The 9th Judgment

by James Patterson; Maxine Paetro

  I didn't wait for Joe to answer. I knew that car. Even from twenty feet away, I could see writing on the windshield. Fear shot through me as if Pete Gordon had lit a fuse under the soles of my shoes.

  HowdidheknowwhereIlived?

  Whyhadhedrivenhiscartomydoor?

  I ran out into the Lake Street traffic, dodging cars blowing past me. I reached the Honda, cupped my hands to the glass, and peered inside. I saw the little boy lying on his side across the backseat. Even in the low light, the round dark spot on Steven Gordon's temple was a vivid red.

  Thepsychohadshothislittleboy.

  He'd shot him--even though we'd done everything he asked us to do! I screamed,

  “No!”and wrenched the door open. The dome light flashed on, and I seized the child by the shoulder. The little boy's eyes opened, and he jerked away from me, screaming.

  He was alive. I gibbered, “Stevie, are you okay, are you okay? Everything's going to be all right.”

  “I want my mom-my.”

  I used my thumb to wipe away the lipstick from the side of Steven's head, a mark so obscene, I couldn't bear to look at it. I took the child out of the car and swung him onto my hip, holding him tight. “Okay, little guy. Your mommy will be here soon.”

  Joe was leaning into the front seat. He fastened his eyes on the letters written on the windshield.

  “What is it? What does it say?” I asked him.

  “Aw shit, Linds. This guy is crazy.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It says, 'Now I want five million. Don't screw it up again.' ”

  He was going to kill more people if he didn't get the money. He'd done it before. I swayed on my feet, and Joe put his arms around me and the boy in my arms.

  “He's desperate,” Joe said. “He's a terrorist. Don't let him get to you, Linds. It's all bull.”

  I wanted Joe to be right, but the last time the city hadn't come through with the ransom money, Gordon had killed three more people.

  “Don'tscrewitupagain”wasn't a taunt. It was a threat, a loaded gun pointed at the people of San Francisco. And because I seemed to have become Gordon's connection to the rest of the world, that threat was also pointed at me.

  Joe put his arm around me and led me back to his car, settling me into the backseat with Steven. He slid behind the wheel and locked the doors. I patted the boy's back as Joe got Dick Benbow on the line. I thought about Stevie Gordon's father, a homicidal maniac with nothing to lose.

  Where the hell was he?

  I didn't think I could sleep until he was dead.

  Womans Murder Club 9 - The 9th Judgment

  Part Four MONSTER

  Womans Murder Club 9 - The 9th Judgment

  Chapter 99

  JACOBI HAD PUT a meaty hand on each of my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Peter Gordon is the FBI's problem, Boxer. You did everything you could do. The little boy is safe. Now, take a few days off. Take as much time as you need.” I knew Jacobi was right. I needed a rest, physically and emotionally. I'd gotten so bad that I jumped when the drip coffeemaker hissed.

  On Sunday, Joe and I reached Monster Park halfway through the first quarter. The 49ers were trailing the St. Louis Rams, but I didn't care. I was with Joe. It was a great day to be sitting along the fifty-yard line. And, yeah, we were carrying guns and wearing Kevlar under our jackets.

  A guard had to bump a couple of squatters from our pricey FBI-comped seats, but I forgot about that little skirmish as the screen pass unfolded below.

  Arnaz Battle speared the slightly overthrown pass, tucked it in, and followed his blockers downfield. At the Rams' forty, he cut to the right sideline and raced, untouched, to the end zone.

  I was jumping up and down. Joe grabbed me and gave me a great big kiss, five stars at least. I heard someone shout from the tier above, a loudmouth yelling over the crowd noise, “Get a room!”

  I turned and saw that it was one of the squatters we'd evicted. He was loaded and he was a jerk. I yelled back, “Get a life!” And, to my amazement, the lout got out of his seat and headed down to where Joe and I were sitting.

  And he stood there, towering over us.

  “What do you think?” the guy shouted, saliva spraying out of his mouth. “You think because you can afford these seats, you can do anything you want?”

  I didn't know what he was talking about, but I didn't like what I saw. When a guy goes bug-nuts at a sporting event, the next thing you know, a lot of other guys want in on the action.

  “Why don't you go back to the seat you paid for?” Joe said, standing up. My fiance is over six feet and solid, but he was not as big as the flabby loudmouth's three hundred pounds. “We're missing the game, and you're making the lady uncomfortable.” “What lady?” said the jerk. “I see a big-assed bitch, but I don't see no lady.” Joe reached out, grabbed the guy's jacket, and held it tight under his chin. I put my badge up to his face and said, “Big-assed cop, you mean.”

  I signaled to the stadium cops, who were jogging down the stairs. As the loudmouth was roughly hustled up the steps over encouraging shouts from the fans around us, I realized I was panting, adrenaline flooding through my veins all over again. I had been a nanosecond from pulling my gun.

  Joe put his arms around me and said, “What about it, Linds? As the man said, let's get a room.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “I've got one in mind.”

  Chapter 100 THE CURTAINS IN our bedroom were stirring with a light breeze coming in through the cracked-open window. Joe had cooked for us, bathed us, admired my “perfect bottom,” and wrapped me in terry cloth.

  He wouldn't let me do a thing.

  I was on my back in the center of the bed, looking up at him, huge and gorgeous in the soft light coming from the desk lamp and the streetlight outside.

  “Don't move, Blondie,” Joe said.

  He tossed his towel over the door without taking his eyes off me. My breathing had quickened, and I fumbled with the belt that cinched my robe at the waist. “What did I tell you, Linds? Doctor's orders. Don't move.”

  I laughed as he stretched out on the huge bed beside me.

  “My nose itches,” I said.

  “I've got an itch, too.”

  “Okay, goofball.”

  “Goofball, huh?”

  He turned onto his side and kissed my neck, a certain way he has of getting me from zero to sixty. I reached up to put my arms around his neck, and he put them back down. “Lie still.”

  He undid my robe and shifted me--and then we were both naked under the covers. We lay entwined, facing each other, my leg hooked over Joe's hip, his arms wrapped entirely around me, my cheek in the hollow of his neck. I felt safe and very loved and had a sense of wonder that after all the ups and downs we'd weathered, we'd arrived at this wonderful state.

  Joe gathered my hair and twisted it around his hand, then kissed my throat. He reached around me and pulled me closer. I made a small adjustment with my hips so that he could enter me. For a moment, I forgot to inhale. I was at the edge of a precipice, and I didn't want to stop.

  “Hang on a sec,” Joe said, reaching across me to open the drawer in the nightstand. I heard the crinkle of the foil-wrapped packet, and I put my hand on his arm and said, “No.”

  “I'm just getting dressed here.”

  “No. Really. Doctor's orders. Don't.”

  “Hon? Are you sure?”

  “I'm sure.”

  Joe kissed me deeply and, while holding me tight, rolled us both so that I was lying on top of him. I raised myself up and folded my knees along his sides, placed my hands on his chest, and looked into his face. I saw the light in his eyes--his love for me. He put his hands on my hips, and, with our eyes wide open, we rocked slowly, slowly, no hurry, no worry.

  There was no place I'd rather be.

  No one I'd rather be with than Joe.

  Chapter 101 I WAS AT my desk when Brenda buzzed me on the intercom. “Lindsay, there's a package downstairs for you. Kevin doesn't want to send i
t up without you checking it out.”

  I took the stairs down to the lobby and found our security guard waiting near the metal detector. He held an ordinary black nylon computer case, my name on a label, many yards of clear packing tape wound around it. I wasn't expecting a package. And I sure didn't like the look of this one.

  “I ran it through the metal detector,” our security guard said. “There's metal in here, but I can't make out what it is.”

  “Where did this case come from?”

  “I was checking people through, a whole bunch of kids from the law school, looking in camera bags and so forth, and when I turned around, this case was on the table. Nobody claimed it.”

  “I'm calling the bomb squad, no offense,” I said.

  “None taken,” Kevin said. “I'll get the head of security.”

  I was shaking again, my clothes sticking to me, my bruised shoulder throbbing. The hard crack of exploding bombs went off in my mind, and I thought about Joe saying that it was so easy to make a bomb, it was scary.

  I called Jacobi from behind a marble column at the far side of the lobby and told him about the mystery case. I said that Peter Gordon probably had the skills to blow up the Hall of Justice.

  “Get out of there, Boxer,” Jacobi said.

  “You, too,” I said. “We're evacuating the building.”

  As I spoke, the alarm went off inside the Hall, and the head of security's voice came over the PA system, ordering all fire wardens to their posts.

  The building was emptied--judges and juries and prosecutors and cops and a floor full of jailed detainees all filed down the back staircase and out to the street. I left through the main door and listened to my heart lay down a three-four beat against my eardrums. Within seven or eight minutes, the building was cleared and the bomb truck was parked in front of the Hall.

  I watched from behind a cordon of cops as a robot with X-ray plates in its “arms” rolled up the wheelchair ramp and through the front door of the Hall. Conklin and Chi came down to wait it out with me, and together we watched the bomb-squad tech, masked and swaddled in an antifrag, flame-retardant suit, walk behind the robot with his remote control.

  I waited for the detonation I was sure would come. Then we waited some more. When I was at the screaming point, Conklin said, “We could be here all night.” So we went to MacBain's.

  It was like an office party in there. Law enforcement personnel from all disciplines were whooping it up while waiting to hear if they had offices to go back to. I had my hand in the Beer Nuts when my phone rang.

  It was Lieutenant Bill Berry from the bomb squad. “Your so-called bomb has been rendered safe.”

  I walked with Conklin and Chi to the bomb truck, which was now parked in the lot behind the Hall. I knocked on the door of the van, and when it opened, I took the case from Lieutenant Berry's hand.

  “So, what's in it?” I asked him.

  “Christmas in September,” he said. “I think you're going to like it.”

  Chapter 102 “SOMETHING YOU'RE GONNA like,” echoed Chi. “What would that be?” “I'm hoping for puppies,” I said.

  Conklin held the door, and the three of us joined the throng of workers returning to their offices. We climbed to the third floor, turned right into Homicide, and crowded into Jacobi's office as he took his swivel chair and sat down heavily.

  Jacobi's space was a pigpen as always, no offense to pigs. I moved a pile of folders from a side chair, Conklin took the chair beside me, knees bumping the desk, and Chi leaned against the doorjamb in his neat gray suit and string tie.

  “Apparently this thing won't blow up,” I said, putting the computer case on Jacobi's desk.

  “Are you going to open it, Boxer? Or are you waiting for an engraved invitation?” “Okay, then.”

  I took latex gloves out of my pocket and wriggled my hands into them, then slit the tape with a shank that Jacobi used as a letter opener and unzipped the bag all the way around.

  At first, I didn't understand what I was looking at. Little suede bags and small boxes and satin envelopes had been stuffed into the body of the case, and more of the same were tucked inside each of the pockets. Paper clipped to one of those pockets was a plain white envelope addressed to me.

  I showed the envelope to my colleagues, then peeled up the flap and teased out a sheet of white copy paper that had been folded in thirds.

  “Is it interesting?” Jacobi asked.

  I cleared my throat and read the letter out loud.

  " 'Hi, Sergeant Boxer. I did NOT kill Casey Dowling. All of her stuff is in here, and everyone else's stuff is in here, too. Please tell everyone I'm sorry. I made some bad mistakes because I thought I had no choice, but I will never steal again. Marcus Dowling killed his wife. It had to be him.'

  “It's signed 'Hello Kitty.'”

  I turned the case so that Jacobi could see me open the small packets. Unbelievable jewelry spilled into my gloved hands. Diamonds and sapphires that I recognized as belonging to Casey Dowling, Victorian brooches and pearls that had been Dorian Morley's, and other jewelry that had belonged to Kitty's other victims.

  I sifted through extraordinary jewels that I'd seen pictured in Stolen Property's files, and then I noticed a two-inch-long leather box shaped like a pirate's trunk. I opened the box and saw a lumpy square of tissue paper.

  I unfolded the paper, and a loose yellow stone the size of a grape winked up at me from the hollow of my palm. I was staring at the Sun of Ceylon.

  “Is that it?” Conklin asked. “Casey Dowling's cursed diamond?”

  Jacobi barely looked at it. He reached for his phone and hit number one on his speed dial--the chief's number. “Is Tony there? It's Jacobi. Tell him I've got news. Good kind.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brady coming toward us in a hurry. He was huffing as he called out to me.

  “Boxer, don't you pick up your messages? Listen, earlier today Peter Gordon's wife walked into the FBI.”

  Chapter 103 HEIDI MEYER SAT alone in an interrogation room, exhausted by the physical and emotional effects of trauma upon unimaginable trauma. Her world was changed. She was changed. How had she lived with Pete Gordon and never known who he was? Pictures kept coming into her mind, images of cooking for Pete, reasoning with him, trying to keep his lid on. She had given birth to his children, compensated for his shortcomings and psychic wounds. She'd slept next to him almost every night for the last ten years.

  And now her husband had both literally and figuratively blown up their lives. After Agent Benbow had interviewed her for three hours, he'd left her alone with a fresh cup of tea. Heidi thought about their interview, how she'd emptied every pocket of her memory in order to tell him whatever she knew to help him find her husband before he killed again.

  She'd said that Pete had been freaky since coming back from Iraq. She'd said that he was always angry, that he scared the children, and that, yes, he kept weapons in the house and knew how to use explosives.

  Heidi had shown Agent Benbow the bruises on her arms and had let a female agent take pictures of the black-and-blue blotches on the insides of her thighs. And as she sat in the windowless room, it finally became clear to her how much Pete actually did hate her and the children, and that if he had in fact killed all those mothers and their children, it was because they were stand-ins for her and for Steven and Sherry.

  She wondered where Pete was now and if he was tracking her, if he'd been watching her when she went into the FBI building, if he was waiting for her to leave. And now that she'd told the FBI everything, what was she supposed to do? Why hadn't someone told her what to do?

  Heidi looked up as the door opened and Agent Benbow came back in with a tall blond woman. He introduced her as Sergeant Lindsay Boxer from the SFPD. Heidi's eyes watered. She stood and shook Sergeant Boxer's hand with both of hers. “You're the one who found Stevie. Oh my God. I can't thank you enough.” “You're very welcome, Heidi. May I call you Heidi?”

  “Sure.”

  Benbow le
ft the room, and Sergeant Boxer pulled out a chair. She said, “Catch me up, okay? I haven't been fully briefed. Where are Steven and Sherry now?” “They're with my friend Sarah Wells. We work together at Booker T. Washington High.” “And where is Sarah?”

  “She's driving around, waiting to pick me up. She can't go home. Her husband... she's left him. We have no place to go. Even if my house wasn't bombed-out, I have to get far away from Pete.”

  “Let's just talk for a little bit,” Sergeant Boxer said.

  “Sure. Whatever I can tell you.”

  “Have you spoken to your husband since the events at your house?” Sergeant Boxer asked.

  “He left me a voice mail. He said that when he was driving around, he was planning to kill Stevie, but then he saw something in Stevie's face. He said, 'He looks just like me. But you, Heidi. You look nothing like me at all.' ”

  “That was pretty ugly. What else did he say?”

  “He said to tell the authorities that if he didn't get the five million bucks, he was going to find me and the kids and shoot us. That's when I contacted Agent Benbow. I gave him my cell phone with Pete's message still on it.”

  Sergeant Boxer nodded and said, “Excellent,” and then asked, “Where do your parents live?”

  “My mother was a single mom. She passed away five years ago. Sergeant, what am I supposed to do?”

  The door to the interrogation room opened, and Agent Benbow returned. He had a precise haircut and a military bearing, but his expression was sympathetic, almost warm. He took a seat at the head of the table.

  “Heidi, you've heard of the Witness Protection Programs?” Benbow said. “We want to put you and your kids in the program. You'll be given documents supporting new names, new identities, and you'll be given a new place to live.”

  “But I'm no good as a witness. I don't know anything.”

  “We've put people in the program for far less than being in Peter Gordon's sights. You have to let us protect you, Heidi. If we can find him, you'll do very well as a witness. He's demonstrated violence against you. And you can give a firsthand account of that.” Heidi's mind flooded with thoughts. Benbow was saying that, for her own protection, her life as Heidi Meyer was over. That for the safety of her kids, she had to disappear, delete her real life and start over as a new person. It was damned near inconceivable. Only Sarah could make this bearable.