Ransom River (4 page)

Church and Berrigan strolled toward the front entrance of the courthouse. Jackets zipped, shades and caps on, steady, relaxed. Two workmen coming to perform repairs. From forty yards away, Church could see everything perfectly.

This was the Criminal Division. In earlier times, a couple of decades back, a man could walk straight into a courthouse without being stopped or searched or monitored. Access to the justice system for all. Now, with street gangs and paramilitary policing and a state security apparatus that pulled in millions by bleating
Homeland Security
and whispering
terrorism,
criminal courthouses put up barriers. Especially courthouses where douche-ass cops were on trial for murder.

Church licked his lips and tried to swallow. His throat locked. Beside him, Berrigan kept pace. The man seemed to have a hitch in his step.

“Easy,” Church said.

Outside the courthouse was a sign:
WEAPONS CHECKPOINT
. Little pictures of every sharp object and firearm you had to leave behind. Inside the doors, milling aimlessly in the empty foyer, were two security screeners. County employees but not sworn deputies, guys in their sixties wearing blue blazers and gray slacks and cheap ties. They were loitering between the X-ray machine and the metal detector. Plexiglas partitions on either side of them, so people coming in had to funnel through the middle of the building.

Church and Berrigan had two ways into the courthouse. One: a door on the left side of the building’s glass front. It was locked, with
NO ENTRY
signs on it. Exit only. Everybody leaving the courthouse came through that door. It was outside the foyer’s Plexiglas security box. Church could wait for a lawyer to breeze through it, some guy distracted by a phone call, maybe headed to the mall for coffee. Grab the door before it shut. Then he could sweep inside and completely bypass security. That would give him a head start on Homer Simpson and Ned Flanders at the weapons checkpoint. By the time they saw him, he’d be past them. But to do that he needed luck. Needed an unobservant lawyer coming this way. And there was none.

Then a group of men slammed through the door into the daylight. Men in suits, surrounding a smaller, strutting man in a suit. Church nearly tripped. He recognized the guy. Grigor Mirkovic.

Mirkovic, right there. Small and nasty and powerful and vivid.

And with his goons holding the door open. Church sped up.

Berrigan grabbed his arm. “Christ, don’t run.”

Church checked himself. Yeah. Don’t draw undo attention. He forced himself to walk casually.

Mirkovic and his posse swarmed down the sidewalk to a waiting SUV. And the side door shut behind them.

Dammit.

That left the second way into the building: directly at the security screeners. Right through them.

Church said, “Code names only.”

Berrigan nodded.

Would Berrigan bolt? Church assessed the man’s walk, the tremor in his hand, the pale look on his face. The guy was shit scared. But no—he wouldn’t run out on this. Not in this lifetime.

Church’s balaclava was in the inside pocket of his jacket but would have to wait. “I’m going in straight ahead,” he said. “Peel off. Go round to the back door. I’ll let you in.”

Berrigan kept walking, toolkit in hand. Church turned and ambled
through the front entrance. He set his toolbox on the X-ray conveyor belt and strolled to the metal detector.

The video began to play. In grainy, gray-blue light, it showed Samuel Koh’s backyard and fence and, beyond that, Jared Smith’s house. A clock was running at the bottom of the screen, reeling off the seconds:
2:03:02 a.m.

At Smith’s house, Brad Mirkovic burst through the kitchen door, off balance, arms wheeling. He looked back.

Lucy Elmendorf, clad in a T-shirt and panties, came at him through the door. There was no sound, but her mouth was moving. It looked to Rory like she was saying
Stop.
He didn’t.

Jared Smith was right behind her, in his boxers, with his service weapon.

Outside the courtroom, noise rose abruptly, echoing.

Rory glanced up. For a moment she wondered if her parents were outside. They’d said they might stop by.

The doors of the courtroom swung open. But it wasn’t her dad who came through.

Two men stormed in. They wore balaclavas. They wore green fatigue jackets and leather gloves and pants tucked into their heavy black work boots.

They had shotguns in their hands.

R
ory froze.

One man slammed the door shut. The other dropped a toolbox to the floor and shouted, “Everybody down.”

The bailiff turned in seeming shock. His hand jerked toward the gun holstered on his hip.

The gunman leveled the barrel of the shotgun and advanced at him. “Drop your weapon. Drop it
now.
Get on the floor.”

The bailiff held poised, hand near the holster.

The gunman charged him. And with one jarring motion he created the scariest sound known to modern America. He pumped the shotgun.

Rory felt it like a shock behind her eyes. People screamed. In the jury box, Helen Ellis jumped. Frankie Ortega sprang upright, eyes wide like a rabbit’s.

The gunman descended on the bailiff, voice booming. “Throw your weapon on the floor.
Now.
”

The bailiff tossed the gun to the floor, raised his hands, and dropped to his knees.

Rory’s heart thundered. In the public gallery people stood and pushed toward the aisles, clambering over others who sat stunned.

At the back of the courtroom, the second gunman swept the barrel of his shotgun across the room. “Sit down. Right now, and shut up.”

He was slight and twitchy. The gun barrel panned the room and
stopped at a man on his feet in the aisle. The guy shrank back. People sat down.

“Hands in the air. Everybody. Do not touch your phones.”

Twitchy dropped his own toolbox to the floor with a clatter. From inside it he produced a Club steering-wheel lock. He jammed it through the handles of the courtroom doors, extended it, and locked it.

The first gunman stood over the bailiff. “Hands behind your head.”

The gunman was built like a stove and had a voice so raspy it sounded charred. The bailiff laced his fingers behind him. The gunman picked up the man’s gun and took his Taser. He bound him with his own handcuffs and ripped the police radio from his shoulder. Then he turned to the judge.

“Off the bench. Get down here.”

Somebody was sobbing. Helen Ellis said, “Oh Lord God, oh Jesus.” Frankie began to wheeze. Rory’s vision pulsed. Bright, thumping, neon, unreal. Un-
what-the-hell
-real. The blood roared in her ears.

It said,
Get out.

Somehow. Now. Get out of the courtroom. The window behind her—they were on the third floor but if she could open the window they could escape to safety along the ledge outside. She looked over her shoulder.

“Hold the fuck still.”

She turned. The first gunman stood in front of the jury box. She held still. So did the barrel of his shotgun, aimed at her face.

For an endless moment the gunman faced her, as though daring her to move. Behind the black balaclava, his eyes were flat.

The shotgun could be loaded with buckshot or with slugs. It made no difference. He was ten feet away. For a crooked second, she pictured the courtroom being swept by forensics techs, and another murder trial—for the people clustered around her like eggs in a carton.
Exhibit A,
a diorama with red strings pinned to it, fanning out from the point of origin and ending
in seats and windows and the wall.
Shots fired.
She fought the urge to vomit.

Then he raised the barrel, stepped back, and called over his shoulder. “Reagan. Clean ’em out.”

The twitchy second gunman stepped forward. “Everybody empty your pockets.” He pulled a plastic supermarket bag from inside his jacket. “Give me your phones. Do it now.”

Frankie’s wheezing intensified. His eyes were wide and he looked twelve years old.

“Phones, right now. Hand them over.” Reagan stalked along the courtroom aisle holding open the plastic bag, like it was cell phone trick or treat. “Do not try to be a hero. Do not try to call for help. If you do, you’ll die.”

People passed their phones to the aisle or simply threw them to the floor near him. A woman broke into loud sobs. One young man stood shaking.

“I’m a reporter. I’m not a part of this,” he said.

“You’re what?” Behind his balaclava, Reagan seemed to snort. He turned to his confederate. “Nixon. Listen to this clown.”

Nixon. Reagan. They’d gone with off-the-shelf code names, Rory thought. Tricky Dick turned and lowered the shotgun at the young reporter’s chest.

“Did you say you’re not apart? I can make that happen.”

His index finger hovered near the trigger. The reporter cringed.

Nixon turned back to the crowd. “Purses, backpacks, satchels, toss all your possessions to the center aisle.”

Hesitantly, most people looked at him.

“
Immediately.
”

Rory jumped again. So did half the room. Helen Ellis emitted a choked cry.

Frankie’s shoulders lifted. He was struggling to inhale. He fumbled manically in his sweatshirt pocket.

Rory grabbed his forearm. “Careful.”

He looked near panic. “Can’t breathe.”

Rory held his arm. “It could look like you’re pulling a weapon.”

He nodded tightly and brought out an inhaler. Helen Ellis kept repeating, “Oh God God Jesus, help us.”

In front of the bench, Judge Wieland stood with his hands raised. “You have no right to do this.”

His voice had a quaver but came out strong. Nixon and Reagan ignored him.

“This is a court of law, and these are the people of the State of California. Let them go,” Wieland said.

Rory’s throat tightened. Wieland hadn’t lost his composure. He was acting like the captain of a ship, trying to hang on to the tiller and get people to the life rafts as water poured over the decks.

She recalled the Marin County Courthouse attack in the seventies. Black-and-white photos: the judge with a sawed-off shotgun duct-taped to his neck. He was taken hostage by radicals seeking to break the Soledad Brothers out of prison. It was a spasm of “revolutionary” violence, terrifying and pointless. The judge had been shot dead.

“Shut your mouth,” Nixon said. “Keep it shut.”

What did these men want?

Nixon nodded at the jury box, at Frankie. “Throw that thing here. Hands in the air.”

Frankie shook his head and gripped the inhaler. “I can’t…”

Nixon lunged forward. People screamed and climbed over each other, fighting to get out of the aim of the shotgun. Frankie shrank back and raised his hands but held on to the inhaler.

Rory shouted at Nixon, “No.”

She pulled Frankie against her. Yanked him almost onto her lap, gripping his sweatshirt, and tried to get both of them onto the floor.

“Shut up and hold still, everybody.” Nixon held poised right in front of the jury box. His chest rose and fell. His gloved hands gripped the gleaming barrel of the gun.

Frankie shuddered. Rory held him. He was hot, he was barely breathing,
he was all she had, human connection, maybe the last seconds of a life she thought would be completely different.