Ransom River (18 page)

“They have to suspect a second vehicle exists,” she said. “After all, they taught you to look for one. Right?”

“They’re not stupid. They’ll find that van and impound it. Probably”—he checked his watch—“about now. A new shift came on at eight a.m.”

“What are you going to do with this information?” she said. “I don’t see you phoning the PD.”

“They don’t pay me anymore,” he said.

“Seth, why are you playing Lone Ranger?”

His shoulders tightened. “If that’s what you think I’m doing, I can let you off at the next corner.”

“No. Sorry.” She said it so automatically that it surprised her. “I don’t mean to impugn your motives. But you got the vehicle identification number. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to use it as the starting point to build a case against the gunmen. And to find out who was behind them and why they’re after you.” He glanced across the truck. “We’re going to use it to get you protection, via federal law enforcement if we need to.”

“And you also want to use it against the Ransom River PD?”

“That would be a dividend. The point is, I don’t believe they’re going to protect the victims of the attack. They’re going to protect their own asses.”

“Hi-yo, Silver, away.”

He rolled along the tree-lined boulevard toward the civic center. “So does that mean you’re happy to see me?”

She laughed. That surprised her too.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “So I’ll presume you want to know how I came up with the name of the second gunman.”

“Y
ou got Reagan’s name?” Rory said. “You’re kidding me. How?”

“Through the van.”

“I thought Sylvester Church stole the van.”

“He did. From a used-car lot in Las Vegas. But he didn’t hotwire it. Somebody got the keys from the office and gave them to Church. And the dealership is owned by the brother-in-law of a young man named Kevin Berrigan.”

“Berrigan’s the second gunman?” she said.

“And model citizen. Married, father of two kids under seven, usher at his church. Steadily employed in Las Vegas for the past five years.”

“What the hell happened to him? How did he get from
A
to
Z
?”

“That,” he said, “is a fascinating story.”

Ahead lay the broad, sycamore-dotted lawn of the courthouse. A news crew was camped on the corner, and police cars parked along the curb.

Seth pulled over and stopped. “I’ll let you out here.”

“You really don’t want anybody to know you’re in town.”

“Nope.”

She paused, her hand on the door handle. Traffic passed by. “Thank you.”

“Call me.”

For a moment he held her gaze. A shadow darkened his lively, renegade’s eyes. Maybe he had been thrown back, never thought he’d hear her thank him again in his lifetime. Because he looked like he had heard a ghost.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“Helsinki, London, then Geneva. Working for Asylum Action. A refugee charity—it helped people who were threatened with being sent back to danger zones.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Why’d you come home?”

“The corporation that funded the charity pulled the plug. Completely.”

“Without warning?”

“New PR team. They retooled the corporation’s branding to breast cancer and Formula 1. The Asylum office in Geneva shut down, days before the office in London.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “All the case files are locked in storage. Families are in limbo—some in danger. Nothing I could do. Not a goddamned thing. Besides take the first plane home.”

Seth gave her a long, concentrated look. And she knew he couldn’t read her. He was trying. But in the past two years she had learned camouflage.

He thought he’d lost her. He didn’t know the half of it.

“You might want to think about laying low,” he said. “Out of town.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing the past two years? Like I said, Helsinki, London, and Geneva. Yet here I am.”

She climbed out. He glanced at his rearview mirror and pulled away.

For a moment she stood on the sidewalk.
Who was that masked man?

It wasn’t the devil-may-care boy who had wanted to protect her when they were kids. It wasn’t the idealistic, daring cop who had swept her away. That’s not who had just driven off. This guise, she didn’t know.

Inside the courthouse, Rory’s pulse picked up again. Everything seemed brighter than normal, etched with black borders, and loud. Granular—small sounds pinging and hitting her with the velocity of tiny stones kicked up by a passing car. At the weapons checkpoint, two uniformed L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies greeted her.

One held up a hand. “Court’s been suspended today. All divisions.”

She got out her driver’s license. “I’m a juror on the Elmendorf trial. I was told to report.”

His expression softened. He checked her ID against a list on a clipboard. “Go on in. Glad you’re in one piece, miss.”

“Me too. How are the guards who were on duty yesterday?”

“Safe. Fine. They got the day off.”

She bet they did. She bet they got their careers off. And she noticed that security had been beefed up all around. Deputies were guarding the exit-only side doors, so that nobody could sneak in with a gun—as the
Justice!
vigilante had apparently done.

“Hope things stay calm out here,” she said.

“You said it.”

At the door to a courtroom on the second floor, a bailiff verified Rory’s ID against another checklist. It was an in-camera session—a closed meeting with a judge. When she saw the people inside, her throat caught.

Helen Ellis and Frankie Ortega were sitting in the front row of the public gallery. Helen looked pale and pasty, but when Rory sat down Helen grabbed her hand and squeezed. Rory squeezed back.

Without his sweatshirt, Frankie looked thin and tough. His right arm was a death-metal tattoo sleeve. Rory was sure people mistook it for a gang tat, but the flaming guitar told her otherwise. He looked like a spooked buck, ready to bound out of sight at the first loud noise. He lifted his chin in greeting. Playing cool.

Rory didn’t care. He was alive; he’d been there with her; he was okay. She hugged him, squeezed his bony shoulders, wanted to lift him off his feet.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said.

He looked abashed. “You too.”

Judge Yamashita wore a Peter Pan collar over her judicial robes. She thanked them all for coming. She explained that
People v. Elmendorf
was in recess. Trial was suspended. A new judge would be appointed to take over Judge Wieland’s duties.

Behind Rory, Daisy Fallon quietly began to cry.

Yamashita said that once things settled down, both the prosecution and the defense would file motions for a mistrial. She couldn’t foresee that any of the jurors before her would have to sit another hour to hear testimony in the case. After the events of the previous day, it was unthinkable that the trial would continue. The case would be declared a mistrial, and the jury would be dismissed.

Her face was kind. “You have suffered a terrific trauma. As has the court. I want to thank you for your service to the justice system. Thank you for turning up this morning. Because of you, the system will continue to work. It will not be brought down by violence and anarchy.”

Frankie eyed Yamashita without blinking. Rory didn’t know whether he was terrified or catatonic.

“However,” Yamashita said, “until the court has officially considered the disposition of the case, the trial remains active and on the docket. And you remain officially its jurors. You can be called back to court at any time. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave town.”

Nail us to the floor,
Rory thought.
Line us up like ducks in a shooting gallery.

On the way out Helen Ellis walked with Rory. The older woman seemed to have stiffened overnight, as though gravity had increased threefold and she had trouble pulling herself along.

“Are you all right?” Rory asked.

“My husband wanted me to go to church this morning, talk to the pastor.” She shook her head. “We were coming down Cloud Canyon Road past the tall rocks. You know how the morning sun shines through the slit between them and looks like a cross?”

Rory didn’t, but nodded anyway.

“Today it seemed so bright, it reminded me of crosshairs. I had to pull the car over. I couldn’t drive past it. Isn’t that stupid?”

Rory squeezed Helen’s hand again.

“You take care,” Helen said.

Rory was halfway down the stairs when her phone rang. It was her former law professor David Goldstein.

“My God, Ms. Mackenzie—is what I read in the paper accurate? You were inside that courtroom yesterday?”

“Me and about sixty others.”

“How dreadful. Are you all right, dear?”

Bless him; he was all cuddles beneath the starch. “Yes and no. I need your help.”

She explained as she descended the stairs to the lobby. Outside, a camera crew had set up camp. She turned her back and spoke quietly.

“I need a criminal lawyer. Somebody experienced,” she said. “A gorilla, preferably.”

“This is serious,” Goldstein said carefully. “Ms. Mackenzie, I am very concerned by what you’ve told me of the police department’s behavior.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you.”

“Leave this with me. I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you, Professor. You don’t know how much.”

“Wait to thank me until we see what the criminal lawyer says.”

She told him good-bye and pushed through the door into the sunshine. A few disaster tourists lingered, pointing and snapping photos. The news crew seemed blessedly self-concerned and didn’t spot her. She was almost to the corner when she heard a voice calling to her.

“Aurora. Aurora Mackenzie.”

On the side street, a chrome-colored Toyota Land Cruiser had pulled over. A woman stuck her arm out the passenger window and beckoned to her.

Rory stopped. It was her aunt Amber.

She thought about falling to the ground foaming at the mouth, or running to the news crew and confessing. To the JFK assassination.

Amber leaned out the window, sunlight bouncing from her eyeglasses, gesturing fulsomely. “Come here, sweetheart.”

Better to get this over with in public, when she could legitimately claim to be in a hurry. She walked toward the car.

And her cousin Nerissa climbed from behind the wheel.

A swig of battery acid to wash down the saccharine. Rory neared the car. “Hey, Riss.”

Amber reached out the window and grasped her hand in an
I’d like to teach the world to sing
way. “Aren’t you just amazing to come back here this morning?”

“What brings you downtown?” Rory said.

Amber’s hands were cinched into wrist-support splints. She claimed to suffer chronic pain from carpal tunnel syndrome, though as far as Rory knew she hadn’t typed a word in a decade.

“We were so worried about you, honey,” she said.

Amber was a hard-wrung fifty-three and looked sixty. Her Janis Joplin hair was dyed a fretful red. Her floral blouse, splashed with enormous daisies and honeybees, seemed to fill the entire car.

“I appreciate it,” Rory said.

Riss cruised around the front of the SUV. “You escaped without a scratch. It’s a miracle. And everybody’s going to want to know exactly how you made it out.”

Riss slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Her filmy top floated like a jellyfish across her breasts, almost dreamily. She eyed the news crew on the courthouse lawn.

“You need to decide how you’re going to explain it, and you’ll want your family at your side,” she said.

Her feline gaze was depthless and patient. “I called you yesterday during the siege. I wanted to help you get intelligence to the police. The news crew was waiting. You didn’t answer.”

It seemed to Rory that a claw had begun to scrape down her spine. “The gunmen confiscated our phones.”

From the backseat of the SUV came a childish voice. “Hot. Out.”

In the backseat, three car seats were strapped in. Filled with a toddler each. One, a little boy, squirmed and pressed his fists against his eyes.

Amber spoke over her shoulder. “We’ll get to Auntie Amber’s in a minute.”
She smiled again at Rory. “You have to tell us all about it. I mean, every word. My dear Lord, it’s just too awful.”