Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  His jacket flayed, a burst of fabric and blood. His head jerked back and he dropped.

  SWAT surged into the courtroom.

  Figures in black tactical gear flowed through the smoke, guns drawn. Through the bathtub dullness in her ears, Rory heard voices.

  “Police! Don’t move.”

  A SWAT officer in a helmet and goggles and body armor came toward her, rifle raised, finger on the trigger. “On your knees. Hands behind your head.”

  She went down and stayed there like a penitent.

  “Officer,” she said.

  He turned. She nodded with her chin.

  “Judge Wieland’s been shot.”

  The officer glanced across the room. Got on his radio.

  One by one the other hostages dropped back to the floor. Across the room, Frankie Ortega knelt, coughing. Lucy Elmendorf sat on the floor hugging her husband.

  A SWAT officer checked Nixon for signs of life. Drew a slash mark across his throat with his thumb. Pulled off Nixon’s balaclava. The dark pool of blood beneath the gunman’s head seemed to crown him. Looked like his thoughts poured out, gone.

  No back talk. You’re going. Because…

  His face was rough. A man in his forties, his features worn and creased. His eyes stared sightlessly. Rory looked away.

  By Judge Wieland’s side an officer knelt on one knee. He was holding the judge’s hand and talking into a radio. Rory began to shake. Her vision blurred. She realized she was crying.

  A cop shouted for the hostages to stand up. He told them to lock their hands behind their heads and walk out single file. By the time they got to the Department of Corrections buses outside, they’d been searched and cuffed with zip ties. The sun seemed too bright. Rory’s knees felt like Silly Putty.

  Helen Ellis tried to climb aboard the bus but wobbled. A cop gestured to the steps and said, “Please keep moving, ma’am.”

  Helen looked ready to crumble. “But we’re not criminals.”

  “It’s just procedure. Take care but get on board, please.”

  Rory said, “Procedure doesn’t have to be spelled asshole.”

  The cop eyed her coolly. “You’ve been restrained for your own safety. This will all be over soon.”

  Not soon enough. Not by a long, rocky mile. She helped Helen up the stairs.

  The door to the interrogation room finally opened at 7:42 p.m. Rory checked her watch. They’d let her keep the watch. They’d even let her keep her belt. In this room she couldn’t have killed herself for fun or money. If she’d taken off her boots and tried to beat herself to death with them, the cops behind the two-way mirror would have simply ambled in and laughed at her.

  Noise flowed through the open door. Conversation, phones, television. In walked a woman with a disheveled ponytail the color of Mountain Dew. Her blue blouse was limp and wrinkled. Her badge was clipped to the waistband of her skirt.

  “Aurora Mackenzie?” she said.

  “Call me Rory.”

  “Detective Mindy Xavier.” She looked a rugged forty-five. She gestured Rory to the worn plastic chair at the table. “Sorry it’s taken so long. And for all the rigmarole.”

  Rigmarole. Rory guessed it was the technical term for plastic cuffs and aggressive pat-downs and a locked interrogation room.

  “We had to make sure that there weren’t any bad guys pretending to be hostages. You know, blending in with the rest of you and threatening everybody into keeping silent about it.” Xavier closed the door. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

  “I’m fine.” Rory sat down. “What’s the word on Judge Wieland?”

  Xavier dropped a file folder on the table. “I don’t know. Sorry.”

  Xavier scraped her own chair back and sat heavily. She looked frazzled. She examined Rory’s face, seemingly for cracks.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “In one piece. When will I get a chance to clean up?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When the first gunman was shot, I was close by. I got sprayed…”

  Her voice chipped. She needed to stay calm. She could hardly bear having Nixon’s blood on her clothes and skin. But she wasn’t going to beg, not in a police station. She wasn’t here to seek mercy from the cops.

  Xavier eyed her sweater. She flushed. “Maybe I can find you a T-shirt.”

  “Even a grocery bag. Paper or plastic, I don’t care.”

  Xavier stood, opened the door, and beckoned to a passing colleague. She asked for a clean T-shirt. Then she closed the door and sat down again.

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Demanding day.”

  “Do you know who they were?” Rory said.

  “We’re investigating.”

  “Why did they attack the courtroom?”

  “Investigating.”

  Xavier opened the file folder. Rory’s driver’s license was clipped inside.

  Xavier uncapped a pen. “Tell me what you saw. What you heard. Take it from the top, and take your time. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Get through this, Rory thought. Just give them what they want and get home.

  “They came in through the main doors,” she began.

  She went through it. Moment by moment, step by step, trying to recall the choreography and the score. Xavier took only occasional notes. The CCTV camera near the ceiling probably had something to do with that. As Rory described the siege, her heart started to pound. Her leg throbbed, the old ache. The room turned stifling.

  “Could I have a glass of water?” she said.

  “Sure.” Xavier glanced at the mirror. “At what point did the gunmen first indicate resentment of the defendants?”

  The door opened and another detective stepped in, a man with placid Young Republican features and a frat-boy strut. He set a plastic water bottle on the table, pulled up a chair next to Xavier. Set down a laptop.

  “Had you ever seen the gunmen before today?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Rory said.

  “Really? Two men hold you hostage and you can’t say whether you recognized them?”

  He didn’t offer his hand. Neither had Xavier, but Rory got the sense that if she had put hers out, Xavier would have taken it. This guy didn’t give her that vibe.

  “They wore ski masks,” she said.

  She unscrewed the bottle top, tilted the bottle to her lips, and gulped it down. She felt like her toes and fingers and teeth had curled. And she felt something else: fear.

  Because, on the Ransom River PD’s busiest day in twenty years, with three people dead, a major crime scene to process, and sixty-five witnesses to debrief, the department surely had no manpower to spare. Sending a second detective to deliver water seemed inefficient. And unlikely.

  “The SWAT guys pulled Nixon’s mask off,” she said. “That’s the only time I saw his face. And he was dead, with a gunshot wound to the head.” A huge, gaping wound. “I don’t know how he looked when—”

  “Nixon?” he said.

  “The gunman who was shot by the sniper through the window. That was what his accomplice called him. They referred to each other as Nixon and Reagan.”

  “And the only time you saw his face was when SWAT removed his mask.”

  “Yes.” And I’d been talking to him at the moment he turned dead. She pressed her hand to her forehead.

  “You all right?” Xavier said.

  “Headache.”

  She drank some more water. The bottle had a chemical tang. She put it down. Her hands had developed a tremor. She clenched them to stop it.

  Xavier gave her a sympathetic look. “I know it’s been a hard day. But we want to get your recollections while they’re fresh.”

  “I understand.”

  The man said, “At what point did the gunmen first mention their demands?”

  She took a second. “I’m sorry—should I call you Detective Number Two?”

  “Zelinski.” He folded a stick of gum into his mouth. “When did the gunmen first make their demands?�
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  “When Sergeant Nguyen tried to engage with them.”

  “Not before?”

  “Until Sergeant Nguyen came on the bullhorn the only thing they demanded was for four of us to stand up and head toward the door.”

  “Any guesses why they did that?”

  “Guesses?” Rory looked back and forth between them. “Yeah, actually. I think they had an outside agenda. And I don’t think they were working alone.”

  Zelinski looked at her thoughtfully. “Really. Why?”

  She seemed to hear a creaking noise, like a pin had been pulled from a support beam below her.

  “I think they were working with somebody on the outside. Nixon kept looking at—” She spread her hands. “Do you know his name? Something else I can call him?”

  “Nixon is interesting,” Zelinski said. “We can go with that for now.”

  She paused. She wasn’t imagining the good cop, annoying cop routine. “Nixon kept handling his phone. I got the impression he was sending text messages. And I heard them arguing.”

  Xavier said, “About what?”

  “Whether the two of them should flee on their own. Nixon wanted to take hostages with them. He said, ‘We leave by ourselves, we die.’”

  “He probably meant he wanted human shields. For good reason. Look what happened to him the second our sniper got a clean shot.”

  Rory shook her head. “It was more than that. He insisted that they take the people who got tapped on the back. He said, ‘The plan is the plan.’”

  They didn’t react.

  “Then Reagan suggested surrendering. Nixon shut him down cold. And asked if Reagan understood the consequences. That’s the word he used. Consequences.”

  “Yeah. Trial, conviction, execution,” Zelinski said.

  “I don’t think that’s what he was talking about. I think he meant that if he botched the attack, a third party would punish him for it.”

  “Really?”

  “He got increasingly upset. Then he mentioned ‘payment.’”

  “Payment for what?” Xavier said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you were pinned against the window,” Zelinski said, “did they tell you to pass along information to the outside?”

  “What? No.”

  “They didn’t direct you to make hand signs and give the police ideas about how many gunmen were inside and what weapons they had?”

  “God no. The police thought there was only one gunman in the courtroom. I was trying to tell them there were two.”

  “The gunmen didn’t want you to mislead the authorities?”

  She just stared. “I provided accurate information.”

  Xavier had stopped writing. The ventilation system hummed. The fluorescent lights hummed. Rory’s nerves hummed.

  Zelinski said, “What kind of outside agenda do you think the gunmen had?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Xavier looked pensive. “You grew up in Ransom River, didn’t you, Ms. Mackenzie?”

  What was this, a change-up pitch? “Born here.”

  “Ransom River High? Sports—is that where I remember you from?”

  “Cross country and track,” Rory said.

  Xavier nodded. “I played basketball at St. Joe’s.”

  Zelinski turned to her, head cocked. “Really, Mindy? You want to talk old times?”

  She waved him off. “He’s new in town. Doesn’t know the ropes. You were a star.”

  “I did all right,” Rory said.

  “Better than that.”

  Xavier continued to stare at her. Waiting for her résumé, it seemed.

  “I won State my senior year,” Rory said.

  Xavier said, “You have siblings?”

  “Only child.”

  “Mackenzie sounds familiar.”

  “There’s family in town.”

  She had cousins. And maybe Xavier remembered them from Ransom River High School football games. Boone had started at tight end, when he wasn’t benched for fighting. Nerissa had been a cheerleader. She was rumored to be the one who seduced the St. Joseph’s quarterback the night before the game, slipped Rohypnol into his rum and Coke, and then dumped him, stoned and naked, on a back road outside town. The QB ended up in the hospital. St. Joseph’s won anyway.

  But Rory bet Xavier knew her cousins’ branch of the family from their history of arrests. The air buzzed as if a scarlet M had lit up overhead. She’s a Mackenzie. One of them.

  “Small world,” Xavier said.

  Zelinski said, “Glad to know you could outrun me, Aurora. Glad it won’t come to that.” His smile was humorless. “Can we show you something?”

  He opened his laptop and queued up a video.

  Rory said, “You got footage from inside the courtroom?”

  “CCTV system records all proceedings at the courthouse. Each courtroom has a camera.”

  He pressed Play.

  The video was silent, grainy and gray. Prosecutor Cary Oberlin was conducting his direct examination of Samuel Koh. Oberlin waved his hand as he spoke. The stenographer typed on her machine. Judge Wieland studied his computer screen. In the jury box, everybody seemed attentive.

  Then, soundlessly, people jumped. Oberlin turned and Wieland looked up, startled. Nixon rushed the bailiff.

  Rory tried to swallow. The hum of the lights and ventilation system seemed to set her entire body thrumming.

  On-screen, the gunmen forced people to lie on the floor. Nixon began to count aloud. Reagan moved among the crowd. When Nixon called four, he tapped a hostage on the back with the barrel of his shotgun.

  It was random and chilling. Judge Wieland was tapped and drew a faltering breath. Reagan moved on, slowly. Nixon counted four and Reagan tapped the man in front of him, Oberlin.

  Rory felt the detectives’ eyes on her.

  On-screen, Reagan stepped over hostages. One, two, three, four. He tapped the third man on the back.

  Rory’s stomach tightened. She knew what was coming next.

  Except she didn’t.

  Nixon counted. Reagan walked. She expected him to continue moving slowly and randomly. But he didn’t. He took large steps. Quietly, carefully, he covered twice the distance he had previously. He aimed straight across the courtroom. He stepped over half a dozen people. And when Nixon counted four, Reagan took an extra second to stare down at the person on the floor below him. He glanced back at Nixon. Nixon raised his chin, a crisp, wordless yeah.

  Reagan lowered the barrel of the shotgun and tapped Rory between the shoulders.

  The humming in the interrogation room filled her head.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  Zelinski paused the video. “You saw that?”

  “He picked me deliberately. What the hell?”

  “Can you explain it?”

  “No.”

  This was crazy. This was bad.

  “Rewind,” she said. “Show that to me again.”

  “It’ll show exactly the same thing,” Zelinski said.

  “They chose me?” She turned to Xavier, lips parting. “Why did they do that?”

  “You tell us,” Xavier said.

  The temperature in the room seemed to plunge. Rory felt so spooked that she forgot herself. And she did what no Mackenzie ever did: She spoke without thinking, without checking her cards. She spoke without understanding she’d been dealt a joker.

  “Jesus Christ. I heard them muttering when I was up against the window—when they were talking about leaving, one of them said something about ‘the girl.’ They were talking about me.” She looked at Xavier. “They chose me. They wanted to take me.”

  Zelinski said, “‘The girl’?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  He fast-forwarded through the video. “Show me where they mention you.”

  She watched, a tremor building in her arms again. “Stop.”

  The camera showed her pressed against the window. Behind her, Nixon and Reagan had thei
r heads together. Their posture was aggressive and nervous.

  “That’s where they were discussing it all,” she said.

  Zelinski tilted his head and examined the screen. “You think they were after you. Not the defendants?”

  “I’m telling you what I heard.”

  “You don’t think they were after money?”

  “They asked for five million bucks in gold. So maybe.”

  “Why did they demand bullion, do you think?”

  “Shall I speculate? No dye packs. No serial numbers. You can melt gold down. Craft it into wedding rings and necklaces and little figurines of the Smurfs.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not. I thought their demand for bullion was absurd on its face.”

  “Really?” Zelinski said.

  “What kind of institution has five million dollars in gold bars lying around? How’d they expect to get it within a short period of time?”

  “You interested in money, Ms. Mackenzie?” Zelinski said.

  And when did you stop beating your wife? She kept her voice even. “I like to pay my rent and put food on the table.”

  “You’re unemployed.”

  “The charity I work for lost its funding.” She knew her cheeks were burning.

  “Lucky that put you here in Ransom River with plenty of time on your hands, so you could fulfill your civic duty.”

  “Lucky? Asylum Action works—worked—to monitor refugees seeking political asylum. We followed up on cases where people were sent back to their home countries. Filed appeals. Fought deportations. Checked that people weren’t put in danger.”

  “I saw your passport. Geneva?”

  “Helsinki, London, then Geneva. Two years.”

  “You have any Swiss bank accounts?”

  Xavier said, “Gary.”

  Zelinski took out another piece of gum, added it to the wad already in his mouth, and started the video again.

  “What did the gunmen want?” he said.

  Rory felt chilled. “I don’t know.”

  “Did they storm the courtroom to kidnap the defendants?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then how come they chose four other people to go with them?”

  Rory’s lips parted. It stopped her dead. “I have no idea.”

  “You said they had an outside agenda. So you think they were coordinating with somebody outside the courtroom?”