb, unresponsive body, unable even to blink or to cough, dependent on a machine to keep from drowning in your own saliva … Christ! It was like being buried alive, with your body itself the grave. To be trapped inside a half-dead mass of flesh and bones struck him as the ultimate claustrophobic horror. Shuddering at the thought, he saw that the prosecutor had resumed addressing the jury, with his hand extended toward the man in the wheelchair.
    “The tragic story whose terrible climax brought us to this courtroom today began exactly a year ago when Carl Spalter made the bold decision to run for governor—with the idealistic goal of ridding our state of organized crime once and for all. A laudable goal, but one that his wife—the defendant—opposed from the beginning, as the result of corrupt influences you’ll learn about during this trial. From the moment Carl set foot on the path of public service, she not only ridiculed him in public, doing everything she could to discourage him, but she also withdrew from all marital contact with him and began cheating on him with another man—her so-called personal trainer.” He raised an eyebrow at the term, sharing a sour smirk with the jury. “The defendant revealed herself as a woman hell-bent on getting her own way at any cost. When rumors of her infidelity reached Carl, he didn’t want to believe it. But finally he had to confront her. He told her she had to make a choice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, she made a choice, all right. You’ll hear convincing testimony concerning that choice—which was to approach an underworld figure—Giacomo Flatano, or ‘Jimmy Flats’—with an offer of fifty thousand dollars to kill her husband.” He paused, deliberately looking at each member of the jury.
    “She decided she wanted out of the marriage, but not at the expenseof losing Carl’s money, so she tried to hire a hit man. But the hit man turned down the offer. So what did the defendant do next? She tried to talk her lover, the personal trainer, into doing it in return