Guilty

by Karen Robards

  All he had to do was keep Kate White alive long enough for the real professionals at this kind of thing to arrive and take over.

  If she wasn’t already dead.

  The thought made him grimace.

  Brriing.

  “Pick up the damned phone,” Davis said aloud, echoing what all of them were thinking. They were all getting wound tighter than a Roger Clemens fastball, but letting their emotions take control would not help the woman they were trying to save.

  His hand gripping the receiver so hard his knuckles showed white, Tom frowned Davis down.

  Brriing.

  The courtroom was chaotic, teeming with cops and medical personnel and civilians and even reporters who had happened to be in the courthouse when the shooting had started and who had immediately converged on the scene. Blood and gore were everywhere. Victims were being treated where they lay. First-aid carts rattled around the room and emergency triage was being attempted by people with no training for it, and over in a corner a defibrillator let loose with its distinctive zap. Women cried hysterically. There were a few shrieks, which Tom deliberately closed his ears to, as loved ones discovered victims. From outside, dozens of sirens, only faintly muffled by the pounding rain and distance, screamed through the broken-out window.

  Reinforcements were coming. Soon there would be somebody more qualified than he to take over.

  Brriing.

  An attempt was being made to cordon off the courtroom; another attempt was being made to clear the room of nonessential personnel. The Criminal Justice Center was being evacuated, except for those who needed to be on the premises, but it wasn’t happening fast. Nothing was happening fast. There were too many nooks and corners, too many people, too many prisoners, too many arrangements to coordinate, too much confusion.

  So far, the necessary organization to accomplish what needed to be accomplished wasn’t happening. Everybody was too shocked, too unprepared for this horror that had so unexpectedly exploded in their lives.

  His job, because right now he was the senior cop on the scene, because he knew Rodriguez from having arrested him before, because he wasn’t willing to entrust it to anyone else until the trained hostage negotiator who was coming was actually present, was to keep Rodriguez talking, keep him believing he was going to get what he wanted, keep him from killing Kate White.

  For as long as he could.

  Her eyes, clinging to his as if she actually thought he could save her, haunted him. So did her voice, cracking with fear as she told him she was a single mother.

  He refused to let himself think about her kid.

  Brri . . .

  The sound broke off. Somebody was picking up.

  He tensed.

  The others must have been able to see that something was going down from his expression or body language, because they all leaned in a little closer, their eyes on his face.

  On the other end of the line, nobody said anything.

  But Tom was sure—almost sure—he could hear somebody breathing.

  “Rodriguez?” Tom hazarded a guess. His voice was grim. The sleazeball was a hardcore criminal with a felony record as long as Tom’s arm. Killing his hostage wouldn’t cause him to bat an eyelash.

  “No.” It was Kate White. He recognized her voice instantly. It was low-pitched and shaky, but the good news was she was alive. Only then, when relief loosened the death grip fear had on his senses, did he become aware of the roaring in his ears, and only because it started to subside.

  He had been hideously afraid that she was dead.

  “You doing all right?” he asked, as the tense group around him, obviously able to either hear her voice or tell that she was alive from his reaction, let out a collective breath.

  “Yes.”

  Her breathing was ragged, and he sure couldn’t blame her for that. All things considered, she was hanging tough, being very calm, very aware, acting as a functioning participant in the attempt to keep her alive, and he admired her for that. Under the circumstances, the majority of people would have been blathering blobs of terror by now. Maybe even himself included.

  “We heard—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “A shot,” she said. “I know.” He could hear her taking a deep breath. Then she stunned him. “I shot him. He’s dead.”

  For a moment Tom wasn’t sure he had heard her right.

  “What?” He must have sounded astonished, because the others leaned in again, all ears.

  “He’s dead. It’s all over.” She drew in another long, shaky breath, then let it out slowly. He heard the sigh of it through the line. “I’m coming out.”

  “How did—” Tom began, stupefied, but again she cut him off, this time by hanging up.

  Just like that.

  Tom listened to the hum of the dial tone in his ear for only a few seconds before hanging up himself and then staring down at the phone in bemusement.

  “What?” The question pulled his head up. Roughly a dozen pairs of questioning eyes pinned him.

  “She said Rodriguez is dead.” Tom couldn’t quite bend his mind around it. “She said she shot him. And she’s coming out.”

  “Alone?” Linnig asked.

  “I guess. She didn’t really say, but if Rodriguez is dead, I’d say that’s the logical assumption.”

  “You mean that shot we heard was him biting the big one?” Davis sounded as gobsmacked as Tom felt. “And she did it?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “I don’t know. This don’t sound right.” Cooney, the veteran, shook his head. He was frowning hard at the closed metal door as if he could somehow divine what could have happened behind it if he tried hard enough.

  Tom saw the same thought that had already occurred to him hit Cooney and the rest of them at just about the same time: Was it a trick? Was Rodriguez setting them up for something?

  That seemed a hell of a lot more likely than the possibility that Rodriguez had been shot dead by Kate White.

  With that thought in mind, they scrambled to isolate the door to the secure corridor from the rest of the courtroom, which fortunately, except for the corpses that had been left in place for the coroner’s office, and a few people—medics, he hoped—working on the wounded, was nearly empty now. Two of their number—a pair of deputies whose names Tom didn’t know—rushed to clear the courtroom completely except for the casualties and essential medical personnel, in case Rodriguez came out shooting or a gunfight should erupt. The rest of them, weapons drawn, took cover behind galleries and chairs and flattened themselves back against the wall, anything to keep out of sight while still permitting them to take a shot if necessary.

  When the knob first started to turn, they were ready. The door was surrounded. Whoever emerged would be instantly covered by a host of guns.

  Tom was the only one positioned to be immediately visible. He stood about ten feet back in the well, near the defense table, facing the opening door as if he had taken Kate White at her word and was waiting for her to walk out of there alone. His Glock was in his hand—he didn’t have quite that much of a death wish—but his hand rested unthreateningly at his side.

  Ready to snap off a shot in just about a second, if need be. Although that should not be apparent at first glance to anybody he needed to shoot.

  The knob stopped turning. The door didn’t open. Nothing happened.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  Every muscle in his body had gone taut with tension. His heart pounded. His jaw clenched. A knot of wary anticipation tightened in his chest. His right hand itched to jerk the Glock up into firing position.

  Not yet . . .

  The waiting was killing him. The thing was, he’d been shot at before, and he hadn’t liked it. He figured the chances were at least fifty-fifty that it was getting ready to happen again, and he wasn’t going to like it any better this time than the last.

  No matter how you sliced it, playing dodge-the-bullet just wasn’t any fun. Especially if you lost, like he had.


  Finally, the knob turned again.

  He held his breath, waiting.

  This time, when the knob stopped turning, the door began to open, slowly and soundlessly. Tom held his breath as Kate White came into view. She stood just inside the secure corridor, pale as a ghost and fragile-looking as a porcelain doll in her figure-hugging black suit, her blond hair loose now and spilling in a profusion of waves to her shoulders, her body seemingly unbloodied and in one piece, her face as expressionless as a doll’s as she pushed the door open with one arm stiffly extended.

  Except for her eyes. They were huge with what he presumed was shock.

  As far as Tom could tell, she was, indeed, alone. Her build was too slight to allow Rodriguez or anyone else to hide behind her. Tom’s eyes slid beyond her anyway, searching along as much of the secure corridor as he could see: nothing. No one. Only gray walls and doors and empty space.

  And Kate White.

  Unbelievably, there didn’t seem to be any trick to this.

  “Kate? Is Rodriguez dead?”

  As he said her name, she looked directly at him for the first time since she’d opened the door. Their eyes met. Hers were shadowed now with trouble, and far darker than the robin’s-egg hue he remembered from earlier, probably because her pupils had dilated with some combination of fear and trauma. She nodded, then seemed to take a deep breath before she started walking, or rather stumbling, toward him on slim, unsteady legs made to seem even longer than they already were by a pair of surprisingly sexy high heels.

  “Hold your fire,” he ordered sharply over his shoulder. “She’s alone.”

  As his backup slowly emerged from their concealed positions and the door swung closed behind Kate, he holstered his gun and strode to meet her.

  She was so white she looked like she was drained of blood, he saw as he got closer. He deliberately made his voice gentle. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded again, and stopped walking. Her lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. As he reached her, Tom saw the ladders in her stockings, the little trickle of dried blood on her cheek, the horror in her eyes.

  She was alive, possibly unhurt, but definitely not okay.

  Her eyes fell away from his. She took another deep breath, shuddered, then pressed a hand to her chest, to her white T-shirt, right in between her small but shapely breasts, as if her heart had suddenly started doing something it shouldn’t and it scared her.

  “What happened in there?” he asked, even as his backup moved in cautiously toward the now closed door, ready to search the secure corridor for themselves.

  “I shot him,” she said, looking up at him again, the words cold and clear. “He’s dead.”

  Then her knees gave way and, with a little cry, she crumpled.

  Tom was just close enough to catch her in his arms before she hit the floor.

  Chapter 7

  “ YOU SURE YOU DON’T want to ride on over to the hospital, get checked out, just in case?” the EMT asked. Laura Remke was her name, according to the silver name tag pinned to her pale blue shirt. About five-four and stocky, with boyishly short brown hair and no discernible makeup on her round face, she looked to be in her early forties. She had been kind and efficient, and asked the minimum of questions, which were characteristics Kate greatly appreciated at the moment.

  “No thanks.”

  Kate was sitting on a high-backed wooden bench nestled against the wall just outside courtroom 207, having been deposited there by the same cop who had scooped her up and yelled for an EMT when Kate’s knees betrayed her. Someone had called to him urgently right after he had summoned Remke, and Kate hadn’t seen him since he’d practically dropped her on the bench.

  She didn’t even know his name.

  Not that it mattered. What mattered was surviving this nightmare the best way she could. She was alive, anyway, when so many others weren’t. That was the most important thing. The rest of the horror she would find a way to deal with, just as she had found a way to deal with everything else life had thrown at her so far. As soon as the panic subsided, as soon as her mind cleared, she would surely be able to think of some way to take care of this latest disaster, too.

  “I need to go pick my son up at school. He’s sick,” Kate said. Which was true. While the EMT had been checking her vital signs—“Your blood pressure’s way up, honey; ’course, with what you’ve been through, that’s not a surprise”—and applying antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid to the small cut on her cheek, she had remembered the call from Ben’s school, and asked for her briefcase. An obliging deputy fetched it, and she had fished out her phone and returned the call. As she had known they would be, the shootings were a media sensation. The school secretary was agog about the massacre at the Criminal Justice Center—as it was apparently being called all over TV—but more than pleased to hear from her.

  Ben was terribly afraid that his mother might be caught up in the tragedy, the secretary told her, despite her repeated assurances that it wasn’t very likely. Kate didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that Ben was right.

  The original call had been made because Ben had thrown up in class, and was even now lying in the little anteroom off the school office, which served as the school’s sick bay. Kate had promised to come get him as soon as possible.

  “The world could be coming to an end, and we mothers would still be on the job, wouldn’t we?” Laura Remke shook her head as she started packing up her supplies. Band-Aids, ointment, blood pressure cuff, thermometer—all disappeared into her bright blue bag with its iconic white cross. “I got three of my own, so I know.”

  Before Kate could reply, the doors to courtroom 207 flew open with a whoosh and were held by a pair of grim-faced deputies as a gurney rolled through them. It was moving fast, wheels rattling, with EMTs on either side pushing it and a couple of cops flanking it. Everybody was running, which told Kate that the condition of the person on the gurney was grave.

  “Hold that elevator!” one of the EMTs yelled to someone Kate couldn’t see. The wide hallway with its soaring, vaulted ceiling was busy and noisy, with cops and deputies and official personnel of all types rushing around, going in and out of various courtrooms calling to one another and talking on cell phones and two-way radios. Heavily armed SWAT officers in their helmets and bulletproof vests moved from room to room en masse. Kate assumed the building, which was still being evacuated, was being thoroughly searched. The staff from the coroner’s office was on the scene now, as well, and their bright lights and painstaking procedures added to the general confusion. But the EMT’s voice was loud and sharp enough to cut through the din. A path was cleared even as the gurney barreled past.

  Kate caught a glimpse of an IV bag swinging crazily on a thin metal pole as it dripped clear liquid down into the arm of the man on the gurney—who, Kate realized with a shiver of recognition as he went past her, was the young, thin, black-haired cop whom she’d last seen lying on the floor of the cell in the secure corridor.

  “He’s alive,” she said aloud, and realized she was glad. It was a glimmer of hope, a shred of something positive, to hold on to on this hellish day.

  “They leave the dead ones lay,” Remke agreed, snapping the latch closed on her medical kit. Kate shuddered. Judge Moran, the slain deputies—all were still in the courtroom. Deliberately, she tried to push from her mind the horrible images the thought conjured up.

  The gurney trundled noisily toward the elevators, and Kate’s head turned as she watched it go. She recognized one of the two cops loping behind it: the lean, black-haired man in plainclothes—a detective, she guessed, from his clothes—who had been her lifeline throughout the ordeal. From his tense expression and the way he was sticking close to the gurney, she guessed the man on it must be someone of importance to him. A relative, possibly, because they shared the same raven hair.

  She hoped he would not lose someone he loved today.

  With all eyes still craning after the gurney, which had just disappeared from view, K
ate figured this would be a good time to make her exit. She knew the cops would want to talk to her, she knew she should give a statement and stay on the premises until she was told she could leave, but she couldn’t.

  Her emotions were too raw. The shock was too new, too awful, for her to trust herself to be thinking properly. She could not make a mistake. For Ben’s sake as well as her own, she had to be very careful, very calculating, in what she said and did next.

  A mistake could cost them everything.

  Accordingly, she put down the now half-empty can of Sprite that Remke had procured for her from a nearby vending machine, curled her icy fingers around the handle on her briefcase, and stood up, ignoring the lightheadedness that immediately assailed her. Her knees wobbled, but she ignored that, too. Her despised shoes were under the bench where she had kicked them off, but she left them where they lay. Their torment was more than she could deal with at the moment. She would be better off escaping—because that’s what she was doing—in her stockinged feet.

  “Thanks,” she said to Remke with a quick, grateful smile. It was good to know that even in such extremis she could smile, that she could look and sound normal enough for the EMT to smile back at her.

  “You start feeling funny, you give us a call, hear? Sometimes shock keeps people from realizing what bad shape they’re in for a couple of hours.”

  “I will,” Kate promised, and started walking toward the stairs. The terrazzo felt slick and cool beneath her feet. Taking the elevators would be quicker and much easier, considering the uncertain state of her legs, but they were in heavy use, and she was afraid of who she might run into. The DA’s office was almost certainly on the scene in full force by now, although, probably because nobody except law enforcement types and medical personnel were being allowed to enter the building, she hadn’t seen anyone she knew. At the very least, witnesses were surely being rounded up and segregated until they could give their statements. And she—by taking the blame, or credit, depending on one’s point of view, for the killing of Orange Jumpsuit—had made herself far more than just a witness. Anyone in authority who knew the details of the events in courtroom 207 should by rights prevent her from leaving until her statement was made and all the pertinent questions were asked and answered.