Like most people, Baumgartner seemed to believe her opinion could be bought, or at least heavily influenced. What he didn’t understand was that there was really only one thing that mattered to her: the truth. She couldn’t bear to think of innocent men and women being beaten or bullied or tricked by lies into giving false confessions, then being convicted of crimes without real proof. Never again would she stand by and do nothing in such cases. She hadn’t been able to save her father, but she’d devoted every day of her adult life to understanding how the mind of a murderer worked. She’d pored over case files of sickening crimes, studying the most heinous criminals in history. She’d stayed cloistered long hours with admitted killers, engaging them in conversational chess, trying to discern their true motives. Some days, she’d soak in too much of their evil, and she wouldn’t be able to return home without finding a church and stopping in.
Not that she went to church to pray.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak to God these days, so she’d just sit quietly, listening, and waiting for . . . relief. Inside the chapel, she’d find a place in the sun and let the light, filtered through the beauty of stained glass, rain over her skin and wash away the darkness of the day. Then she’d get up the next morning and go right back to her grisly work—because she knew of no other way to recognize an innocent man than to scour the minds of killers. And the innocent man was the reason she got out of bed in the morning.
But there was no part of her that wanted to see a guilty man set free.
After all, someone had committed the murder her father had been accused of. And that someone was still out there. That someone was most likely still living his life, free to come and go as he pleased. Free to bring his wife flowers—Caitlin was certain he had a family. Free to carry on his charade of decency—she was equally certain he was an upstanding citizen, the last person anyone would suspect. Of course, he might’ve died an easy death by now, a heart attack in his sleep, for example. But she hoped not. That someone had taken her father’s life just as surely as if he’d injected the lethal chemicals into her father’s veins himself. She’d spent a great deal of her earnings on investigators, hoping to solve her father’s case. She needed to find the man who’d killed Gail Falconer alive and expose him to the world for the monster he truly was.
A muscle in her back complained, and she shifted in her chair, looking up into Baumgartner’s eyes.
He frowned, and she realized he was awaiting a response. “I do understand the death penalty’s in play here. That’s why I agreed to come to Phoenix.” A place so filled with painful memories she’d stayed away fifteen years. When she wasn’t traveling for business, she lived in the same town as her mother—Boulder, Colorado. They’d both been desperate to escape this place they’d once called home. “That’s why I sat with your client for six hours over the past three weeks.” Six hours of compulsive rambling about his sick fantasies. As the glint in Kramer’s eyes came back to her, she scratched at her arms. “Don’t. Call me. To the stand.”
“You’d tell the jury you think Kramer is capable of kidnapping, raping, and murdering a Tempe University coed, knowing you might be sending him to his grave?”
“I wouldn’t be sending him anywhere. If you put me on the stand, however, I will tell the truth.”
“And just what is the truth? That Kramer lives in a dark world that most of us would rather not know about? That’s a fantasy world, dear. It doesn’t make him a murderer. You know perfectly well most individuals who harbor these twisted fantasies never act on them. A collection of sadistic pornography doesn’t make a man a sexually sadistic killer.”
“Maybe not. But if your defense is that Kramer’s depraved ideation is nothing more than harmless fantasy, it’s not a good one. As you well know, most violent sexual offenders begin by simply imagining claiming their prey. Later, they progress through a series of stages before finally acting out against others.”
She slipped her papers into her briefcase. “Your client’s neighbor told the police Kramer couldn’t stop talking about his desire to abduct and murder women—a classic example of leakage—meaning he’s unintentionally revealing clues to acts he plans to commit. Mrs. Kramer told me her husband coerced her into rough sex on several occasions—too rough, and that he frightens her. Kramer himself told me, in great detail, just exactly how he would act out a set of sadistic rituals, then denied, of course, that he had ever done so. Yet the police found a murder kit in the trunk of his car. Procuring the items he needs to carry out his fantasy means Judd Kramer has progressed from imagination to action. If he’s not the man who murdered Sally Cartwright, it’s only a matter of time until he does kill someone.”
Baumgartner pulled his lower lip between his teeth as if chewing on her words. Then a sly smile crossed his face. “You heard Atticus Spenser is testifying for the prosecution? They’re going to use the FBI’s mumbo jumbo profiling to help get a conviction. Spenser hasn’t even got a graduate degree. Where does he get off calling himself an expert on the human mind?”
Baumgartner had done his research. He obviously knew there was no love lost between Spense and her—they’d been on opposite sides of a contentious case more than once. And there was also that personal incident a few years back . . . but fortunately no one knew about that little gem of a disaster except Spense and her. Still, she felt a flush rise to her cheeks and quickly put her attention back to the matter at hand.
Maybe Baumgartner had asked her to come in on the Kramer case in part because he’d assumed she’d welcome the chance to take the arrogant special agent down a notch. And maybe she would—but Spense would have to be wrong in order for that to happen, and he wasn’t wrong—not about Kramer, anyway. “Regardless, I simply cannot testify on Mr. Kramer’s behalf.” For emphasis, she swept her hand out in front, accidentally knocking her pen from the table to the floor in the process.
As she bent to retrieve the pen, the door opened, and from her vantage point she spied a man’s feet plant in a wide stance. Her eyes focused on his shoes, and her throat tightened—expensive, unscuffed loafers peeked out from beneath the type of soiled janitor blue pants she associated with a maintenance worker.
Something wasn’t right.
“You’ll have to come back later. I’ve got this room reserved until—” A flash of light coincided with the sound of Baumgartner’s angry voice, and a series of pops cut him off. Beneath the table, she saw his legs jerk in time to the short bursts of light.
Gunfire!
A burnt odor hanging in the air made her stomach clench, and she suddenly understood what was happening.
Heart jackhammering in her chest, she dove to the ground, scrambling for cover. Her head cracked against the side of the table, sending pain ripping through her skull.
Pop.
Her shoulder started to burn. The gunshots should’ve been louder, but still she knew they were gunshots. Curling her body into a tight ball, she covered her head with her hands. Heat rolled in scorching waves down the nerves in her arm, and her hand went slack, dropping from her head.
Open your eyes, Caity. Do something!
She jerked her head up in time to see the loafers padding, slowly, deliberately toward her. Her limbs were trembling uselessly. While her heart pounded hard, stealing her breath, her brain hummed with escape plans, each one evaluated, then discarded in a nanosecond—until the moment she saw that the shooter no longer blocked her path to the door. Since the table above her offered little protection, she knew she had to move or die. At close range, he wouldn’t miss. Maybe, just maybe, she could make it through the open door and out into the hallway. Then she felt something sticky and wet and warm spreading out beneath her, a flowing red river of it.
Blood.
Oh, God.
She’d never make it out the door alive—she knew that now. But no way was she going to wait huddled under a table for a
killer to amble over and finish her off. The nerves in her skin no longer burned. Her arms and legs had gone mostly numb, and they were heavy when she tried to lift them.
Do something!
She grunted. Summoned all her strength.
Warn the others!
Just as a shot of epinephrine can restart a heart, the thought of others in the building infused her dead muscles with life. Jamming her elbows onto the cold, hard floor, she dragged her body out from under the table and catapulted to her feet, then ran like hell, right past the shooter, catching the briefest glimpse of his face.
She made it to the doorway.
“Guuuun!” she screamed, using all the breath she could squeeze from her aching lungs.
Chapter Two
GUN! THERE ARE some words that echo in the mind, and some voices that echo in the heart. Right then, Special Agent Atticus Spenser’s mind and heart were both reverberating. Something about that voice—not just its urgency, not just its ferocity—pierced his chest and shocked his pulse into overdrive. He knew that voice, despite the fact he’d heard only a single, distorted beat. But now was not the time to try to remember where he’d heard it before or why it made him want to leap tall buildings to keep its owner safe. After all, it was his job to keep others safe.
Gun! He focused his mind, stripping the word away from the disruptive emotions the voice had triggered.
A shooter was loose in the courthouse.
He was on the first floor, in the public area of the building near the snack bar. The cry had come from behind him, maybe from the judiciary wing. The lone syllable had been a breathless call to action that left no room for doubt. This was no prank. He hadn’t misheard. His hand darted beneath his jacket, closing over the Glock 22 holstered at his hip. He was already moving toward the sound of the voice, stalking the UNSUB. Around him, a few confused civilians stopped in their tracks like kids playing a game of freeze tag, but then they quickly shook their heads and resumed milling down the hallway, either uncomprehending or, more likely, in a state of denial. Without the benefit of training and experience—without the benefit of preparedness—disbelief would guide their actions, putting them at even greater risk.
First order of business: make the civilians aware and offer them a plan of action. Make them understand this was really happening and that they needed to act quickly.
Flashing his creds, he called out, “FBI. FBI.” An immediate, awed hush followed. Then he lowered his voice and pressed his palm down in a stay calm gesture. “Get out if you can. If you can’t get out, hide.”
A teenage boy raised his tattooed arm and reached for the fire alarm. “No! Don’t pull that alarm.” Grateful his command had gotten through to the kid in time to stop him, Spense drew his service weapon from his holster, keeping it low. At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, it had been the fire alarm that’d sent students and teachers scurrying outside, where they’d become sitting ducks for the two young snipers lying in wait in the woods. But there was no time to explain that a shooter would anticipate and use predictable human responses, like pulling a fire alarm, to his advantage. So Spense simply repeated: “Get out. If you can’t get out, hide. Stay quiet.”
His drawn service weapon seemed an extension of his hand. The familiar weight confirmed what he already knew—he was fully loaded and ready to roll. Experience had taught him to recognize the eleven-ounce difference between his loaded and unloaded pistol. Keeping his finger adjacent to but not in contact with the trigger—another behavior that had been trained into him—he narrowed his eyes and concentrated, trying to localize the voice, the word, that was now a mere memory of a sound.
Gun.
Around him, people whispered excitedly, some addressing him, but his ears were tuned to one channel only. Like sonar, he homed in on the ghostlike wake the word gun had left behind. Soon, he could hear the plaintive voice clearly in his mind again, a solitary vibration echoing down the tunnel that had become his world. He could imagine sound waves floating in slow motion through the air, practically see the word drifting toward him.
Over there! It’d come from over there.
He backed close to the wall, but not too close, keeping a safe space behind him. He didn’t want to risk taking a stray round, and stray rounds had a way of skipping off walls. As time expanded, he wasn’t sure if it’d been seconds or minutes since that first alarming cry, but he was absolutely certain enough time had passed that he should’ve heard the cry repeated . . . or if not . . . His throat tightened. If not, then he should’ve heard gunfire. But he’d heard nothing more, only the white noise from civilians hurrying past him in the opposite direction. Hurrying away from the danger.
Good.
Then, up ahead, he saw it, rust red fluid slithering down the hall, snaking its way toward him. Its telltale coppery odor turned his stomach.
Blood.
He stuck his pistol out in front of him, sidestepping forward. Automatically leading with his eyes and his gun, clearing slices of the hallway like cutting slivers of a pie as he moved.
“Got your back.” He heard someone speaking low and calm behind him.
Swiveling his head, he spotted a uniformed deputy on the opposite side of the hallway. The bulk beneath the man’s clothing told Spense he was wearing Kevlar, but the look on the guy’s face said it all. Uniform was stepping up because it was his duty and because he was a brave man, but he was clearly out of his depth. Spense was the one with the experience, the confidence, to take on a gunman, and even though he wasn’t wearing a vest, Spense should be the one to take the lead.
A quick nod, and Uniform assumed a cover position while Spense cleared the corner. Always, always leading with gun and eyes.
Now, the blood had reached his shoes. With the doorway, a fatal funnel, mere feet ahead, his careful, quiet approach came to an end. There was no safe way to clear the entry. He’d have to barrel through the door that was swinging on its hinges. If a shooter was waiting inside that conference room, Spense could only hope for the element of surprise. His new best friend, his cover officer, would be close behind, so getting it right was critical. Did Uniform have a family?
Spense pushed the thought aside. He twisted his head a half-second, making eye contact with his cover and mouthing: on one. Then, Glock out in front, he charged into the room, and the door thundered against the wall.
His heartbeat counted down the seconds.
One.
He swung eyes and gun left.
Two.
Then right. Before he could get to three he’d cleared the small room. The sparse furnishings and lack of connecting doors and closets left no place for a shooter to hide.
“Clear!” he called out, and his cover officer flew in behind him.
Two victims: One female, prone on the floor, the source of the snaking blood. And a male slumped onto the conference table— facedown in a pool of dark liquid.
Uniform was on his radio. “SWAT’s on-site.”
Spense said a silent prayer of thanks. Without backup, he would’ve been unable to stop and render aid to the victims. Leaving them behind to bleed out while he prowled the building looking for the shooter was one response that although drilled into him, he wasn’t sure he could carry out. Luckily, he didn’t have to make that decision because SWAT was already here, and that meant it was their show now.
He got to his knees beside the woman.
Checked for a pulse in her neck. It was either absent or too weak to pick up. A sick sense of foreboding came over him as his fingers slid over her clammy skin. Despite the cool temperature in the air-conditioned building, drops of sweat stung the corners of his eyes and salted the corners of his mouth. He swiped his forehead with the back of his arm.
He pressed his face close to hers, hoping to feel her breath against his cheek.
Nothing.
She’d stopped breathing. Gently, his fingers wove into the mass of shiny black hair, to sweep it away from her face, and the color, the sheen, the scent of that hair, even though tangled and matted with blood, sent recognition jolting through him, making his heart first stop beating altogether, then rage against his chest.
Goddamnit!
Caity!
Swiftly, he rolled her over.
“Caity!”
Sealing his lips over her nose and mouth, he gave two fast breaths, then turned his head to the side, checking for the rise of her chest, watching to be sure his breath had reached her lungs. Then he placed the heel of his palm over her chest. He didn’t count the compressions, just worked hard and fast to pump blood through her body, stopping only to give more breaths, before starting again . . . and then again.
“Come on, Caity! Breathe!”
Nothing.
He pumped harder, faster, hoping not to crack her ribs but willing to do whatever it took to get her breathing again.
Suddenly, her arm jerked, and he heard a faint grunt release from her lips. “That’s it, Caity. Stay with me.” Rocking back on his heels, he noticed the ache in his arms and realized he’d been giving compressions long enough for muscle fatigue to set in. Not good. Caity’d been down minutes, not seconds like it’d seemed. He checked her pulse again. Thready and weak, but hell, at least it was present. She was breathing on her own, too—but for how long? Now that he had her breathing, he had the luxury of checking her wounds. He could see blood seeping from beneath her left side. Easing her slightly off the floor, he used his jacket to apply pressure to her flank wound and shot a questioning glance at Uniform, who was talking into his radio again. Spense didn’t need to ask him why he’d given up reviving the man at the table. In the bloody stream surrounding the male victim, pieces of skull were strewn like bone stepping-stones.
Judgment Page 2
