Silent Prey

Bekker struggled back. It was so hard. He d let himselfgo during the trial. He had no interest in it. Refused to testify.The outcome was fixed, and he had more serious problemsto deal with. Like survival in the cages of the HennepinCounty Jail, survival without his medicine.

But now the time had come.

His blood still moved too slowly, oozing through his arterieslike strawberry jam. He fought, and simultaneouslyfought to hide his struggle.

Focus.

And he started, so slowly it was like walking throughpaste, trudging back to the courtroom. The trial had lastedfor twenty- one days, had dominated the papers and the television newscasts. The cameras had ambushed him, morningand night, hitting him in the face with their intolerable lights,the cameramen scuttling backward as they transferred him, inchains, between the jail and the courtroom.



The courtroom was done in blond laminated wood,with the elevated judge s bench at the head of the room, thejury box to the right, tables for the prosecution and defensein front of the judge. Behind the tables, a long rail dividedthe room in two. Forty uncomfortable spectator s chairswere screwed to the floor behind the rail. The chairs wereoccupied an hour before arguments began, half of them allottedto the press, the other half given out on a first- comebasis. All during the trial, he could hear his name passingthrough the ranks of spectators: Bekker Bekker Bekker.

The jury filed out. None of them looked at him. They dbe secluded, his peers, and after chatting for a decent interval,they d come back and report him guilty of multiplecounts of first- degree murder. The verdict was inevitable.When it was in, the crow would put him away.

The black asshole in the next cell had said it, in hisphony street dialect: They gon slam yo nasty ass into OakPark, m man. You live in a motherfuckin cage the size of amotherfuckin refrigerator wit a TV watching you everymove. You wanta take a shit, they watchin&rsquo