The 9th Judgment (25 page)

Wilma had made him, but there was nowhere for her to go, handicapped as she was by her kiddo.

“Lady, you’ve got it wrong. My cell phone died. Look.”

Her back was up against her VW Passat, one hand on the stroller’s handlebars, mouth hanging open as she looked everywhere
for help. The kiddo let out a scream, and Wilma reached into the stroller, and when she straightened up, Pete saw a .22 pointing
at him.

He pulled his gun, but it snagged on his shirt. The muzzle was coming up when he heard the shot and felt the punch to his
right shoulder. His gun jumped out of his hand and clattered to the concrete floor.

He yelled,
“Stupid bitch!”
and dove for the weapon. A slug pinged into the floor an inch from his nose. He rolled onto his back with his gun in his
left hand.

“Don’t move, Wilma,” he said, taking aim. But his vision was blurring and lights swooped around him. He squeezed off a few
rounds, but he didn’t drop her. Wilma was firing again.

She kept firing.

I WAS RUNNING up Sutter, Jacobi shouting into the cell phone at my ear,
“It’s not one of ours!”

“Say again.”

“None of our people are involved. We got a nine one one call. Shots fired in the Sutter–Stockton Garage. Third floor.”

I called ahead to Conklin over the shrill wail of sirens. We were yards from the garage and then we were inside, our feet
striking metal treads as we bounded up the stairs with weapons drawn.

We cleared the doorway to the third floor, and I heard a baby screaming. I ran toward that sound. A woman in her twenties
was frozen in place, standing only yards from a man lying spread-eagled, faceup on the floor. She was holding a gun.

I approached the woman slowly, leading with my badge, and said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer. It’s okay now. Please hand me your gun.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” she said, still transfixed, her baby screaming behind her. “The coroner said to carry a gun, and I did
it. It’s him, isn’t it? It’s the killer, isn’t it?”

I had to holster my weapon, shake the shooter’s wrist, and pry up her fingers until I’d secured her .22. Yards away, Conklin
kicked a gun out of the limp hand of the man on the floor.

I joined Conklin and put my fingers on the downed man’s carotid artery.

“Rich, I’ve got a pulse.”

Conklin called for an ambulance, and cruisers screamed up the ramp. I couldn’t look away from Peter Gordon’s face.

This was the monster who’d executed nine people, five of them children, a killer who’d tormented his family and held an entire
city hostage.

His blood was pumping onto the concrete floor.

I didn’t want to lose him. I wanted to see him in an orange jumpsuit, shackled to the defense table. I wanted to hear his
fucked-up view of the world. I wanted him to pay with nine consecutive life sentences, one for each of the people he’d killed.
I wanted him to
pay.

I pressed my hand to the well of blood pumping from his femoral artery. I nearly jumped when Gordon opened sleepy eyes and
turned them on me, saying, “Sweet… meat. I think… I’m shot.”

I leaned so close to his face, I could almost feel a breeze as he opened and closed his eyes.

I said, “Why’d you kill them, you son of a bitch?”

He smiled and said, “Why not?” Then he exhaled a ragged breath and died.

911

IT WAS SEPTEMBER 25, and Joe and I were having friends over to toast one another and the good days ahead.

A ham was in the oven, baking under a peppery mango glaze. Martha was begging for a taste and got a Milk-Bone instead. I was
wearing a kimono and an avocado mask as I peeled the potatoes and Joe sliced apples for the cobbler. The 49ers were playing
the Cowboys, the cheers of the crowd coming over the TV, when Joe’s cell phone rang.

I said to him, “Don’t answer that, honey.”

I wasn’t joking, but he grinned at me and picked up the phone.

I hadn’t had a call in weeks that hadn’t sent me down a tunnel of horror, and frankly I was so strung out from my job, I couldn’t
take even a lightbulb burning out. Or a broken fingernail. Or even a dip in the temperature. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Joe brought the phone into the living room, and I rinsed the potatoes and put them on to boil. I was in the bathroom washing
avocado off my face when Joe said my name. I shut off the water and patted my eyes with a fluffy towel, and when I turned,
I saw Joe looking at me, gray-faced and grim.

“There’s a plane full of people on the tarmac at Dulles International,” he said. “There’s a guy on board, used to be an informant
of mine years back. He smuggled C-four in with his hand luggage. He’s threatening to blow up the plane.”

“Oh my God. And the Feds want you to advise them?”

“Not exactly. The guy with the C-four, Waleed Mohammad, wants to talk to me and only me.”

Joe had been deputy director of Homeland Security when we met and had become a high-level security consultant when he moved
here from DC—a consultant who worked from
home.

“So you need to call the guy,” I said. “Talk him down.”

“I have to fly to Washington,” Joe said, walking to me, enfolding me in his arms. “A car’s picking me up. I have to go right
now.”

It felt like my heart stopped in its tracks.

It was stupid, but I just wanted to bawl in Joe’s arms and tell him he couldn’t go, and if he did, I’d keep crying until he
came back.

“Do what you have to do,” I said.

I WAS DRESSED by the time Yuki and Miles arrived. Miles, that too-cute-for-words bartender, presented me with a bottle of
wine, telling me about its special qualities. I barely heard him, but I’m pretty sure I thanked him. Yuki asked where Joe
was, and I told her with my voice catching, my eyes watering up, that he had rushed off to Washington.

I turned away so she wouldn’t have to endure my disgraceful wet-eyed funk. So she followed me into the kitchen and helped
me plate the olives and cheese. “What’s going on, Lindsay?” she asked me.

“Don’t look at me. It’s just that everything finally got to me. You know. Everything.”

“When’s Joe coming back?”

I shrugged and the doorbell rang, Martha yelping happily when I opened it to Edmund and Claire. Claire surrounded me in a
big hug and smothered me with flowers.

Edmund said, “Lindsay, you look gorgeous in red. Gorgeous in any way, but red’s definitely your color.”

Edmund joined Miles in front of the TV, the two of them having a football bonding moment as Claire went into the kitchen and
poked around for a vase.

When Cindy and Rich showed up, I realized it was the first time I’d seen them together on a date. And maybe it was the first
time they’d really been out in the world publicly. That their debut was happening at my home was pretty cool. I told them
that Joe was MIA and why.

Rich said, “You want me to pick out some music, Linds?”

“Thanks. That would be great.”

Richie was digging through the CDs and I was pulling the ham out of the oven when the phones rang, each of them, one in all
four rooms ringing together.

“Are you getting the phone?” Claire asked me.

“Phones are no friends of mine.”

“Could be Jacobi.”

“He’d call me on my cell.”

My mobile rang from my handbag. I reached in and looked at the caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number. Maybe, I thought,
it was coming from Jacobi’s mystery date’s phone.

“Warren, are you lost?”

“Sergeant Boxer?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Commander John Jordan. I’m afraid there’s been an incident. I wanted to reach you before you heard it on the news.”

My mind skittered like a needle across an old-fashioned vinyl record. This couldn’t be about that hostage crisis in Washington.
Joe couldn’t have gotten there—not yet. His plane had just lifted off. I looked at the television set through the wall opening
to the living room.

Talking heads had replaced the football game, and I read the breaking-news banner:
CHARTER JET DOWNED IN CALIFORNIA
.

Chopper footage came on, showing a green valley blemished by airplane wreckage and a blooming column of black smoke.

The commander was speaking to me, but I didn’t really hear his words. I already got it. Joe’s plane had gone down. They didn’t
know what had happened, why it had blown up or simply crashed.

The lights faded to black, and I went down.

I SWAM UP out of the darkness, hearing Claire talking to Cindy, feeling something cold on my forehead, Martha’s paws on my
chest. My eyelids flew open. I was looking up at the ceiling of my bedroom.

Where was Joe?

Claire said, “I’m here, baby. We’re all here.”

“Joe? Is Joe…?” I wailed. “Oh no. Oh God no.”

Claire looked at me helplessly, tears rolling down her face. Cindy grabbed my hand and Yuki cried, paced, and cried some more.

I was overwhelmed with a horrible emptiness, a pain so deep, so shocking, I wanted to die. I rolled onto my side so I couldn’t
see anyone and covered my head with a pillow. Sobs poured out of me.

“I’m right here, sugar,” Claire said.

“Tell everyone to go home. Please,” I said.

She didn’t answer me. The door closed, and I took Joe’s pillow in my arms and rocked myself into a sleep that was more falling
down a bottomless hole than floating in a dream.

I woke up not knowing why I was drowning in dread.

“What time is it?” I asked into the pillow.

“It’s almost five,” Claire said.

“In the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve only been out for an hour?”

“I’m going to get you something to put you out,” she said. “I called in a prescription.”

I pulled the blanket over my head.

I came up from the deep again, this time into a roar of voices, cheers—
What the hell? Was I still dreaming?
The bedroom door opened, and lights blazed. Joe was standing over me.

I screamed his name.

Was it really him? Was it? Or had I gone insane?

Joe opened his arms, and I threw myself against him, feeling the wool of his jacket scrape my cheek, hearing his voice saying
my name.

I pulled away and looked again to be sure, and now the room was filling with my friends, standing-room only.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, sweetheart. I’m here.”

I was crying again, and I was asking Joe to tell me what had happened.

“I was at the airport,” Joe said. “Ours—SFO—when I got a call from my contacts in Washington saying that the passengers on
that plane had overpowered Waleed. It was all over. I could go back home.

“I was arranging a car. I didn’t know about that jet going down, Lindsay, until my driver turned on the radio and told me
the news.”

I was helped out of the bedroom and brought to the table. Joe sat beside me. The food was rubbery and cold, and it was the
best damned meal I’d eaten in my life—in my whole entire life.

Wine was poured. Toasts were made. I looked around the table, and it finally sank in—Jacobi wasn’t there.

“Rich, did you hear from Jacobi?”

“He hasn’t called,” Rich said.

We raised a glass to Jacobi’s new girlfriend. We ate Joe’s apple cobbler with gusto and, by the way, the 49ers won. I was
weak from emotion and didn’t even try to stop people from clearing the table.

By eight o’clock, I was in bed for the night with my arms wrapped around Joe.

THE TELEPHONE RANG several times that night and the next morning, too. I told Joe that if he picked up a phone, he was a dead
man, and then I pulled out the cord to the landline, put both our cell phones in the wall safe, and changed the combination.

Joe and I took Martha for a run, and when we got back, Joe made ham-and-cheese omelets with leftovers. It was after noon,
so we opened the wine Miles had brought, Joe sipping, looking at the bottle, and saying, “Wow.”

We had bought, but never had had the time to watch, the complete season-one set of
Lost,
so we pulled up armchairs to the TV and went through six episodes, broke for pizza and beer, and watched the news. We learned
that the downed plane hadn’t been sabotaged. The cause was pilot error, terrible enough because four people had died but a
relief in that it hadn’t been a failed attempt on Joe’s life.

We soaked up another five hours of
Lost,
and I suppose some would say it was a waste of a day, but Joe, beer, and fantasy TV, in that order, were what I needed. I
fell asleep in Joe’s arms watching a recording of Bill Maher on the
Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson
. I turned off the television and shook Joe awake.

“Huh?”

“I love you,” I said.

“Of course you do. I love you, too. I wish there was a better, more expressive way to say it. Too bad you can’t slip into
my skin and
feel
how much I love you.”

I laughed.

Boy, did it feel good to laugh.

“I believe you, sweetheart,” I said.

When I woke up again, it was morning. I took Martha for a walk, and when we returned, I watched Joe sleep as I dressed. I
plugged the phones back into their sockets and slugged down a glass of orange juice.

I strapped on my gun, opened the safe in the closet, and took out our cell phones. I put Joe’s on the night table and gave
him a kiss.

He opened his blue eyes.

“How’re you feeling, Blondie?”

“Never better,” I said. “Call me later.”

Martha got into bed with Joe, and I went out to my car, remembering as I got into the front seat to check my phone messages.

I’d missed four calls, all of them from Jacobi. I was alarmed and swamped with guilt. I love Jacobi. Love him like the father
I wished I’d had. What happened to him? How badly had I let him down?

I pressed the buttons and listened to Jacobi’s first message.