Judge Stillman looked puzzled.

“I have no objection, Your Honor,” Delilah said. She thought Ashley could use a break.

“Very well. You can use the jury room.”

The judge called over the court guards and told them that she was going to let Weller confer with his client during the break. Two guards escorted Weller and Maxfield to the jury room while another corrections officer left the courtroom to watch the door that opened into the hallway.

Judge Stillman ordered a recess and left the bench. The spectators filed into the hall or stood chatting at their seats. Delilah walked over to the witness box.

“How you feeling?” she asked Ashley.

“I wish it was over.”

“Me too, but you were good up there and you’ll handle Weller’s cross just fine if you remember my simple rules.”

“Think before I answer, always tell the truth, don’t be afraid to say that I don’t know an answer, and always ask Mr. Weller to explain his question if I don’t understand it.”

Delilah beamed. “A-plus, young lady. You’re ready for law school right now. Come on down out of that chair and stretch your legs for a while.”

Ashley and Delilah walked over to the counsel table. Larry Birch, Tony Marx, and Jerry Philips joined them. The Van Meters asked the DA how she thought the proceedings were going. Delilah said that she had no doubt that Maxfield would be bound over for trial. She complimented Ashley again for doing so well during her direct examination.

“What are they doing in the jury room?” Ashley asked Delilah.

“I don’t know.”

Wallace did have a hunch but she didn’t want to get Ashley’s hopes up. The DA suspected that Ashley’s testimony had convinced Maxfield that he would lose at trial. She hoped that he was asking his lawyer to negotiate a deal.

“Do you think…?” Before Philips could finish his question, a man in an orange jumpsuit staggered out of the jury room. The guard stepped back, startled, before grabbing him. Delilah stared at the prisoner’s face.

“That’s Weller, the lawyer,” she shouted at the guard as she crossed the courtroom. “Where’s Maxfield?”

The guard looked confused.

Delilah pointed at Weller. “This is the lawyer. Your prisoner changed clothes with him. He’s escaping.”

The guard took one more look at the man he was holding and finally figured out what was going on.

“Watch Ashley,” Larry Birch told his partner as he rushed toward the jury room. Delilah was already inside. A conference table that seated twelve dominated the long, narrow room. The guard who had been posted in the hallway was sprawled on the floor between the table and the corridor door. Larry Birch raced past Delilah and checked the guard for a pulse. He was breathing.

“Get a doctor up here,” he told Delilah as he pulled his gun and entered the corridor outside Judge Stillman’s courtroom. Two women gasped and moved against the wall. A muscular construction worker had the opposite reaction-he looked ready to take on the armed detective. Birch held up his badge.

“I’m a police detective,” Birch said. “Did you see a man in a suit leave this room?”

The man shook his head without ever taking his eyes off Birch’s gun. The detective ran down the hall toward the wide marble stairway that led to the courthouse lobby. He held his gun at his side to avoid a panic. Most people rode the elevators. The detective guessed that Maxfield would take the stairs where there was little traffic. The few people he passed were concerned about their cases, or courthouse business, and paid no attention to him. They wouldn’t have paid attention to Maxfield, either.

Metal detectors had been set up in the lobby at the front of the courthouse. A number of security guards were screening the lawyers, employees, and litigants who were entering the building. No one was paying any attention to the people who were leaving. Birch walked outside into a crisp, cool afternoon. A summer rain had fallen a short time before, but the sun was shining now and the air was heavy with ozone. He looked up and down the street and across Fourth to the park. There was no sign of Joshua Maxfield.

When Larry Birch returned to the courtroom, Barry Weller was seated at the defense table, surrounded by Judge Stillman, the Van Meters, Delilah Wallace, Tony Marx, Jerry Philips, and Ashley Spencer.

“I walked into the jury room and put my briefcase on the table,” Weller was saying. “Maxfield was behind me. Before I could turn, he put on a chokehold. It was so tight I couldn’t shout or breathe. He wrestled me to the floor and wrapped his legs around me. It was some kind of wrestling hold. I struggled for a few seconds and passed out. When I came to, I was dressed in Maxfield’s jumpsuit and my clothes and briefcase were gone.”

“Do you have any idea where he went?” Tony Marx asked.

“No. He never said anything that made me think he’d try something like this. He was planning on writing a book about the case. He seemed resigned to going through a trial.”

Marx spotted his partner. “Any luck?”

Birch shook his head. “Did you put out an alert?”

“Yeah. It sounds like Maxfield’s been planning this for a while. Weller thinks he was hired because he looks a lot like Maxfield.”

Birch studied the lawyer for a moment. “Damn. That never occurred to me.”

“Or me,” Weller said sheepishly.

A doctor came out of the jury room followed by the guard who had been attacked. The guard looked shaky but he was walking on his own. The doctor spotted Weller and walked over to him.

“Let me take a look at you to make sure you don’t need to go to the hospital.”

Everyone moved away to let the doctor work. Delilah noticed how pale Ashley looked.

“It’s okay,” Delilah assured her terrified witness. “We’ll protect you.”

Ashley sank onto a chair. Her breathing was shallow.

“He’s going to run, Ashley,” the DA said. “The first time he was captured he was in Nebraska. Maxfield doesn’t want to be anywhere near you. He wants to get as far away from Oregon as he can.”

Ashley looked like someone who had seen her own death. “Maybe he’ll run now,” she said in a voice devoid of energy, “but he’ll come back for me. He’s killed everyone I love and he’s tried to kill me. I don’t know why he wants me dead but he does and he won’t stop.”

Larry Birch stopped at McDonald’s to get Ashley dinner before driving her to the dorm. By the time they arrived, a policeman was sitting outside her room. Birch told her that another officer was patrolling the grounds.

Ashley did not like being the only person in the dorm. After Maxfield’s arrest, she was lonely and bored. With Maxfield on the loose, the empty building felt threatening. It was old and musty, with dark wood paneling and little natural light. Without the noise made by the students, Ashley could hear the eerie whine the wind made when it slipped through cracks in the wall. The building creaked, and Ashley was certain that she’d heard scuttling sounds in the walls.

Before she went to bed, Ashley turned out the lights in her room and stared out the window. The dormitory was next to the science building, and the front faced the quadrangle. Ashley’s room was at the rear of the building and faced the woods. Streetlights illuminated a lot of the campus, but there were no lights in the dense forest. When the dorm was full, ambient light from the rooms cast a glow over the trees. The rooms were deserted now, and the only light came from the dim glow of a quarter moon.

Ashley watched the trees sway in the wind. She looked up at the stars. Where were her mother and father? She hoped that there was a heaven or some kind of afterlife where they were together and happy. She wanted to believe that they weren’t simply decomposing; that there was something more than rotting flesh and naked bone to mark their time on Earth. A friend of hers was into New Age stuff. She spoke of auras and spiritual energy left behind by the dead. Ashley remembered how she used to feel her father’s spirit inside her when she was little and he could not make it to her soccer game, but the brutal murders that had taken her parents from her had also murdered her belief in magic. Ashley had searched for some trace of her parents-their spirit, a soul that lived on when the body was gone-but all she felt was an absence; a cold, hollow feeling that was the opposite of life.