Temporary Sanity (30 page)

“At the cottage.”

“Whose cottage?”

Another glance at Maggie. “Sonia’s.”

“When?”

“Right around two. I know because the kindergarten school bus went by, the one Billy rode last year.”

“Why were you at their cottage?”

Patty frowns and looks at Maggie again.

“Go ahead,” Maggie says. “It’s okay.”

“I heard the commotion earlier, so I thought I’d check in. Make sure Sonia and Maggie were all right.”

“Did you go inside?”

“No. I didn’t dare. Sonia’s car was gone and Howard’s truck was in the driveway, so I figured he was in there alone. Lord knows I didn’t want to deal with him.”

Good instincts. “So how did you see Stanley?”

“I saw him leaving. I was glad. I thought Howard had been arrested, thought Sonia had finally turned him in. I had no idea about…you know.”

“How did you know who he was?”

Patty shakes her head, looks at me as if she’s worried about my well-being. “Stanley? I knew who he was. I attended pretrial motions, remember? On Friday?”

Of course she did.

The Thunderbird does a U-turn on its own and retraces its tire tracks in the snow. I flip open my phone, though I don’t know why. I’ve no idea whom to call.

And then my stomach knots, and I do.

With almost no hassle, the hospital operator connects me to the nurses’ station in the ICU. I will myself to ask for Alice Barrymore, not Annie Wilkes. The unit secretary tells me to hold, she’ll put me through.

Annie Wilkes picks up at once and listens to only a few words of introduction. “I know who you are,” she interrupts. “You’re the sassy one.”

Not how I’d hoped to present myself. I press on the accelerator.

“The one telling us all to shut up.”

Oh, that. “Where are you, Nurse Barrymore? Are you in Judge Long’s room?”

“Yes, I am, as a matter of fact. He’s sitting up nicely, thank you, having a bit of broth. And there’s no one here telling me to shut up, I might add.”

“Listen, Ms. Barrymore, I need a favor.”

“Oh, do you now?”

“Yes. Ask the judge, please, if he was trying to say the word
tassel
last night.”

“Now
you
listen,” she says, “you lawyers have got to leave this man alone-all of you.”

“What?”

“The three of you in here carrying on late last night and then another one here before dawn. When is the judge supposed to rest?”

“Before dawn? Who was there before dawn?”

“An entirely new one. Short, balding fellow. Why don’t you lawyers talk to each other?”

The knot in my stomach doubles. “Did he say what he wanted, the short, balding fellow?”

“Certainly. The same thing you all want. He wanted to ask more questions. Marched into the room as if he were the chief of surgery, telling me he’d need a few moments alone with the judge.”

Panic tightens my grip on the phone. “And?”

“And I told him he’d be spending more than a few moments alone with security if he didn’t turn around and march right out again. The judge was sound asleep. I think that lawyer would have wakened him if I hadn’t been there.”

My gut tells me Annie Wilkes is wrong about that. Terribly wrong.

“Nurse Barrymore, please. One question. From you to the judge. It’s important.”

Silence on her end.

“Ask if he was trying to say the word
tassel
last night. Remember? We couldn’t understand him. Harry made the Irish joke because it sounded like
’tis
.”

“Oh, for the love of Peter.”

“Please.”

Silence again. And then a rustling sound.

Annie Wilkes covers the mouthpiece, but I can still decipher her words. “Judge,” she says, “it’s the woman from last night, the younger one, the one telling us all to shut up. Damned if I understand it, but she wants to know if you were trying to tell them about a tassel of some sort…”

Annie’s words trail off. “Oh, for the love of Peter,” she says again, speaking to the receiver once more. “Listen, Miss, I enjoy a good word game as much as the next person…”

“What did he say?”

“Not a blessed thing. But his head’s bobbing up and down like one of those little statues people put in the backs of their cars.”

“Thank you, Annie. Thank you.” I snap the phone shut. It takes a few seconds for me to wish I hadn’t called her Annie.

I press harder on the accelerator, concentrate on negotiating the curves. My passengers remain silent, Luke and Maggie leaning so far forward they’re almost in the front seat. Patty presses her hands against the dashboard as the Thunderbird tears through the black night.

When the pieces come together, I take a deep breath and open the phone again. Three more calls, I tell myself. One to the state dispatcher. One to the Barnstable Police Station. And one to the Kydd.

Howard Davis was a disgrace to the criminal justice system. J. Stanley Edgarton the Third said so. On a normal day, Stanley wouldn’t have stood a chance against Davis. But on Monday, Davis was drinking himself into oblivion and Stanley knew it. He knew because I told him. I told him when I called from the hospital parking lot.

Judge Leon Long is despicable. Stanley said so. Nicky Patterson interrupted Stanley on Thursday morning. Not the other way around.

Harry Madigan is vile, reprehensible. Stanley said so just a few hours ago. And now Harry’s asleep in a holding cell at the all-but-empty Barnstable County Superior Courthouse. Stanley’s in the courthouse too.

And Harry sleeps like a dead man.

Swirling blue and white lights from a dozen police cruisers bathe the Superior Courthouse. The four granite pillars that frame the front entrance seem to sway as strobelike beams pulse over them. Uniforms pepper the courthouse steps and the hillside in front, most holding two-way radios close to their faces. Inside, the building is lit as if it’s nine in the morning instead of nine at night.

The Thunderbird rolls silently down the snow-packed road, west bound, past the county complex and the courthouse. I pull over in the darkness on Historic Route 6A, under an ancient, leafless oak tree. There’s no way I can get back into the county lot; the cops have blockades set up at both entrances. I’ll have to go on foot from here.

Patty Hammond slides over to take the wheel. She’ll keep Luke and Maggie in the car, she promises, won’t bring them near the building until she’s sure it’s all clear. I motion for her to wait while I trudge through the snow to the trunk and retrieve the tire iron. Her eyes are wide in the side mirror as she pulls away.

I wave to Luke and Maggie, both still in the backseat, their faces pressed against the rear window, their breath making small side-by-side circles on its glass. When they’re out of sight, I grab the Lady Smith from my jacket pocket, release the safety, and hurry across the street.

The cops have the north and east sides of the courthouse heavily covered because that’s where the doors are. I approach from the west, avoiding the squad cars and the streetlamps, and run in the darkness of night up the steep hill to the courthouse. There, at the top of a grassy knoll on the west side of the building, is a window I can reach. I stop a few steps away from it, tuck the Lady Smith back into my pocket, and brace the tire iron with both hands.

With strength I don’t ordinarily have, I hurl the heavy tool through the window and hear what I knew I would hear: the whoops and shrieks of the security system. I wonder, as I pull myself up on the outer sill and kick out more of the glass, if the alarm will unnerve Stanley, throw him off course somehow, make him slip just enough for Harry to react.

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.