Judgment

by Joseph Finder

  Duncan came in from outside, panting. “He took off. Bat out of hell.”

  “You shot him.”

  He nodded. “He pulled out a gun. I had to.”

  She heard thundering footsteps coming from the stairs: Jake.

  “That was loud. Someone’s going to report it. One of our neighbors.”

  “What happened?” Jake shouted, racing across the room toward them. “Was that a gunshot?”

  68

  Jake, get back upstairs!” Duncan said. The gun was no longer in his hand. He’d dropped it to the carpet.

  “What just happened? Did a gun go off?” Jake, like his dad, dressed for sleep in T-shirt and boxers.

  “Upstairs! Now!”

  “Did someone get shot?”

  “Go!” She’d never heard Duncan yell at him that way before.

  “Jesus!”

  Looking like he’d been slapped, Jake winced, turned, and walked heavy-footed away, back upstairs. But he would be listening at the top of the stairs, lurking at the upstairs railing.

  She closed the door to her study. Duncan had walked over to the open French door. He was picking up some papers that had flitted to the floor in the breeze.

  “Duncan, that was insane!” she said. “Where—where the hell did you get that gun?”

  “I know a guy who knows a guy. I just—five hundred bucks for the gun plus some ammunition.”

  “This is crazy! I’ve turned us both into criminals.”

  He put his arms around her, pulled her close. “Breathe, Jules.”

  She nodded, closed her eyes. “He wasn’t here to kill anybody. He was here to look for something.”

  “For what?”

  “Hersh had a file for me.”

  “I think I got him in the leg,” Duncan said. “I’m not sure.” He actually looked pleased.

  “You’ve never fired a gun before?”

  “Call of Duty on Jake’s Xbox. But this was pretty close range.”

  “God, what if one of our neighbors heard the shot and called the cops?”

  “So?”

  “And the cops come knocking on our door. Asking about a reported gunshot. If they find out you have a gun and fired it without a license, we’re screwed.”

  “Gunshot? No gunshot here. Maybe from the movie we were watching. Who knows.”

  “Unlawful possession of a firearm,” she said. “That’s eighteen months in prison.”

  “I know the law. And they can get you for discharging a weapon within five hundred feet of a dwelling too. I know. But I wouldn’t worry about illegal. The guy pulled a gun on me. He could have killed me. He could have murdered all three of us. How do I know what he’s about to do?”

  She nodded, closed her eyes. She felt the beginnings of an onrushing panic attack.

  “The guy was a threat to my family,” he went on. There was something in his voice, something hoarse. Not loud but firm. “Legally, we both know you can twist it this way or that, but what I did? I’d do it again. You think I’m going to let these bastards break into my house, menace my family?”

  “Is that blood on the carpet?” she said, pointing at what indeed looked like a darker spot on the gray carpet. “We’ve got a crime scene. What do we do?” Her voice shook.

  Duncan came close and gently caressed her face. “Breathe,” he reminded her.

  She nodded. “I’m okay.” She drew him near. They hugged, hard, and for a fleeting moment she felt safe.

  “We’d better hope this guy doesn’t check himself into a hospital,” she said. “They’re required to report gunshot wounds.”

  “Guy like that? He’s not turning himself into any hospital.”

  He placed his forehead against hers. “The cops are either coming or they’re not, and I’m not going to call them.”

  “But what if we call the cops, tell them about the break-in? Maybe they’ll park a cruiser out front for a while.”

  “Think, honey. Your situation, you sure you want the cops involved? And how long do you think the police can protect us anyway? A day or two?”

  “Yeah,” she said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  “Jules, I’m here, okay? Don’t think for a moment there’s anything I wouldn’t do to keep you safe,” he said. “To keep us safe.”

  Her heart rate began to slow. A curious sense of calm seeped into her like a warm fluid.

  They cleaned up the crime scene, as she thought of it, sweeping up the glass, putting packing tape over the holes where the glass panes had been broken. Before they went to bed, they checked in on Jake—amazingly, he’d fallen back to sleep. Juliana wondered briefly if he’d even remember this in the morning, and if so, what they could possibly say.

  * * *

  —

  They both lay there for a long while. She looked at a beam of moonlight across the ceiling and tried to still her revving thoughts, but it was like trying to slap down a spinning top.

  “Sweetie?” Duncan whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “You awake too?”

  “Yeah.”

  She felt his hand caress her thigh, and then she reached for him. “I missed you,” she said. She pulled his face close, kissed him, lightly at first, then ferociously. His hands moved slowly over the swell of her hips, and then his fingertips brushed against her nipples, his lips grazing hers as his hands encircled and caressed her breasts. She pushed him down on the bed, straddled him, slid him inside her. She closed her eyes, felt the pressure building and building, more and more intense, and then the dam burst and an engulfing hot wave came over her, a great flood of pleasure and a hot tingly sensation all over, and she felt herself melting, and then she gave over to it entirely. Her head was spinning and her body began to shake. A surge of heat washed over her, and then a great calm.

  They talked for another hour until pinkish light appeared in the night sky and morning began to dawn. She made coffee, took a shower, and got dressed for work.

  Her phone made a text sound.

  It was from a long series of numbers at T-Mobile. It read only:

  12:00 NOON TODAY.

  69

  By the time it was almost noon, she was dragging. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours, and the coffee was no longer working, just making her stomach sour.

  During the ten o’clock break, Duncan came by her lobby. He said hi to Kaitlyn, who got up when he arrived and excused herself.

  “Look,” Juliana said, “what we’re talking about—what I’m about to do is—you know. There can’t be any e-mail trace, no texting, nothing, okay?”

  “Okay. I understand.”

  “Do you know how much money this guy has? Fifteen billion dollars. That’s billion with a B. He’s one of the richest guys in the world. Five million bucks is peanuts to him.”

  “But it’s so goddamned risky, babe. You’ve got the police breathing down your neck, and—”

  “Dunc, the way they turned over my life, that’s the least I’m owed.”

  They both fell silent. Duncan said, “I wonder if this is something you negotiate with him. Like, you know, start at ten million?”

  “Why not? That’s nothing to him.”

  A long pause. She said, “What have I become?”

  “I think you’ve become what circumstances made you. I think you don’t really have a choice.”

  * * *

  —

  Back in court, at two minutes before noon, Juliana checked her iPhone to see if there were any more text messages.

  Just that one from the long number at T-Mobile. 12:00 NOON TODAY.

  In two minutes, noon was going to arrive. The minute hand on the courtroom clock would click over the twelve.

  The plaintiff was sitting in the witness box, testifying about the icy pavement in the privately owned p
arking lot where he’d taken a nasty fall. She was finding it hard to concentrate.

  Instead, she was remembering when Duncan fired the gun. The crash, the man tearing outside through the French doors. She thought about how remarkably calm Duncan seemed when it was all over. He seemed suffused with the certainty of having done the right thing.

  And she couldn’t help thinking about Philip Hersh. She’d called the hospital before court started for the day and asked how Hersh was doing. Still in the medically induced coma, the nurse said. She wondered how bad his injuries were going to be. And she wondered what the file was he’d left for her somewhere.

  She wondered if Hersh had figured out a way to get to the oligarch, Protasov. And if she’d ever know the answer.

  At the stroke of noon—she could see the numerals 12:00 appear on her iPhone—the plaintiff’s lawyer was asking questions of his client, who was in a wheelchair, paralyzed since his fall on the ice.

  At 12:01 a message appeared on her phone:

  Time’s Up.

  * * *

  —

  She looked up when the door at the back of the courtroom opened and a uniformed deliveryman entered with a large bouquet of flowers. Her heart jumped. What the hell was going on?

  A few people laughed and whispered. This never happened. The deliveryman, who looked like a gawky teenager, walked down the aisle until he came to the bar, which separates the spectators’ gallery from the area where the lawyers and their parties sit.

  She watched apprehensively as the court officer, George, leaped up and blocked the delivery guy’s path. He grabbed the teenager’s sleeve. The deliveryman turned, stopped. The two conversed in low voices. Then George took the bouquet from the delivery guy, who turned and walked right out of the courtroom.

  “Nothing further,” said the plaintiff’s lawyer.

  “And we’re adjourned,” Juliana said.

  As the courtroom emptied, she saw George approaching her bench. He was holding the bouquet of flowers, a pastel arrangement of stargazer lilies and pale pink roses, tipping it toward her.

  She had crazy thoughts. What if there was a bomb in it, a plastic explosive or something?

  “Those were for me?” she asked.

  “‘Judge Juliana Brody, courtroom 903,’” George read.

  “Who the hell told that kid to deliver to a judge on the bench?” Ordinarily all deliveries to a judge went to her lobby.

  He held the bouquet in her direction. “Just hand me the card, please,” she said.

  He pulled a small white envelope off the bouquet and passed it to her.

  She slipped a white card from the envelope.

  It read:

  See you soon.—Matías.

  She flushed, her heart suddenly knocking.

  She stared at the note.

  “It better be your husband,” the court officer said, mock-sternly, laughing.

  “My secret admirer,” she said, forcing a smile. “Thanks, George.”

  * * *

  —

  As soon as the lunch break began, she went online and checked a bunch of legal-related websites to see if that video had been posted anywhere. She clicked on sites that ran news about the legal profession, like Underneath Their Robes and Above the Law, to see if anything had been reported. They wouldn’t post the video, of course. They’d post a story about it.

  But she found nothing, thank God. At least nothing yet. Finally she Googled herself and waited tensely for a couple of seconds for the search results.

  Nothing about a sex tape.

  She glanced at her phone. Paul Ashmont from the CIA had left her a message, returning her call. As she was about to call him back, her phone rang.

  “Hey,” Ashmont said. “You have Signal on your phone, right?”

  “I do.” That was one of the encryption apps Sasha had told her to install.

  “I think we’d better use it.”

  He called her back a minute later using Signal. She answered the phone out in the hall.

  “Okay, you called me. What’s up?” Ashmont said.

  “This board meeting of the Protasov Foundation—there are a lot of VIPs coming to Nantucket,” she said. She mentioned some of the names: a former prime minister of the UK, a former female Secretary of State, a senator from Massachusetts. “Security’s going to be tight.”

  “Oh, you better believe it.”

  “I wonder who does security for Protasov. If he contracts it out.”

  “The Russian mafiya does security for most of these guys, these oligarchs,” Ashmont said. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

  * * *

  —

  Juliana called in Kaitlyn and asked her to cancel the afternoon session. She had important personal business to attend to, she said. Then she drove over to Boston Medical Center in the South End. She parked, took the elevator up to the neuro ICU on the sixth floor of the Menino building. She stopped at the counter and asked the nurse where she could find a patient, Philip Hersh.

  The nurse looked up and then away, said, “Um, yeah, let me ask someone.”

  She got up and went over to another nurse, who was standing at a desk, a dark-haired young woman. They conversed quietly for a few seconds. Then the dark-haired nurse came over and said, “Hi, excuse me, are you a family member?”

  “I’m a friend,” Juliana said. “I—my phone number was in Philip’s pocket when he was found.”

  She nodded. “Let me page the neurocritical care fellow, Dr. Robiano. I think he’s still on call.” She picked up the phone and spoke briefly. Then she hung up and came around to the front of the counter. “Why don’t we talk in one of these rooms?”

  “Oh, no,” Juliana said, her eyes tearing up. “What happened? A few hours ago he was stable.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know any of the details.”

  The dark-haired nurse showed her to a small, stark conference room, a round table with four chairs around it. Juliana sat and pulled out some Kleenex.

  When Dr. Robiano showed up a few minutes later, holding a can of Coke Zero—still looking like a fifteen-year-old playing doctor—he seemed genuinely saddened. “I’m sorry to tell you that Mr. Hersh died.”

  Juliana sighed, her breath trembling. She nodded. The tears were streaming now.

  He said, “He had a rebleed in his brain. We took him to the operating room, and he died on the table.”

  She nodded, couldn’t talk.

  He sensed that and went on. “It’d been touch-and-go since he got here. His injuries were just too severe.”

  “When did it—when did he die?”

  “About an hour ago. They haven’t taken his body away yet, so if you want to go into his room and spend some time . . . ?”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I do.”

  When she was able to stop crying long enough to talk, she called Martie and arranged to come by. She didn’t want to tell her over the phone.

  70

  Numbly, she entered Martha Connolly’s apartment. She gave Martie a quick hug, leaned over and petted Lucy. The dog had brought her Donald Trump chew toy over, as if to show off how little of it was left: just half a torso and an arm.

  “You look terrible,” Martie said. “What happened?”

  “Philip Hersh is dead.”

  Martie gasped. “What?”

  Juliana told her what little she knew.

  “Can I pour you a drink?”

  “I have too much to do now.”

  “Have you talked to the police?”

  She shook her head.

  Martie seemed to know what Juliana was thinking. “You don’t know this happened because of your case,” Martie said.

  “But it did.”

  She shook her head. “You think.”

  “It’s my fault,” she said.
“You told me to get off the trolley; that was how you put it. Stop what I was doing. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t ask Hersh to stop digging, even when we knew it was dangerous.”

  “Juliana—”

  “I need to ask you something,” Juliana said.

  “Ask away.”

  She hesitated. “You know Yuri Protasov. You’re on a Doctors Without Borders board with him. Yet you never mentioned that to me.”

  Martie was silent for a long time. She looked down at the carpet. Then she looked up at Juliana. “I knew a woman once who became obsessed with black mold,” she said. “Who was convinced she was getting sickened from black mold, that she was suffering from toxic mold syndrome. So she had dehumidifiers installed in her basement. But the experts came to test, and the tests still came back positive for mold spores. So she ripped everything out. When that didn’t work, she gutted the first floor. Then the second. Eventually she got rid of every piece of textile she owned, even a quilt that had been passed down from her great-grandmother. She ripped her whole damn house apart, her whole life apart.”

  “And?”

  “She ended up moving into some sterile cinder-block house in Brighton. But she still felt something was wrong. So she had the place tested, and it came back positive for black mold.”

  “Your point?”

  “There’s no uncontaminated terrain. Or people. Some hands are cleaner than others; none are truly clean. Have I ever met Yuri Protasov? No. Have I ever even been in the same room with the man? I don’t think so, but maybe. You want to find moments where I’ve crossed paths with this villain or that? The harder you look, the more you’ll find. And I could explain every one, but that’s not the point. Because anyone can explain anything. At the end of the day? You need to ask yourself one question: Do I trust her? So do you?”

  It was a long, fraught silence. The two women stared into each other’s eyes frankly, almost hostilely. And then something in her melted. Because she knew the answer was yes.