Ben slowly released his breath. That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t good, but they could survive it. If that was where it stopped.

“Could you please explain to the jury why you were at the meeting for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the day in question?”

“Of course.” Shandy shifted slightly to face the jury, adjusting her skirt to keep her knees covered. Now that Ben thought about it, she was dressed much more conservatively than she had been in the past. Padolino had coached her well. “As I said, it was my first day on the job, my first day working for Senator Glancy. He told me to follow him around all day long, just to get the lay of the land. That didn’t last long-his office was so overrun by the media that the senator’s PR adviser, Amanda Burton, paged me and instructed me to return to the office. But I was at the committee meeting for a good long while.”

“And were you there between the hours of nine and ten?”

“I was.”

“A previous witness, Senator Tidwell, has testified that he saw Senator Glancy leave the conference room during that time.” He paused, making the jury wait for it. “Did you?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

Ben closed his eyes. There it was. The clincher. Verification from Glancy’s own staff member, albeit a new one. Ben had interviewed Shandy after he took the case, of course, as he had every member of Glancy’s staff and everyone else on the prosecution’s witness list. She had given no indication of any sexual misconduct by the senator, during her job interview or later. And she certainly had said nothing about seeing the senator leave the committee meeting-even though she knew that meeting was key to his alibi.

“Did you see where he went?”

“I did not. I just looked up one moment and he was gone. But I had a hunch.”

Ben tensed, ready to spring. This wasn’t speculation yet, but it sounded as if it might be on the verge.

“And what was the basis for this hunch?”

“I knew how Senator Glancy got to the meeting. Because he brought me along. We didn’t come the usual way, through the marble corridors like the other senators. We took what he called his ‘secret passageway.’”

“And that was?”

“A back stairwell. Through a rear door in his private office he could enter the emergency stairway, wind through some maze-like hallways, and end up in the committee room, without ever once emerging in any of the public areas of the building. He said it was very exclusive-only a few of the senators even knew about it. He also told me about his hideaway and how you could get to it via these back passageways without being spotted.”

Ben felt Christina kicking him in the shins under the table. She knew where this was going as well as he did.

“Did this behavior strike you as… unusual?”

“He said he wanted to avoid the press, which under the circumstances I could understand. So when he disappeared during the meeting, I assumed he went the same way he had come.”

“What did you do?”

“I followed him.”

Ben felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach. Was it possible? Could Padolino finally have what he needed most? An eyewitness?

“What did you do?”

“I entered the stairwell through the door we had used to get to the committee room and tried to thread my way to his hideaway. But remember-this was my first day, and I’d only been in this place once. I got lost. There are very few exit doors. So I wasted a lot of time wandering around, not really knowing where I was.” She paused. “I probably never would’ve found them-if I hadn’t heard the noise.”

“The noise? Could you please be more specific? What did you hear?”

“I heard two voices, a man and a woman, even though the door was closed. But that wasn’t the main noise.”

“What was the main noise?”

Shandy took a deep breath. “The sound of two people… doing it. You know what I mean. Making love.”

Jaws dropped in the jury box. And elsewhere as well.

“What did it sound like?”

“It’s a little hard to describe, but-we’ve all heard it. It’s a pretty distinctive sound. There was… jeez…” She rubbed her brow for a moment. “Rhythmic grunting. Low-pitched. The sound of someone being knocked against the wall at a steady rhythm. Some crying out.”

“Crying out? As in pain?”

“No. As in… you know. Orgasmic ecstasy.”

“Are you sure?” Padolino asked. “The two might sound alike. And if you couldn’t see them-”

“Yes, I’m sure. And no, actually, they don’t sound anything alike. I’m no tramp, but I know an orgasm when I hear it.”

Ben cast a quick look at Glancy, who was remarkably stone-faced. He couldn’t tell what was going on in that brain, but the wheels were definitely turning. And he didn’t want to know what Marie was thinking.

“How long did these… noises go on?”

“Oh, I’d guess around two minutes. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to go. I couldn’t decide. Then I heard the man speak.”

“What did he say?”

“Objection,” Ben said. “Hearsay.”

“You must be joking,” Judge Herndon said. He was hunched forward over his bench, hanging on Shandy’s every word. “The witness will answer the question.”

“It was more of a whisper, actually,” Shandy explained. “But I could make it out, just barely. He said. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Because it’s the last time for you. Forever.’”

The buzz in the gallery had been growing for the past several minutes, but at this point it reached a distracting crescendo. Herndon banged his gavel several times. “Don’t make me clear this courtroom!”

That quieted the crowd. No one wanted to risk missing what came next.

“Was there anything more?” Padolino asked.

“Yes. I heard the woman give out a little gasp, and then there was this-this-really strange sound, almost like air being sucked in. I heard a sudden thud-as if one of the parties had hit the floor. After that, the room was silent.”

“What did you do then?”

“I turned back the way I had come and found the committee room, in a lot less time than it took me to stumble upon those two. Amazing how much better your brain works when you really don’t want to be caught somewhere. I came back later, trying to get a break from all the chaos upstairs. I assumed they would both be gone but… that was when I found her. Veronica Cooper. Dead.”

Padolino nodded sympathetically. “Thank you, Miss Craig. Pass the witness.” Padolino looked pointedly at Ben.

He wasn’t the only one in the courtroom looking that way. Ben had learned to watch the expressions on the jurors’ faces surreptitiously and frequently-and what he was reading now he didn’t like at all. What he was reading was that every juror on the bench thought Glancy was a murderer-and a disgusting, perverted, cradle-robbing, sex-addicted murderer at that.

“Will there be any cross?” Judge Herndon asked.

Ben rose to his feet. “Oh yeah.”

Once they got Shalimar to put away the crossbow, Loving and Daily escorted her to a nearby Georgetown all-night coffeehouse so they could exchange notes.

“Why do you think vampires were responsible for Beatrice’s disappearance?” Loving asked.

She drank deeply from her coffee cup-almost an entire cup at once. If Loving had done that, he’d never get to sleep, but it didn’t seem to be a problem for her. Or maybe vampire hunters didn’t sleep nights. “I was going to school in Philadelphia-Bryn Mawr-but I have friends in DC, and they kept an eye on my little sister for me. Told me she was changing, going out almost every night, dressing in black, wearing turtlenecks even though it was hot as blazes out. Then she started disappearing, not coming back to her apartment, sometimes for days. At first I just assumed she had a new boyfriend. But one of my friends managed to get a look under the collar of her sweater-and found two unhealed puncture wounds. Bite marks.”