The Hanging Judge (45 page)

After hanging up, Gomez-Larsen punched in the cell number for Sean Daley. She’d want him at the courthouse for the conference with Maria. As she waited for Captain Daley to pick up, she was aware of her husband standing in the doorway of the family room, looking concerned. For the moment, she ignored him. What in the name of God was going on?

61

E
va could not shake her worries about Monday’s penalty-phase jury instructions. The final draft that emerged from the Friday afternoon conference with Judge Norcross still needed a lot of cutting and pasting, and Friday night she’d barely slept, positive that the most recent version had two long revisions switched around. She waited until a respectable hour Saturday morning before calling Frank and begging him to come to the courthouse to run over a final clean copy with her. It wouldn’t take long, she promised, and they could meet Trish and Brady for strudel at The Fort afterward. Her treat.

Two hours later, Eva was pacing up and down a side street next to the courthouse’s private security entrance, pulling at her hair and trying to remember the file name for the latest edits. She caught sight of Frank, noodling down the block, walking with his toes stuck out. She could not help smiling at what a total loser he was.

“You’re frigging weird, Meyers!” Frank called out. Then, more quietly as he drew closer, “This trial is giving you OCD.”

“Humor me, okay? Jesus, have you bathed?”

Frank had on a pair of baggy blue jean shorts, a Red Sox T-shirt, and dirty sneakers.

“I’m clean enough for present company. Everything else was in the wash.”

Outside the normal workweek, the area around the courthouse was deserted. The Massachusetts Department of Social Services office across the street, the bar down on the corner, and the Korean clothing store were all closed. The two or three cars parked illegally looked as though they’d been abandoned for the weekend, except for a dark blue Lexus that was idling with two men inside, apparently waiting for someone. The sun had not quite reached its zenith, and a diagonal splash of light hit the side of the courthouse, sliced by the shadows of the NO
PARKING
signs.

Frank took his pass card out and was just slipping it into the electronic slot to open the side door when Eva heard someone yell, first in surprise and then louder, frightened. She turned and saw a small brown woman, whom she instantly recognized as Pepe’s mother from the trial. Maria something, Tom Dickinson had told her. The woman was halfway down the block struggling with a very large, dark-skinned man, who was coming out of the Lexus. The front passenger door stood open, and the man was pulling the woman by her elbow. She was punching and scratching at him and yelling in Spanish. Eva felt a surge of nausea; she hated this kind of stuff.

Frank didn’t look too happy, either. After a few seconds of hesitation, he took two steps in the direction of the fracas, calling out in a pleading tone, “Hey! Come on!”

There was no way to ignore what was happening. Maria had wrapped her arms around one of the signs, hanging on desperately, screaming and crying, and the large man was trying to pry her hands loose. The big guy’s eyes shifted toward Frank with a clear message: Mind your own business.

Frank glanced back at Eva and reluctantly shifted into motion. “Hey! Leave her alone!” he said, trotting most of the way to the struggling woman. “Come on. Really!”

He looked over his shoulder at Eva again and rolled his eyes up to heaven. He held up his palm in the shape of a phone and poked at it with his finger.

“Help me!” Maria cried out, switching to English. “He wants to …” But a sharp yank from the larger man detached her from the sign, and she fell hard onto the sidewalk.

Frank stepped nearer, still fighting himself. “Whoa! Hey, really, come on!”

The guy was huge. He made Frank look like Danny DeVito. Eva reached into her purse, dug her phone up from under her two small barbells, and quickly tapped in 911. Her phone took its time connecting, and as she waited, she saw the big dude’s angry eyes move over to her, noticing that she was making a call. Did he have a gun? People got killed in situations like this. Scraps of old newspaper headlines flashed through her mind.

Meanwhile, Frank had drawn up to the pair and was reaching down to help the woman up, looking at her attacker and trying to sound reasonable. “Come on, look what’s happened. Leave her alone, okay?”

The man shifted his eyes to Frank, shook his head, and punched Frank in the face, very hard. The sight of her friend being hit and Frank staggering back with blood streaming down his face, horrified Eva. Frank fell backward against the courthouse wall, and slid down onto the pavement. Eva felt herself starting to get sick to her stomach and, at the same time, enraged.

The big man thrust his arms out and looked down at Maria on the ground. “See what you made me do?”

Eva flipped the cell phone closed just as a voice answered. The police would never get here in time anyway. She had to do something herself.

She could see Frank, pushing at the pavement and shaking his head, blood running all down his chin and onto his T-shirt. The big man was leaning over, slipping his hand under the woman’s back to lift or throw her into the front seat, and she was still wriggling and kicking at him. She was screaming apparently—her mouth was wide open, anyway—but Eva didn’t seem to be hearing anything.

Eva forced herself into a run toward the Lexus, holding her heavy purse by its handle with both hands and yelling, “Hey! No hitting!” It was all she could think of to say.

The big man looked up at her and sighed, like a busy guy who’d been asked to deal with too many annoyances in one day.

“I don’t hit women,” he said dismissively. He bent over, heaved the small lady upright, and shoved her toward the car.

“Goodie for you!” Eva said, swinging her purse with all her strength. It struck the man a heavy blow in the lower part of his skull and upper neck.

Her small barbells did their work amazingly well. The big guy grunted, lost his grip on the small woman, and grabbed the side of the car to keep from falling. Shaken free, Maria staggered backward across the sidewalk toward where Frank was slowly pushing himself to his feet.

“Okay, enough!” The driver’s-side door of the car swung open, and a bearded man with tinted glasses jumped out. He pointed a rifle with a curved banana clip over the top of the car at Eva.

“Have you ever been shot, honey?” he asked. “I have. I guarantee you won’t like it.” He nodded toward Frank, who was on his feet but wobbly, bracing himself against the courthouse wall and wiping his face with the bottom of his shirt. “Go help your friend.” Then he directed something angry at Maria in Spanish, pointing furiously over the roof down toward the front passenger seat. When Eva didn’t move, the bearded man looked back at her and pointed the gun at Frank. “You want me to put one in his belly? Go!” Eva moved back from the car. Maria walked past her with a look of despair and slid into the front passenger seat. “Mannie,” the bearded man said. “Get in the back.”

The big man, still leaning on the side of the car for support, looked reproachfully over at Eva and began opening the rear passenger door.

“Good,” the bearded man said. He put one foot back into the car and began lowering himself to enter.

A police cruiser turned the corner at the end of the block and flipped on its siren and flashers. The bearded man wheeled around and fired a clatter of shots into the cruiser’s windshield, then jumped into the Lexus. But even before he’d entirely disappeared into the driver’s seat, the car’s idling engine stopped abruptly, and the keys flew out the passenger window. They fell with a chink at Eva’s feet.

The bearded man shouted in Spanish, there was the sound of a blow and a cry from Maria, and the man was out of the car, loping down the street away from the police cruiser, holding the assault rifle across his chest. He had just reached the far sidewalk when another shot cracked, so loud it made Eva jump, and she heard a voice shouting, “Police! Drop the gun!” She saw a cop with short gray hair standing behind the open door of his cruiser, bracing his revolver in two hands over the doorframe. The windshield was riddled with bullet holes.

The bearded man twisted back and lifted the automatic to his shoulder. He got off a wild burst before the cop fired again. The first shot hit the man in the midsection, and he doubled over. The dark gun clattered onto the concrete. At the second shot, he flew backward, and Eva’s view of him was blocked by the car. A glob of something red spattered against a NO
PARKING sign.

Eva was cursing her size and trying to get up on tiptoes to see what happened when she felt a hand on her arm. It was Frank. The side of his face was already turning purple and beginning to swell. His right eye was bloodshot and ghastly looking, but Eva could see that his sick expression was not just from getting punched.

“You really don’t want to look,” he said.

“He’s dead?”

“As a doornail. Total, and messy.” Frank squeezed his eye shut, wincing as he tried to work his jaw.

Eva started to speak, intending to tease Frank in their old way. “You look like …” But before she could get the word
crap
out, her voice broke, the boundaries of her vision started to darken, and a wave of dizziness came over her.

Frank, wobbling, grabbed her, and the two of them sank slowly down to the pavement. They sat there for quite a while, holding each other and saying nothing, as more police cruisers pulled up and, eventually, an ambulance.

62

D
eath took the form of an oversize doll, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The way he sat there, tilting his head with a happily expectant smile, reminded Norcross of Howdy Doody, except that this puppet was bigger, older and wore a light gray suit.

Norcross’s mouth opened to ask, “Have you come for me?” But the only sound that flushed itself from his throat was a croak that rattled his head horribly. The painted face tipped toward him, swirled, and began to dissolve into blackness.
Perhaps,
Norcross thought as his mind dove down,
this grinning thing and I are going on a journey somewhere.
He didn’t really care.

A long while later, he was sitting up; the room was drifting in and out of focus. Voices spoke to him and hands were touching him, rousing up the pain again, worse than ever. Howdy Doody had vanished, but the ghost of Faye was nearby, at the edge of his wavering field of vision. Or was it someone else? Claire? Did he catch the edge of tears in her low voice? Years ago, during those last hours in the ICU when his dear, frightened wife was moving beyond his reach, was this the atmosphere of blur and bobbing shadows she had melted into?

They were putting a needle into him, a distant pinch, and he was startled by a new thought so crisp it was almost an object, a bright yellow birch leaf disappearing down a blood-dark stream: Hudson. Was it over? What happened?

After a long while, he found himself in the present again, in a way, but at a great distance from his physical surroundings and in unbelievable pain. Something was pressing down on his head so intensely he was afraid his skull might crack. The burning behind his eyes forced the room into a kind of wobbling, violet-edged focus, and he could perceive that, far across the room, the doll had returned, collapsed backward with its eyes closed. The creature seemed to be sleeping while it waited to start their journey. Beyond the window, the day was dark, and the light on the far side of the room was faint. Everything was quiet. It bugged him that this little guy should sleep like that.

“Hey!” Norcross cried, awakening a roar of pain. With a forward twitch, the dummy’s eyes rolled open; its limbs started to float up but then drooped back onto the sofa, lifeless. Norcross lost interest; the pain from his cry was blinding him. Half his world was black, the other half fading.

After another gap, Norcross found himself in conversation with the little man, whispering, “Are you death?” Among the perceptions that had failed him was time; the window was now a glowing butter color. The pain, too, had receded, though he sensed it might lunge at him again at any moment. His cranium had cooled to a steady throb. He must not move; he must speak very, very softly.

“No,” the little man replied. “Just a judge like you, Dave. Just a very tired colleague.”

“Skip?”

“Got it in one.”

“Cripes.” The pain squirmed menacingly, and Norcross sipped a tiny breath. “Where?” He steadied himself. “Where the heck am I?”

“Massachusetts General Hospital. Boston. We got you a lift in a helicopter.”

“Sorry I missed it. I always wanted a ride in one of those things.”

“I know. It’s a great pity.” Skip’s voice seemed far away.

Norcross formed his words slowly, planning them out first with care; the pain was like a pillar of China plates, swaying precariously. Any extra movement, and the tower would crash down and kill him.

“I thought …” He waited to let the crockery settle. “I thought I was done for.”

“Oh heavens, no,” Chief Judge Broadwater said. “They tell us you survived by a good three-sixteenths of an inch.”

“That much?”

“Sleep. Just sleep now, Dave.”

“What did they do?”

“What did who do, Dave?”

“What did they …” He paused to let a rumbling tremor pass. “What did they do with my guy? With Hudson?”

“Oh, there have been some developments. I thought I might lend a hand with the case. Would you mind?”

But Norcross was slipping away, back down into the darkness, and barely heard the question.

When he awoke, he was alone, and his world had taken another step toward coherency, though the level of rank unpleasantness was the worst he’d ever known. A chrome pole next to his bed held a bottle and a dangling intestine of tube leading into his arm. A similar strand of entrail, he noticed glumly, was leading out from between his legs. Wires attached to itchy things on his chest led off in another direction. The place smelled like petroleum jelly and Band-Aids.

Well, here I am,
he thought.
God’s little science project.