“I’m going for it.” The voice was high-pitched, hysterical.
“Little Julie, no!”
If there was an answer, Kate didn’t hear it, maybe because the words were swallowed up by another bellowed “I said freeze!” followed by a deafening burst of gunfire. Bullets whistled through the air, so close she could hear their passing. One smacked into the side of the jury box just a few feet away. Another gouged a chunk from the floor just beyond her briefcase. She and Bryan instinctively covered their heads, getting as low to the ground as they could while staying under the table. They were pressed so closely together now that it was hard to know where his body left off and hers began. From the sound of it, Kate was almost sure that more shots were being fired outside the building. A muffled scream, abruptly cut off, sent a chill racing down her spine.
“I think they’ve got the building surrounded,” Bryan whispered. “I think that guy jumped from the window, and they shot him.” They were both shaking all over. Brian’s teeth chattered, and the sound of his clattering teeth punctuated his words.
“I wish they’d all jump.”
Another bullet smacked into the table leg just inches away from Kate, sending splinters flying. Gasping, her gaze flying to the damaged leg, she shied violently, her shoulder butting hard into Bryan’s side.
“God save and protect us. . . .” The desperate mutter came from Bryan, who, she saw with a despairing glance, was folded into tight thirds now with his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around his head.
Footsteps pounded nearby. Kate’s eyes widened and her mouth went dry as her head jerked instinctively in the direction of the sound. She could hear them, but she couldn’t see whom they belonged to. Being effectively blind, she discovered, was terrifying.
But not as terrifying as the realization that came to her an instant later: The footsteps had to belong to one of the gunmen, because there was no one else left standing in the well.
As she scanned what little she could see beyond the table, her heart thumped wildly. Her stomach cramped with fear. Her eyes darted desperately all around, but there was nothing new in view. Crouching as low to the floor as she could get, sucking in ragged gulps of air as she tried to look everywhere at once, she became aware that the quality of what she was breathing had changed: It was cooler and smelled of rain, which confirmed her guess that the window almost directly in front of the prosecution table had been blown out. Apparently, the prisoners had planned to jump but had been dissuaded—all but Soto, anyway—by some sort of police presence outside. She could hear the rush of the downpour, and, cutting through it, sirens. Lots of sirens, as if the entire PPD was now converging on the Justice Center.
If I can just survive a little longer, it’ll all be over.
“Drop your weapons now!” a police officer yelled from inside the courtroom. Instinctively, she and Bryan huddled closer, bumping shoulders and hips, keeping their heads low, shuddering together as guns cracked and screams filled the air. With the cavalry’s arrival and a gunfight going on above their heads, making a break for it suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing they could do.
Please, please, let us be saved. . . .
Another quick flurry of running footsteps sent cold chills racing over her body. Anxiously, she scanned as much of the area as she could see. There was still nothing there except the empty lower third of the front of the courtroom and the two dead deputies—she was sure the second one was dead now; his eyes had glazed over and his fist had gone slack. Then, suddenly, the view changed: A pair of feet in black sneakers jumped into view. Kate’s heart lurched as Orange Jumpsuit accordioned down on top of the feet, crouching like a malevolent frog directly in front of the counsel table. A big black pistol was in his hand. It had been fired so recently that Kate could smell the scent of hot cordite emanating from it. Like Soto, this guy appeared to be Hispanic, midtwenties, a street punk. His face was round, clean-shaven, almost babyish, with full cheeks and a dimpled chin. He was sweating, panicky-looking, breathing hard. He was looking over her head, over the table, she thought, probably at the cop or cops at the other end of the room, and his eyes were small and hard and cruel.
Then his gaze lowered, and their eyes locked.
“Throw down your weapon!” a cop roared from the gallery. Kate’s pulse was pounding so hard in her ears now that the voice sounded muffled, as if it were coming from miles away.
Orange Jumpsuit gave no indication that he heard. He never even blinked. He just kept holding her gaze. The realization that she was in all likelihood eyeball-to-eyeball with her own death broke over Kate like an icy wave.
She quit breathing.
Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, don’t let him shoot me.
“Throw down your weapon!” the cop screamed. Only then did Kate notice that he was saying “weapon,” singular, instead of “weapons,” plural, as he had earlier. Did that mean that there was only one gun left for the cops to take out? The one Orange Jumpsuit was holding right in front of her?
“Come on.” Orange Jumpsuit grabbed her arm above the elbow, fingers clamping roughly into her flesh. Pointing his gun at her face, he pulled her toward him. She didn’t resist; she had no doubt whatsoever that he would shoot her if she did. Her knees bruised on the hard terrazzo. Her sweaty hand kept slipping as she crawled awkwardly out from under the table. She stared at the gun’s little round black mouth, and remembered Judge Moran’s head exploding: That’s what would happen to her if he pulled the trigger.
No, no, no.
But there was nothing she could do to save herself. Bryan didn’t try to help her. He shrank away instead, and for that she couldn’t blame him: It was abundantly clear that he would have been shot dead in an instant if he had interfered in any way.
“Please, I’ve got a little boy,” Kate said as her knee bumped Orange Jumpsuit’s leg. She tried to hold his gaze, tried to find and appeal to any scrap of human feeling he might possess, but he was looking over the table again, presumably at the cops (she hoped it was plural) at the other end of the room. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. She was so scared she was nauseated.
“Shut the fuck up.” Orange Jumpsuit shifted his grip, pulling her around so that they were facing the same way, then wrapping an arm around her neck so that he had her in a choke hold, all the while keeping his head below the table. “Now we’re gonna stand up. Together.”
The cold, hard muzzle of his pistol jammed into Kate’s cheek. Her heart gave a great terrified leap. She went all light-headed. Her knees trembled and threatened to fold, but Orange Jumpsuit forced her up with him regardless. Plastered against her back, his surprisingly muscular arm locked around her neck so that there was no possibility of escape, he felt hot and sweaty and loathsome. He was just a little taller than she was in the heels, but stockier and far stronger. She could smell him—BO and some bad cologne. She could feel his damp, sticky cheek against her ear. She could hear his labored breathing.
She wanted to puke.
“I’ll kill her,” he yelled, holding her tight against him as they slowly straightened together. His arm forced her chin up. The pistol ground into her cheek. “Back off, or I’ll blow her fucking head off.”
“Hold your fire!” A man—she thought it was a cop but her head was tipped up at such an angle that she couldn’t see the speaker—at the other end of the room yelled in warning to, presumably, his fellow cops. “Don’t shoot!”
His grip shifted again, and she was able to lower her chin slightly. Weak-kneed, stretched to her full height and then some, Kate found herself staring at a courtroom in which all the remaining civilian occupants—there were maybe ten—were curled into protective balls, hiding among the galleries, with only a few daring to peep up at her. A wedge of armed deputies and cops was frozen in place in the back of the courtroom, with some fanning out of the open doors and into the hall. The ones inside were hunkered down, with some sheltered behind galleries and others exposed in the center aisle. A couple wore protective gea
r; the rest didn’t. All had weapons, and all were pointing them at her. Nobody was moving. The black-haired, olive-skinned cop in the lead was in plainclothes—a navy jacket, white shirt, and red tie that were soaked with rain. His clothes were plastered to a lean, wide-shouldered body. His wet shirt stuck to his chest in places. Maybe in his midthirties, he was good-looking enough to have rated a second glance from her under other, better circumstances. He was down on one knee in the aisle at the head of the wedge, holding his pistol with a two-handed grip. Like the others, it too was aimed straight at Kate.
No, not at me, she told herself, trying to slow her racing heart. Like the others, his gun was pointed at the man using her as a human shield.
She just happened to be in the way.
Her eyes locked with the cop’s. He had dark, heavy-lidded eyes that looked almost onyx in the stark overhead light. Their expression was cool, calm, and reassuring. He held her gaze for the briefest of moments before shifting his attention to the man behind her. If he was agitated at all, it didn’t show.
“Let her go,” the cop said. Like his eyes, his voice was calm. His pistol never wavered. She knew she was breathing again, because when Orange Jumpsuit tightened his arm around her neck it cut off her air. Gasping for breath, she clutched at his hairy forearm with both hands, not daring to dig in her nails or scratch him for fear he might shoot her if she did. Her heart thundered. Her stomach twisted into a tight knot. Her terrified eyes never left the cop’s face.
He didn’t look at her again. His attention was all on the man holding her prisoner.
“Yeah, right.” Orange Jumpsuit gave a jeering laugh and began pulling her to the right, toward the doors to chambers and the secure corridor. She stumbled in the impossible shoes, and he jerked her painfully upright. But the action shifted his grip, and she was once again able to breathe. Relieved, she greedily sucked in air. “What, do you think I’m fucking stupid? You think I don’t know I’m looking at the death penalty here?” He hesitated fractionally, and Kate could feel the too-rapid rise and fall of his chest against her back. “I want a helicopter, see. Out in front of this building. In fifteen minutes. Otherwise, I kill her.”
“You kill her, we kill you,” the cop said. His tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. His lean, dark face was expressionless. His eyes never wavered from her captor. His gun tracked them.
“Without that helicopter, I’m dead anyway.”
“Not today.”
“Fuck today. I want that helicopter, you hear me? Or she’s dead.”
They reached the door to the secure corridor.
“Open the door,” Orange Jumpsuit said in her ear.
When Kate didn’t immediately comply, he jabbed the mouth of the gun viciously against her cheek, gouging her skin. The pain was quick and sharp. Wincing, she gave a choked little cry and reached for the knob, which she could just see out of the corner of her eye. It was shiny silver and, she discovered as her hand closed around it, slippery beneath her clammy palm.
Don’t turn the knob. Try to delay. . . .
“Look,” she said through dry lips, knowing it was futile even as she tried. “Maybe we could work out a deal. . . .”
“Open the goddamned door. Now.”
“Oh.” The gun jabbed her cheek again, grinding painfully into the hollow below her cheekbone. This time she felt her skin rip. A warm trickle that she knew was blood spilled down her cheek. Breathing hard, the stinging in her cheek a puny thing compared to the terror flooding her veins, she gave up. The tension in his body, the rapid rasp of his breathing, the copious amounts of heat and sweat pouring off him all told her how very desperate he was. If she pushed him, she was as certain as it was possible to be that he would kill her here and now. Moving as slowly as she dared, she did as he said, managing to turn the knob despite her sweaty skin.
Inch by reluctant inch, she started to ease open the heavy, solid metal door.
“Let her go, and you got years to figure out some way to beat the death penalty,” the cop said, still conversational, like he was discussing the weather. Her eyes clung to his face beseechingly. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash did he acknowledge her in any way.
She didn’t even want to think about what might happen to her if Orange Jumpsuit got her inside that door.
Oh, Ben. Mommy loves you, Ben.
At the idea that she might never see her little boy again, she could feel the tears starting.
“Smart guy like you, that should be a piece of cake,” the cop continued. “You know how the system works. On the other hand, if you kill her, I guarantee you won’t live out the day.”
“You’re full of shit,” Orange Jumpsuit said, and to Kate’s horror used his foot to shove the door the rest of the way open. Then he backed into the secure corridor, pulling Kate in behind him. “I ain’t ridin’ the needle, amigo. No fucking way. You got fifteen minutes to get me that helicopter.”
Chapter 5
THE DOOR, which closed automatically, clicked shut in Kate’s face. Her heart lurched. Cold chills raced down her spine. She was now alone with Orange Jumpsuit and whoever else might be left in the secure area. It was eerily quiet—so quiet she could hear the hum of the ventilation system ebbing and flowing like a critically ill patient’s life support. There was a security camera mounted on the wall just above the door—or, rather, what was left of a security camera. It was clearly useless, having been shot to smithereens. The air smelled stuffy and stale, like the inside of an airplane cabin. Only prisoners and deputies were permitted in this area, and she doubted very much if any deputies were present—at least, none who were still alive.
“Lock it,” Orange Jumpsuit ordered. Glancing down, Kate saw that there was a dead bolt below the knob. He didn’t expect or want anyone to join them, and that confirmed her impression that both his buddies were now out of the picture, either dead, wounded, or escaped. Despairing, feeling like she was cutting off her last best hope of rescue, Kate did as he told her. The dead bolt clicked into place. The smooth metal door was bulletproof, she knew. It was also, as far as she could tell, soundproof. If anything was happening in the courtroom—and she prayed that something, namely the urgent organization of a rescue attempt, was—she couldn’t hear it.
“That’s a good little prosecutor.”
The venom in his voice as he said “prosecutor” made her even more certain than she already was that her fate was sealed. Whatever happened, he was going to kill her.
Unless she was next in line for a miracle, or she could think of some way to save herself.
Within the next fifteen minutes.
No pressure, though.
“You got a watch?” Without waiting for her to reply, he added, “What time is it?”
Glancing down at her wrist, she saw that it was nine-sixteen, and told him so.
“You got till nine-thirty-one. Walk.”
Swinging her around so that she faced the opposite end of the hall, he force-marched her forward, shifting his grip so that his hand curled into the neck of her jacket and thrusting his gun hard into her spine just above the small of her back. She grimaced at the sudden jab but didn’t dare protest. Her shoes cut into her heels, but the discomfort was so minor now compared to the direness of her situation that she barely even felt it. She was sweating and shivering at the same time, while her heart thundered in her chest and her mind raced.
Stay calm. Think. There has to be a way out of this.
The corridor was part of a labyrinth of connected passages that led from the large, subbasement prisoner holding area throughout the building. They were designed to keep the public separate from the prisoners even when they were of necessity sharing the same general space. Constructed with security in mind, they allowed deputies to move prisoners about inside the Justice Center in virtual invisibility. In an emergency, each section of hallway could be isolated from the others by the bulletproof doors. The safeguards designed to protect the public from the prisoners worked against her
now. From what she knew about them, and what she could see, the hallways were all but impregnable.
This particular one was narrow, brightly lit by fluorescent lights glowing out of recessed panels in the ceiling, and painted a depressing shade of gray. The floor was smooth concrete. Two doors, both gray metal, both with small glass-enclosed grilles that allowed deputies in the hallway to check on the prisoners inside, opened through its right wall into holding cells. The left wall was a smooth, unbroken expanse of gray paint. A black telephone hung on the narrow wall at the end of the hall. Beneath it, a folding metal chair for deputies to use while waiting to escort a prisoner into court waited beside another solid metal door. That door was the twin of the one that led to the courtroom, and it led into another corridor, world without end. It, too, was closed and, she presumed from his lack of interest in it, locked from this side. The bottom line was, the secure corridors constituted an interior prison hidden inside the soaring, designed-to-impress public areas of the Justice Center. For her to be rescued from this one by force would, she feared, require a Herculean effort on the part of the police—and would give her captor plenty of time to kill her as they tried.
All of a sudden, the possibility that the cell doors were almost certainly bulletproof, too, occurred to her, bringing with it a ray of hope. If she could somehow break away from Orange Jumpsuit, maybe she could dart inside a holding cell and lock herself in. . . .
“You better be praying for that helicopter,” he said, nudging her in the spine with his gun.
Oh, yeah. She took a deep, steadying breath. Say I whirl around, manage to shove him off balance, then run inside the nearest cell and slam the door. . . .
“Maybe a helicopter’s not the only option. Maybe we could work something else out—like a plea deal.” She was proud of how steady her voice sounded. Her mind continued to race, turning over the pros and cons of her not-quite-ready-for-prime-time escape plan. It was so quiet in the hallway that the click of her heels on the concrete was clearly audible. Her voice seemed to echo.
Guilty Page 5