Tuck. Their eyes met, and Nash lunged for the dying deputy. A blur of motion in front of him told him that Tuck had the same idea. But Nash was closer and got there first. He got both hands on the woman’s holster, unsnapped it, and ripped out her pistol before he realized that Tuck wasn’t even after the gun. The fool was pulling his tie out of the deputy’s pocket!
Nash froze for a moment, incredulous, watching Tuck examine the tie as the old man kept whistling his crazy tune. The pool of blood spreading from Erlinger’s body soaked the thin material of Nash’s jumpsuit. The warm, oily feeling against his skin turned his stomach. This was like some kind of fucking nightmare. He stood on shaky legs, using one hand to pull himself up the bars of the cell behind him, and the other hand to raise Erlinger’s gun and aim it at Tuck’s face.
“Who’s laughing now, Reggie?” Nash knew he wasn’t a great shot, but Tuck was practically at point blank range, just the way Nash liked it. He flexed his finger against the trigger. “You ready to die, you rat liar?”
A grip as strong as a vise crunched Nash’s biceps. The old man’s face loomed uncomfortably close to his. He could smell onions on the old man’s breath. “You an idiot, boy?” the old man said. His voice was deep and steady, not at all what Nash expected after the crazy high-pitched whistling.
“Fuck you,” Nash said. “You know what this rat’s here for today?”
“I know if you fire that gun every deputy and cop within earshot will come down on our asses. You want to squander what advantage we might have?”
Nash gritted his teeth, holding the gun steady even as the old man tried to force his arm down. “He’s a snitch. And after he’s done snitching on me, he’ll snitch on you. He just saw what you did, killing that deputy. He’ll be calling the DA the first chance he gets, try to make another deal.”
“Don’t think they’ll need a snitch for this crime.” The old man pointed up at the corner of the room near the ceiling. Nash saw the security camera aimed down at them. “Only a matter of time before someone looks at the screen. You want to get out of here? We got to move now.”
Nash hesitated. His hand twitched with the desire to blow Reggie’s ugly face off. But the old man had not let go of his arm. If anything, the old bastard’s grip had tightened.
“Listen to the man, Ty,” Tuck said. “He’s smart. He’s real smart. You don’t get a nice full head of gray hair like that unless you’re smart.”
A grin cracked across the old man’s lips. “I don’t know about smart, but I like to think I got pretty good survival skills.”
Nash looked from the old man to Tuck and back to the old man again. “Hold on a second now. You know him, don’t you? Is that it? You’re friends or something?”
The old man’s smile widened. “Matter of fact I met him on the bus down here this morning. We got to talking. I believe Reggie understands me. We’re on the same wavelength.”
Nash couldn’t believe he was hearing this shit. “Wavelength? Reggie Tuck doesn’t understand you, you old moron. He’s a bullshitter. He’s a snitch.”
“Shhh,” the old man hushed him and held up a finger. “Listen.” Nash listened. At first, he didn’t hear anything. Then he heard footsteps. Sounded like they were coming from the direction of the courtrooms.
“We gotta get out of here,” one of the other men said.
A fourth bad part of being locked up—the worst part, to be sure—was that most of the time, you had to do what other people told you to do. This was one of those times. Nash reluctantly lowered the gun to his side. “Fine. Let’s go then.”
The old man studied his face, seemed satisfied, and released his arm. “Follow me.”
9
With the first six floors of the courthouse locked down, and all civilians contained on the first floor, there wasn’t much for Kurt Garrett to do. He’d been assigned to patrol the sixth floor hallways in case any of the armed intruders popped up, but all he did was pace and listen to the flurry of radio communications squawking from his shoulder mic. The incident with Estrada had been exciting, but short-lived. Now that the civilians had been herded together to wait out the lockdown, it was all too obvious he wasn’t where the real action was.
That was the seventh floor, penned in by JusticeGuard podiums jammed into the stairwells, where Kenny Rodriguez, Mo Rais, and a handful of other deputy sheriffs—hardly the cream of the crop—dealt with the real crisis. By pure luck, they were the ones being tested, while Garrett could do nothing but twiddle his thumbs and listen to the chaos play out through the speaker of his shoulder mic.
There was a burst of static and he heard, “Control, this is 15.” If he hadn’t known Rodriguez’s call sign was 15, he might not have recognized the deputy’s voice. Rodriguez sounded uncharacteristically shaken.
The voice that answered from the Security Center didn’t sound much steadier. “Go ahead, 15.”
“Requesting permission to use the elevators, Control.”
“Stand by.”
Garrett’s breath caught. Using the elevators—even the sheriff’s elevators—was against protocol in a situation like this, and for good reason. Elevators could be deathtraps. He waited for the response. His fellow deputies were panicking—and men in a panic made bad decisions. He sensed events moving in a bad direction, but standing in an empty hallway on the sixth floor, he was powerless to intervene.
The response came back. “Negative, 15. Play by the book on this one.” Garrett let out a relieved breath.
“Control,” Rodriguez’s voice returned, sounding even less steady, “stairs are blocked and we have a lot of people here, and a potentially very dangerous situation. The elevators—”
“This is an open line, 15.”
“I know that.” The speaker carried the sound of Rodriguez’s sigh.
“Stand by.”
Shit. Control was reconsidering. Garrett could imagine the deputies in the Security Center trying to make a decision. His gaze dropped to the microphone clipped to his shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, then thumbed the talk button.
“Control, this is 33.” He started walking down the hallway, toward the elevator bank.
“33, go ahead.” The voice from the speaker seemed extra loud in the empty corridor. Garrett reached the elevators and stared at the closed metal doors.
“Powering up the elevators would be a mistake.”
“We are not debating this on an open line, 33.”
“Listen to me, Control. We all want to get these people out, but we have rules in place for a reason.”
There was a crackle, and Rodriguez’s voice cut in. “Stay out of this, Garrett. The rules assume stairways are clear. This is different—”
Not bothering with call signs or radio etiquette? Even for Rodriguez, that was sloppy. The man must be genuinely terrified. “At least test the elevators first,” Garrett said. “Before you start loading civilians, run one of the cars empty.”
“Stand by.” Garrett held his breath. Seconds passed. He heard a low hum coming through the elevator doors in front of him. Control must have returned power to one of the cars. “Sending car 3 to your location now, 15. Let it open, then send it down to the lobby, empty. That will serve as a test.”
“Roger that, Control,” Rodriguez said.
Garrett strained to hear the machinery. A louder hum emanated from behind the doors, and he imagined the elevator car beginning its descent down the shaft.
“Control, the doors just opened on seven,” Rodriguez said, “I’m sending it to the lobby.”
The hum grew louder as the elevator car continued downward. Garrett sighed and took a step back when a bang of rending metal sounded from above and the elevator car plummeted down the shaft, roaring past the doors in front of Garrett with a sound like a rushing train. Garrett stumbled backward. Before he could regain his balance, he heard the elevator car smash into the ground floor. The impact rocked the building and sent Garrett falling on his ass.
The radio squawked and st
uttered as too many people tried to open their mics at the same time. Someone radioed, “What the fuck was that?”
Garrett thumbed his mic. “The elevators are not safe. Repeat, the elevators are not safe. Do not use the fucking elevators!”
He staggered away from the elevator bank, trying not to think about how close Rodriguez had come to sending a carload of people to their deaths. Some part of his mind knew that he had just saved those people, but the thought gave him no pleasure.
The danger hadn’t passed. It was just beginning.
10
For Jessie, walking back up the stairwell was a million times more nerve-wracking than the trip down had been. Jessie found herself peering into the shadows above them and listening for any sounds other than the echoes of their footsteps. She stayed behind Rais, who held his pistol extended in front of them in a two-handed grip. She could see beads of sweat on the back of his neck, despite the chill of the stairwell, and she could smell a musky odor coming off of him. Was it fear?
Suddenly the stairwell shook with the force of an earthquake. The jolt threw Jessie off balance. She fell forward and slammed her knee into the stair in front of her. Rais grabbed her arm and helped her up.
“What the hell was that?” she said.
He fumbled for his shoulder mic, which he’d muted before starting back up the stairwell. A cacophony erupted from the speaker. At first, she could make no sense of the panicked voices and bursts of static, but certain words repeated. Elevator. Booby-trap.
“Jesus,” Rais said. “We need to find out if anyone was hurt.”
They started up the stairs again, moving faster this time, and with less caution. Jessie could feel her heart slamming against her chest. As they approached the door, she heard voices from the hallway beyond.
“Sounds like a crowd,” Rais said.
She didn’t know what to expect when Rais opened the stairwell door and emerged into the hallway, but the level of chaos surprised her. Rais looked equally shocked. He took her hand and shouldered his way past frightened-looking people. She saw where the young man was heading—straight to the closest person in a deputy sheriff uniform. Jessie recognized the woman’s face, but couldn’t recall her name. She was a relatively new addition to the courthouse security team.
“What’s happening, Fincher?” Rais said. Fincher. Jessie’s memory took the cue and filled in the rest as she watched the woman’s hard features focus on her and Rais. Carol Fincher.
“Elevators are rigged,” Fincher said. “We sent down an empty car as a test, thank God. Some kind of explosive charge severed the cables and the car dropped seven stories. Apparently the lobby’s a mess, and some of the people down there were injured.”
“So we’re trapped here,” Rais said. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to Fincher. “The stairs are blocked. The elevators are sabotaged.”
“And there aren’t many deputies on this floor,” Fincher said. “Luckily, we have a handful of cops, too, who were here to testify. We’re trying to move all of the civilians into a few courtrooms so we can watch over everyone. It’s not going well.”
“What about the people in the holding cells?” Jessie said. “Are you moving them to the courtrooms, too?”
“Negative,” Fincher said. “Too dangerous. We can’t mix them with the civilians. We’re keeping them in the cells. Don’t worry. Erlinger is watching them.”
Jessie felt a knot in her stomach. There were at least four armed men loose in the courthouse—probably on this floor—and, as far as she could tell, their goal was to murder Reggie Tuck. As good a deputy as Amy Erlinger seemed to be, she had a tough time imagining the five-foot-five woman, who always seemed to be adjusting her thick glasses, fighting off the attackers. At the same time, she wasn’t surprised. The deputies needed to make tough decisions, and the safety of the civilians—lawyers, witnesses, victims’ families—must have taken precedence over a jailhouse snitch and the other inmates who’d been transported here from jails and prisons.
Jessie did not feel that way. Reggie Tuck was her witness. Her responsibility. “I need to check on Tuck,” she said.
Rais shook his head. “No way. He’ll be fine in the holding cells. We need to get you to one of the courtrooms.”
“I’ll go to the courtroom after I see Reggie. And I’m bringing him with me.”
“A convict?” Fincher said, her eyes widening with incredulity. “You can’t bring him into a courtroom full of frightened civilians.”
“He’s not dangerous. He was convicted of fraud.”
“He’s a felon,” Fincher said. The flat tone of the woman’s voice and the hard stare she leveled at Jessie told Jessie all she needed to know about Carol Fincher’s opinion of the men and women she handled every day. “He doesn’t belong anywhere near decent people.”
Jessie turned away from the deputy, looking to Rais. “You can come with me or not. Up to you.”
The young man hesitated, then cursed under his breath. “I’m coming.”
“Thank you.”
“I never met a lawyer like you, that’s for sure.”
She ignored the comment and moved down the hallway, pushing to the edge of the crowd and into the open corridor. She had walked this route hundreds of times, but the knowledge that she was now trapped here transformed the familiar surroundings into something terrifying. With every door she passed, she braced herself, her instincts screaming danger.
Finally she and Rais went through the door from the public area into the holding area. She heard Rais breathe a sigh of relief, and felt her own body loosen as the muscles in her neck and shoulders relaxed. The feeling was short-lived.
“Holy shit,” Rais said. He rushed past her. “Fuck!”
She followed him. The cells were empty, the doors unlocked and open. A body lay on the floor in a pool of blood. Amy Erlinger. Jessie knelt beside her, and felt her neck for a pulse. Her fingers found a ragged hole in the side of her neck.
“Someone stabbed her,” she said.
“Amy,” Rais said. His voice cracked on the name. “Oh my God.” He knelt beside Jessie, staring at Erlinger’s body with a slack jaw and wide eyes. “Her holster is empty.” He turned his head upward, toward the camera mounted near the ceiling, and screamed, “Isn’t anyone paying attention?”
Jessie put her hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. “How many men did you have in the cells today?” When she had walked past the cells earlier, she had made a point not to look at the men as they jeered and whistled, but she didn’t think there had been many.
“I don’t know,” Rais said. He shook his head, and she could see the muscles of his face twist and flex as he struggled to bring himself under control. “Four or five? Your witness Tuck, Tyrone Nash—we had to keep them separated, obviously—and a few others.” He looked at the camera again, his eyes narrowing accusingly. “No one thought to check in with Amy?”
She rubbed her temples. “Probably too busy trying to contain the chaos out there. First the blocked stairwells, then the elevator.”
“I know, but....” His voice trailed off and his gaze seemed to lock on Erlinger’s blood-soaked uniform.
Jessie looked around her, trying to get a better sense of what had happened here. It was possible that the intruders had come here, hunting Reggie. But she didn’t think so. Why open all of the cell doors? And why wasn’t Reggie’s body here next to Erlinger’s? She chewed her lip. What happened here was different, unrelated to the armed intruders. It had been a jailbreak.
“These stab wounds look like they were made with a shiv. I think one of your prisoners took advantage of the situation, grabbed Erlinger through the bars of his cell, and stabbed her. Then he broke everyone free. Easier to escape that way. Strength in numbers. They don’t know the stairs are blocked.”
“Do you think Kenny’s dead, too?” Rais’s childlike face had lost some of its olive complexion.
Jessie had not thought the situation could get any worse, but it had. “
We need to find him. And Reggie.”
“You been here five minutes and you just got to worrying about me now?” The shrill voice seemed to come out of nowhere. Jessie stumbled backward, almost falling over in the pool of blood. Rais fumbled with his sidearm, nearly dropping it. “Your concern is touching!”
The voice was coming from above them. Jessie looked up. A panel of the ceiling had been broken, and a familiar face stared down at her from the narrow crawl space above.
“Get down from there right now!” Rais said. He aimed the gun at the ceiling, then jumped out of the way as Reggie Tuck dropped from his hiding place to the floor. His shoes squeaked in the blood. His suit was smeared with grime. His tie was askew.
“I thought you were going to the Security Center,” Reggie said. He straightened the tie, a gesture that seemed absurd given the circumstances.
“I thought you were going to be safe in a holding cell,” she said.
“I guess shit didn’t go according to plan, then, did it?”
“You want to tell us what happened here?” Rais said.
Reggie looked at him. “You really gotta ask? No wonder you’re a deputy instead of a real cop—”
“Reggie,” Jessie warned. “Just answer the question.”
Reggie shook his head and sighed. “Well, there was this old guy I met on the bus.”
He told his story while Jessie and Rais listened. It was pretty much what she had surmised by looking at the scene. “Why’d you stay behind?” Rais said when Reggie finished.
“You think I’m going anywhere with Tyrone Nash and some psycho old man? I’d rather take my chances with the other guys trying to kill me.”
Jessie looked around the holding cells, suddenly aware that those men could appear at any time.
That’s when they heard the sound of a loud bang from down the hall, in the direction of the attorney-client conference rooms. “Was that a gunshot?” Rais said. He held his own gun out in front of him, returning it to his two-handed grip. “I need to check it out.” Jessie couldn’t tell if he was breathing heavily, or starting to hyperventilate.
Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1 Page 38
