The Outsider

by Anthony Franze

  Gray and Sam stayed low in the brush, a spot that gave them a line of sight to the front door. The moon occasionally made an appearance from under the clouds, casting a silver glow over the damp grass. Sam tested the phone Arturo had given her to make sure it was ready to film. Gray stared at his phone. Two blue dots were just minutes away.

  “Justice Wall is way ahead of the chief’s car,” Gray said.

  “What if they don’t say anything incriminating?” Sam said. “What if you can’t subdue them both?”

  Gray didn’t answer. They were rhetorical questions.

  “I think we should call the cops now,” Sam said.

  “If I call too soon, it won’t work.”

  Sam opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. Then: “You can’t let them get in that house.” She tightened her lips. “Please, make the call.”

  Gray gave in. He dialed 911, reporting an intruder at Justice Cutler’s home. He also sent a text to Milstein.

  Headlights swung around a bend and Wall’s car pulled up to the front of Cutler’s estate. Gray wondered if Wall would scale the fence, but Wall simply stopped at the intercom right outside the iron gate. From the brush Gray couldn’t hear what Wall said, but the automatic gate creaked open. Gray realized that Wall wasn’t planning a surprise attack. He was coming in the front door as a colleague. Gray glanced at the phone. The chief’s car was still a good five minutes away.

  Wall pulled his sports car to the long drive and around the half circle in front of Cutler’s porticoed entrance. He stepped out of his car quickly, looking flustered, agitated. Pretty brazen going to the front door. But that was the genius of the plan. Play the colleague stopping by for an unexpected visit to discuss a case.

  Gray looked at Sam, who had the phone’s lens directed at Wall. Gray steeled himself, then stepped out from the brush, a gun trained on Wall.

  “Don’t go any further,” Gray called out.

  Wall turned. His eyes wide.

  “Don’t move,” Gray said, louder now. He was having a hard time holding the gun steady.

  The porch light clicked on. Justice Cutler appeared at the front door.

  “Don’t worry, Justice Cutler,” Gray yelled. “The police are on the way. It’s not what you think.”

  Cutler looked out at Justice Wall. “I’m so sorry, Peter. He made me call you both.”

  Gray didn’t understand.

  Headlights beamed from behind, another car coming through the gate. That’s when Gray saw it. The mass behind Cutler, and the reflection of the steel blade pressed to her throat.

  Gray held the gun, not sure what was going on. He heard the car come to an abrupt stop behind him, and he made a quick look, the gun still on Wall. Gray then felt a jolt of electricity, like the one that had brought him to his knees in the garage attack. He had a sickening realization that it wasn’t Wall and Douglas who’d been caught in a trap. He struggled to see who had jammed the stun gun in his side, but saw only the butt of a gun coming down on him.

  CHAPTER 79

  When Gray came to he had a terrible thumping in his temples. His head thick with sounds. It was hard to breathe. He had tape covering his mouth. He tried to move, but his wrists and ankles were bound to the chair with plastic ties, disposable restraints. The blur was coming into focus. Three chairs lined up next to him in the elegant dining room. Three Supreme Court justices—Cutler, Wall, and Douglas—tied up. That didn’t make sense. Douglas and Wall were the killers. The man at the front door with the knife at Justice Cutler’s throat, Gray was sure it was the chief. But, wait, then who was in the chief’s car? Who hit him? He wasn’t thinking straight. The blow to the head, his mind was playing tricks. Gray started to lash about, but the plastic restraints were tight. He needed to calm down.

  Then another shockwave shredded through him. Arturo. No. No! His old friend was spread out on the dining room floor, his shirt stained in red. And another surge of dread. Where was Sam? Maybe she’d escaped. Gone for help.

  Gray’s body stiffened when he heard slow footsteps on the creaky hardwood.

  It didn’t make sense. Who?

  The figure entered the room. He was tall with a scruffy beard. Wild eyes.

  Vincent.

  The homeless man who’d taken up residence outside the court. He didn’t look at his captives, instead he just paced about, a caged animal.

  Gray’s thoughts swirled. All of this orchestrated by a homeless man with mental disabilities? How would he even get into the Supreme Court unnoticed? Why? And where was Agent Milstein? It shouldn’t be taking this long.

  Did Gray hear sirens? Or was it still the ringing in his ears? Then he smelled it. Smoke. He glanced at the others. Douglas and Wall started making sounds through their gags. Justice Cutler’s head snapped up, like she suddenly regained consciousness. They saw it too. The orange glow from the hallway outside the dining room.

  Vincent had started a fire.

  CHAPTER 80

  Milstein and Cartwright raced down the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the sedan’s blue light flashing from the dash, Milstein careening on the shoulder through traffic.

  “It’ll be a waste of time if we crash and don’t make it there alive, Em,” Cartwright said, his knuckles white on the armrest.

  In the rearview, Milstein saw more police lights. She’d been debriefing the full task force on her theory—showing them the footage of Whitlock and his prison visitor, which resolved any doubts—when a text arrived from Grayson Hernandez. Dozens of agents were now racing to Justice Cutler’s estate.

  Traffic came to a stop. Milstein laid on the horn, and cars parted a path as the sirens from behind drew closer.

  Cartwright was talking to someone on his mobile, but it was hard to hear with all the horns and sirens. She heard him say something about a fire. They needed to get there before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 81

  The smoke was growing thick in the hallway. Fire alarms were beeping loudly. Vincent was muttering to himself, still pacing. Like he was waiting on something. Gray and the others sat helpless, bound up, watching the smoke wisp into the room. Arturo was still on the floor. Gray thought he saw the smallest of movements from him, but maybe it was just wishful thinking. Where was Sam?

  Then Vincent stopped suddenly. He looked to the doorway. Through the smoke, a figure emerged. A backlit feminine form. She wore a business suit. And a ski mask. She carefully pulled off the mask. She shook out her long locks, then looked at them. What little breath Gray had in him was stripped from his lungs.

  Lauren.

  CHAPTER 82

  Lauren looked dismissively at Gray, then the others. She walked up to Vincent and spoke softly to him. She stroked his back gently as if trying to calm him down.

  She then faced the group. Gray had always considered Lauren one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. But standing before him, eyes dark with hate, she was the definition of ugliness.

  She walked up to the chief justice, and yanked the tape covering his mouth.

  “Lauren, what are you?— I don’t understand. What is—”

  “You still don’t know who I am, do you?” Lauren said, her voice tinged with disgust.

  The chief gave her a bewildered stare. “I don’t under—”

  “I kept thinking, surely he’ll understand. He’ll remember Amanda Hill was the piece of shit’s lawyer. That Ben Freeman was the agent who testified in the suppression hearing that helped free him. But you’re just too much of a fucking narcissistic asshole to get it.” It was Lauren who paced now. Vincent gazed at her, his expression one of sorrow.

  “Why?” the chief said.

  “They got to watch their loved ones die the way I got to watch my sister die,” Lauren said.

  The chief’s face showed a glimmer of recognition. “You’re one of the Whitlock girls?”

  Lauren raised her hands: No shit. “You know, I put so much thought into this. What would make you suffer the way I did. What would hurt more than k
illing you. So you could experience the pain we experienced. But a selfish son of a bitch like you has no wife or kids. Far as I could tell you have only two things you love even remotely as much as you love yourself. Your career and your dear old friend.”

  She nodded to Vincent, who walked over. Bile reached Gray’s esophagus when he saw Vincent pull a knife from a sheath at his ankle.

  “I thought it would be so fitting to make it look like it was you,” Lauren continued. “Use your pitiful competition against you. Take away your precious reputation, your career. But the feds were too slow on the uptake, even as I tried to spoon-feed it to them. Quill pens, for fuck’s sake, and they still didn’t get it!

  “Then that fucking reporter learned who I was, and was going to ruin everything.” She looked over at Gray. “And, of course, your little charity project got in the way.” She bore no resemblance to the woman he knew.

  The chief finally spoke. “Lauren, I’m sorry about your sister. I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  Lauren’s face reddened, her jaw set.

  The chief said, “I’ve relived that ruling over and over. And if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have let him out. I was young. I thought it was my duty—it was justice—to follow the law, no matter the cost.”

  “You and your fucking justice games.” Lauren gave a nod to Vincent, who moved toward the chief, knife gripped in his hand.

  “Please, I was just following the law,” the chief repeated. More desperation now. “I’m sorry,” the chief said. “It was twenty years ago, a mistake. I’m so sorry.”

  Lauren put a hand up to stop Vincent. “You’re violating your own rules, chief.”

  The chief gave her a quizzical look.

  “You know, the lessons you taught your minion.” She looked at Gray. He’d once told her the rules he’d learned from the chief justice. Lauren looked at the chief again. “No apologies, remember?”

  “Please,” the chief pleaded.

  “But that’s not my favorite little nugget of wisdom.” She nodded at Vincent, who glanced at Douglas, then twisted around and drove the blade into Justice Wall’s chest.

  “No mercy!” Lauren screamed violently in the chief justice’s face. She then got near Wall’s face. Wall’s eyes were wide, an expression of shock. Lauren said, “My skin crawled every time you touched me. You couldn’t possibly think I wanted you.”

  Douglas let out a sob, and Lauren then roughly slapped the tape back over his mouth.

  Gray had a moment of clarity. Lauren wasn’t at the condo that night to see Gray, she was there to see Wall. Lauren knew that Dora Baxter was having an affair with Wall because Lauren was having an affair with Wall. And she never saw the chief justice talking to Amanda Hill before Hill was murdered. Lauren was trying to cast suspicion on the chief. When Gray told her the FBI was focused solely on the Whitlock case—that they were close to a big break in the investigation—she must’ve panicked, knowing it would lead to her. She needed to blame someone else before they found her. Gray recalled the day before she faked her own abduction, her insistence that the FBI should be focusing on the clues she and Gray had provided them, and not the Whitlock case.

  “Watch him die,” Lauren said to the chief. “Watch him!” There was madness in her voice now.

  Wall writhed in the chair, a repugnant gurgling from his throat filling the room.

  Gray sucked for air, his chest pushing in and out. The room was a haze of smoke now. Gray’s heart plummeted when he saw Lauren and Vincent coming toward him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Bracing himself.

  But no blade came slicing into him. Instead, he felt a latex-glove-covered hand on his bound wrist, and another on his right hand. He started to struggle, closing his hand to a fist. They weren’t going to stab him, just yet, anyway. No, they wanted his prints on the knife. Vincent pried open Gray’s balled fist, and Lauren wedged the knife’s handle into Gray’s hand. Once his palm gripped the knife, they released their hold and Lauren carefully threw the weapon on the floor. They were going to make it look like Gray stabbed Justice Wall.

  Lauren glowered at Gray. “I knew you’d believe those papers came from the envelope. That you’d come running to Cutler’s. The hero, proving he was worth something, that you belonged.”

  Lauren was about to say more to Gray, but stopped at the sound of sirens in the distance. Lauren looked at Vincent. “You need to do it.”

  She stood in front of Vincent, bracing herself.

  The man spoke. “I don’t wanna hurt you, Susie.” He had a lisp. Despite just plunging a knife into a man’s chest, there was a gentleness to him. “You’re my baby sister.”

  “Johnny, it’s okay. You need to do it. It’s the only way to save me.”

  Vincent, or Johnny, or whatever his name was, gave a reluctant nod.

  Lauren braced herself again. Vincent then punched her in the eye. She stumbled backward.

  “Okay, good. Now the mouth. Not so hard, though.”

  Vincent punched her again. Lauren walked over to a mirror that hung over a bar cart filled with decanters. She nodded at her bloodied face as if it would do. She then walked over to Gray and scratched deep into his arm. She did the same with his face.

  He realized what she was doing. Evidence of a struggle with him. DNA under her nails. She looked Gray in the eyes for just a moment. He thought he’d see some remorse, some sadness, but there was nothing.

  The chief justice and Cutler were coughing through their gags now. Wall was still.

  Lauren looked at Vincent. “I need to go. You know what to do. Just like we went over. No one can leave here alive. I’ll be at the storage unit so they can find me.”

  “I’m worried, Susie. What if I mess up?”

  “Look at me,” Lauren said. She clenched Vincent’s chin in her hand and turned his face to hers. “You took your meds?”

  Vincent nodded.

  “Then it’s just like you did at Christmas at the train station. Just follow my instructions one at a time. You have the list?”

  Vincent nodded again and pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket.

  “I need you to do this to protect me. Can you do it?”

  Another nod.

  “Say it, Johnny.”

  “I can do it. Just follow the list.”

  “I love you.” She kissed him on the cheek, then disappeared out of the fiery house.

  CHAPTER 83

  Gray choked back the terror as the room enveloped in smoke. Lauren had all the bases covered. The killer Grayson Hernandez’s final acts of carnage, acting on his obsession with the Supreme Court, killing three justices, aided by his childhood friends. Physical evidence to back that up. And a fire to destroy any other evidence. Vincent would kill Gray and untie him to make it look like Gray died in a struggle with Justice Wall. Vincent would then kill the others and make his escape. Lauren—Gray’s prisoner—would be found alive, beaten with Gray’s skin under her fingernails. Suspicion averted. Lauren’s vengeance-laden plan a success. Gray wasn’t clear what that plan was, but she and Vincent were siblings, that much he understood. The Whitlock kids from that old case. Piecing things together, it seemed that Lauren had intended to send a message to the chief justice before framing him, but apparently there had been too much attention on the scheme. She’d mentioned that a reporter had discovered her real identity. She needed a fall guy. He wondered if that was her plan from the start. She’d never cared about Gray. She was just using him. The coldness in her departure confirmed it all.

  He closed his eyes again, feeling heat blanketing the room. Just do it already, Vincent, he thought, his heart thumping. Just get on with it.

  His eyes shot open to the sound. A struggle. He had a swell of hope when through the smoky haze he saw Arturo clasping Vincent’s wrist, trying to wrestle the knife away from him. Arturo’s torso was covered in red. He’d been shot or stabbed, but he clawed and scrapped like the brawler he was.

  Vincent came down on
Arturo’s head with his fist, again and again. But Arturo kept a grip on Vincent’s wrist, trying to loosen his grasp on the knife. Both were tall and muscular, but Arturo was severely injured. Arturo shifted his weight, swinging Vincent’s wrist like a baseball bat, and both men crashed to the floor.

  Gray rocked his chair. Maybe if he kept it up, the wood would give, the bindings would loosen. But the chair was solid, the zip ties tight. Gray kept jerking side to side until he toppled over.

  Arturo kept his grip around Vincent’s wrist and the two men thrashed about on the floor, colliding into the bar cart. Heavy decanters fell, shattering on the hardwood floor. The room was growing black with smoke, and Gray heard cracking wood. More coughing from the others. The floor was actually the best place to be right now.

  Arturo managed to get on top of Vincent, straddling him, his hands not letting go of Vincent’s wrist.

  Gray, still bound to the chair, bucked, inching closer to them. Maybe, just maybe, he could help his friend. He lashed about, skidding along the floor.

  Vincent was still on his back, Arturo sitting on top of him, still holding Vincent’s wrist. But Vincent didn’t let go of the knife. Vincent was still writhing about, and managed to twist the blade toward Arturo. With his hand that wasn’t pinned to the floor, Vincent grabbed Arturo’s shoulder and started pulling Arturo toward the steel point. He was trying to impale him. Arturo turned his torso just as he came down on the knife, stabbing through his shoulder, eliciting a wail of pain.

  Gray was right next to them both now. Arturo was slumped over, semiconscious. Gray skidded closer on the floor that was slick with blood and liquor, littered with broken glass. Vincent shoved Arturo off of him. Vincent stayed on the floor catching his breath. This was Gray’s only chance. He slid closer, cocked his head back, and head-butted Vincent.