Women's Murder Club [09] The 9th Judgment Read online

  Fire was consuming an SUV at the curb. Injured men, bleeding from shrapnel wounds, leaned against their vehicles or slumped by the street. The intensity of the blast marks near the road told me that Gordon had planted a bomb on the sidewalk. Another bomb had gone off at the back of the house—and the home was starting to burn. Were these explosives meant to kill? Or to create chaos?

  Where was Gordon now?

  I heard the unmistakable grind of a garage door rolling up behind me. I turned to see Gordon at the wheel of a blue Honda station wagon, heading out of the garage and down the driveway toward the street.

  Rich pulled his nine, and I knew his wasn’t the only weapon pointed toward that Honda. The house was covered, high and wide—and I was in the direct line of fire.

  “Hold your fire,” I shouted toward the street.

  I put up my hands and walked toward Gordon’s car. As I stared through the driver’s-side window, I found that I was looking into the face of a terrified child. Gordon was holding his son up to the glass, gun to the baby’s head, using him as a shield.

  The window lowered an inch, and Gordon’s too-familiar voice came to me.

  “Stink bomb,” he said, “say hello to Sergeant Boxer.”

  Chapter 96

  I TORE MY eyes away from the terrified little boy, whipped around toward the street, and screamed again, “Hold your fire. For God’s sake, he’s got the child. Hold your fire.”

  A blurred shape charged from behind a vehicle and continued in a line parallel to the street and toward the driveway. It was Brady. I watched in horror as he threw a spike strip down in front of Gordon’s car, then took a stance at the head of the vehicle and, holding his gun with both hands, leveled it at the windshield.

  Brady yelled to Gordon, “Get out of the car. Get out of the car now.”

  Gordon leaned on his horn, then called out to me, “Tell that bozo I have a gun to stinky’s head. At the count of three, I shoot. One.”

  My voice was hoarse as I shouted, “Brady, put down your gun. He’ll shoot the boy. He’ll shoot!”

  Gordon was a serial killer with a hostage. Procedurally, Brady was in the right and would probably be considered a hero for bringing Gordon down, even if Steven died.

  Then Benbow backed me up.

  “Brady, lower your weapon.”

  Brady hesitated, then did what he was told. I was moved by Benbow’s humanity, even as I prayed he was doing the right thing.

  Gordon said, “Lindsay? No guns. No choppers. No one on my tail. Do you copy? Two.”

  I called out Gordon’s demands toward the street, and the chopper flew out of range. I heard the squeal of rubber on asphalt, and I turned back to see Gordon’s car shoot out of the driveway. He wheeled around the spike strip and rammed an SUV, knocking it out of the way, then jumped the curb and gunned the car down the street in the direction of the freeway.

  Within seconds, this suburban block had been turned into what looked like a combat zone. The wails of sirens came from all directions: the bomb squad, ambulances, and fire rigs all rushed to the scene.

  I made my way to the street, where Benbow was ordering air cover on the Honda.

  Conklin put me on the phone with Jacobi, and I told him I was all right, but the truth was, I was dazed and breathless from the explosions, and my vision kept fading in and out.

  As Conklin and I helped each other to our car, I kept seeing the red, terrified face of that small boy, screaming wordlessly through the car window.

  Dizziness swamped me. I bent over and threw up in the grass.

  Chapter 97

  I WOKE UP in the emergency room, lying in a railed bed inside a curtained-off stall. Joe got up from the chair next to me and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Hello, sweetie. Are you all right? Are you okay?”

  “Never better.”

  Joe laughed and kissed me.

  I squeezed his hand. “How long was I out?”

  “Two hours. You needed the sleep.” Joe sat back down, keeping my hand in his.

  “How’s Conklin? How’s Brady?”

  “Conklin’s got a line of stitches across his forehead. The scar’s going to look good on him. Brady’s a hundred percent okay but pissed off. Says he could’ve taken Gordon out.”

  “Or he could’ve gotten me, himself, Conklin, and that baby all killed.”

  “You did good, Linds. No one died. Jacobi’s in the waiting room. He hugged me.”

  “He did, huh?”

  “Bear hug.” Joe grinned and I laughed. I’m not sure that Jacobi has ever hugged me.

  “Any news on Gordon?”

  “By the time the air cover got up, his Honda was one of a million blue wagons just like it. They lost him.”

  “And the boy?”

  Joe shrugged. I felt sick all over again. All that highly trained manpower, and Gordon had made fools of us all. “He’s going to use Steven as a hostage until he doesn’t need him anymore.”

  “I think he’s ditched the kid by now, honey. Once he got out of there, a screaming toddler could only get in his way.”

  “He killed him, you mean?”

  Joe shrugged. “Let’s say he just dropped him off somewhere.” Joe turned his eyes down.

  A nurse came in and said the doctor would be back in a minute. “Can I get you anything, sweetheart? Juice?”

  “No, thanks. I’m okay.”

  When she’d gone, Joe said, “The whole deal was a diversion. The guy knows how to make a bomb.”

  “Did I set off the charge?”

  “The doorbell. When you pressed the button, signals went to two blasting caps, one in a cooler at the curb. The other blew up the back of the house—what used to be a house.”

  “He asked for me, Joe. He demanded that I come to the door. He planned for me to detonate that bomb. Why me? Payback because he didn’t get the money?”

  “I think so. He’s putting your face on his power struggle with the city—”

  The doctor came in, and Joe stepped outside. Dr. Dweck asked me to follow his finger with my eyes. He hammered my knees and made me flex my wings. He told me that I had a gorgeous palm-sized contusion on my shoulder and that the cuts on my hands would heal just fine.

  He listened to my breathing and my heart, both of which sped up as I thought about how Peter Gordon could be anywhere by now, with or without that little boy—and no one knew where in the hell he was.

  Chapter 98

  I LEANED BACK in the passenger seat as Joe drove us home. Jacobi had told me to take a few days off and to call in on Monday to see if he was letting me work next week.

  Joe said, “You’re taking the sleeping cure, you hear me, Blondie? Once you’re home, you’re under house arrest.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stop arguing with me.”

  I laughed and turned my head so I could look at his strong profile in silhouette against the cobalt-blue dusk. I let centrifugal force hold me against the car door when Joe made the turn onto Arguello and I watched the steeples of St. John’s go by. I must’ve closed my eyes, because I woke hearing Joe telling me that we were home.

  He helped me onto the sidewalk outside our building and steadied me as I got my balance.

  Joe was asking, “What do you feel like having for dinner?” when I saw what had to be an illusion. Across the street was a blue Honda wagon with a crumpled right fender.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the car.

  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.

  How did he know where I lived?

  Why had he driven his car to my door?

  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 temp
le was a vivid red.

  The psycho had shot his little boy.

  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’t screw it up again” 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.

  Part Four

  MONSTER

  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 fiancé 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 it 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.”