Shadows Everywhere by John Lutz Page A

in charge.
    "I don't understand," Robert said, noticing that Emerick had inserted his hand into the briefcase.
    "There are two small pillows in here," Emerick said. "And between those two pillows is a gun–pointed straight at you. Now get in the car."
    Robert felt himself grow faint. "You wouldn't do anything... in front of all these people. It's broad daylight...
    "Oh, but I would," Emerick said, his dark face breaking into a confident smile. "The pillows will muffle the shot so that it will barely he heard inside the restaurant, and when you drop I'll simply pick you up and put you in the car. It will appear that you fell or took sick–if anyone is watching."
    Robert knew that he had his choice: he could either turn and walk away, chancing that Emerick wouldn't dare fire, or he could get in the car and take his chances. It would take nerve to do either, but more nerve to walk away.
    As he opened the car door, Robert was shocked to see Mrs. Emerick sitting behind the wheel. His heart hammering, he got in, followed by Emerick. The gun was out of the briefcase now, pressing painfully into Robert's ribs.
    "To Memorial Park, darling," Emerick said.
    Fright and bewilderment hit Robert with a wave of nausea "I–I don't understand," he mumbled as the big car pulled out onto the highway. "The blonde lady...the lady in the woods..."
    Emerick laughed long and heartily, pushing the gun muzzle harder against Robert's ribs, and out of the corner of his eye Robert could see the woman's ruby lips twist up in a smile.
    "Oh, that was no lady," Emerick said, the laughter still ringing in his voice, "that was my wife."

A VERDICT OF DEATH
    Â 
    F rank Seabold sat quietly alongside his lawyer, his hands resting steadily and relaxed atop the gleaming mahogany table.
    His sensitive and rather elongated features were unreadable as he watched the jury, eight men and four women, file somberly from the courtroom to deliberate his case. Seabold turned his heavy lidded gray eyes toward the judge, but the judge had already left the bench and disappeared into his chambers to wait.
    "This is the hardest part," Allan Gory, his lawyer, said to Seabold, "the waiting. If I know anything about juries we have a good chance, though I wouldn't want you to get your hopes too high, Mr. Seabold. You never can tell about juries for sure."
    "I'm not worried," Seabold said calmly, and that was true. From the corner of his eye he saw Cory glance strangely at him, and he had to restrain a smile.
    No doubt it did strike the little lawyer odd, that here sat a man waiting while twelve people decided whether he lived or died in the electric chair, and that the man seemed genuinely unworried.
    The two uniformed bailiffs had approached Seabold, ready to lead him to the small cell in the courthouse basement where he would await the life or death verdict. They were both beefy, unsmiling men.
    Seabold stood to accompany them.
    "Don't you worry either," he said to his lawyer, leaning down and smiling for the first time since the trial began. "I'm not going to die in the electric chair."
    He was aware of Gory watching him as he was led from the now empty courtroom.
    In his cell Seabold removed his shoes and lay back on his cot. The courthouse basement was quiet in a hollow, faintly echoing kind of way. The only view from between his bars was the opposite green-tiled wall of the corridor.
    Seabold folded his hands on his chest and stared upward at the ceiling with its undersized heating and ventilation ducts. He thought of Gracie and of the life they would lead with Nina's money.
    Nina was Seabold's wife of ten years, and though they had never found her body, they were trying Seabold for her murder. Popular fallacy that they couldn't try a murderer without the body of his victim, Seabold thought. They could, all right, with enough evidence.
    He had been smart enough not to pin his hopes on that.
    Closing his eyes Seabold tried to create a mental picture of Gracie, of her