Catherine Coulter - Backfire

“I hope I don’t ever have to tell someone their husband or wife is dead. By violence.”

“Agreed. I called Officer Mancusso and asked him to unplug the TV and call if Ramsey happens to find out something. He said he’d alert the nursing staff to keep quiet as well.”

“That’s good, Harry. I’ll tell you, Molly looked so beaten down, so afraid for Ramsey today, that she shouldn’t have to handle any more tonight.”

“We should be okay until morning now,” Harry said.

Eve handed him his water. “I’m thinking our killer has been making a few mistakes. Like the kids seeing him today. You know he never wanted Mickey O’Rourke to be found. And he failed to kill Ramsey twice.”

Harry took a drink from the Pellegrino bottle. “I can’t help but think he’s not altogether sane.” He stopped, shook his head. “Just shoot me. I don’t know what to think anymore, but I do know this has got to be a huge hit for him. Any time now he’s going to listen to the news and hear about Mickey O’Rourke being dug up. So what does he do now?”

Eve said, “Good question. He isn’t going to give up, that’s all I’m sure of. If Savich is right, he’s in the spy business. I don’t imagine you can survive very long doing that unless you’re real careful. But he hasn’t been careful, has he, at least with his two attempts on Ramsey’s life?”

Harry said, “He tried to be with burying Mickey O’Rourke; just bad luck for him there.”

“We’ll find out from forensics tomorrow if he left any prints in that shack. And if Sherlock is right that he’s spent time in prison, we’ll have him.”

Eve took a pull of her beer. “Why did you and your wife divorce?”

The doorbell rang. The food.

She said, “Give him a big tip, Harry, I’m really hungry.”

They were eating hot-and-sour soup when Eve said, “I’m sorry I asked you about your wife. I didn’t mean to. It popped out.”

“My ex-wife,” Harry said mildly, and finished off the bottle of Pellegrino.

“Nevertheless, it’s none of my business. I’ve only known you for a matter of days. Isn’t that amazing? So much has happened, it seems much longer.”

He said nothing, but she was right, it felt very odd.

Eve sat back against the sofa and immediately sat forward again at the stab of pain in her back. “I hate not having control. My dad’s the same way. I’ll tell you, Mom had to belt him lots over the years when he tried to be her camp commandant. I’ll bet they’ve both lost count.

“My four brothers are all grown up, and they laugh at him now when he tries to throw his weight around.” She drank the last of her beer. “My dad’s amazing. He reminds people of Tommy Lee Jones, though the two marshal movies came out before he started his service there.”

“Service where?”

“In Chicago. Didn’t you know, my dad’s the U.S. marshal in Chicago? He’s served as marshal there through two presidents.”

“I thought the marshal changed out with every new administration.”

“Once in a great while, an appointed marshal is so well regarded he’s left in place. My dad says he’s trained the toughest hard-asses in the United States Marshal Service right there in Chicago. He says they take no grief, since they have a responsibility to Tommy.” She paused for a moment. “He’s very good, my dad.”

“How does your dad treat you?”

Eve gave him a big smile. “You heard Dillon talk about the power of the ponytail? Works on my dad every time.”

San Francisco General Hospital

Monday morning

Ramsey blamed himself, Eve saw it clearly on his freshly shaved face, just as she’d known he would.

“It’s obvious to me that by suspending the trial, I alerted the Cahills or whoever is working with them that I suspected something going on with Mickey’s prosecution. If only I’d held off that day, let the pretrial motions continue until I could talk to him privately, he might still be alive.”

Eve said, “It isn’t like you to sit back and watch a train wreck, is it, Ramsey? You did what was appropriate, what your experience and your training told you to do. Who could have known what would happen?”

Ramsey plowed right over her, shaking his head back and forth. “No, no, I should have thought it through better. I should have realized that with the death penalty on the table, whoever was controlling Mickey wouldn’t draw the line at anything. It’s my fault they killed him, no one else’s.”

Eve said patiently, “Ramsey, say Mickey had succeeded in manipulating you, and you had ruled to dismiss the federal case against the Cahills. Do you think they would have let Mickey live? I think you know as well as I do after what happened that Mickey was dead the minute they threatened his family. If he’d come to you, maybe it would have turned out differently, but he didn’t.”

Slowly, he shook his head. She hated it. He looked defeated. “I should have approached him differently, gotten him to confide in me-if he’d told me, I could have made sure he’d be safe. And his family.”

She lightly tapped her fist against his arm. “Stop this, Ramsey, you’re pissing me off. A monster hiding in a human skin did this. No more blaming yourself or I’ll have to punish you for it when you’re well again.”

He didn’t smile. “I’ve been thinking about why they shot me, of course. I’m a judge, and if a judge is doing his job, he’s providing an even playing field to give the jury the best chance of arriving at the truth, not to influence the jury in any one direction.

“So why me? Most of my pretrial rulings had been in the Cahills’ favor, in fact. And the bigger question-why did they try to kill me again after the trial was dead in the water, at least in my court? We were done with each other, so why?”

He looked at each of them. “The only answer I’ve come up with is that they think Mickey may have talked to me before they could grab him, told me something dangerous for them, either about the case itself or implicating whoever had threatened him. That would also explain why they tried to shoot me again on Saturday, while they could hope I was still too ill and drugged to have spoken to anyone.”

“That’s a reasonable scenario, Judge Hunt,” Harry said. “We’re certain someone was working with the Cahills, probably a professional. And the man-we’re calling him Sue for the moment-might have a great deal to lose if he’s exposed. As a matter of fact, Sue did try to find out if Mr. O’Rourke told you anything before he kidnapped him, but O’Rourke didn’t have any information to give him, and so he ended O’Rourke’s life.”

Ramsey said, “So whoever this Sue is, you can be sure the Cahills are up to their earlobes in this with him; there’s simply no other explanation.” He paused for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “Molly already knew Mickey was dead last night, didn’t she? She knew, and she kept quiet about it.”

Eve said, “No, I didn’t tell Molly.”

“The TV didn’t work, either. I wondered why not. What’d you do, Agent, unplug it?”

“I asked one of your guards to unplug the TV, Judge Hunt,” Harry said.

“I hate lying here feeling helpless, everyone guarding me, shielding me. I’m pretty sick of it.” He smacked his fist on the bed and swallowed.

Eve waited a moment until he had himself together again, then looked him straight in the face. “I had nothing to do with it. It was all Harry’s idea.”

What moxie. Harry had to work hard to keep the laugh in. She was a piece of work, fast on her feet. He couldn’t help but admire that. She’d succeeded in distracting Judge Hunt. Harry saw incredulity, disbelief, and then humor in his eyes.