Bad Blood (29 page)

Curtis Pell arrived half an hour later with more coffee and breakfast for himself and Laura. We had been over his involvement in the investigation and his written reports four or five times in the last month, so I just walked him through the trim version of his direct that I had fashioned yesterday.

The chatter of assistants arriving filled the eighth-floor corridor as Curtis helped me maneuver my shopping cart from my office to the first of two elevator banks that connected to the courthouse tower above the DA’s Office.

The hallway outside Part 83 was already lined with spectators and a handful of local crime reporters. Two court officers were standing between the metal detector through which they all had to pass and the long wooden table on which handbags and backpacks and briefcases would be searched.

Curtis Pell opened the door for me and we walked down the aisle to counsel’s table.

Lem Howell had the
Wall Street Journal
spread out before him. His cream-colored suit looked like the cleanest thing in the drab courtroom, a cool contrast to my slim turquoise sheath.

Lem didn’t pick his head up from the market listings but heard the tap of my heels as we approached him. “Good morning, Alexandra.”

“Morning, Lem,” I said. “Hey, Jonetta, how are you?”

The court clerk waved at me, and Artie Tramm was on his way off the bench to fill the judge’s water pitcher. “We got eight jurors, Alex. We should be able to get started on schedule if the next few mosey in on time. Mind if I put Detective Pell in the witness room?”

“He’s all yours.”

Pell followed Artie out the side door of the courtroom. The hallway behind the jury box had several small rooms — the one in which jurors gathered before proceedings and in which they eventually deliberated, and a windowless cubicle in which witnesses waited before they were called to the stand.

When he came back into the part, Artie called out to Lem and me, “Gertz wants to know if you’re ready as soon as we get our full panel.”

“Good to go,” I said.

“You expecting a visitor?” Artie asked.

One of the court officers had let Alan Vandomir into the room. Lem Howell recognized the detective and got on his feet to sit on the edge of my table. “No more monkey business up your sleeve, is there?”

“It is monkey business, actually, but nothing to do with your case. This will only take a minute. You can listen in, Lem. You’ll hear it on tonight’s news anyway.”

Alan and Lem shook hands. “The sergeant got through to the head of the Medicaid office half an hour ago. These Viagra pills, they cost ten bucks a shot, and the government’s been paying for released sex offenders to get them for
five years
before anybody happened to notice. The bill for keeping these pervs’ private parts up, just in New York alone, runs over twenty-one million dollars. You better call Battaglia, Alex.”

“Will do, Alan.” He turned to leave the courtroom and Artie Tramm walked him out, locking the door behind him so that Gertz could take the bench without any further interruptions.

“Let me understand this,” Lem said, pacing the well as though arguing to an imaginary jury. He was entertaining me and Jonetta Purvis, the court clerk, and Artie Tramm, the last bit of humor before we hunkered down for a day of testimony about Amanda Keating’s homicide.

The two uniformed court officers who would be guarding Quillian for the remainder of the trial — a stooped older man, Oscar Valenti, and the short African-American woman, Elsie Evers, who had worked the part last week — were leaning against the door to the defendant’s holding pen, also watching Lem perform.

“I am all for the underdog, ladies and gentlemen, do not mistake that fact.” Lem gestured with his forefinger. “But when you are taking food out of the mouths of our hungry children — how much money did he say, Artie?”

“Twenty-one million large, Mr. Howell.”

“When you are using money that could be better spent on a pension fund for Ms. Cooper or a fine new robe for the judge or membership at a gym for Artie Tramm” — Lem patted Artie’s paunch as the officer passed behind him — “and instead, you are correcting, you are fueling, you are — hell, Ms. Cooper, you’re the expert here, what’s going on? You, my dear taxpayers, and the United States government, have just declared an end to erectile dysfunction, is that it? Whose lobby is this? Erectile dysfunction is unfair for sex offenders. Watch the ACLU jump in on their side. It’s mind-boggling.”

“I’ll tell you right up front,” Artie said, “I keep waitin’ for one of those four-hour jobs that I’d have to call my doctor and complain about. Four minutes I’m lucky. I see that ad one more time on TV I’m gonna throw something at the set.”

Fred Gertz swept into the courtroom from his robing room. “Who’s complaining about what? I must say, you’re a happy-looking bunch this morning. How many jurors missing now, Artie?”

“I just checked. We need two regulars and one alternate. Nobody’s called with a problem, so we should be fine by nine fifteen.”

“Anything to discuss? Any housekeeping?”

Lem and I looked at each other, and I said, “No.”

“Shall we bring the prisoner in?” Gertz asked.

Lem walked to the bench for his daily bonding with the judge. “You have to hear this one, Fred. Special Victims Unit locks up a serial rapist last night — a guy on parole for a bunch of attacks Alex got him on years ago. You know what you bought him?”

“Me?” Gertz didn’t get it at first. “What did I buy who?”

“We’ve been paying for his Viagra, Fred. You and I. We’ve been helping to set him up in business in the hood. Helping him get his groove back.”

The two court officers, Oscar and Elsie, had left the room to bring Brendan Quillian in, so that he could take his place before the press, the public, and the jurors were allowed to enter.

“That’s expensive stuff,” Gertz said with a chuckle. “What does one have to do to get the government to pay?”

More than I needed to know about the usually sober jurist.

I walked to the wall phone that was mounted behind Jonetta’s desk. Cell phones were not allowed in court, and this was an internal unit that could only be used to reach extensions within the DA’s Office system.

“Rose? Would you tell the boss that Ryan Blackmer will besending up an urgent notice any minute now? Paul has to pay attention to it and I’m not available till the end of the day. The police commissioner will be trying to get lots of press on this one, and Battaglia needs to know the numbers.” I thanked her and hung up the phone.

Oscar Valenti held open the door for Quillian, and I could hear the distinctive jangling of the metal cuffs as Oscar’s partner, Elsie, unlocked the prisoner’s hands as they paused at the entrance to the court.

“I’ll look into it for you, Fred,” Lem said.

“That’s what they call a stiff dose of medicine,” Artie called across the room, the only one of us laughing at his joke.

The levity would be over the minute Gertz banged his gavel and called for the stenographer and jury to be brought in. But the bizarre news of the Medicaid outrage had broken the tension for all of us before the day’s serious work began.

It had also put us all off guard.

I heard the gunshot before I saw the weapon in Brendan Quillian’s hand. I watched as the petite court officer fell to the floor, shot in the head with her own service revolver.

Quillian took a few steps forward, his head sweeping the room so his only good eye could scope the territory. He’d been present enough times to know that the door to the main hallway stayed locked until the prisoner was seated. His only way out was the exit in back that had brought him from the Tombs to the holding pen.

Jonetta Purvis was standing still, frozen in place, screaming at the bloody sight of the woman whose brains had been blown out before us. I watched helplessly as Brendan Quillian struck Oscar Valenti on the head with Elsie’s gun, after the older man instinctively kneeled to look at his partner’s wound at the same time he tried to unholster his own weapon.

Then Quillian swung the barrel of the gun in Jonetta’s direction. I tackled her to the ground and we both went down behind the desk. There was a huge noise in the high-ceilinged room as he fired again, a bullet striking the wall above our heads.

As I fell on top of Jonetta, I saw Lem Howell vault over the side of the jury box, taking cover behind it. “Give it up, Brendan. Give it up, you damn fool.”

The judge must have ducked beneath the bench the minute the first shot rang out. I neither saw him nor heard his voice.

Artie Tramm had drawn his gun and was trying to jog to the rear of the room to unlock the hallway door — or to run out. Quillian moved faster than Tramm. Before the officer was halfway down the aisle, Quillian fired three times at Artie’s broad back.

I couldn’t see my old friend, but I heard him grunt as at least one bullet struck its mark, and I recoiled as his body hit the floor with a dull thud.

From beneath the kneehole of Jonetta’s desk, I saw the defendant turn and go back to Oscar’s side.

I had one hand over Jonetta’s mouth, trying to stifle her sobs while I propped myself up with the other. I could see Quillian take the man’s gun from its leather case and disappear back into the top of the landing beside the holding pen from which he had emerged. After all these months, he knew the enormity of the building as well as I did — a maze of hallways, staircases, and elevator shafts. He’d had scores of opportunities to make note of its labyrinthine passages, and he was undoubtedly scrambling down the one adjacent to the prisoners’ elevator as we stayed frozen in place.

The slaughter and turmoil that Brendan Quillian had begun so abruptly ended just as fast.

I pushed myself up as Lem called out the judge’s name. I got onto my knees, barefoot, the skirt of my dress ripped at the seam from the tumble with Jonetta.

There was still no sound from the bench, no sign of Fred Gertz.

Oscar was stirring, rolling onto his back and stroking his head.

I started crawling toward Elsie’s body.

“Get the hell back, Alex,” Lem said. “Fred, are you alive, man?”

Lem ran toward Elsie and crouched beside her. I stood up, thinking I could help him if there was any chance of keeping her alive. “Forget it. She’s gone, Alex. Get back with Jonetta.”

Judge Gertz clutched the top of the bench with both hands. “Is it safe?”

Everything seemed to be happening at once. I could hear Artie Tramm moan and Lem ran in his direction. “Stay down, Fred. He could be back any minute.”

I dashed to the door through which Quillian had entered and slammed it shut, turning the lock. If he encountered other armed officers in the stairwell, he was just as likely to try to get back here and take us all hostage.

“I told you to stay put, Alex,” Lem shouted. “That one’s not like the front door. Most officers have a key to open that lock — it’s useless.”

Lem had spent far more time outside those holding pens than any prosecutor had.

“Is Artie—?”

“I got his gun, Alex. Everybody stay calm with me. That door opens again, I got Artie’s gun and we’ll be fine.” Lem raised his arm so Jonetta and I could see it. “It’s just your arm, Artie. Don’t fight it. Stay down here with me. You’ll be kicking ass again in no time, Artie.”

I stepped closer to Elsie Evers. Two minutes earlier, this quiet woman had been doing her job, none of us anticipating the deadly threat from the seemingly well-bred defendant who had been so compliant during every other court appearance.

I ignored every principle of crime-scene investigation I had ever learned and expected from other professionals. I knelt beside her, taking her still-warm hand in my own to try to feel a pulse. One look at the back of her head was enough to tell me I wouldn’t find one — that it would be better for Elsie if I couldn’t find one — but I felt an overwhelming need to minister to her in some human way as her life oozed out on the filthy courtroom floor.

“What are you doing?” the judge asked. “She’s dead. Leave it alone.”

“Jonetta, would you get my jacket from the back of my chair?”

Someone was rattling the door from the pens.

Jonetta heard it, too, and ducked back beneath the desk.

Lem had grabbed Artie’s walkie-talkie to toss to me. “Alex — catch it! Press the talk button and send an SOS.”

He sprinted the remaining twenty feet to the main entrance and unlocked the door to the hallway. The two young officers who had been stationed at the metal detector came in with their guns drawn as Lem explained to them what had happened.

I transmitted the message that an armed prisoner had escaped and one court officer was dead. “Lem,” I called out. “Someone’s trying to get back in over here.”

Both officers were on their walkie-talkies, coming toward me to secure the door through which Quillian had fled. “When we heard shots, I called for backup and a bus,” one of them said — the NYPD shorthand for an ambulance. “They should be here any minute. Those reporters are all going nuts.”

One stationed himself beside the door, watching the knob wiggle, hearing a man’s voice yelling to Artie Tramm as he banged at the door. “Artie? Open up. It’s me — it’s Blakely.”

The second officer went around to the back of the bench and put his hand under Fred Gertz’s arm to help the shell-shocked jurist to his feet. “Judge, you gotta come with me. I want you at the other end of the room.”

“The captain has us in lockdown,” the first officer answered Blakely. “I can’t let you in till we get backup here. The prisoner went out your way. We got Elsie down. Artie and Oscar are waiting for medics.”

I walked to counsel’s table and slipped my jacket off the back of the chair. I brought it over to where Elsie lay and covered her head and upper body with it. There would be no shelter from the way the media pundits would blame her for her own death — for allowing Quillian to overpower her, take her gun, kill her, and endanger everyone else, as well as possibly make his escape from the massive building with its dozens of entrances and exits.

I could only offer her a bit of dignity now, in case the reporters and photographers flooded the room when we admitted the rescue team.