Guilty Page 4

  A stricken glance at Bryan’s face told her that he knew the distracting sound was emanating from somewhere around their table.

  Her briefcase, to be precise. Nestled against the far leg of the counsel table, there on the floor beside her chair. Although she couldn’t see the black leather rectangle from where she stood, she guessed the thing was practically vibrating with the energy of the song.

  Her phone let loose with the bouncy melody again, and she felt about two inches tall.

  “I want an answer!” Moran said.

  Everyone glanced around, searching for the culprit. The three deputies stationed around the courtroom looked at one another, then at the judge for a cue as to what to do. Knowing Moran, this was going to get nasty fast.

  Kate faced the awful truth: There was no way out. She had to confess.

  “It’s mine, Your Honor,” she said, doing her best to keep her chin up even though she felt like sinking straight down through the floor. Right on cue, the ringtone sounded again.

  If only the damned thing would shut up. Please, let it just shut up.

  “I’m so sorry, I . . .”

  “Turn it off.” Moran’s voice was like thunder. His face was taking on color like a quickly ripening tomato.

  “Now.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Toddling off in the direction of counsel table while doing her best to maintain some semblance of professional cool, she was hideously conscious of being the cynosure of all eyes. Bryan’s face was a study in dismay. Beyond him, in the galleries, Kate faced a sea of wide eyes all focused on her. Except for another exuberant burst of melody from her damned phone, the silence in that courtroom was absolute.

  Oh my God, I don’t believe this. I’ve made an absolute fool of myself and Bryan and the entire district attorney’s office. Moran’s going to wipe the floor with me. How could I have let this happen?

  Those, and more along the same line, were only some of the happy thoughts that pounded through Kate’s head as, teeth clenched, she crouched beside the prosecution’s table, flipped the clasps open on her briefcase, and thrust her hand into the side pocket to grab her vibrating phone.

  Kate found the button and turned off the ringer with a quick, vicious jab even as recognition dawned: The phone number dancing across the little digital display on the front of the phone was that of Ben’s school.

  Even so, her uppermost feeling for the next split second was relief that blessed silence now reigned.

  Then anxiety of a different sort raised its head, playing havoc with her already frazzled nerves.

  Ben.

  She had dropped him off at seven-thirty, as she did every morning so she could get to work on time. He was part of the breakfast group, which was maybe a quarter of the school’s population of two hundred under-twelves, basically the kids whose parents had to be at work by eight. They had juice and cereal or whatever in the cafeteria until seven-fifty, when they were allowed to go to their classrooms for the official beginning of the school day. This—fourth grade—was Ben’s first year at the school, because they’d moved into the district at the beginning of the summer when she’d been hired on at the DA’s office. So far, he had told her, it had been “okay.” Which in Ben-speak meant he didn’t want to talk about it. Which worried her. Which was no surprise. Practically everything to do with raising Ben worried her.

  She was so afraid she wasn’t doing it right.

  Now the school was calling, and the knowledge made her stomach tighten with anxiety.

  Was Ben sick? Was he hurt? Or was it something else that the school wanted, something administrative maybe? Yes, that was probably it: a form she’d forgotten to fill out, a check she’d forgotten to send, something of that nature. Whatever it was, though, she couldn’t possibly return the call now. The best she could do was wait until she could somehow manage to squeeze in a break.

  Please don’t let Ben be sick or hurt, she prayed as she stuffed the now silenced phone back into her briefcase, slid Bryan an apologetic look, and, cringing inwardly in anticipation of what she knew she was about to face, rose to her feet.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  The sounds, faintly muffled, came out of nowhere.

  With her peripheral vision, Kate caught a blur of sudden movement: a door—the tan metal door to the secure corridor where prisoners were kept in a series of holding rooms until their presence was required in court—flew open. As she whirled to face it, someone in the gallery screamed.

  Those are gunshots was her instinctive first thought as the courtroom erupted into chaos around her.

  To her astonishment, Little Julie Soto sprang to his feet and ran around the far end of the defense table, his wiry, five-feet-six-inch frame conveying a surprising amount of menace despite its diminutive proportions and the ill-fitting gray suit he wore for the benefit of the jury. His long black hair and pale blue tie bounced as he moved, and his narrow face was alight with savage triumph. From somewhere he had acquired a pistol; it was in his hand.

  Kate sucked in air. Her heart gave a great leap.

  No! But her throat didn’t work; her lips didn’t move.

  She screamed it only inside her head.

  “You ain’t putting me back in jail,” Soto shouted to the accompaniment of an explosion of frantic screams.

  Judge Moran was on his feet, she saw as her disbelieving gaze followed Soto’s. The judge raised his hands, palms outward, as if to ward off the threat. His eyes were wide and his mouth was opening, as if he was about to speak, or yell, or something. Whatever he meant to do, she never knew, because she was just in time to watch—bang!—as his head was blown to pieces.

  Chapter 4

  KATE EXPERIENCED the horror of Judge Moran’s murder like a punch to the stomach. She gasped. Her ears rang. A sour taste sprang into her mouth.

  This can’t be real.

  Blood and brains splattered the wall behind the bench. The gruesome cloud of red-tinged mist that was left where the judge’s head had been just a split second before was still hanging in the air when his body dropped like a rock, disappearing from view. Kate’s knees buckled at the same time. She collapsed into a kneeling position right there at the far side of the counsel table, eyes huge with disbelief, heart pounding. Her clenched fists pressed hard against her mouth. After that, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She felt suddenly disembodied, as if she was viewing what was happening from a great—safe—distance.

  Please, oh please, let this be a bad dream.

  Men—two of them, at least one a prisoner, judging from the short-sleeved orange jumpsuit he wore—burst from the secure corridor. Pistols were in their hands. Soto glanced over his shoulder at them.

  “Vámonos! Let’s go!”

  Crack! Crack!

  More shots rang out, coming from roughly the direction of the jury box. One of the deputies firing back, Kate thought, although she couldn’t see who was shooting exactly because she still couldn’t move. At the same time, panicked confusion erupted everywhere. In the space of just those first few seconds, the courtroom turned into a terrifying kaleidoscope of color and sound and movement.

  Ducking low, Soto and the newcomers ran toward the front of the courtroom as one of them—the one in the orange jumpsuit—shouted at him, “What the hell did you just do?”

  “I killed him, so what?” Soto yelled back.

  “You stupid shit!”

  “Go to hell!”

  With two of the three cursing at each other, they converged, dashing around the side of the bench toward the window, dodging bullets and snapping off shots as they ran. Curry hit the ground in front of the bench, his arms flying to cover his head as a bullet smacked into the smooth mahogany not two feet above where he lay. Hands in the air, the court reporter fled shrieking toward the jury box. The deputy nearest the bench—the one whose sleep-inducing drone Kate had tuned out earlier—screamed and dropped; he’d been shot, she knew, even before she saw the blood rolling out from beneath
his head. Screams and curses and pounding feet and gunfire—even after all these years, Kate would recognize those sharp bangs anywhere—mingled hideously, exploding off the walls and floor and ceiling like rapid-fire thunder, filling the room with deafening, terrifying noise. The smell of cordite and carnage was everywhere.

  The blood now pouring from the slain deputy’s head continued to roll toward her like a scarlet river across the black-speckled stone floor.

  The smell hit her.

  Human blood smells like raw meat. Oh, God, I remember that smell. . . .

  Kate’s stomach turned inside out. She wanted to gag, but she couldn’t. She seemed to be paralyzed. Shock—it was good that she could at least recognize that cold, dead feeling as shock, wasn’t it?—rendered her immobile, rooting her to the smooth, hard terrazzo beneath her bent legs.

  Blood—so much blood . . . blood everywhere . . . splashes of scarlet on the walls, splatters of scarlet on the floor, gushers of scarlet pumping from destroyed flesh . . .

  Time seemed to slow to an impossible crawl. Her stomach churned sickeningly. Her heart pounded in hard, fast strokes. Icy with horror now, she knew there was nothing she could do to save herself or anyone else as the nightmare unfolded around her.

  “Where are they?” the guy in the orange jumpsuit screamed, sharply enough to pierce the explosion of noise, which was so loud she felt her brain might self-destruct from the sheer, unbelievable volume of it.

  “The fuck should I know?” Soto screamed back.

  “They oughta be here!”

  “Get out, get out, get out!” This, from the gallery, was some other, innocent, man’s yell, rising over the tumult, urging others to flee.

  “Mama, where are you?” It was a child’s frantic screech, also from the gallery.

  “God help me, Jesus help me . . .” a nearby woman wailed.

  These and other disembodied voices reached her ears through the hair-raising sounds of dozens of people screaming and fighting to escape what in just a matter of seconds had turned into an abattoir. If she’d been able to move, she would have clapped her hands over her ears, but her muscles, seemingly heavy as lead, obstinately refused to respond to her brain’s signals. Her breathing came fast and shallow. Her pulse raced. Cold sweat poured over her in waves. She knew she should move, run, hide, right now on pain of death, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. For the second time in her life, she was frozen to the spot with fear. Only her eyes moved, glancing desperately around.

  Oh, God, how many dead?

  Some people in the galleries were hunkered down, she saw as her terrified gaze darted toward them, doing their best to hide from the flying bullets as the remaining deputies and prisoners exchanged fire. Others jumped screaming over the backs of the benches or charged down the center aisle, bent double, pushing and slamming into one another as they tried to escape by way of the double doors she and Bryan had hurried through just moments before. A fleeing man was shot in the back and flung forward out of sight, knocking down two people in front of him as he fell. Those rushing up the aisle behind him leaped over the fallen bodies. In the jury box, some were on their feet, stampeding like crazed cattle toward the door to the jury room. Others dived out of sight behind the box’s low wall, impeding their fellows.

  Bullets flew everywhere.

  Another deputy, retreating along the courtroom’s left wall, shot steadily at the murderous trio now sheltering behind the bench before being hit by a barrage of return fire that cut him down. The jackhammerlike crack of the shots blasted Kate’s eardrums. She screamed along with the rest—but once again, the sound was only inside her head.

  “Kate, for God’s sake, get under here!”

  The urgent summons came from nearby. Something warm and faintly moist grabbed at her leg. She squeaked, jumping, and sucked in a great gulp of air. Reality hit her like a bucket of ice water to the face.

  I could die here—only I can’t. What would happen to Ben?

  As her son’s beloved face rose in her mind’s eye, panic clawed at her insides. Her survival instinct kicked in. Even as she recognized Bryan’s pudgy fingers sliding away from her ankle she saw him, hunkered down under the dubious protection of the counsel table. He crouched on the balls of his feet, breathing hard, visibly sweating. His eyes were shiny-scared as he met her gaze.

  Oh my God, they killed Judge Moran. We—the prosecutors—are probably next on the list.

  Time resumed its normal ferocious pace. Twisting around, she speed-crawled toward Bryan. Her heart pounded like a marathon runner’s. Her palms were so sweaty that they slipped a little on the terrazzo. Although she knew she really wasn’t, she felt safer once the thin slab of mahogany was over her head. Crowding next to the sturdy warmth of Bryan’s side, she strained to look out beneath the overhang, desperate to find out where the shooters were. What she could see was limited: briefcases and umbrellas and a scattering of papers that had fallen to the floor from the counsel table, part of the wall to the jury box, the lower half of the bench, podium, witness stand, and court reporter’s station, the area beneath the defense table and dark paneling all around. The only people visible to her from that angle were the fallen deputy and Curry, who, while still hugging the floor, was moving in a fast, commando-style crawl toward the defense table and, beyond it, the wall that separated the well from the gallery.

  “This is bad,” Brian said in her ear, his voice shaky.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” Terror squeezed her throat, making it difficult to force words out. Their dark little cave might have felt safe, but she absolutely knew it was not. For Ben’s sake if for no other reason, she had to survive.

  What would he do without her? His dad was dead; she had no family to take him in. He would be all alone. The thought of it imbued her with the worst kind of fear.

  “Is that bastard even out there?” Orange Jumpsuit shrieked. “Pack, you see him?”

  “Can’t see nothing through the damned rain.”

  “We gotta chance it. We gotta go.”

  At least two of the trio were scarily close, Kate estimated, judging from the clarity with which she heard their shouted exchange. Their guns sounded like they were being fired almost directly overhead. She still couldn’t see them, which made the panic flooding her just that much worse. At the thought that at any second now they might remember her and Bryan, Kate shuddered.

  Please, God, don’t let it be my time to die.

  She was breathing so fast that she feared she might hyperventilate. Her pulse raced. Her heart pounded. Loud crashes from the general vicinity of the bench made her cower, but try as she might to see, Kate couldn’t tell what caused them. All she was sure of was that she and Bryan were in deadly danger. Knowing that the counsel table offered only an illusion of protection, she desperately looked around for the best way out. The presence of the wall separating the well from the galleries, designed to keep the principals in a trial at a safe distance from the public gallery, worked against them now. It was about three feet behind them, cutting them off from any chance at an easy escape. As she saw it, they had three choices: They could go over the wall and start leaping galleries, they could dash toward the small swinging door that led to the center aisle and bolt with the rest of the crowd for the exit, or they could stay put. The first two exposed them to the bullets that were still flying everywhere, and, if they were spotted by the bad guys as they were almost certain to be, might be the equivalent of painting targets smack in the middle of their backs. The third seemed safer, but in reality it left them vulnerable to being hit by a stray bullet—or discovered at any time by the gunmen.

  Who would, she had no doubt at all after what happened to Judge Moran, kill them with glee.

  The idea of being trapped and at the prisoners’ mercy gave her the willies.

  “We need to make a break for it,” she whispered to Bryan, who was looking around just as desperately as she was.

  He nodded.

  Before they could even think abo
ut making a move, the last remaining deputy, the one who earlier had been standing nearest to the jury box, popped into view. He was, she saw, middle-aged, his brown hair going gray around the temples, a little paunchy in his uniform. He shot out from behind the jury-box wall in an awkward, crouching run, yelling, “Officer down! Officer down!” into a walkie-talkie even as he fired his weapon multiple times to cover himself. Seconds after she spotted him, he took a bullet in the back. The walkie-talkie went sailing as he was flung forward. He landed, hard, just a few feet from where she and Bryan cowered. Kate looked with horror at his blinking eyes—and at the growing circle of crimson that blossomed like a fast-opening rose on the back of his dark blue shirt. The man wasn’t dead, though, or at least not yet, because after he hit the floor his hand moved, closing into a loose fist.

  Her heart turned over.

  He needs help. . . .

  But there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t even go to him without exposing herself to potentially deadly fire.

  “Hang on,” she mouthed to the deputy, whose eyes had quit blinking. He was staring at her in a fixed way that she feared meant nothing but bad news. She was nearly positive he wasn’t seeing her.

  As she looked back at him in horror, two things happened almost simultaneously. First, there was a quick barrage of shots accompanied by the crash of glass shattering. From the sound of it, the window closest to them had been shot out. Shards rained noisily to the floor, breaking again on the stone and sending a cloud of sparkling glass dust flying into view. Second, from the opposite end of the room where the doors to the hall were located came a mighty bellow loud enough to be heard over the chaos.

  “Police! Freeze! Get down, get down!”

  Thank God, we’re saved. . . .

  “Shit,” one of the bad guys—she was sure it was one of the bad guys, though not Orange Jumpsuit—cried, to the accompaniment of another burst of gunfire and a crescendo of screams that told Kate that the courtroom was still plenty full.

  “There’s a fucking army of pigs outside!” Orange Jumpsuit shrieked, sounding way too close for Kate’s liking.