James Patterson - The 9th Judgment

We cleared the doorway to the third floor, and I heard a baby screaming. I ran toward that sound. A woman in her twenties was frozen in place, standing only yards from a man lying spread-eagled, faceup on the floor. She was holding a gun.

I approached the woman slowly, leading with my badge, and said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer. It’s okay now. Please hand me your gun.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” she said, still transfixed, her baby screaming behind her. “The coroner said to carry a gun, and I did it. It’s him, isn’t it? It’s the killer, isn’t it?”

I had to holster my weapon, shake the shooter’s wrist, and pry up her fingers until I’d secured her.22. Yards away, Conklin kicked a gun out of the limp hand of the man on the floor.

I joined Conklin and put my fingers on the downed man’s carotid artery.

“Rich, I’ve got a pulse.”

Conklin called for an ambulance, and cruisers screamed up the ramp. I couldn’t look away from Peter Gordon’s face.

This was the monster who’d executed nine people, five of them children, a killer who’d tormented his family and held an entire city hostage.

His blood was pumping onto the concrete floor.

I didn’t want to lose him. I wanted to see him in an orange jumpsuit, shackled to the defense table. I wanted to hear his fucked-up view of the world. I wanted him to pay with nine consecutive life sentences, one for each of the people he’d killed. I wanted him to pay.

I pressed my hand to the well of blood pumping from his femoral artery. I nearly jumped when Gordon opened sleepy eyes and turned them on me, saying, “Sweet… meat. I think… I’m shot.”

I leaned so close to his face, I could almost feel a breeze as he opened and closed his eyes.

I said, “Why’d you kill them, you son of a bitch?”

He smiled and said, “Why not?” Then he exhaled a ragged breath and died.

IT WAS SEPTEMBER 25, and Joe and I were having friends over to toast one another and the good days ahead.

A ham was in the oven, baking under a peppery mango glaze. Martha was begging for a taste and got a Milk-Bone instead. I was wearing a kimono and an avocado mask as I peeled the potatoes and Joe sliced apples for the cobbler. The 49ers were playing the Cowboys, the cheers of the crowd coming over the TV, when Joe’s cell phone rang.

I said to him, “Don’t answer that, honey.”

I wasn’t joking, but he grinned at me and picked up the phone.

I hadn’t had a call in weeks that hadn’t sent me down a tunnel of horror, and frankly I was so strung out from my job, I couldn’t take even a lightbulb burning out. Or a broken fingernail. Or even a dip in the temperature. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Joe brought the phone into the living room, and I rinsed the potatoes and put them on to boil. I was in the bathroom washing avocado off my face when Joe said my name. I shut off the water and patted my eyes with a fluffy towel, and when I turned, I saw Joe looking at me, gray-faced and grim.

“There’s a plane full of people on the tarmac at Dulles International,” he said. “There’s a guy on board, used to be an informant of mine years back. He smuggled C-four in with his hand luggage. He’s threatening to blow up the plane.”

“Oh my God. And the Feds want you to advise them?”

“Not exactly. The guy with the C-four, Waleed Mohammad, wants to talk to me and only me.”

Joe had been deputy director of Homeland Security when we met and had become a high-level security consultant when he moved here from DC-a consultant who worked from home.

“So you need to call the guy,” I said. “Talk him down.”

“I have to fly to Washington,” Joe said, walking to me, enfolding me in his arms. “A car’s picking me up. I have to go right now.”

It felt like my heart stopped in its tracks.

It was stupid, but I just wanted to bawl in Joe’s arms and tell him he couldn’t go, and if he did, I’d keep crying until he came back.

“Do what you have to do,” I said.

I WAS DRESSED by the time Yuki and Miles arrived. Miles, that too-cute-for-words bartender, presented me with a bottle of wine, telling me about its special qualities. I barely heard him, but I’m pretty sure I thanked him. Yuki asked where Joe was, and I told her with my voice catching, my eyes watering up, that he had rushed off to Washington.

I turned away so she wouldn’t have to endure my disgraceful wet-eyed funk. So she followed me into the kitchen and helped me plate the olives and cheese. “What’s going on, Lindsay?” she asked me.

“Don’t look at me. It’s just that everything finally got to me. You know. Everything.”

“When’s Joe coming back?”

I shrugged and the doorbell rang, Martha yelping happily when I opened it to Edmund and Claire. Claire surrounded me in a big hug and smothered me with flowers.

Edmund said, “Lindsay, you look gorgeous in red. Gorgeous in any way, but red’s definitely your color.”

Edmund joined Miles in front of the TV, the two of them having a football bonding moment as Claire went into the kitchen and poked around for a vase.

When Cindy and Rich showed up, I realized it was the first time I’d seen them together on a date. And maybe it was the first time they’d really been out in the world publicly. That their debut was happening at my home was pretty cool. I told them that Joe was MIA and why.

Rich said, “You want me to pick out some music, Linds?”

“Thanks. That would be great.”

Richie was digging through the CDs and I was pulling the ham out of the oven when the phones rang, each of them, one in all four rooms ringing together.

“Are you getting the phone?” Claire asked me.

“Phones are no friends of mine.”

“Could be Jacobi.”

“He’d call me on my cell.”

My mobile rang from my handbag. I reached in and looked at the caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number. Maybe, I thought, it was coming from Jacobi’s mystery date’s phone.

“Warren, are you lost?”

“Sergeant Boxer?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Commander John Jordan. I’m afraid there’s been an incident. I wanted to reach you before you heard it on the news.”

My mind skittered like a needle across an old-fashioned vinyl record. This couldn’t be about that hostage crisis in Washington. Joe couldn’t have gotten there-not yet. His plane had just lifted off. I looked at the television set through the wall opening to the living room.

Talking heads had replaced the football game, and I read the breaking-news banner: CHARTER JET DOWNED IN CALIFORNIA.

Chopper footage came on, showing a green valley blemished by airplane wreckage and a blooming column of black smoke.

The commander was speaking to me, but I didn’t really hear his words. I already got it. Joe’s plane had gone down. They didn’t know what had happened, why it had blown up or simply crashed.

The lights faded to black, and I went down.

I SWAM UP out of the darkness, hearing Claire talking to Cindy, feeling something cold on my forehead, Martha’s paws on my chest. My eyelids flew open. I was looking up at the ceiling of my bedroom.

Where was Joe?

Claire said, “I’m here, baby. We’re all here.”

“Joe? Is Joe…?” I wailed. “Oh no. Oh God no.”

Claire looked at me helplessly, tears rolling down her face. Cindy grabbed my hand and Yuki cried, paced, and cried some more.

I was overwhelmed with a horrible emptiness, a pain so deep, so shocking, I wanted to die. I rolled onto my side so I couldn’t see anyone and covered my head with a pillow. Sobs poured out of me.