Tess Gerritsen - John Doe

Suddenly a lamp came on. Jane froze.

Harry O’Brien stood clutching Maura as a shield in front of him, his gun pressed to her temple.

“Drop it, O’Brien!” Jane ordered, her weapon raised. She heard Frost move beside her, caught a peripheral view of his gun, clutched in both hands.

“We don’t want violence, Detective,” another voice said, and Jane glanced in surprise at Sarah Shapiro, who rose to her feet from the armchair. “Harry just wants to settle things, once and for all.”

“By killing a witness?” said Jane. “The one person who remembers he was here that night?” She looked at O’Brien. “You were stalking Scanlon. Oh, it was in the name of justice, I get that. The scum deserved to die, and any jury will sympathize.”

“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said.

“You should’ve thought of that before you stabbed him.”

“Did I?” He shook his head. “I told you, I was with a friend that night.”

“She’s covering for you. That alibi will fall apart.”

“No, it won’t. We built a fortress, Detective. You just haven’t realized it yet, because you haven’t finished your job.”

“I know you’re all in this together. And I know this is not helping your case.” She tightened her grip on the Glock. “Drop the gun.”

“Why? I have nothing to lose.”

“Your life?”

O’Brien’s laugh was bitter. “My life is over. It ended when Kitty died. I’m just tying up loose ends.”

“Like Scanlon?”

“And his partner.”

He knows there’s a second man. “We will find that partner, Harry. I swear we will. And he’ll pay.”

“Oh, I know you’ll find him.”

“Drop the gun and we’ll talk. We’ll work on finding him together. We’ll see justice done.”

He seemed to weigh her words, and she saw the struggle in his eyes. The indecision. “It never comes soon enough,” he said softly.

“What doesn’t?”

“Justice. Sometimes, you have to give it a nudge.” With that, he pushed Maura so hard that she went sprawling against the sofa. He raised his gun, and the barrel was aimed directly at Jane.

Gunfire exploded as both Jane and Frost opened fire. The bullets punched into O’Brien’s chest, sent him slamming backward against the bookcase. He leaned there staring at them for a moment, an odd smile on his lips, the gun already falling from his hand. Slowly he slid down to the floor, and Sarah dropped to her knees beside him, sobbing, screaming.

He had not fired a single shot.

Maura crouched over the body, felt for a pulse, and began CPR. But staring into O’Brien’s eyes, Jane saw the light fade away. And she knew there was nothing left to save.

A day later, they found the body.

They tracked down the recipient of Scanlon’s text messages, and it led them to the handsome Newton residence of William Heathcote, age forty-two. There they found Mr. Heathcote slumped in the driver’s seat of his silver Mercedes, which was parked inside his garage. He had been dead for several days, which meant he could well have died the same night as Scanlon. The cause of death was immediately apparent: a single gunshot to the right temple. A Smith amp; Wesson nine-millimeter pistol, reportedly stolen in Miami a year before, was in his hand.

In the Mercedes trunk was a plastic bag containing two chefs’ knives, both covered in dried blood.

It was almost certainly Scanlon’s blood, thought Jane as she watched the CSU team tag the evidence. No case could come more prettily tied up with a bow. The evidence was all there to help the police draw the obvious conclusion: Heathcote stabbed Scanlon to death in Olmsted Park, then drove home and committed suicide. In a single bloody evening, two predators met their end.

Jane didn’t believe it for a second; neither did Maura.

They stood together in Heathcote’s driveway, watching as the Boston PD tow truck pulled away with the Mercedes, bound for the crime lab. It was late afternoon, dark clouds were moving in, and the air felt prickly with impending thunder.

But for Maura, the storm had already passed. “Harry was a hero, Jane,” she said. “He never meant to hurt me. He came to my house without a single bullet in that gun.”

“We didn’t know that. We had no choice.”

“Of course you had no choice. It was supposed to happen this way. He wanted to go out with a blaze of publicity, so his daughter would be remembered. And he wouldn’t have to face any questions.” Maura paused. “He had cancer.”

“Harry told you that?”

“No. Dr. Bristol did the autopsy this morning. Harry’s body was riddled with tumors. I think he knew he was dying, and he chose this way to end it.”

Leaving me with the nightmares, thought Jane, looking up at the darkening sky. Taking a man’s life leaves a stain on your soul, even if you’re forced to do it. Even if the man you kill wants you to pull that trigger.

“We both know it was a conspiracy,” said Jane. “Harry and those victims, they planned this together. They covered for each other. For all I know, they each took their turn stabbing Christopher Scanlon. Fifteen stab wounds, two different knives? And not a single fingerprint.” Jane sighed in frustration. “I know what happened, I just can’t prove it.”

“Do you really want to?”

“ You’re the one who’s always hung up on the facts, the truth. But you’re willing to ignore the truth of this case?”

“I could have been a victim, too. I was like a staked goat, drugged and laid out on my sofa, where anything could have been done to me. But it never happened because they stopped it. I don’t know which of them was there in my house, or how many. All I know is that this time, the victims fought back. They caught and killed two monsters.” Maura looked straight at her. “And they saved me.”

Maybe that’s worth more than any truth, thought Jane as she watched Maura climb into her Lexus and drive away. And she remembered what Harry O’Brien had said: Justice. Sometimes you have to give it a nudge.

That you did, Mr. O’Brien. That you did.