They put her on dust duty.
Three weeks of pushing paper while the news ran continuous on every screen in the precinct — the dancing footage, the masks, the countdown. Every channel, every hour, him. She filed reports she didn't read and signed forms she didn't look at and tried not to hear it, and heard all of it anyway. The fluorescent lights. The ringing phones. The whole world talking about the man she'd loved like he was weather.
She could barely tolerate her life right now.
When the trial started, Hannah wouldn't let her watch it alone.
The trial was a circus, and the whole world bought tickets.
McGee watched it from Hannah's couch — the blue couch, the Florida crack in the ceiling — because Hannah wouldn't let her watch it alone, and because she didn't want to. The TV burned from morning to night. Every network. Every eye.
Outside the courthouse: barricades, soldiers, satellite trucks stacked three deep. On one side of the street, the masks — paper Guy Fawkes faces, hundreds of them, chanting. On the other side, the ones who wanted him dead, holding photos of the sixty-four. The Maestro, the monster. The prophet.
And in the middle of it, the arraignment — live, the whole planet watching.
The judge, a woman with iron-gray hair and no patience for theater, looked down at the defense table. "Mr. Blake. Do you seek counsel?"
He stood. Black suit, black tie, white shirt. No mask. "No, your honor."
"You understand you have the right to an attorney. You understand the charges against you carry—" She listed them. It took a while. "Do you understand what you're giving up?"
"I understand my rights," he said. "I do not request counsel."
Twelve words. The only words he would say in any courtroom, ever.
---
The prosecution took nine days. McGee watched them lay it out like a museum exhibit: Kane in his office. Walker in her penthouse. The fundraiser, sixty-three dead, Langley on the bull. The riddle. The Capitol that was never the target. The dancing footage — played in open court, the whole room watching him spin with his arms out while the jury stared at their hands. The Federal Reserve, gone. The fingerprint. Matthew Blake, eleven years old, holding his placard.
And at the defense table, through all of it: silence.
He sat the way he'd sat in Interview Two — calm, patient, hands folded. Sometimes his head kicked a little to the left and he looked at the cameras, and McGee knew — she knew — that he knew exactly what the shot looked like. The commentators filled the silence with theories. The body-language experts. The priests and the professors. He gave them nothing, and the nothing was the whole show.
Hannah muted it sometimes, when it got to be too much. They'd sit in the quiet and hear the traffic outside, and then Hannah would unmute it, because you couldn't look away. Nobody could.
On the tenth day, the prosecution rested.
The judge turned to the defense table. "Mr. Blake. Does the defense wish to present a case?"
He stood. The courtroom held its breath — the galleries, the cameras, the millions. McGee found she was holding Hannah's hand and didn't remember taking it.
He shook his head, once. Sat back down.
No witnesses. No evidence. No closing remarks. The silence was the closing.
The judge gave the jury their instructions. They filed out. The whole world exhaled and started waiting.
---
Three days. The jury took three days, and the city held its breath, and the masks multiplied outside the barricades, and the soldiers stood in the rain.
On the fourth morning, the call came: the jury had reached a verdict. Court would reconvene at two o'clock. Every network broke in. Hannah made coffee with hands that weren't steady.
At half past one, McGee sat on the blue couch and watched them bring him in — black suit, black tie, white shirt, calm as ever — and set him at the defense table to wait for the words that would decide the rest of his life.
The courtroom settled. The judge looked at the jury box.
Chapter 37