Jane's Baby

by Chris Bauer

  “Okay, okay. Fine, Judge, never mind, you made your point. I’ll shut up. Sorry.”

  “And stop pounding my dashboard. You’re pissing off my dogs.”

  The Cowboys were mounting a comeback. “Damn, Judge, now that’s what’s for dinner, Slick!” So again Judge asked himself, why let this loose popgun tag along on what was now a case with a larger profile? In Texas, Owen had some juice, but now that they were in another state, his stock had dropped.

  An admission on Judge’s part: Owen was there for more than one reason. Judge saw him as an unedited version of himself; some of his inner demons personified. Plus maybe his behavior and small stature deflected some of the public focus from Judge’s Tourette’s. Maybe it was also the five hundred bucks Owen offered him for the ride-along. He didn’t take the money, but he let him think he might later.

  The Cowboys were on an extended drive deep into Titan territory, getting closer to evening the score when Owen turned from his phone and said, “Judge, I haven’t had this much fun since my tryout with Wrestlemania. No, wait, that’s a negatory. When I punched you in the balls was a pretty good time, too. Before they tased me.” Beer gulp, belch. “I feel another installment for my column coming on”

  “I’m thrilled for you.”

  “For my court blog. ‘My Trip To The Supreme Court: Thoughts on Roe v Wade.’ Yeah. That’s the ticket.” He put the beer aside, opened his laptop and started keying.

  The hum of the van on the highway, Owen keying, the dogs snoring, and the football play-by-play, all this white noise settled Judge back down, allowing him time to think.

  Earlier he’d texted LeVander, to let him know he was back on the case, adding that he was bringing a Cowboys fan back with him.

  Then another attempt at reaching Geenie. With her, what wasn’t said kept things interesting for them. He’d given up finding someone after he lost his wife, then he met Geenie. This attractive, adjusted woman, her focused life, and his life for the past six months with her in it, it had all been amazing.

  “About time you called again, mister,” she said, answering on the first ring.

  “What are you wearing?” Judge’s best lecherous smile accompanied the question. Owen choked on his beer.

  “Orvis,” she said. “A colorful autumn print with twelve-point bucks. Flannel, neck to toes, with footies. It’s cold in the Poconos today. Plus my face is broken out and I gained fifteen pounds while you’ve been away.” A chiding tone. “Stop trying to impress your new friend, Judge. I know he’s right there.”

  Geenie. The most striking fifty-plus-year-old woman Judge knew. Spanish in her blood, and naturally beautiful, and even if what she’d said were true, she was still an extraordinary gift to him. Before her interest in him, he’d been a most extraordinarily broken man.

  “Fine. Busted. Hey, we’re closing in on Memphis. Look, I’m still working this thing. We’ll be making a stop at the Planned Parenthood clinic that blew up in Virginia, then we head to D.C. After that, home.”

  “I haven’t been to D.C. in a while. Maybe I’ll join you.”

  In Judge’s head he said no, absolutely not, too dangerous. Except Geenie was far from the wallflower type. Judge knew this, and she knew that he knew. Still, the macho-guy protector part of him said no, no, no. He’d lost his deceased wife to their respective violent professions. He wasn’t going to chance reliving that.

  “You’re not speaking, Judge, which means you’re thinking. Which means you’re looking for a way to say no. Which, my dear, makes me want to make the trip all the more.”

  “Look, a number of agencies and the local police are working this. So yes, the answer has to be no.” Experience told him he needed to add a certain suffix to the ultimatum. “Please.”

  “You’re cute when you get like this, Judge. Give me a call when you get closer, sweetie, and get ready for some seriously hot I-miss-you-so-much cuddling. Plus maybe I can help you with your bounty after you catch her. How’s that?”

  The problem was it was not a hollow offer, and it terrified him. “Um…”

  Owen got loud. He was now Skyping with his Glenn Heights, Texas, police chief buddy on his laptop. He tapped down the volume on the phone carrying the game. “Say that again, Frannie,” he said at his laptop screen.

  “Hold on a minute, Geenie.” Judge eased the van onto the highway shoulder and listened in on the conversation.

  “I said,” Frannie repeated, “tell your Marine bounty hunter friend that the Feds had hits on some of the other souvenirs from the storage locker. From unsolved cases in Oklahoma and New Mexico.”

  It was confirmed: the pen belonged to Mr. Beckner, the pastor. No surprise there. And Zachary Enders’s parents now had his college ring back, but they still didn’t have his body. He’d gone missing the year before Teresa Larinda Jordan graduated from the university.

  Plus there were surgical instruments.

  “This, gentlemen,” Frannie said, Owen’s phone developing an echo, “I’m struggling with.”

  The instruments were from a clinic in Oklahoma near the Texas border, according the Frannie, where there’d been an unsolved triple murder in 2010. One doctor, one nurse, one patient, all executed with point-blank gunshots to the head. Plus, “The blood from the smear on the forceps,” he said, “is the same type as the murdered patient and her fetus. We’re waiting on DNA test results.”

  Judge felt queasy all over again, but a few swallows choked it back. Owen and Frannie doubled-down with a goddamn Dallas Cowboys chant when they learned their team had scored a go-ahead touchdown. Judge hadn’t forgotten Geenie, who was still on his phone.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sounds like a nightmare.”

  “You still want to meet me?”

  Say no. Please.

  “Now more than ever, Judge.”

  Shit. “Fine then.” There would be no talking her out of it, but she needed to hear him out. He turned away from Owen to lower his voice, Owen still whooping it up, still Skyping with his police chief friend. The Cowboys had just pulled off a lame-ass come-from-behind victory to stay undefeated for the season.

  “Look, Geenie…”

  The twist of a bottle cap. Owen bumped Judge’s arm to get his attention with a freshly opened sudsy beer. “C’mon, let’s celebrate, pardner. Your Eagles won today, too.” He eyed the phone, then leaned over to raise his voice at it. “Hi, Judge’s girlfriend Geenie. Owen Wingert here. ’Sup? So Judge here tells me you’re a nurse…”

  Judge hung up, reached over and pushed him back against the seat, his free hand to his chest, and held him there. “Will you just shut the fuck up, Owen? I need to have a serious conversation with her. No horsing around. Just…relax, okay?”

  “Jeez. Okay. Sorry.”

  He redialed Geenie while keeping an eye in Owen. “No accounting for present company,” he said, launching into it when she answered, “there’s some serious terrorism shit going on here, and I don’t want you getting mixed up in it, so…”

  “So?” she said. Judge sensed she was enjoying this. “So then what, Judge?”

  “Leave your guns at home, Geenie. Please.”

  “That’s sweet, Judge, really it is, but we both know I won’t do that.”

  TWENTY

  She could have had a stretch limo for her first day on the job, a nice celebratory gesture offered by the U.S. Marshal’s office. Naomi deferred to Edward and declined it in favor of the safety of the pickup truck he had at his disposal. Still, at seven-thirty a.m. on the first day of the new Supreme Court session, having to be concerned about her safety was something new for her, and a feeling she didn’t like.

  “You look particularly sharp today, Edward.” His suit was dark, smartly tailored, and it tamed his beastly proportions in a manner usually enjoyed only by retired pro football players dressed for TV sports appearances. She let him open her door and help her into the back seat of the truck.

  “It’s a better fitting suit,
Madam Justice. For your special day today.”

  “Well, it doesn’t show much. Like there might be less weaponry under there.”

  “That’s not the case, ma’am.”

  He shut her door, hustled around, and climbed into the driver’s seat. They were off.

  Naomi shuffled papers, her nerves getting the better of her. She put her law clerk biographies aside and retrieved a case document from her bag. Babineau v Turbin. A hugely polarized first argument, for today, for the term, and for her as a new associate justice. They neared the Supreme Court building. A long line of people extended off the southwest corner at East Capitol Street, toward Second Street. As the truck circled the building, the line circled with it.

  “Have you ever been inside the Supreme Court, Edward?”

  “The court chambers themselves, only a few times, ma’am. Elsewhere in the building, many times, on special details.”

  “Good, then you can keep me from walking into walls whenever I’m not in my office. At least for the first few days while I get acclimated.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve never seen so many visitors outside before. If they’re here for courtroom seating…”

  “I know. Most will be turned away.”

  She was aware this was a large opening day crowd, was also aware that it was less likely the result of it being the first day for the term, and more likely because of the first case to be heard. A once-in-a-generation thing. Historic. And, as she analyzed the crowd, looking more closely at their faces, she observed one phenomenon she hadn’t expected: there were a number of Native Americans in attendance. Clusters of them. She blushed at this, again humbled by the interest.

  She chided herself: my ethnicity is my parents’ doing, not mine, people.

  “Undeserved,” she murmured.

  “Did you say something, ma’am?”

  “Nothing worth repeating, Edward. Let’s get in so I can have a quick chat with my clerks before we start the day.”

  Larinda had dressed herself in exercise clothes with a woman’s leather bag looped over her head, its strap across her chest. Facing her were three identical tan brick buildings in arrowhead formation, four stories each, comprising a small office park at the intersection of Maple and Gibson streets, Falls Church. She entered the tiny lobby of the middle building, stopped at the glassed-in registry and checked its list of occupants. Medical and legal offices, title searches, county offices, other professionals. Planned Parenthood, Suite 304.

  She pressed the up button, exited the elevator on the third floor. Three glassed-in vestibules lined the wall on her right, all floor-to-ceiling panels with closed drapes: a social work agency, a county child services office, and a suite with no tenant. Her full-length reflection got the better of her. She stopped, lifted her sunglasses, and confronted herself.

  Cher. Sixties or seventies Cher in sunglasses, but without the heavy mascara and eyeliner behind them. Tall and slim, with straight black hair. She remembered Cher from full-length glitzy glamour posters on the college dorm room walls of one homosexual student’s room in her boyfriend’s building, before she’d realized this was what this repulsive human defect was. Cher, with her rumored Cherokee ancestry, was all glammed up and on the dorm wall next to Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, and Madonna. Today’s Cher look wasn’t planned, it had just happened, and it made her skin crawl.

  At the end of the hallway was the entrance to Planned Parenthood, which occupied the three suites on this side of the building. She slipped a baseball cap out of her bag and onto her head, grabbed the door handle and pushed through. It was a little after nine a.m.

  The waiting room, all warm earth tones and new age music, empowerment posters and baked cookies. Each of the feminist clinicians at work here deserved a bullet for such obscene, paganistic manipulation, for tricking these vulnerable women into getting in touch with their inner feelings. For soothing their consciences before the women descended deep into the bowels of this office to have their babies scooped out of them like chunky undercooked pudding.

  She reminded herself that some of these people were innocent, specifically the pregnant women who hadn’t yet made their decisions. She would destroy the clinic only if she could get the people in the waiting room out.

  At the counter, a ceiling camera showed a green light. She shielded her face from it with her hand. A nervous, frightened pregnant woman might do this, so her shyness would draw no special attention. She spoke with a receptionist who was dressed in a nurse uniform.

  “I, ah, don’t have an appointment. Is there a doctor here today who performs the procedure? Would he have a moment to speak with me?”

  “Yes there is, miss, but she has no time right now. I can make an appointment for you for this afternoon. She has time at four-fifteen. Can I have a name?”

  “Jane Roe.”

  The receptionist/nurse moved her glasses down her nose and peered over them, her look skeptical. Her eyes softened, became compassionate. “Sure,” she said. “We’ll see you at four-fifteen, Ms. Roe.”

  Larinda exited the facade of the building, reconned both sides of it, reentered the lobby and left the building through the rear exit. One narrow sidewalk connected the rear exits for all three huddled buildings. Security cameras dotted the rooflines, just like at Blacksburg. It was tapered and tight back here, cool and wind-swept and given to shadows, but the payoff at the end of the sidewalk was worth it. A number of late-model luxury cars occupied the spaces. Reserved parking, with four spaces labeled “Agency Staff” all occupied.

  When she flushed them out the clinic’s staff would use the building exit, so they could get to their cars.

  Something else she’d gleaned from her visit inside, from a slip-up by the receptionist: the doctor was in, and the doctor was a she. Larinda had been smart enough not to ask for a name. Asking could have been a red flag.

  Back at her SUV she climbed in, sat, observed. Property Security consisted of one car, an old Hyundai Accent clearly marked “SECURITY” that sat idling in the front parking lot, its driver probably a retired cop. While she waited, the Hyundai took three slow cruises around the lot at fifteen-minute intervals, each time returning to the same parking space.

  A half-hour of recon was enough. It was time.

  Two blocks away, up a nearby residential street, with single homes on deep lots on both sides, Larinda settled her Chevy Tahoe into another parking spot. She shoved a gun into a holster and the holster into the small of her back, under her exercise shirt. She wrapped herself in a hoodie, her long hair inside and down her back, the hood down. She exited the SUV, walked to the rear. Inside the carpeted cargo area was a jumble of equipment. She liberated a guitar carrying case and a motorcycle helmet. She didn’t ride bikes, wasn’t a musician either. With the guitar case tightly packed and heavy, she fit her head into the helmet and flipped down the tinted visor. Good to go.

  Half a block away, the Hyundai rent-a-cop cruised the buildings and settled back in the same parking space. Nearby, on a park bench, Larinda sat with her helmet off, her guitar case next to her. Helmet on. She stood, retrieved the guitar case, and took a walk, ending up alongside the Hyundai. She rested the case on the blacktop. When she straightened up it was with her handgun drawn. One shot, to the Hyundai driver’s head, who slumped onto the passenger’s seat. She and her guitar case resumed her walk into the front of the building.

  Inside the first-floor lobby, her helmet on, the tinted visor up, she yanked a fire alarm and calmly retreated through the rear exit. At the end of the walkway she opened the guitar case, removed a midnight black propellant tank, two high-pressure hoses wound together in one sleeve, and a metal wand with a plastic grip. She assembled the brass spray tip to the wand and twisted the assembled handle into the high-pressure hose ends, then the two hose ends into the base of the tank. She slipped her arms inside the backstraps and lifted the apparatus onto her back. The wand in her hands, she pointed it in the directi
on of the sidewalk and waited. The wind picked up, whooshing toward her from between the buildings in waves. Forty-five seconds into the alarm, she got the response she wanted.

  Three nurses exited the building and hustled toward her, their heads down as tiny swirls of dust and plastic bags and bits of paper whipped around them in between the buildings and against their faces. A hobbling matronly woman followed them, ushering her associates forward, making sure they remained in front of her. Larinda stood directly in their path, the face shield to her helmet raised.

  The nurse in the lead, the clinic’s receptionist, made eye contact with her. The woman’s expression said I recognize you.

  Yes, nurse, you do, Larinda internalized. Jane Roe, today’s four-fifteen. I’m a bit early,

  Larinda fired up the flamethrower and closed the face shield. The women had nowhere to go.

  She squeezed the wand. The napalm-like liquid streamed forty feet, like a clothesline dripping liquid fire, lighting up the sidewalk and its shrubbery bright as a lightning strike in a California forest, drenching the receptionist then a second victim. Inside her helmet their screams reached her ears, sounding hollow, like deep echoes from a sea conch. The two victims retreated a few yards until the fire streams overwhelmed them, dropping them into the burning fuel that pooled at their feet, the flesh melting off their legs, their arms, their faces. Larinda advanced, and with a lengthier controlled burst she incinerated the remaining nurse attempting to reenter the building, the stream of fire traveling sixty feet. The glass doors to all three buildings opened onto the walkway, with additional office workers about to exit. Larinda torched the shrubs in front of each, forcing them all back inside.

  The last victim, the older silver-haired woman smocked in white as far south as her knees, backed up on wobbly legs. Larinda flipped up her helmet visor so she could look into the eyes of this murderer. The baby-killing doctor, in her sixties, maybe older, remained expressionless, almost resigned. “Please, show some mercy, this is murder.”