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.
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 exit, 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.”