The Jury Master

by Robert Dugoni

  She felt another chill run through her body.

  “Can you get a message to him?”

  “I can try.”

  “I suggest you do. Tell him he needs to turn himself in.”

  “But you believe him,” she said. “You said he’s telling the truth.”

  “About everything? I don’t know. No, it doesn’t appear he’s a suspect in Ms. Demanjuk’s death, but unfortunately he doesn’t know that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s on the run, and according to witnesses, he’s walking around with a loaded gun.”

  “He’s not dangerous, Detective.”

  “Ordinarily I’d likely agree with you, Ms. Scoccolo, but this isn’t ordinary. Desperate men can do desperate things. Sloane was desperate enough to get out of that hospital room, which I assume had something to do with the guy he popped in the elevator, though you said he was running before that guy made an appearance. That tells me Sloane knew the guy was coming or had some other burning reason to feel threatened. How and why are a couple questions I’d like to ask him at the moment, along with a few dozen others, but that’s not my immediate concern at this time.”

  “What is?”

  “The guy who came to the hospital. He’s still out there, and I don’t want to see a bad situation escalate.”

  38

  METAL SHELVING UNITS filled with Melda’s gardening tools and miscellaneous building supplies cluttered the cramped storage closet, which was no larger than a walk-in closet. Sloane sat on a five-gallon bucket of wood stain left over from the last application to the shingles. Overhead a bare lightbulb fixture he’d nailed to a wood joist and crudely wired emitted a low-wattage glow. He awoke feeling the lingering effects of the drugs in his system, fatigued and groggy, but at least he was no longer dizzy or racked by chills. He had no idea how much time had passed.

  He’d directed the cabdriver to drop him in the vacant lot, watched the building to be sure there was nothing out of the ordinary, then walked along the cliff’s edge to the back of the building and the storage closet off the corridor. There he collapsed. As the adrenaline from his altercation in the hospital elevator subsided he began to feel more and more light-headed and nauseated. He needed a place to sit down and get his bearings—without his keys he would have to climb the balconies to get into his apartment. The last thing he remembered was resting his head against the concrete cinder-block wall to catch his breath.

  He stood, pulled the string hanging from the bulb to turn off the light, and slowly pushed open the door into darkness. However long he’d slept, it was now night. He heard the crickets in the field and the muted crashing of the ocean. A cool breeze blew down the corridor. Ambient light from the moon filtered down the hallway. The fog had not rolled in. He let his eyes adjust before stepping out and making his way to the carport, staying below the roof of a big SUV to look through its windows into the gravel lot. The lights atop a police cruiser parked near the laurel hedge were silhouetted in the shadows.

  This was not going to be easy.

  He crept back to the storage closet, grabbed the five-gallon bucket of wood stain, and carried it to the back of the building. Standing on the bucket, he could reach the wrought-iron railing of Melda’s deck. He pulled himself up, slipped his legs over the railing onto Melda’s deck, then stood on her railing and reached up to grip the edge of the deck to his apartment and repeated the process. He slid open the glass door to his bedroom, listened for a moment to make sure he was alone, and stepped in, trying not to think about Melda or what had happened there. He exchanged the hospital scrubs for a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a plain gray sweatshirt, then retrieved the roll of duct tape from where he’d left it after bandaging the seat cushion. His ankle was black-and-blue, but he wasn’t going to have any time soon to treat it. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he pulled on an athletic sock, wrapped the ankle in duct tape to give it support, and swallowed the anticipated pain as he forced his foot into a hiking boot, lacing it tight. He stood and tested the ankle. Sore, but the tape and boot gave it enough support so that he could walk without a perceptible limp or too much pain.

  Sloane picked up the gun from the bed. He knew enough from his stint in the marines to know it was a Ruger MK2, a .22-caliber automatic. What the hell was going on? He felt as if he’d been suddenly thrust into a virtual-reality game, with forces he could not see or hear controlling and manipulating him. He stood, shaking off the thought, and chided himself to think linearly. Then he shoved the pistol in a gym bag from his closet and stuffed the bag with random clothes from his dresser and toiletries from the bathroom. Back in the bedroom, he knelt in the closet, tossed aside shoes and dirty clothes, and pulled back the carpet to reveal the small floor safe he had installed when he purchased the building. He used it as fireproof storage for important papers and rent payments—his older tenants still paid in cash. He pulled open the safe and counted $2,420.

  He wanted to avoid using his credit cards or ATM as long as possible. He grabbed the Rolex from the nightstand, figuring he could pawn it. As he slipped the watch onto his wrist, he noticed a red number “1” flashing on the answering machine beside his bed. Feeling a strange compulsion, he pressed the button. The beep sounded like a car alarm. Sloane quickly lowered the volume.

  “David? It’s Tina.” She sounded anxious. “If you get this message, please call me. I spoke to Detective Gordon. He said he talked to one of your tenants. You were right. The man who came to the hospital was at your building posing as a telephone repairman, and your tenant directed him to Melda. Detective Gordon checked. The telephone company has no record of a service call. The police also found a bullet in the siding of your building, David. Gordon wanted me to tell you that the man, whoever he is, is still out there . . .” Her voice paused. “I hope you get this message, David.”

  He felt a sense of relief. At the very least he had not been hallucinating everything that was happening to him. He was about to shut off the machine when, as if struck by an afterthought, Tina continued.

  “I’m going to get your briefcase from the office tonight. Call me at home.”

  As the machine clicked off, the foreboding feeling washed over him again like a sudden rogue wave. His briefcase. He’d forgotten that he asked her to get it, and now realized it had been a horrible mistake. Sloane’s office was the next logical choice to look for the package, and Sloane knew, as certainly as he had known that the man would come for him in the hospital, that he would go there. At that same moment another domino fell—something his mind had continued to work on subconsciously but had been unable to solve. If the man was skilled at picking locks, why bother to come as a telephone repairman, except perhaps to avoid attention?

  Sloane hurried through the living room to the kitchen, pulled the telephone from its cradle on the counter, and snapped off the back. The tiny microphone, no larger than a watch battery, was wedged behind the battery pack.

  He looked at his Rolex. He was at least thirty minutes away.

  JACK CONNALLY LOOKED up at the sound of heels on the marble floor and folded the corner of the page in his novel to mark his spot. He pressed his palms flat on the counter, pushed back his chair, and stood. Tina smiled as she approached, one hand rummaging through her purse in search of her computerized access card to the building. With the Emily Scott episode and a less recent rampage by a client armed with military weaponry through his attorney’s offices, most buildings had put in security systems that shut off the elevators in the lobby without computerized access, and had doors installed on each floor that locked the suite of offices from the exterior hallway. A computerized card was needed to gain after-hours access through both.

  “Tina, what’s a pretty young girl like you doing working this late on a weekend?” said Connally, who was a recent grandfather and old enough to be her father.

  “Oh, you know, Jack, another trial.”

  “Well, I hope you won’t be here too late again.”

&nbs
p; “Not tonight,” she said, continuing to dig through her purse. “Just need to pick up some things.”

  “You should be out enjoying yourself on a Saturday night. You work too hard. You sure put in the hours.”

  “Have to pay the bills, Jack.” She found her card. “Besides,” she said, giving him a wink as she ran the card over the electronic sensor, “all the good guys like you are taken.”

  Connally smiled like an embarrassed schoolboy. The computer registered her checking into the building at 9:22 p.m.

  “Nineteen is unlocked.” Connally picked up his novel. “Janitor just went up.”

  Tina stepped into a waiting elevator, leaning back against the wall as the doors closed, and watched the floor numbers tick off as the car ascended. She had left messages for David at his home, office, and cell phone and hoped he’d get at least one of them. The elevator slowed and came to a stop, the doors separating. She stepped off, startled, and quickly jumped back, her hand to her chest.

  “Oh, my God! You scared me.”

  The janitor stood in the lobby, cleaning an ashtray and looking nonplussed. “Sorry,” he said. He pulled the garbage can to the side to allow her to pass.

  Tina punched in the access code on the keypad mounted to the wall, just below the gold-embossed sign indicating “The Law Offices of Foster & Bane,” and pulled open the door. She stepped into the darkened reception area, lit by a single overhead security light and the green glow of an exit sign above the double doors, and walked in sporadic light down the hall to David’s office. She found his briefcase exactly where he had left it, picked it up, noticed the corner of a burnt-orange envelope protruding from the pocket, and wondered what it could possibly be.

  A telephone rang down the hallway. She wondered who else would be working on a Saturday night. No wonder so many were divorced. She walked back down the hall and was about to turn the corner back to the reception area when she noticed the red light on her telephone blinking, indicating that she had a message. Given that she had worked until nearly ten Friday night, the message was unlikely to be business related. She could think of only two people who might know she was at the office late on a Saturday night: her mother . . . and David. She stepped into the cubicle and punched in the number for the systemwide voice mail, then her password. The computerized voice advised that she had two messages. The first message had been sent roughly twenty minutes earlier.

  “Tina? Tina, are you there?”

  She felt a rush of adrenaline at the sound of his voice, but the message ended abruptly. She quickly pressed “pound” to retrieve the second message, delivered four minutes after the first.

  “Tina. It’s David. I just spoke to your mother. Are you there?” He swore as if to himself. “Damn it. Tina, I got your message.”

  She could tell from the static that he was calling from his cell phone. He sounded out of breath, as if he was running.

  “Forget about my briefcase. Do not get my briefcase. Leave it where it is. If you are there and you get this, just leave it and get out of the building. Damn.”

  His words hit her like a punch to the gut. She held the phone a moment, suddenly uncertain what to do, hung up, and quickly dialed the number from memory. It rang once before he answered.

  “David.”

  “Tina, where are you?”

  “I’m at the office—”

  “Get out! Do you understand me? Get out as quickly as you can.”

  “What—” She heard the wheels of the janitor’s cart on the marble floor in the lobby. Smoking was not allowed in the building. There was no reason for the janitor to be cleaning an ashtray by the elevator.

  “Tina? Tina!”

  She thought of Melda Demanjuk. Then she thought of Emily Scott.

  HE MOVED QUICKLY through the carport, using the cars for cover and watching the parking lot through the windows. His Jeep was out of the question; the police were sitting on it. Melda’s 1969 Barracuda was his only other option; Sloane kept a spare key for her. If he could get to it and get the engine to start, he had a chance. Melda had rarely driven after her husband died, and the car sat unused for long periods.

  He had contemplated simply rushing out of his apartment to the two officers waiting in front of his building, but dismissed the idea. They were looking for an escapee from a psychiatric department who was armed and presumed dangerous. Under those circumstances, it was unlikely they’d believe Sloane’s premonition that a woman in a downtown San Francisco high-rise was in danger, or even give him the time to explain it. He’d tried to reach the detective, Frank Gordon, at the Ingleside station, but he had not answered and the exchange wasn’t about to give Sloane Gordon’s home telephone number. They said they’d do their best to get him a message, but he couldn’t count on the detective getting to the building before him.

  He slid between the wall and the car and popped the lock. The driver’s-side door groaned like a steamer trunk being opened after years sitting unused in an attic. He squeezed in, pushing back the driver’s seat while watching the rearview and side mirrors, but did not see the officers. The car had the musty smell of an old person’s closet, poorly camouflaged by a pine-scented air freshener that had long since lost its usefulness. The car was spotless—not a crack in the cherry-red seats or dashboard. Sloane hoped the engine was in as good shape. He was about to find out. He inserted the key, crossed his fingers, and turned the ignition. The engine strained, a hyena laughing. He played with the pedal, trying to coax the engine to kick over, but sensed the power in the battery quickly fading and turned it off. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, he forced himself to count to ten. Then he kicked the gas pedal once to set the automatic choke and turned the key again. This time the engine whined and sputtered hopeful chokes of exhaust. He pushed it, working the pedal, urging it.

  “Come on. Come on, kick over.”

  The car sputtered and spit like a drowned person coming back to life.

  Then it died.

  “Damn.” He turned off the key, waiting, searching the parking lot in the mirrors, fighting the urge to rush, hoping there was enough juice left in the battery. He counted again but this time only reached five before he turned the key. The engine gave a quick burst of life and backfired—a shotgun blast that echoed loudly beneath the carport. Sloane heard voices, and the two officers appeared in the rearview mirror. All they had to do was follow the plume of smoke from the Barracuda’s exhaust pipe.

  Sloane closed his eyes. “Okay, Melda, if you’re up there and you’re still taking care of me, kick this son of a gun over.”

  He pumped the accelerator once, turned the key. The engine strained, sputtered, fired again. He played with the pedal, revving it, fighting to keep it from dying. A carbon-gray cloud obscured the view out the back window. He kept the rpm high, dropped the shifter into reverse, took his foot off the brake, and hoped the two officers standing somewhere in the smoke got the hell out of the way.

  39

  PETER HO’S NAVY-BLUE Chevy Blazer, with JEFFERSON COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER stenciled in white on the door panel, sat parked in the street at the brick walkway to Tom Molia’s colonial-style house. Located at the end of a cul-de-sac, the pale yellow house had blue shutters framing dormer windows. Roses and azaleas bloomed in the garden, and the lawn was mostly green but for patches of brown where the portable sprinkler didn’t reach. Molia stopped the Chevy to consider his suburban neighborhood of green lawns, mature trees, and three-bedroom houses aglow beneath perfectly linear streetlamps and an assortment of porch lights. It was the type of house, in the type of neighborhood, that Bert Cooperman had always talked about owning.

  Not anymore.

  Molia had personally delivered the news to Cooperman’s family. He had knocked on doors before, but nothing compared to this. Debbie Cooperman broke down the moment she saw him. She knew. The family knew. They were all there. Waiting. Hoping against hope. Cooperman’s infant son cried in his mother’s arms. He had the right.

  J. Rayburn
Franklin reasoned that the accident explained why Cooperman had just disappeared, why the young officer hadn’t radioed when he arrived at the site, why the park police did not find him waiting when they arrived. Coop had never made it. His car had skidded around the turn and plunged down the ravine into the Shenandoah. It was a logical explanation.

  Except that Tom Molia wasn’t buying it. Not any of it.

  Bert Cooperman didn’t misjudge a turn he had made hundreds of times in his life. He didn’t miscalculate his speed because of fatigue. Somebody wanted it to look that way. Somebody wanted it to look like an accident, as if a tired young officer in a rush to get to where he was going had made a fatal error in judgment. They had done a pretty good job, too. They covered the physical evidence all the way to erasing the cruiser’s tire tread at the bluff. They weren’t run-of-the-mill, amateur killers. They were good. Real good.

  But they didn’t know Bert Cooperman the way Tom Molia did.

  They didn’t know that Coop was a country boy who had hunted the West Virginia mountains and fished its streams since he was old enough to sit on his father’s lap and see over the top of the steering wheel. They didn’t know what it was like to be a young police officer at the end of a shift, rolling to your first dead body. Cooperman would not have been tired. He would not have felt fatigued. He would have been wide-awake.

  Molia parked in the street and pushed open the car door, trudging up the walkway and stopping to pick up his son’s bike. He leaned the handlebars against the porch railing, but it pitched to the side and fell. He left it. He pulled open the screen door to the whir of an oscillating fan—they didn’t like to use the air-conditioning at night because it was expensive and made the air stale. Peter Ho sat on the couch next to Maggie. She wore shorts and his Charles Town Police Department softball T-shirt and had pulled back her red hair into a ponytail. She had never looked more beautiful. His daughter, Beth, lay on the oval throw rug, trying to read a book while T.J., still in his Little League uniform, pressed the end of Ho’s stethoscope against her head. She swatted at him like a bothersome fly, which only encouraged him.