“Let me guess,” she said, straining to keep the panic from sounding in her voice. “You’ve got some unresolved issues about women.”
He didn’t answer. He came at her.
Close up, the man’s face became visible in the faint light of the alley. Middle-aged, with deep grooves and pockmarks hinting at a difficult life. Graham figured the crew of young men he’d appeared to be walking with earlier had actually been strangers. He’d used them as cover, to get close enough to bump into her and steal her gun.
He was a big man, easily twice her weight. His body seemed to fill the alleyway. She considered trying to run past him—if she could get to the street, she’d be safe—but she wasn’t sure she’d make it. She didn’t want to risk running straight into his grasp. She considered reaching for her phone, but ultimately rejected that idea, too. She wanted to have her hands free when he closed the distance between them.
She didn’t have any other weapons on her. No backup gun, no knife. If she lived through this, she’d have to be more paranoid in the future.
The man lumbered forward. His face was screwed up with malevolent determination. Whether his intent was to pummel her, strangle her, stab her, rape her, or all of the above, she had no idea. But she could tell he wasn’t here to give her a back rub. She shifted her weight, balancing on the balls of her feet and tensing to meet his attack. She’d trained in close quarters combat, although she’d rarely had occasion to use her skills. Now she felt the muscles in her arms and legs tense, felt her hands curl into fists.
“You think Harrison’s your friend,” she said. Part of her was still hoping a fight could be avoided with words, even though instinct told her it could not. “He doesn’t give a shit about you, or about the men’s rights movement, or about anything. He’s just a coward who talks other men into fighting his battles for him.”
The man didn’t stop. His expression didn’t change. She couldn’t even tell if he’d heard her. He swung a punch and she just barely ducked under it. She heard the whistle of air above her as his fist missed her head by inches.
She backpedaled until her spine pressed against the brick wall of the building behind her.
He threw another punch. She tried to dodge it, but this time he anticipated her direction. His fist connected with her right breast. Pain exploded in her chest. The air went out of her lungs.
“That’s right,” he said. He breathed heavily through his open mouth, watching her. “Not so arrogant now, are you? I’m going to beat you to death and leave your body here. Your face won’t even be recognizable.”
She might have asked him why, if she weren’t struggling with all her strength just to catch her breath. His fist shot forward. She realized two seconds late that it was a ruse, distracting her from his leg. His boot, hard and huge, slammed into her left knee and she crumpled to the pavement. There was a puddle of water that smelled like the Dumpster. He stomped his foot in it and splashed her face.
She tried to crawl away. Broken pavement raked her palms and tore up the knees of her pants. Her fingernails snapped and splintered.
He kicked her hard in the gut and she flipped over. She curled into a fetal position.
This is where I’m going to die, she thought. Right off Walnut Street, ten feet from a million oblivious people.
“You’ve got this coming to you,” he said. She didn’t know if he was trying to justify his actions to her, or to himself. She didn’t care.
He lifted one heavy boot over her head.
Before he could stomp her skull into the street, she reached out and grabbed his other foot with both of her hands. She wrapped her fingers around his ankle and pulled with all her strength. His foot came up and he lost his balance, falling backward. There was a loud, metallic clang as the back of his head connected with the Dumpster behind him. Then he was sitting on the pavement, gawking at her.
“You’re gonna regret that, bitch.”
“Oh yeah?” She scrambled to her feet. He was bigger, but she was faster. She made a run for the mouth of the alleyway and the busy street beyond.
Before she made it, he tackled her. Two-hundred or more pounds drove her to the ground. She screamed, but her voice was driven out of her, along with her oxygen, when he landed on top of her. She struggled to crawl forward, to free herself from him. One of her hands swept past something hard and rough. She looked. A brick.
She grabbed it but he grabbed her hand. His hand seemed to envelope hers. He squeezed, crushing her fingers painfully against the brick. Intense pain flared in her hand. In another moment the bones of her fingers would snap.
Desperate, she clawed at him with her free hand. But she only touched air. He grunted and squeezed her other hand harder against the brick. She felt the skin of her palm tear open.
“Get … off … you crazy … bastard!”
“My wife called me crazy. That’s how she took my kids away from me. My little boys. But I’m not crazy. I’m not—”
Her hand continued to claw at the air. It brushed his mouth. The softness of his lips and his wet tongue repulsed her. But only for a second. Then she thrust her hand into his face, past his teeth, and stabbed her jagged, broken nails into the soft bed of his tongue.
He reared back. He released her throbbing hand and grabbed her other wrist with both of his hands, pulling her fingers out of his mouth. Her hand was numb and throbbing, but she managed to maintain her grip on the brick. Twisting around, she swung it with all her strength against the side of his head.
He went down. She rolled clear of him. She didn’t want to look at the damage. But at the same time, she did want to. Half his skull was misshapen, concave, like a dented fender. The ear on that side of his head was a bloody, torn mess. One of his eyeballs bulged, and blood leaked from the tear duct. His tongue lolled from his mouth, bloody and raw-looking. A piece of fingernail jutted from it. She was pretty sure he was dead. If he wasn’t, he was going to wake up wishing he was.
35
Jessie and Leary were relaxing at a coffee shop near her apartment, drinking decaf cappuccinos and reliving the excitement of the trial’s first day. They both felt it had gone really well. If she could maintain her momentum through the rest of the trial and closing arguments, she was confident the jury would follow through with a guilty verdict that would put Harrison away for the rest of his life.
“He can talk to his fellow inmates about men’s rights till he’s blue in the face,” Leary said.
She reached across their little table and wiped a dot of whipped cream off his nose. “Just as long as they don’t give him internet access,” she said.
“I think Clark Harrison’s online days are over.”
Her cell phone vibrated. She’d placed it on the table, just in case someone needed to reach her about the trial. Now, it inched toward the edge of the table as it buzzed. She picked it up. “Jessica Black.”
As she listened to the voice on the other end of the line, the taste of coffee in her mouth turned sour. Leary must have read her expression, because when she thanked the caller and put down her phone, he said, “What happened?”
“Clark Harrison escaped from his cell.”
“What?”
“Apparently one of the deputy sheriffs helped him.” She remembered something Graham had told her on the day of Harrison’s arrest. “He boasted to Emily that he had friends.”
“Jesus,” Leary said. “You think this deputy sheriff was someone he met on the Manpower forums? Didn’t you read all of Harrison’s online messages?”
“The warrant covered records for the True_Man account. Harrison could have had other accounts, though. Other names. Who knows how many angry men he connected with on the Manpower forums using various identities?”
“Are there that many angry men? I’m starting to feel like I should apologize for my gender.”
Jessie shrugged. “Your gender’s fine overall. The bad ones are a small percentage of the population. But the internet makes it easy for someone like Harr
ison to find them.”
Leary pushed aside his cappuccino. “I think I’ve had enough.”
“Me, too. Let’s go back to my place.”
It wasn’t that late, but knowing Harrison was loose made the streets feel darker and quieter than usual. Jessie caught herself peering into shadows and throwing quick glances over her shoulder.
There was another couple on the sidewalk a few steps behind them, twenty-somethings holding hands. There was a man behind the couple, walking casually, hands in his pockets. Across the street, there were a few other people. A homeless man. A middle-aged woman wearing headphones. Every so often headlights lit the night and a car glided past them on the street.
They passed the entrance to a SEPTA subway station. The black stairwell yawned like a cave. Jessie felt herself stiffen as they walked by, as if she were bracing herself for an attack.
“Relax,” Leary said. “This is a safe part of the city.”
“Are you carrying?”
He tapped his hip reassuringly. “Always.”
“Good.”
Leary shook his head. “You think Harrison cares about you? He’s focused on one thing right now, and that’s getting out of the country. He’ll never make it. His face has been all over the news. He’ll be back in a jail cell so fast there will hardly be a pause in the trial.”
“You think so?” His confidence was infectious, and she found herself agreeing with him. With the state of modern surveillance, fugitives rarely made it far.
“I know—” Leary’s voice choked off. His body jerked and spasmed. He dropped to one knee and stared up at her with a stare of wide-eyed surprise.
That’s when she saw the cords extending from his back like tentacles. She turned around. The twenty-something couple was gone. So were the homeless man and the middle-aged woman who’d been on the other side of the street. But the man who’d been walking with his hands in his pockets was still there. He’d chosen a moment when the street was abandoned. His hands were no longer in his pockets. One held a device from which the cords extended. A Taser.
Leary rolled on the ground, incapacitated. He opened his mouth, tried to speak. No sound came out, but his mouth seemed to form the word Run!
The man tossed aside the Taser and came at her. Jessie resisted the impulse to run. Leary’s jacket had opened when he fell, and she could see the holster at his hip, with his Glock tucked snugly inside. She crouched beside him and unbuttoned the strap on the holster.
The man grabbed a handful of her hair. Pain raced across her skull. She saw Leary’s arms twitch as he struggled to regain control of his body. He managed to wrap one arm around the assailant’s leg, hooking his elbow against the man’s ankle. The man lost his balance and let go of Jessie’s hair as he fell on top of Leary.
Jessie got the holster opened and yanked the gun free. She aimed it at the man’s chest just as he rose to his full height.
“Don’t move. I’m a good shot.”
“Fuck you, bitch.” The man was average-looking—about five-ten, normal weight, plain face, maybe mid-thirties. He didn’t look like a criminal. He was dressed in a nice pair of khakis and a button-down shirt. She thought there was something strange about the shirt, but it was hard to tell because he was wearing a jacket over it.
Leary twitched on the ground, staring up at her with a helpless expression.
Jessie took one hand off of the Glock and pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to call the police. You haven’t done anything terrible yet. We can still sort this out.”
“That’s what the cops told me last year when they pretended to be on my side. All I wanted to do was show a woman how much I liked her, but she called me a stalker and a woman judge agreed. Now I have a restraining order and I lost my job.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Jessie struggled to use her phone’s touchscreen one-handed. She managed to hit 9, then 1.
The man charged forward. She dropped her phone as the hand holding it instinctively joined the other around the grip of the gun. She fired two bullets into the man’s chest, stopping him no more than a foot away from her. She smelled his bad breath as he collapsed onto the street.
She bent down to pick up her phone. As she did, her eyes met Leary’s. His mouth moved again as he tried to tell her something.
“I can’t hear you.”
He tried again, and a thin voice came from his lips. “Vest. He’s wearing a vest.”
She looked up just as the man was getting to his feet again. That was why his shirt had looked strange. He was wearing a Kevlar vest underneath it. The vest had stopped her bullets.
He charged at her again, and this time she wasn’t able to bring the gun to bear in time to stop him. His body slammed into hers and she staggered backward. She had just enough time to realize he was shoving her toward the subway entrance, but not enough time to do anything about it. The back of her left shoe came down on empty air and she fell backward down the staircase.
Her body hit the concrete steps with a series of bone-jarring impacts. She let go of the gun and the phone and used her arms to protect her head. She spilled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. Her whole body was in pain. She wasn’t sure she could get up.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the man descending after her. There was no one else on the subway platform.
“You bitches are all the same, but you’re about to get what’s coming to you. There’s going to be a revolution. Men like Harrison are leading the way, but there will be more. A lot more. We’re taking back our lives.”
“You’re crazy.” She got onto her knees. Pain fared in her knee caps and raced up and down her body. She crawled away from the stairs, but there was nowhere to go. A wall on one side, and the edge of the platform on the other, with the tracks beneath it.
“I used to think that,” the man said. “But now I think I’m one of the only sane people on Earth.”
The station rumbled. A subway train was approaching the station. Hopefully that meant people. She crawled toward the platform’s edge.
The man loomed over her. He seemed oblivious to the sound of the oncoming train. He reached down and grabbed her throat.
“I’m going to make an example of you,” he said. “I’m going to send a message.”
The sound of the train grew louder. She met his insane stare and knew there was nothing she could say that would stop him from his crazy mission. She knew what she needed to do if she wanted to live.
She grabbed his arms. He looked surprised, but not concerned. He was bigger than her. Stronger. He increased the pressure around her throat. She struggled to breathe. Her lungs burned. Black spots floated in her vision. Using the last of her strength, she twisted sideways, toward the edge of the platform, and pushed. He rolled over the precipice, but for several seconds, his hands continued to clutch her throat. The skin of her neck stretched painfully. She slid sideways. The weight of him almost pulled her over the edge. She gritted her teeth and wrenched her body in the opposite direction. His fingers slipped off her neck and he fell. She heard the thump as his body hit the ground.
The train blared its horn. The tunnel filled with the sound of squealing brakes, but the train rushed into the station, unable to stop. Jessie squeezed her eyes closed as the engine roared in her ears and the warm wind of the speeding train blasted her face. From below, she might have heard the punch of steel plowing into a body, or she might have just imagined it.
After what felt like an eternity, the train ground to a halt. She heard the buzz of an alarm. There was yelling. People surrounded her.
Then she heard Leary’s voice in the crowd and knew she was going to be alright.
36
Jessie tried not to limp as she walked into the courtroom. She had suffered some injuries during her fight with her attacker—mostly bruises on her neck from his attempt to strangle her, and on her arms and legs from her fall down the subway station steps—but they weren’t debilitating. Graham, sitting in the front
row of the gallery, looked to be equally worse for wear. She offered Jessie a sympathetic nod, and Jessie returned it.
Passing through the gate, she looked at the defense table and said, “Good morning, Hyram.”
Brand sputtered a response that was incoherent. His usual bluster seemed to have abandoned him. Apparently, the escape of his client and the attacks that had followed were events beyond his experience, and he looked like he had no idea how to deal with them. Jessie almost felt bad for him. She was grateful to be on her side of the aisle and not his. One of the benefits of representing the state was that your client generally didn’t surprise you with jail breaks and attempted murders.
Her attacker, identified as Michael Walter, turned out to be a troubled software engineer with depression and alcohol problems who had been in and out of institutions for years. Graham’s attacker was an out-of-work, former US postal service employee who’d been terminated after several inappropriate outbursts at work. A search of their computers and phones revealed that they were both frequent posters to the Manpower forums. Ditto for Rick Tyler, the deputy sheriff who’d been missing since the night of Harrison’s escape. All of them blamed their troubles on the women in their lives.
If the courtroom had been crowded before, it was an absolute mob scene now, as every reporter and curious bystander in the city tried to cram into the room. Not surprisingly, Clark Harrison’s mysterious escape from custody and the attacks on the lead detective and prosecutor on his case had led to a storm of national news coverage. A massive manhunt involving state and federal law enforcement was underway, but so far had failed to find the fugitive. With each passing hour, she knew, the chances of catching Harrison lessened.
Judge Sokol pounded her gavel until the room subsided into silence.
“Ms. Black, I assume, given the circumstances, that you are here to request a continuance.” A continuance would postpone the trial, in this case until Harrison could be retrieved, assuming he ever was.
Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1 Page 72