The Missing Piece (25 page)

The elevator stopped rumbling, and Linda opened the door, which looked just like any other door except there was a small elevator car on the other side. Bernadette and Linda stepped in. As Foxx followed, the inside doors began to slide shut. Linda pulled Foxx out of the way.

“No electric eye,” she said.

Foxx got off at the first floor and went into the den while Linda and Bernadette continued up to the third floor. He was paging through an old
New Yorker
when the elevator rumbled again.

“She still refuses to call the police and still hasn't called Hugh,” said Bernadette. “At least she agreed to stay home tomorrow.”

Foxx turned two more pages and then put the magazine aside.

“Why an OB/GYN?” he said.

“That's something I'm not comfortable sharing,” said Bernadette.

Foxx got up from the chair and parted the curtains. A single leaf shook free from a tree and glided to the sidewalk.

“I'll stay the night, too,” he said.

“I thought you might. There are two guest rooms upstairs.”

“That's one more than we need,” said Foxx.

Bernadette laughed and headed to the elevator, shutting lights as she went. Soon it was dark and quiet, well short of midnight, but with a much later feel. Foxx pried off his shoes and stretched out on the sofa. He listened to Bernadette's laugh in his head. He could read many types of laughs—the sardonic, the ironic, the wry—but not that one.

He woke up some time later to the sound of the elevator. He opened his eyes as someone came into the den. He expected Bernadette, but then the curtains parted and street light sliced the darkness. Linda. Silently, Foxx sat up.

“So, which is it?” he said.

Linda shook at his sudden words, then turned toward him.

“Which is what?” she said.

“The gynecologist,” said Foxx.

Linda dropped the curtain and plunged the den back into darkness.

“The way I figure it,” Foxx could see her gray figure settle into the chair, “there are two possible reasons you go to a gynecologist. One is that the attack was a sexual assault. The other is you're pregnant and you needed to make sure nothing happened.”

“It's the second.” Linda curled up in the chair. “I found out only last week. Didn't tell anyone, including my husband, until I told Bernadette tonight. So now you know, too, and I didn't want anyone else to know just yet.”

Foxx waited.

“Don't you want a guest room?”

“I'm not a guest,” said Foxx. “Are you worried?”

“I haven't sorted it out yet. But I do feel better with you here. At least for tonight.” Linda stood up, her grayness hovering in the dark. “You'll keep my secret?”

“Is that a court order?”

“Yes,” she said with a hint of a laugh. “It is.”

“You got it,” said Foxx. “But could someone know you are pregnant?”

“No. Wait. You think the mugging was planned?”

“I think if someone wanted to send you a message, this might be the way.”

“Earlier tonight, I went to a maternity store and struck up a conversation with a sales clerk,” said Linda. “I didn't exactly tell her, but she assumed it.”

“How long before the attack?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Then the answer is just you, me, and Bernadette,” said Foxx. “Let's keep it like that.”

“I'll need to tell Hugh.”

“Sure you will. Let me know when you do.”

“You don't think Hugh…”

“I just want to keep things clean.”

“Why? You're only a court officer. Sorry, that didn't come out right.”

“It came out exactly right,” said Foxx. “I am only a court officer. But I'm your court officer.”

He could sense something in the dark. A smile, maybe, or just a nod of understanding. She said a soft “good night,” then moved through the shadows to the elevator.

 

CHAPTER 28

The phone jarred Linda awake at exactly eight o'clock. It was the landline, which she and Hugh nicknamed the telemarketer/robo-call line. But the caller ID readout showed Hugh's cell phone, and so Linda answered.

“What's going on?” said Hugh.

“Nothing.” Her mind spinning, Linda quickly sat up and dropped her feet over the side of the bed. “Is something wrong?”

“Just that I haven't been able to get in touch with you. Left two messages last night. Called this morning and your cell phone kicked into voicemail.”

“It's off, charging,” said Linda, relieved that Hugh's mild fit at being thwarted meant she could get through this call without affirmatively lying. “What's up?”

“The judge has a conflict this afternoon,” said Hugh. “We'll work only the morning, so I'm coming home for the weekend.”

“Didn't you know this last night?”

“Not until well after we spoke,” said Hugh. “The judge's law clerk called and said the judge wanted us to know.”

“Why not tell you when you got to court today?”

“The other side had a witness flying in. The judge knew that. Didn't want to inconvenience anyone.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Linda.

“Don't you want me to come home?”

“Of course I do. I'd love it.”

“You won't be too busy?”

“You know me, party city since you've been gone. I can still cancel the Saturday-night orgy.”

“I meant the trial.”

“It starts Monday,” said Linda. “I have some rulings to issue, some witness problems to resolve. Normal stuff.”

“Are you all right?” said Hugh.

“Do I not sound all right?”

“Actually, you sound like you could break into a coughing fit.”

Linda cleared her throat. “How's that?” she said, injecting some steel into her voice.

“Better,” said Hugh. “My flight gets in some time after seven. It was the only direct flight that worked.”

“Great,” said Linda. “I'll send the cabana boy home at six.”

She never was so playful over the phone, she thought after she hung up. Must have been a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

She went into the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. Her face was pale, but unmarked. Her wrist felt tender, but it was not swollen or bruised, so it likely was just a sprain. But the scrapes on her knees were still bright red, and she wondered how much they would heal before tonight.

She threw on a bathrobe and went down to the kitchen, where Foxx stood barefoot at the counter. A skillet sizzled. The coffeemaker dripped. Three mugs stood in a row nearby.

“I hope you don't mind,” said Foxx. He produced an egg in his hand, almost but not quite like a magician. “I like breakfast so much I usually eat two a day.”

“Eggs or breakfasts?”

“Both.”

“Like a hobbit.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” said Foxx.

“How do you like them?”

“Scrambled.”

“Dry?”

“Very.”

“Throw in two for me.”

She watched him crack the eggs into a steel mixing bowl and whip them with a whisk. His hair was rakishly mussed, his bare arms well-muscled. She might have taken more notice if she was of a mind. She wasn't, but she had to admit that he cut a much different figure out of uniform than in one.

Foxx divided the eggs onto two plates, poured two cups of coffee, and joined Linda in the booth that served as a breakfast nook.

“Hugh is coming home tomorrow night,” she said. “That was him on the phone.”

“Because of what happened?”

“I didn't tell him.”

Foxx squinted over the rim of his mug.

“Phone calls with Hugh are very to the point. He told me he was coming, the reason, and the time. No diversion, so it was easy not to tell him. Anyway, I'd rather it be face-to-face.” She forked a clump of egg into her mouth. “And I'm going to the courthouse today. I can just as easily rest in chambers as I can here. But more importantly, in the clear light of day, I think the attack may have been a message. I don't want to give them what they want.”

“Any idea who they are?” said Foxx.

“Well, there's the trial,” said Linda. “Lord Leinster was attacked a few days ago in Ireland. Two people sent by investors with a stake in the treasure broke his ankles. It's why we're having the settlement discussions now. He wants out.”

Foxx scraped together the last bits of egg with his fork.

“That's good to know,” he said.

“Then there are the protestors,” she said. “Increasing their number increases the chances one of them might do something violent. But really, I have six hundred cases in my active inventory and I've probably disposed of double that since I became a judge. That's a big pool of unhappy people, and you can't ever be sure how other people perceive you.”

“How do you want people to perceive you?” said Foxx.

“As a judge who goes where the evidence and the law takes her, rather than a judge who tries to fit the evidence and the law into some preconceived result. Basically, as a good judge.”

“Not as a good person?”

“Is it possible to be both?”

“Theoretically,” said Foxx. “But I rarely see it.”

They finished breakfast in silence. As Foxx cleared the plates and loaded them into the dishwasher, Bernadette came into the kitchen.

“I thought we were both sleeping in today,” she said.

“Hugh woke me up,” said Linda. “He's coming home tonight. And now that I'm up…”

Foxx turned away from the dishwasher, and Linda briefly but obviously locked eyes with him.

“You're going to the courthouse,” said Bernadette. “Even though the doctor told you to stay home.”

“He didn't say that exactly,” said Linda. “He said to rest and avoid stairs.”

“I was there, remember? It wasn't a suggestion. It was a prescription.”

She looked back and forth between Linda and Foxx, then poured herself a cup of coffee and headed back to the elevator.

“I just thought of something,” said Linda. “I took the early pregnancy test here last week, and since I didn't want Hugh to find it, I brought it to the courthouse and tossed it out in chambers.”

“So, your staff knows?” said Foxx.

“No,” said Linda. “Someone else.”

*   *   *

Ivan's plan was to hide out till the weekend, and right now he was almost halfway there. He knew Pinter would send Luis after him and that Luis probably would come looking for him at the courthouse and then, when he didn't find him, stake out his apartment from the bodega across the street.

Ivan twisted slowly to ease the pressure of the support rod that dug into his kidneys. Even this slight movement shook the foldout bed, and Jessima's breathing changed as she rose toward wakefulness and then sank back to sleep. Ivan drifted off himself. It had been a long, eventful night, the events playing out across the flimsy mattress at angles and in positions much different from those in the supply closet.

Eventually, Ivan got up to pee and when he returned Jessima was sitting up with the sheet wrapped tightly around her, from her breasts to her knees, and with her dark hair pulled back from her face. Ivan could see immediately that the sex play was over, that it was time to pay up with the explanation he had deferred from last night.

“Pinter wants me to testify at the trial,” he said, answering the question that had hung in the air between them since he had followed her home from the courthouse. “He wants me to testify about things that I didn't quite see, things that I saw but was too young to understand, and things I saw and never will forget.”

“What things?” said Jessima.

“About a letter and a woman and a murder.”

Jessima said nothing, but moved her head in a way that demanded he continue.

“She was a neighbor with two grown sons and a third long dead. I would visit her to get away from my own house, and she treated me like her little boy. Gave me treats to eat and trinkets to play with. Let me help her cook.

“I never saw her write any letter, but I remember the day Pinter says she wrote it. I was at her house, and she was getting ready to meet her youngest son, who was being released from prison. She had an old suitcase on her kitchen table and was waiting for a neighbor to pick her up with his car. I sat with her. She looked sad, I remember thinking. And then came the sound of the car horn. She lifted the suitcase off the table and told me to go home. I always came and went by the back door. So as she left the kitchen, I only pretended to leave. Instead, I hid in a cabinet below the counter.

“The cabinet had big iron pots. The doors had thin slats that I could see through. I sat on a pot and waited for her to come back. Even then, I was a patient boy. I could sit and wait for hours, so I sat on the pot and waited for her to come home, and when she opened the cabinet door I would jump out and surprise her.

“I heard the front door open, but instead of her footsteps I heard thick boots and sharp whispers. I held my breath and slid back deeper among the pots and pans, but I could still see through the lattice. There were four men in dark clothes. They were looking for her.

“They left. Slammed the door. Drove away. I stayed in the cabinet, too scared to come out even when she returned. But she found me, and I told her about the men. We heard a car pull up outside. She pushed me back into the cabinet and told me not to make a move or a sound.

“They made quick work. One muffled her screams, another held her wrists, a third fit the noose around her neck and then threw the rope over the rafter. I could see her feet through the slats in the cabinet door. They kicked, then they swung, then they were still. One of the men crouched to pick up the knife she had dropped. He looked through the lattice, right into my eyes, but he did not see me.