by Lisa Gardner
Entering the penthouse suite, Bobby's first thought was that the Gagnons knew how to make an impression. The space boasted Italian marble floors, expensive antiques, and a vast bank of windows draped in enough silk to exhaust a worm farm. The high-end hotel suite provided the perfect backdrop for its high-end occupants.
Maryanne Gagnon appeared to be in her mid-sixties, trim but slightly stoop-shouldered, with tight-set platinum blonde hair that was now more platinum than blonde. She wore a triple strand of knuckle-sized pearls around her neck and a rock the size of a golf ball on her finger. Sitting in some dainty French provincial chair in a cream-colored silk pantsuit, she nearly blended in with the draperies behind her.
In contrast, Judge Gagnon dominated the space. He stood slightly behind his wife's right shoulder, tall, in a single-breasted black suit that probably cost more than Bobby made in a month. His hair had turned the color of slate with age, but his eyes remained bright, his jaw square, and his mouth hard. You could picture this man ruling a courthouse. You could imagine this man ruling the country.
Bobby had a flash of insight: Weak-willed Jimmy Gagnon had most likely taken after his mother, not his father.
“You don't look that big,” Maryanne Gagnon spoke up first, surprising all of them. She turned her head to look up at her husband, and Bobby saw her hands trembling on her lap. “Didn't you think he'd be somehow . . . bigger?” she asked the judge.
James squeezed his wife's shoulder and there was something about that quiet display of support that unnerved Bobby more than the clothes, the room, the perfectly posed sitting. He studied the marble floor, the zigzag patterns of gray and rose veins.
“Would you like something to drink?” James offered from across the room. “Maybe a cup of coffee?”
“No.”
“Anything to eat?”
“I don't plan on staying that long.”
James seemed to accept that. He gestured to a nearby sofa. “Please have a seat.”
Bobby didn't really want to do that either, but he crossed to the cream-colored sofa, sitting gingerly on the edge and fisting his hands on his lap. In contrast to the Gagnons' perfectly groomed appearance, he wore old jeans, a dark blue turtleneck, and an old gray sweatshirt. He'd crawled from his bed in the middle of the night to view a crime scene, not face grieving parents. Which, of course, the Gagnons had known when they'd sent Harris to pick him up.
“Harris tells us you've met with Catherine.” James again. Bobby had a feeling it was his show. Maryanne wasn't even looking at Bobby anymore. Bobby realized after another moment that the woman was crying soundlessly. Her face, carefully angled away, was covered in a glaze of tears.
“Officer Dodge?”
“I've met Catherine,” Bobby heard himself say. His gaze was still on Maryanne. He wanted to say something. I'm sorry. He didn't suffer. Hey, at least you still have your grandson. . . .
Bobby'd been a fool to come here. He saw that now. James Gagnon had run a sucker play, and Bobby had walked right into it.
“Did you know my daughter-in-law before the shooting?” James was prodding.
Bobby forced his gaze back to the older man. Seemed like everyone was asking that question these days. Firmly, he said, “No.”
“You're sure?”
“I keep track of the people I meet.”
James merely arched a brow. “What did you see that night? The night Jimmy died?”
Bobby's gaze flickered to Maryanne, then back to her husband. “If we're going to talk about this, I don't think she should be in the room.”
“Maryanne?” James said softly to his wife, and she once more looked up at him. Seconds before, she'd been crying. Now Maryanne seemed to draw herself up, to find a reserve of strength. She took her husband's hand. They turned toward Bobby as a united front.
“I would like to know,” Maryanne drawled softly. “He's my son. I was there for his birth. I should know of his death.”
She was brilliant, Bobby thought. In four sentences or less, she had cut out his heart.
“I was called out to a domestic barricade situation,” he said as evenly as he could. “A woman had called nine-one-one saying her husband had a gun, and the sound of gunshots had been reported by the neighbors. Upon taking up position across the street, I spied the subject—”
“Jimmy,” the judge corrected.
“The subject,” Bobby held his ground, “pacing the floor of the master bedroom in an agitated manner. After a moment, I determined that he was armed with a nine-millimeter handgun.”
“Loaded?” James again.
“I could not make that determination, but previous reports of shots fired would seem to indicate the gun was loaded.”
“Safety on or off?”
“I could not make that determination, but again previous reports of shots fired would seem to indicate the manual safety was off.”
“But he could've put the safety on.”
“Possible.”
“He could have never fired the shots at all. You didn't witness him firing his weapon, did you?”
“No.”
“You didn't witness him loading the gun?”
“No.”
“I see,” the judge said, and for the first time, Bobby saw. This was the preliminary, just a brief taste of what would happen to him when things went to trial. How the good judge was prepared to show that he, Robert G. Dodge, had committed murder on Thursday, November 11, 2004, when he shot the poor, unsuspecting victim, beloved son James Gagnon, Jr.
It would be a war of words, and the judge had all the big ones on his side.
“So what exactly did you see?” the judge was asking now.
“After a brief interval—”
“How long? One minute, five minutes? Half an hour?”
“After approximately seven minutes, I saw a female subject—”
“Catherine.”
“—and a child come into view. The woman was holding the child, a young boy. Then the female subject and the male subject,” Bobby said emphatically, “proceeded to argue.”
“About what?”
“I had no audio of the scene.”
“So you have no idea what they said to one another? Perhaps Catherine was threatening Jimmy.”
“With what?”
The judge changed his tack. “Or she was verbally abusing him.”
Bobby shrugged.
“Did she know you were there?” the judge pushed.
“I don't know.”
“There were spotlights, an ambulance arriving at the scene, police cruisers coming and going. Isn't it likely that she noticed this level of activity?”
“She was up on the fourth floor, above street level. When I first arrived, it appeared that she and the child were hunkered down behind the bed. I'm not sure what it's realistic to assume she knew and didn't know.”
“But you said she placed a call to nine-one-one herself.”
“That's what I was told.”
“So therefore, she expected some sort of response.”
“Response in the past has been two uniformed officers knocking at her front door.”
“I know, Officer Dodge. That's why I find it so interesting that this time, she made certain to mention that Jimmy had a gun. A weapon made it an automatic SWAT call, didn't it?”
“But he did have a gun. I saw it myself.”
“Did you? Are you sure it was a real gun? Couldn't it have been a model, or maybe one of Nathan's toys? Why, it could've been one of those fancy cigar lighters in the shape of a revolver.”
“Sir, I've viewed over a hundred pistols of various makes and models in the past ten years. I know a real gun when I see it. And it was a genuine Beretta 9000s that the techs recovered from the scene.”
The judge scowled, obviously not liking this answer, but was swift to regroup. “Officer Dodge, did my son actually pull the trigger Thursday night?”
“No, sir. I shot him first.”
Maryanne moaned and sa
nk deeper into her chair. In contrast, James nearly grinned. He started pacing, his footsteps ringing against the marble floor, while his finger waggled in the air.
“In truth, you don't really know much about what was going on in that room Thursday night, do you, Officer Dodge? You don't know if Jimmy had a loaded gun. You don't know if he had the safety on or off. Why, for all you know, Catherine started the argument that night. Catherine may have even threatened to harm Nathan. Why, for all you know, Jimmy went into the family safe and got out that gun only as a last resort—so he could fight for the life of his child. Couldn't that well be the case?”
“You would have to ask Catherine.”
“Ask Catherine? Invite my daughter-in-law to lie? How many cases are you called out to a year, Officer Dodge?”
“I don't know. Maybe twenty.”
“Ever fire your weapon before?”
“No.”
“And the average length of engagement for those call-outs?”
“Three hours.”
“I see. So on average, you're deployed twenty times a year for three hours each episode, and you've managed in all that time to never fire your weapon. On Thursday night, however, you showed up and shot my son in less than fifteen minutes. What made Thursday night so different? What made you so convinced that you had no choice but to kill my son?”
“He was going to pull the trigger.”
“How did you know, Officer Dodge?”
“Because I saw it on his face! He was going to shoot his wife!”
“His face, Officer Dodge? Did you really see it on his face, or were you thinking of someone else's?”
In Bobby's heightened state of agitation, it took him a moment to get it. When he finally did, the world abruptly stopped for him. He suffered a little out-of-body experience, where he suddenly drifted back and became aware of the whole sordid scene. Himself, sitting on the edge of the silk-covered sofa, half leaning forward, his hands fisted on his knees. Maryanne, slumped deep into a cream-colored chair, lost in her grief. And Judge Gagnon, finger still punctuating the air with a prosecutorial flourish, a triumphant gleam in his eyes.
Harris, Bobby thought abruptly. Where the hell was Harris?
He turned and found the man lounging in a dark wooden chair in the foyer. Harris delivered a two-fingered salute: he didn't even bother to hide his smugness. Of course he'd dug up the information. That's how this game worked. The Gagnons paid, Harris dug, and the Gagnons got whatever they wanted.
For the first time, Bobby began to truly understand how helpless Catherine Gagnon must have felt.
“If there's a trial, it's going to come out,” Judge Gagnon was saying now. “This kind of thing always does.”
“What do you want?”
“She's the reason Jimmy is dead,” James said. There was no need to define she. “Acknowledge it. She cajoled you into firing.”
“I'll say no such thing.”
“Fine then. Revisionist history. You showed up, you heard my son and his wife arguing, but it was obvious she started it. She was threatening Jimmy. Better yet, she was finally admitting what she was doing to Nathan. Jimmy simply couldn't take it anymore.”
“No one in their right mind will believe I heard all that while sitting in another house fifty yards away.”
“Let me worry about that. She murdered my son, Officer Dodge. As good as if she pulled the trigger herself. There is no way I'm going to stand by and let that woman harm my grandson too. Help me, and I'll let your little lawsuit slide. Resist, and I'll sue you until you're a broken old man with no career, no home, no dignity, no self. Consult any lawyer. I can do it. All it takes is money and time.” James spread his hands. “Frankly, I have plenty of both.”
Bobby rose off the sofa. “We're through here.”
“You have until tomorrow. Just say the word and the lawsuit is gone and Harris's little research project is ‘forgotten.' After five p.m., however, you'll find I'm no longer as forgiving.”
Bobby headed for the door. He'd just gotten his hand on the brass knob when Maryanne's soft voice stopped him.
“He was a good boy.”
Bobby took a deep breath. He turned around, asking as gently as he could, “Ma'am?”
“My son. He was a little wild sometimes. But he was good, too. When he was seven, one of his friends was diagnosed with leukemia. That year for his birthday, Jimmy had a big party. Instead of asking for presents, he asked people to bring money for the American Cancer Society. He even volunteered at the suicide hotline while in college.”
“I'm sorry for your loss.”
“Every Mother's Day, he'd bring me a single red rose. Not a hothouse rose, but a real rose, one that smelled like the gardens of my youth. Jimmy knew how much I loved that scent. He understood that, even now, I sometimes miss Atlanta.” Maryanne's gaze went to him, and there was a pain in her eyes that went on without end. “When it's Mother's Day,” Maryanne murmured, “what am I going to do? Tell me, Officer, who will bring my rose?”
Bobby couldn't help her. He walked out the door just as her grief finally broke and her sobs began in earnest. James's arms were already going around his wife and Bobby could hear the man as the door shut behind him: “Shhhh. It's all right, Maryanne. Soon we'll have Nathan. Just think of Nathan. Shhhhh. . . .”
W HEN CATHERINE GOT up, Prudence was already gone for the day. Sundays were the nanny's day off and Prudence didn't like to waste a minute. Catherine thought it was just as well. The sun was out, an almost unbearably bright blue sky yawning above, looking the way only a New England sky could look during the crisp days of November. Catherine went from room to room, turning on lights anyway. She thought she might be going a little mad.
Had she slept last night? She couldn't be sure. Sometimes she dreamed, so that must have involved sleep. She'd seen Nathan, the day he was born. She'd been pushing for three hours. Almost there, almost there, the doctor kept telling her. She'd stopped screaming two hours ago, and now only panted heavily, like a barn animal in distress. The doctors lied, Jimmy lied. She was dying and this baby was tearing her in two. Another contraction. Push, screamed the doctor. Push, screamed Jimmy. She sank her teeth in her lower lip and bore down desperately.
Nathan came out so fast, he overshot the doctor's waiting hands and landed on the sheet-covered floor. The doctor cheered. Jimmy cheered. She merely groaned. Then they put little Nathan on her chest. He was blue, tiny, all covered in muck.
She didn't know what she was supposed to think. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel. But then Nathan moved, his tiny little lips rooting for her breast, and she found herself unexpectedly blubbering away like an idiot. She cried, huge fat tears, the only genuine tears she had shed since her childhood. She cried for Nathan, for this beautiful new life that had somehow come from her own barren soul. She cried for this miracle she had never believed could happen to her. And she cried because her husband was holding her close, her baby was snuggling against her, and for a fraction of an instant, she did not feel alone.
She'd dreamed of her mother. Catherine saw her standing in the doorway of her childhood bedroom. Catherine lay in her narrow bed, her eyes desperately alert. She had to stay awake, because if she slept, the darkness would come, and in the darkness would be him. Forcing her head into his lap. The smell, the smell, the smell. Grunting as he rammed himself into her, a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. The pain, the pain, the pain. Or it would be worse. It would be the days and weeks later, when he didn't even have to force her anymore. When she simply did whatever he wanted, because resistance was futile, because the indignities no longer mattered, because the little girl who'd been thrown into this hellhole didn't exist anymore. Now only her body remained, a dried-up shell going through the motions and feeling only gratitude that he returned to her at all.
Someday he wouldn't. She understood that. Someday, he would tire of her, simply walk away, and she would die down here. In the dark, alone.
There were n
ot enough lights in the house. Three, four, maybe it was five in the morning, Catherine rounded up all the candles. Flashlights were good. The light in the oven. The night-light for the water dispenser in the refrigerator door. The undercabinet lights. The inside-the-cabinet lights. The fires in the two gas fireplaces. She went from room to room, turning them on. She needed light, she had to have light.
She'd dreamed of Jimmy. Smiling Jimmy, happy Jimmy. Hey, what's a guy gotta do to get a little spritz? Angry Jimmy, drinking Jimmy, cold Jimmy. You're sure she won't get anything? I don't want her touching one red cent.
She'd dreamed of Jimmy so much, she'd bolted out of bed at six a.m. and run to the bathroom to throw up.
Boo, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. Boo.
Oh please God, let Jimmy be finally dead.
Now it was nearly nine. Visiting hours at the hospital. Catherine had already called four times. Nathan was awake. She could see him.
Fuck that. She didn't trust the hospital. It didn't offer enough security. She was bringing her son home.
Catherine had her coat, had her keys. One last check of the house. That's right, the candles. She passed through the rooms, blowing out the burning wicks one by one. She was just coming downstairs again when she remembered the Taser. She'd had one in the safe. She returned upstairs to the master bedroom, preparing to arm herself for a war against an enemy that had no name.
Who would write Boo! on her rearview mirror? Who would do such a thing?
She didn't like to think about it too much. There were answers out there, and most of them terrified her.
The safe was wide open, the way the police had left it. She gazed inside. The Taser was gone. Rat bastards. They'd probably inventoried it for evidence. Like the Taser was really going to protect her from Jimmy's gun.
She returned downstairs, the anger reinvigorating her and driving her toward the front door. To the hospital, to Nathan. She'd just put her hand on the knob when, from the other side, someone knocked. Catherine recoiled, hand to her chest as if struck. The knocking came again.
