Free The Copy by Grant Boshoff Page A

they're going. Can't believe they're doing it, but I see where they're going."
    "You think he really cloned himself?"
    "What's the evidence say, Jim?"
    Bianchi blanched. "According to the pointy heads at the lab, yeah. But, Mac, really? This guy offs someone with a 12-gauge, it's murder, plain and simple. Screw the DNA. Jury's not buying that."
    Alton looked at his deputy for a beat. "Maybe not, but if Lemar buys the legal argument then he's the one instructing the jury on how to interpret the evidence isn't he?"
    "C'mon! You think he's drinking the Kool-Aid?"
    "I don't know, Jim," Alton replied, a cloud moving across his features. He placed a hand on Jim's shoulder as he moved past him, back toward the courtroom, saying again in a strained whisper, "I don't know."
     
    Geoffrey Bartell was seated at the witness stand when Alton re-entered the courtroom. He sat perfectly still, his hands clasped on the rostrum in front of him. From beneath a perfectly starched white cuff peeked a sleek, expensive looking watch. Probably worth half a DA's annual take-home, yet somehow a standard issue item for Bartell's courtroom attire, which replaced the orange jumpsuit he wore the rest of the time. The watch was a metaphor, Alton mused ruefully; a metaphor for how men like Bartell moved through the world, seemingly part of it yet in their essence disconnected from the daily struggle that defines it, that painful pleasure intrinsic in the pursuit of those brief glimpses of what men call happiness.
    Chairs scraped and voices murmured as the crowd filed back in, reporters, grad students, and the morbidly curious all vying for the too few seats in the gallery. None of it seemed to impinge on Geoffrey Bartell. He stared straight ahead, calm, composed, and with a look that, if Alton were not mistaken, appeared to be contentment. The DA followed the man's gaze and found it falling on Camilla Bartell who was seated in the front row of the gallery behind the defense table. She was outfitted in an elegant cream dress with muted red stitching and a red scarf tied at the throat. Her hair was scooped up on top of her head and held in place with a delicate filigreed comb, and on her face a pair of large dark sunglasses which she had not removed once during the trial. She was stoic. The picture of composure, save for the occasional fidget with a pair of lace gloves in her lap.
    Judge Lemar entered and brought the court to order. He repeated his admonitions to the gallery regarding their behavior and then ordered the jury brought in.
    The jurors filed in in solemn procession. As they took their seats Geoffrey Bartell finally moved. He looked over at the jury, holding his gaze for a long moment as if needing to imprint on his mind the faces of the twelve who would forever change his life, for better or for worse. Then he gave them a weary smile and returned his gaze to Camilla.
    The judge waved at James Scott May, who rose from his seat to continue the testimony.
    "Mr. Bartell," he said, "before the recess you mentioned making your 'first mistake'. By that statement were you referring to the press gala?"
    "Yes."
    "And what occurred at this gala exactly?"
    "Well, we staged a major event. Black tie dinner at the Dulcimer Hotel. The attendees included every major media outlet as well as the who's who of the scientific community and, of course, government dignitaries. I emcee'd the event myself, presenting an overview of our breakthrough and the subsequent technological developments. While dessert was being served I revealed the coup d'grace."
    "Which was what?"
    Bartell lifted his chin and looked directly at May. "I presented to the world a one hundred percent lab-created clone of our three-year-old family Golden Retriever, Thaddeus."
    Murmurs bristled through the room like an autumn gust, subsiding just as abruptly when Judge Lemar lifted his eyes to the gallery. He fingered the gavel in unspoken warning.
    "And how was this revelation received by 'the world'