James Patterson - The 9th Judgment

“Hang on a sec,” Joe said, reaching across me to open the drawer in the nightstand. I heard the crinkle of the foil-wrapped packet, and I put my hand on his arm and said, “No.”

“I’m just getting dressed here.”

“No. Really. Doctor’s orders. Don’t.”

“Hon? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Joe kissed me deeply and, while holding me tight, rolled us both so that I was lying on top of him. I raised myself up and folded my knees along his sides, placed my hands on his chest, and looked into his face. I saw the light in his eyes-his love for me. He put his hands on my hips, and, with our eyes wide open, we rocked slowly, slowly, no hurry, no worry.

There was no place I’d rather be.

No one I’d rather be with than Joe.

I WAS AT my desk when Brenda buzzed me on the intercom. “Lindsay, there’s a package downstairs for you. Kevin doesn’t want to send it up without you checking it out.”

I took the stairs down to the lobby and found our security guard waiting near the metal detector. He held an ordinary black nylon computer case, my name on a label, many yards of clear packing tape wound around it. I wasn’t expecting a package. And I sure didn’t like the look of this one.

“I ran it through the metal detector,” our security guard said. “There’s metal in here, but I can’t make out what it is.”

“Where did this case come from?”

“I was checking people through, a whole bunch of kids from the law school, looking in camera bags and so forth, and when I turned around, this case was on the table. Nobody claimed it.”

“I’m calling the bomb squad, no offense,” I said.

“None taken,” Kevin said. “I’ll get the head of security.”

I was shaking again, my clothes sticking to me, my bruised shoulder throbbing. The hard crack of exploding bombs went off in my mind, and I thought about Joe saying that it was so easy to make a bomb, it was scary.

I called Jacobi from behind a marble column at the far side of the lobby and told him about the mystery case. I said that Peter Gordon probably had the skills to blow up the Hall of Justice.

“Get out of there, Boxer,” Jacobi said.

“You, too,” I said. “We’re evacuating the building.”

As I spoke, the alarm went off inside the Hall, and the head of security’s voice came over the PA system, ordering all fire wardens to their posts.

The building was emptied-judges and juries and prosecutors and cops and a floor full of jailed detainees all filed down the back staircase and out to the street. I left through the main door and listened to my heart lay down a three-four beat against my eardrums. Within seven or eight minutes, the building was cleared and the bomb truck was parked in front of the Hall.

I watched from behind a cordon of cops as a robot with X-ray plates in its “arms” rolled up the wheelchair ramp and through the front door of the Hall. Conklin and Chi came down to wait it out with me, and together we watched the bomb-squad tech, masked and swaddled in an antifrag, flame-retardant suit, walk behind the robot with his remote control.

I waited for the detonation I was sure would come. Then we waited some more. When I was at the screaming point, Conklin said, “We could be here all night.”

So we went to MacBain’s.

It was like an office party in there. Law enforcement personnel from all disciplines were whooping it up while waiting to hear if they had offices to go back to. I had my hand in the Beer Nuts when my phone rang.

It was Lieutenant Bill Berry from the bomb squad. “Your so-called bomb has been rendered safe.”

I walked with Conklin and Chi to the bomb truck, which was now parked in the lot behind the Hall. I knocked on the door of the van, and when it opened, I took the case from Lieutenant Berry’s hand.

“So, what’s in it?” I asked him.

“Christmas in September,” he said. “I think you’re going to like it.”

“SOMETHING YOU’RE GONNA like,” echoed Chi. “What would that be?”

“I’m hoping for puppies,” I said.

Conklin held the door, and the three of us joined the throng of workers returning to their offices. We climbed to the third floor, turned right into Homicide, and crowded into Jacobi’s office as he took his swivel chair and sat down heavily.

Jacobi’s space was a pigpen as always, no offense to pigs. I moved a pile of folders from a side chair, Conklin took the chair beside me, knees bumping the desk, and Chi leaned against the doorjamb in his neat gray suit and string tie.

“Apparently this thing won’t blow up,” I said, putting the computer case on Jacobi’s desk.

“Are you going to open it, Boxer? Or are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”

“Okay, then.”

I took latex gloves out of my pocket and wriggled my hands into them, then slit the tape with a shank that Jacobi used as a letter opener and unzipped the bag all the way around.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Little suede bags and small boxes and satin envelopes had been stuffed into the body of the case, and more of the same were tucked inside each of the pockets. Paper clipped to one of those pockets was a plain white envelope addressed to me.

I showed the envelope to my colleagues, then peeled up the flap and teased out a sheet of white copy paper that had been folded in thirds.

“Is it interesting?” Jacobi asked.

I cleared my throat and read the letter out loud.

“ ‘Hi, Sergeant Boxer. I did NOT kill Casey Dowling. All of her stuff is in here, and everyone else’s stuff is in here, too. Please tell everyone I’m sorry. I made some bad mistakes because I thought I had no choice, but I will never steal again. Marcus Dowling killed his wife. It had to be him.’

“It’s signed ‘Hello Kitty.’”

I turned the case so that Jacobi could see me open the small packets. Unbelievable jewelry spilled into my gloved hands. Diamonds and sapphires that I recognized as belonging to Casey Dowling, Victorian brooches and pearls that had been Dorian Morley’s, and other jewelry that had belonged to Kitty’s other victims.

I sifted through extraordinary jewels that I’d seen pictured in Stolen Property’s files, and then I noticed a two-inch-long leather box shaped like a pirate’s trunk. I opened the box and saw a lumpy square of tissue paper.

I unfolded the paper, and a loose yellow stone the size of a grape winked up at me from the hollow of my palm. I was staring at the Sun of Ceylon.

“Is that it?” Conklin asked. “Casey Dowling’s cursed diamond?”

Jacobi barely looked at it. He reached for his phone and hit number one on his speed dial-the chief’s number. “Is Tony there? It’s Jacobi. Tell him I’ve got news. Good kind.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brady coming toward us in a hurry. He was huffing as he called out to me.

“Boxer, don’t you pick up your messages? Listen, earlier today Peter Gordon’s wife walked into the FBI.”

HEIDI MEYER SAT alone in an interrogation room, exhausted by the physical and emotional effects of trauma upon unimaginable trauma. Her world was changed. She was changed. How had she lived with Pete Gordon and never known who he was? Pictures kept coming into her mind, images of cooking for Pete, reasoning with him, trying to keep his lid on. She had given birth to his children, compensated for his shortcomings and psychic wounds. She’d slept next to him almost every night for the last ten years.

And now her husband had both literally and figuratively blown up their lives.

After Agent Benbow had interviewed her for three hours, he’d left her alone with a fresh cup of tea. Heidi thought about their interview, how she’d emptied every pocket of her memory in order to tell him whatever she knew to help him find her husband before he killed again.