Temporary Sanity

by Rose Connors

  Inside, I find myself in a crowded storage area, a small room adjacent to Beatrice Nolan’s makeshift courtroom. The air is stale, musty, and the room is lit only by the bulbs in the hallway. I retrieve the Lady Smith quickly, check all corners of the small room. No one’s here.

  No one’s in the brightly lit corridor, either. I hurry next door, my Lady Smith leading the way, to check Beatrice’s courtroom. Yet another uninhabited space. Our table-strewn with briefcases and legal pads-is abandoned.

  So is Stanley’s.

  I hurry out to the hallway again, toward the stairway that leads down to the basement, to the holding cells. The uniform guarding the building’s back door has it propped open and he’s leaning against it, keeping an eye on the stairway as well. I force myself to wait until he’s distracted. After what seems like an eternity, a fellow officer calls to him from the parking lot, the words indecipherable through the shrieks of the alarm. When the uniform walks outside, I head for the stairs.

  He spots me, though, when I’m three steps down. “Stop right there,” he orders. “Don’t move.”

  I turn to face him, intending to explain, plead, threaten, if necessary. But I don’t see him. I don’t see anything. For a split second I can’t think. Then I realize he can’t see me either.

  I take the remaining steps two at a time and lean against the wall at the bottom to catch my breath. And then I realize something else: the alarm has been silenced. The building is quiet. Quiet and dark. Someone flipped the main breaker. And I’ve little doubt who that someone is.

  Down here, in the subterranean hallway that leads to the four holding cells, it’s not merely dark; it’s black. Stanley wants it this way. I flash back to the closing argument he delivered just hours ago; he’s at ease in the blackness.

  A half dozen polka dots of white light erupt along the hallway, pressed against the outside cinder-block wall. The cops are already here, and they have penlights. The polka dots, and presumably the officers holding them, move steadily, silently, toward the cells. With all of my being, I will them to reach Harry before Stanley does. Harry’s odds improve with each step they take. But if I can see their locations, their progress, then Stanley can too.

  I press myself against the complete darkness of the inside wall and trail them, the Lady Smith pointed into the emptiness ahead. This wall is cinder block too, but it extends only half the length of the corridor; that’s where the cells begin. The first three are empty. Harry is in the last one, at the very end. The Kydd said so.

  A deep voice shatters the silence. The words, slow and deliberate, reverberate through a bullhorn. “Mr. Edgarton, this is Sergeant Briggs.”

  Sergeant Briggs has had quite a week.

  “We can help you, Mr. Edgarton. Step into the hallway. Drop any weapons you have on the floor in front of you. Kick them away, toward the staircase. Then put your hands behind your head. No one-I repeat, no one-will get hurt. We’re here to help.”

  If nothing else, the Sergeant’s announcement might wake Harry. Even with a knife, Stanley isn’t likely to overpower Harry. Unless he’s in his dead man’s sleep.

  My boot brushes against something as I reach the bars of the first cell, just after Sergeant Briggs finishes his plea. I drop to my knees to find it. It’s metal. A knife. Stanley already dropped one weapon, it seems. I wonder how many he has.

  I hold my breath, run my fingers along both sides of the sharp blade. To hell with the rules of evidence collection. The blade is dry. Maybe it hasn’t been used. Or maybe it’s been wiped clean.

  I drop it into my parka pocket and slip past the first two cells. They’re empty, as promised. I inch halfway across the bars of the third cell, careful to stay a few steps behind the tiny dots of light, hoping that at least one of us will take Stanley by surprise.

  We don’t, though.

  “Drop them, gentlemen.” Stanley takes us by surprise instead. “Now.”

  There’s a click, then a sudden shaft of bright light from Harry’s cell.

  First the penlights clatter to the concrete floor in front of me. Then the weapons-all of them. I almost drop my own. I swallow a gasp just before it escapes. The light from Harry’s cell floods the hallway and illuminates the police officers’ faces. There are a dozen of them; half weren’t carrying lights. They stare into the cell-all of them-eyes wide, mouths open.

  Sergeant Briggs, first in line, is the only one who moves. He lowers the bullhorn to his side, then squats and sets it quietly on the concrete floor. His eyes never leave the cell. He comes up with both hands in front of his chest, palms out. “Mr. Edgarton, what is it you want? Tell us. We’ll do everything we can to meet your demands.”

  I can’t see inside the cell. But the Sergeant’s offer tells me the only two facts I need to know. Harry’s alive. And that could change in a heartbeat.

  Silence for a moment, then the scraping of metal against metal. It’s a sound I recognize: a round being chambered in a semiautomatic weapon.

  “A car.” Stanley’s voice sounds no different than it does on an ordinary day in the courtroom. “Unlock this door, and have the car outside, running.”

  Sergeant Briggs raises his hands again. “We’ll have to get the key, Mr. Edgar-”

  A hailstorm of bullets blows the padlock and chain off the fire exit at the end of the hallway. Stanley isn’t willing to wait for the key, it seems. I jump backward and hit my head hard against the bars of the cell. The hailstorm moves upward, pelts the top of the door, then shatters the unlit exit sign above. The door swings halfway open, its top hinge decimated.

  Cold wind carries snow into the corridor. Pieces of plaster and shards of the exit sign fall to the floor amid the flakes in a miniature avalanche. And then for a moment the wind’s whistle is the only sound in the basement.

  Sergeant Briggs turns to the officer beside him, the only woman in the lineup. “Go,” he says. “Get a car. Radio when it’s outside this door.”

  She takes off, almost slipping on the debris underfoot.

  “Make sure it’s an unmarked car,” Stanley calls after her. “And no wires, either. No tricks. I’ll know.”

  I know something too. Stanley emptied the chamber. And he didn’t do it smoothly. He’s used to knives, not guns. He can’t fire again until he pulls the slide and resets. The process takes about thirty seconds. Not a lot of time, but it’ll have to do.

  I step out from the bars into the center of the hallway, both arms outstretched, the Lady Smith aimed into the cell at Stanley’s eye level. Harry is on his knees, bent down toward the floor, hands clasped behind his head. Stanley holds a 9mm Stallard Arms semiautomatic handgun against Harry’s left temple. A low-voltage work light sits on top of the disheveled cot, its beam aimed directly at Harry’s head. For once, it seems Stanley wants to see what he’s doing.

  He doesn’t see me, though. He’s still facing the exit, keeping the line of cops in his peripheral vision. He presses his weapon harder against Harry’s temple and lets out one of his hiccup-laughs. Then he lifts the handgun up to pull the slide. My hesitation is almost nonexistent. Almost.

  In a millisecond I make the decision to lower the Lady Smith before I fire. Stanley howls, topples forward, and his handgun hits the floor just before he does. Police officers storm the cell. Harry drops to the floor and reaches out for Stanley’s weapon. Stanley gropes for it too. And the cops, I realize, can’t get there in time.

  I raise the Lady Smith again. Harry’s fingertips brush the handgun’s barrel, push it slightly in the wrong direction, toward Stanley. Stanley’s fingers reach the butt of the gun and-without hesitation-I aim at his head. But Harry lunges forward, into my line of fire.

  Harry smacks the semiautomatic across the cell and it clatters against the iron bars, out of Stanley’s reach. One of the cops dives to retrieve it while the others surround Stanley and cuff him. He wails again and writhes like a wounded animal as they shackle his ankles. Instantly, it seems, an ambulance pulls up outside the bullet-riddled fire exi
t, and a team of paramedics rushes through the half-hinged door.

  Harry gets to his knees again and stares as the cops disable their prisoner, then turns his ruddy, astonished face toward me.

  Only then do I lower my gun.

  I start toward Harry, but too many cops are in front of me. I can’t get there. My knees give out. I fall against the wall and slide down the cinder blocks to sit on the concrete floor amid the rubble, still clutching the Lady Smith in both hands.

  Geraldine appears out of nowhere, the Kydd right behind her. They stare at the ruins on the floor, then shift their gazes to the battle-scarred fire exit and the crowded cell. For a moment, it seems neither one of them can speak.

  Geraldine recovers first, of course. She lights a cigarette, then shakes her blond head and looks down at me, blowing smoke toward Stanley. “You missed,” she says.

  I might strangle Geraldine.

  The paramedics wheel the gurney out of the cell, Stanley strapped to it and still wailing, toward the open doorway. Harry emerges behind them. On hands and knees, he crosses the hallway and presses his face into my neck, breathing hard. Minutes pass, it seems, and neither one of us moves. Then Harry lifts his face up to mine. “Told you you’d end up on the cell block,” he says.

  I might strangle Harry, too.

  Joey Kelsey appears in the hallway and walks toward us, looking like a man on his way to the electric chair. He stops dead in his tracks before he reaches us, though, dumbstruck as he surveys the battlefield. After a moment, he shakes his head as if to clear it. It seems to work. “I’m sorry to bother you…”

  Joey addresses Geraldine as if the rest of us aren’t here. It’s pretty clear she’s the only one he’s sorry to bother.

  “But those jurors…” Joey shifts from one foot to the other. “The ones who wouldn’t leave?” He points at the ceiling, so Geraldine will remember where they are. “They’re done now.”

  Chapter 48

  Saturday, December 25

  Joey Kelsey doesn’t normally work in Judge Beatrice Nolan’s courtroom. And that’s a good thing for Joey. Beatrice doesn’t have a positive impact on anyone’s nervous system. But Joey’s seems more fragile than most.

  When it became clear that some unlucky bailiff would spend Christmas Eve tending our jury, though, Joey automatically got stuck. He’s the new guy, the rookie. Big Red wasn’t about to volunteer.

  It’s eight A.M. When Joey called Beatrice at midnight to tell her the jury was ready, she informed him that she was not. Snow or no snow, she said, Judge Beatrice Nolan doesn’t drive in the dark. She’d leave her house at daybreak, she told him. Not a minute sooner.

  Joey didn’t seem to remember that Beatrice somehow managed to drive home in the dark, and I didn’t mention it.

  Beatrice’s trip to the courthouse will take at least an hour, and it’s been light only forty-five minutes or so. But Joey is watching the door to her chambers anyway, fingering his cheat sheet into tatters. After spending the night trying to justify the delay to our jurors, he’s a wreck. They’re all exhausted, he reports. And they’re mad as hell. Joey may never be fit for trial again.

  Harry and I spent the wee hours in Geraldine’s office, the three of us drafting the tedious documents necessary to secure Sonia Baker’s release. By four o’clock, the papers were ready and Geraldine left the complex with them to track down the required signatures. She was back by six, mission accomplished, whereupon Harry and I hand-delivered Sonia Baker’s freedom to the Barnstable County House of Correction.

  The jail has its own formal exit rituals and paperwork, of course, but Sonia Baker should be out soon. And in a rare accommodating gesture-explainable, perhaps, by the spirit of the season-one of the matrons offered to bring her to our courtroom when she’s ready. Maggie is twisted around in her front-row seat between Patty Hammond and Luke, watching the back door with all the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning. Which, of course, she is.

  The Kydd went home as soon as he heard about Beatrice’s aversion to night driving. He’s back now, though, looking thoroughly refreshed. It’s obvious he’s had a few hours’ sleep and a hot shower. I feel a twinge of envy. He grins at Harry and me, then slips into the aisle seat of the front bench, next to Patty.

  Reporters and photographers roam the courtroom in search of a scoop. Most of them were hanging around the hallways waiting for the verdict when the police evacuated the building. For the moment, at least, Buck Hammond’s fate is not their chief concern. They want to know what happened in the Superior Court holding cells.

  The cops won’t let them anywhere near the scene, of course. The elevator is shut down, and the staircase leading to the basement is roped off and guarded. But they all heard the gunfire from the parking lot and they all saw the ambulance leave the county complex. They also see that Harry and I are disheveled, to put it mildly. And, with the reading of the verdict imminent, more and more of them are questioning the whereabouts of J. Stanley Edgarton the Third.

  The steady rumble from the gallery rises a notch when Geraldine Schilling arrives. The reporters pelt her with questions about Stanley. Has he been taken ill? Called to another crime scene? Found to have a conflict?

  If Geraldine were inclined to answer, she could say “all of the above.” She’s not, though. She ignores them with a thoroughness honed over almost two decades. They may as well hurl their questions at the walls.

  Geraldine crosses the front of the courtroom and pauses at our table to scowl. More than ten years I’ve known Geraldine Schilling. She’s never looked worse. “You’re a lousy shot,” she says.

  “How can you say that? My shot took him down. I hit him.”

  “In the thigh,” she fires back.

  “That’s where I wanted to hit him.”

  She rolls her green eyes at me.

  “Geraldine, I wasn’t trying to kill the man.”

  Another eye roll.

  I turn to Harry. “She thinks I was trying to kill him.”

  Harry nods knowingly. “Would’ve been better that way,” he says.

  “Now he’ll probably enter an insanity plea.”

  Geraldine scowls again and starts toward her table. She stops for a moment, though, and turns back to me. “Oh, and Martha, good of you to drop by the other night. We should get together more often.”

  It wasn’t the other night. It was yesterday morning-early. Better left unsaid.

  Harry watches her leave, then arches his eyebrows at me. “Drop by? You dropped by?”

  “Please,” I beg, “don’t ask.”

  The courtroom grows louder still when two prison guards arrive with Buck Hammond in tow. He waits patiently while one of them unlocks his cuffs and shackles, then sends a signal to Patty and settles into the chair between Harry and me. He eyes Harry with obvious concern. “You okay?” Buck asks.

  “Me?” Harry turns toward him. “Of course I’m okay. You’re the one we’re worried about.”

  “Did you have to stay in jail very long?”

  “No,” Harry says. “Marty shot the place up and got me out.”

  Buck laughs.

  The noise in the courtroom subsides when the chambers door opens and Judge Beatrice Nolan emerges. She climbs to the bench, her expression on this Christmas morning even more dour than usual. Joey speed-reads through his litany. He wants to get this over with.

  Beatrice pauses before taking her seat and stares down at Geraldine. “Attorney Schilling,” she says, “you’re here for the Commonwealth?”

  Geraldine stands. “That’s right, Your Honor.”

  “And Mr. Edgarton,” the judge asks, settling into her leather chair, “where might he be?”

  Geraldine gazes over at our table as she searches for words. Harry leans forward and smiles at her. She frowns back. “Mr. Edgarton is indisposed at the moment, Your Honor.”

  “Yes,” the judge replies idly, erect in her chair. “Aren’t we all?”

  With that, Beatrice nods at Joey and he scram
bles through the side door as if the room is on fire. He returns moments later with the beleaguered jurors in a single line behind him, every one of them scrutinizing the courtroom floor.

  In my peripheral vision, I spot Geraldine casting a satisfied glance over her shoulder at the press. My knees go weak. Popular wisdom among criminal law practitioners holds that jurors who’ve acquitted look the defendant in the eye when they return to the courtroom with their verdict. Those who’ve convicted don’t. If that theory proves true, then Buck Hammond is headed for Walpole.

  But I don’t buy that particular tenet of popular wisdom. Murder trials are gut-wrenching. Deliberations are worse. Jurors returning with a verdict in a murder case are exhausted. Most of them don’t look at anyone.

  The jurors take their seats and everyone else does too. Everyone, that is, except Harry, Buck Hammond, and me. We stand side by side at our table, Buck in the middle, facing the panel. We’re close enough to each other that I can feel Buck taking slow, deliberate breaths. This is a tense moment, but he’s been through worse. Even so, I’m glad when Harry rests a steady hand on Buck’s shoulder.

  Judge Nolan swivels in her chair to face the jurors. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,” she says, glaring at them. “Have you reached a verdict?”

  Juror number five, the fifty-something restaurant owner, stands in the front row, and I feel a small wave of disappointment. He wasn’t high on my list of candidates for foreman. He’s seated next to the retired schoolteacher and she’s had his ear throughout this trial. I haven’t been able to read her-or him, for that matter-at all. She looks up at him now and nods.

  “We have, Your Honor.” The foreman’s voice is a deep baritone; his eyes are fixed on the judge.

  Judge Nolan turns to Joey Kelsey. He stares back at her, blank. Beatrice sighs and grimaces-you can’t get good help these days, her face says-then tosses her head at the foreman. He’s waiting, verdict slip in hand.

  Joey freezes for a moment, then recovers and scurries to the jury box. He fetches the verdict slip like a golden retriever and almost runs to the bench with it. Judge Nolan reads, expressionless, then returns the slip to Joey, who ferries it back across the courtroom to the foreman.