The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  “Rape and kill my mother, that’s what.”

  She clutched her hands together against her stomach. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about my father, goddamn it! My father!” Again he’d come forward, lifted the gun. He held it on her for five seconds, ten. Again he collapsed back. “My father,” he said, his voice now going to dead calm.

  “What about him? I don’t know about your father.”

  “Lucas Welding. His name was Lucas Welding.”

  “All right,” she said. “Please. Tell me about him.”

  Jason Brandt got to the landing and thought he heard voices upstairs. He stopped and listened, almost turned around and went back down, but then decided since he’d come this far, he’d just say he was in the neighborhood and thought he’d stop by and see if she wanted to go out for a drink, or maybe meet him later at the Balboa. Surely, that was harmless enough. Or if whoever was with her turned out to be just a friend or a neighbor, she’d invite him in, they’d finish their conversation, then she’d tell the friend good-bye. After that, the two of them could let the night take them where it would.

  When he got to the door, he paused a moment and listened. Yes, two voices, one male and one female. When he knocked—three quick raps—the voices stopped abruptly within. He waited through a lengthening silence, perplexity growing on this face. Then all at once the truth of what he must have been hearing dawned on him.

  He blinked a few times, nodded, bit at his lower lip. He wasn’t aware of it, but his shoulders fell.

  What a fool he was.

  He turned back toward the steps.

  Then heard her voice through the door behind him. “Who is it?”

  For a second, he considered not answering, getting to the stairs and out of sight before he brought any more embarrassment to himself. But she had asked him to believe her, believe in the kind of person she was. At least, he thought, he owed her that. To give her a chance to be straight with him. “Amy. It’s me, Jason.”

  “Jason.” He thought he heard a kind of relief in her voice, but it disappeared with her next words. “This isn’t a good time. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I’m fine. But really, it’s not a good time.”

  “Okay, but if I could just—”

  “Jason, go away! Leave me the fuck alone, all right! Get out of here! Now! Or you’re in trouble! I mean it!”

  “Good,” he said. “That was all right. Nobody stays around after that.”

  “No. He’s a jerk,” she said, turning around. “Well, you know that. But please, could I go to the bathroom?”

  Brandt stood below, in the gathering dusk, looking up at her window. Her outburst against him had punched him in the gut. Even now, frozen in his spot, leaning against the wall of a building across the street, he held his hand there.

  He couldn’t seem to make himself move. He stared up at the window, saw no shadows, no sign of movement.

  Maybe they were lying together in her bed?

  That thought came like another kick to his stomach, but suddenly, all at once, he couldn’t accept it. That wasn’t what was happening up there. And his certainty wasn’t a matter of rational thought. It was on another level, a bone-deep conviction. She was up there with somebody, yes, but even if she was being romantic with another man, there was no way she would have gone off on him that way. Beyond the connection he felt that they’d established, that wasn’t who she was. She wouldn’t have treated him like that, not now.

  It made no sense.

  And then, suddenly, her words came back at him. “You’re in trouble.”That private, powerful, ambiguous code word between them, and now Amy had screamed it at him through her locked door. “You’re in trouble.” A little out of place, even in that context. Off-key.

  A warning? Or a cry for help?

  Christ, he thought. What an idiot. She’s just dumping me. Let it go.

  But he was already crossing the street, going back up.

  “Boscacci was so sure,” he said. “All the jurors were so sure. They polled them one by one afterward, you know. Every one of them.”

  He’d followed her into the bathroom, stood in the doorway while she’d gone, walked her back to her chair and now was finishing his story.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah? Well, here’s something else you don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like having your home taken away from you when you’re seven years old. You don’t know what it’s like when your mom’s murdered and they blame your father for it and then try him and take him away and put you in foster care. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “No, I don’t,” Wu said. “I’m so sorry.” And she was, but mostly she was afraid that she was going to die, and thought maybe she could get him to spare her. “It must have been terrible for you.”

  “Terrible doesn’t begin to cover it. And taking away my own name, talking me into taking my mom’s maiden name. I didn’t want to have people knowing I’m the son of that murderer, did I? Wouldn’t I be happier with a different name? Don’t you understand—they took away my life!”

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean to do that. I mean, Boscacci and the jury . . .”

  “I hope they all rot in hell.” He suddenly jerked and was back to the present. “Thirteen of them, every one of them so certain, and every one of them so completely dead wrong.” He found something to laugh at. “And now more than half of them just completely dead.”

  She felt a wave of chill break over her. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? I mean I killed them. You haven’t figured that out yet? All of them still living around here, anyway, in beautiful San Francisco and vicinity.”

  When it came to her, the blood ran from her face. “You’re the Executioner.”

  “Good,” he said. “Why do you think I got onto you in the first place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t, really? All right, then, I’ll tell you. Because there you were, Miss Professional Lawyer who doesn’t believe in seeing people you work with. There you were, Andrew’s defense lawyer, the only person in the lousy system who’s supposed to be working for him, and you’re talking about pleading him guilty and sending him away for eight years. And I’m watching you in court, and listening to what you’re telling him, and I see it’s going on and on, and will always go on with you, since you’re just like them all, like all of them have always been.”

  He raised the gun and she thought he might shoot her now, but he lowered the weapon then, swallowed, went on. “And it was so funny to me, you see? Because I knew he didn’t do it. And you know why I knew that? Because I did.”

  “You killed Mooney?”

  He nodded. “And his whining little girlfriend. And while we’re at it, I should maybe call your partner after I’ve gone and thank him for letting me know how close they were to finding me this morning. I wasn’t planning to do more of my work today until I heard what he said in court and realized I really had to hurry. Though I would have been gone anyway soon enough.”

  “Where to?” she asked.

  He gave her a ghastly, empty smile. “On the road. But first,” he said, “there’s you.”

  “Please,” she said, “please don’t. Put the gun down.”

  “Don’t make me use it then. I don’t like sitting with a corpse. They stink. So you stay sitting there and shut up.”

  “All right, I will,” she said. “I won’t move. What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I want it to get dark.” Again, that empty-eyed smile. “It’s so much easier to walk away when it’s dark.”

  Brandt crept away from Amy’s door and descended from the fourth down to the second landing, which he figured was the closest spot where he couldn’t be heard from above. He took out his cellphone and turned it on and couldn’t get a signal in the stairwell.r />
  His breath coming in ragged gasps, he broke out of the building onto the sidewalk, got his signal and punched in the number for police dispatch, which, like all assistant DAs, he knew by heart. He didn’t want nine one one, somebody getting it wrong and showing up with lights and sirens. “This is Jason Brandt. Patch me through to Deputy Chief Glitsky, please, at the Hall of Justice. Yes, it’s an emergency. Tell him I’ve found the Executioner.”

  34

  The sun kissed the tops of the cypresses, next the roofs of some of the low buildings, and then suddenly full dusk had fallen. There were no shadows anymore, no reflection of the setting sun in the windows of Amy’s place across the street. The sky in the east had gone from turquoise to a deep indigo. Behind Brandt, at the western horizon, a garish orange sunset was fading to a purplish yellow bruise.

  But no Glitsky.

  Four patrol cars had arrived, silently, then three more. Then Brandt had lost count. All of the police cars had parked invisibly somewhere in the surrounding streets and dispatched their occupants out to encircle Amy’s place and evacuate anyone inside who lived on the floors below her, and even people in the surrounding buildings. Brandt showed his badge to Sergeant Ariola, the initial ranking officer at the scene, and identified himself as the person who’d called the police. But that cut him no slack with Ariola, who shunted Brandt with an escort back behind the police line.

  He could still see Wu’s windows, but now he was around the corner on Cervantes Boulevard. Looking behind him and down the other streets, he realized that the entire block had been cordoned off—squad cars parked perpendicular to the curbs in the middle of the streets, stopping any automobile traffic. Teams of cops were keeping pedestrians out of the area, although now small crowds of the curious had begun to gather at the perimeter.

  Next, bad to worse, the TV news vans were arriving—the very scenario Brandt had tried to avoid by calling Glitsky direct. If the TV happened to be turned on in Amy’s apartment and they broke the story as late-breaking news, there was no telling what would happen inside, but it could not be good. Next, Brandt watched with some admixture of dread and disbelief as the motor home command post of the tactical unit pulled up. He saw Ariola moving toward it and again tried his DA’s badge trick with one of the uniformed cops, who this time let him through with barely a glance. He stood right behind Ariola as he reported the situation to the TAC unit commander, and neither of those men paid him the slightest heed either.

  The whole TAC unit wasn’t here yet—it usually took forty minutes to an hour for all the members to check in—but the sharpshooter had been one of the first to arrive, and the commander sent him up to the roof of the building directly across the street from Amy’s to see what, if anything, he could do. Brandt heard the order, “If you get a clear shot, and he’s got a gun on her, take it.” Then, motioning to the TV vans, he turned to Ariola. “Inform those jackals that if anyone runs a live feed, I’ll hunt them down and kill them and their children.”

  In the crush of events, Brandt’s presence continued to go unnoticed. Ariola went to talk to the newspeople, while the commander ran across the street and disappeared into Amy’s building. Every minute or so, another policemen in a black TAC unit jacket would show up and report to the deputy commander at the door to the motor home. At some point—any normal measure of time had long since become meaningless—Ariola reappeared next to Brandt, and they both watched as the commander came out of the lobby, looked up into the sky and jogged back over to where they stood. He spoke to his deputy. “I don’t see how we can wait much longer.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “The Chief ordered me to wait for him. If we bust in, we could lose her. Although I don’t know what else he’s got in mind.” Again, the commander glanced at the rapidly darkening sky. Shaking his head, he sighed with exasperation, looked up again. “Five minutes,” he said, “and it’s dark. We’ve got to go in.”

  He’d been sitting the whole time, holding the gun with its awkward attachment, the silencer, resting on the arm of the chair. His finger continually, unconsciously, teased the trigger as he flipped one by one—casually, relaxed—through the pages of the various magazines Wu kept next to her reading chair. She became nearly hypnotized with fear, watching it. Once she shifted her weight in her chair at the table and it was as though she’d prodded him with electricity, so quickly did he have the gun raised, all focus and menace. “Don’t move!”

  Then, satisfied that she wouldn’t, he sat back, crossed one leg comfortably over the other and began turning pages again.

  Wu didn’t know what she could do to save herself, and so sat in a numbed state of panic and resignation. She’d already considered what she thought were her only options. In his chair, he was probably close to ten feet away from her, farther than she could leap in a quick rush. The front door was still deadlocked and chained. The bathroom—the only place she might conceivably escape to—was all the way at the back corner of the large, otherwise open room.

  She thought that when the time came, if indeed he gave her any warning at all, she would bolt and try to throw something—the saltshaker, the chair she sat on. But she realized from his demeanor throughout this excruciating wait that he was just as likely to lick his finger, turn a page, check the window (as he’d done a dozen times), decide it was sufficiently dark, lift the gun without a word or warning and shoot her. Then unlock the door and walk downstairs and out into the sheltering night.

  Unable to bear watching his twitching finger any longer, she closed her eyes, trying to find some place of inner peace, but found there was nowhere she could go. This was the end of her life, and all she could feel was the coming void. Opening her eyes again, she watched him flip a page, glance at her as though she were a piece of furniture, look back down at his magazine, turn his head to the window, flip another page.

  The small hole in the barrel of the silencer, the finger dancing over the trigger guard, had so dominated her consciousness that she hadn’t looked at the window herself in what must have been minutes. But now she did and realized that the night had truly come on—she was looking at her own reflection now in the glass, as though in a mirror. There was no more light from outside to dissipate the image.

  He would not wait much longer.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  The sound startled them both. Wu gave a little involuntary yelp and he jumped where he sat, the chair legs giving a little screech on the hardwood floor. At the same time, the magazine slipped and fell out of his lap. After all the silence in the room, the two sounds—the knock and the dropped magazine—seemed to Amy to echo like thunder.

  She shot a startled glance at him. He lifted the gun, his arm outstretched, centered on her heart. The gun never left her. His eyes went to the door, back to her. The initial moment of panic passed. She felt she could see him plotting what he would do. With the inadvertent noises from inside, there was no way to pretend that no one was home.

  Quickly, he pointed the gun at the door, then back to her, and nodded.

  “Who is it?”

  “Amy. It’s me. Diz. We had a meeting?”

  She turned to him. Mouthed, “My boss.”

  Something like a smile curled the corner of his mouth. All the better. He nodded. The message was Let him in. He got to his feet.

  “Just a second,” she said.

  In a few steps, agile as a cat, suddenly he’d come around the table and pressed himself against the wall by the door. He moved the gun up and now held it on her head. One foot from her head.

  Wu read his intentions with crystal clarity. When she opened the door, it would block him from sight until Hardy was inside. And then he would shoot. And then both of them would die. She couldn’t let that happen.

  What was he doing here? They hadn’t planned any meeting.

  She undid the chain, fumbling with it, her hands shaking.

  If she threw the door back quickly, could she disable him? She looked down for an instant, saw that he
’d planted his foot to prevent that. The door could open only enough to let Hardy in, nothing more. And meanwhile he could fire at will.

  If she let him in, Hardy would die, too. She couldn’t be responsible for that. If she was going to die anyway, maybe at least she could warn him first.

  Her thoughts tumbling over one another, she watched as though from a distance as her hands turned the dead bolt, went to the knob, turned it.

  Dropping her hand, resigned now to the gun there at her ear, she heard herself saying, “I don’t feel well. You have to go, Diz.”

  “We need to talk,” he said, “face to face. It’s urgent.”

  Hardy knew she’d undone the chain. He’d heard her throw the dead bolt, watched the doorknob turn and heard the little click. The door was unlocked. He guessed she was stalling for time, but there was no more time.

  He grabbed the knob, turned, lowered his shoulder and exploded into the crack where he’d opened the door, hitting her with a tackle at the waist, taking her down with him.

  Before they’d even hit the floor, the four TAC unit specialists who’d crammed into the landing behind Hardy crashed in through the opening with their guns drawn, splintering the door completely off its hinges. There were another four behind them, and then yet another team, rushing unstoppable as a flash flood into the apartment.

  The force of the door flying back knocked the gun from his grip and somersaulted him back over the table and onto the floor. Crashing against the counter where Wu kept her dishes and cooking supplies, for an instant he lay stunned on the floor amid the splintered wood and broken glass. But in the half-second before anyone could reach him, emitting an animal cry, he made a last desperate scramble and lunge for his weapon.

  But he never made it, as the first pair of TAC unit specialists reached and fell upon him.

  Writhing and screaming, a run-over animal whose back had been broken, he grunted and kicked and gouged and spewed his vile rage until they’d gotten his hands behind his back and cuffed him. Now, facedown in his own blood and spread-eagled with a TAC guy on each leg and another kneeling on his back, he couldn’t move a muscle.