Glass Houses by Jane Haddam Page B

you. You got that? There is a list of procedural questions to be decided here, and as far as I’m concerned they can go either way. If I see one of you giving an interview outside with a microphone stuck in your face, I’ll start thinking the other side has a lot of merit in their procedural requests. And don’t either of you forget it.”
    â€œYour Honor,” the district attorney said, “my office is going to be expected to—”
    â€œYour office has an official press liaison. Let her give the interviews for the next few weeks. We need to have a plea entered here, then we need to make some arrangements. So let’s get on with it. Mr. Donahue, will you and Mr. Tyder approach the bench.”
    â€œOh,” Margaret said, from right behind Henry’s head.
    Henry felt Russ’s hand touch his elbow, and he stood up again. Up and down. Up and down. A courtroom was like church, at least as he remembered church. He got up and folded his hands in front of his waist, the way he’d seen people do on court shows once or twice.
    Then something happened, and he was never later able to say exactly what it was. Maybe it was just that the room was too stuffy, or the people were toostuffy, or everybody was being so serious all the time. He hated being serious. It made him jumpy. He hated this, too, because he had a feeling that he was going to have to take it seriously; in the long run, there could be a lot of trouble if he didn’t do everything exactly right. He felt the twitching in his arms and legs that always signaled the start of one of those episodes that had gotten him picked up in the past. He tried to listen to people talking, but he couldn’t hear their words. It was as if he were far underwater, and they were not. He would be pleading not guilty, he knew about that. Russ Donahue would be asking the judge to let him have bail, and the district attorney would be asking her not to. He would be saying that Henry was dangerous to the public, a frothing animal intent on committing murder and worse, out of control, out of the mainstream, out of this world.
    â€œOut of this world,” Henry said, in the loudest voice he could manage.
    The judge leaned forward and opened and shut her mouth. Henry didn’t hear any of it. He didn’t hear Russ Donahue, who was talking, too. He didn’t hear Margaret and Elizabeth, who were probably hissing at him.
    â€œOut of this world,” he said again. And then, because it was the only thing he could do, it was the only way he could go on being in this room and not die, he jumped up onto the table and began to dance. People didn’t think he could do something like that. People thought he was so broken down he couldn’t do anything at all. They were wrong. When the fire got into him, he could do anything.
    â€œOut of this world,” he shouted. “I’m going to Venus. I’m going to Mars. I’m going to Jupiter.”
    His voice was getting louder and louder. It was past the point of singsong and onto the other thing, the great fiery thing where everything inside him let loose at once and tried to get out, the vast rotten blackness of him, the well of anger that went all the way down. He was aware that he wasn’t making sense anymore. He was aware that he was just screaming, screaming, and screaming; kicking things off the table, not because he wanted to kick them, but because they were in the way. Somebody had a hand on his leg. Somebody else was trying to get on the table with him. He didn’t give a damn anymore. He hadn’t given a damn in the first place. He only wanted to get it all out, all of it, and if he had to scream until the walls fell down, he was going to do it.
    Then two police officers grabbed both his legs at once and he fell, sideways and down, into the arms of two others.

PART ONE
THRONING STONES

ONE
1
    G regor Demarkian was too old to spend his time having anxiety about