Ransom River (5 page)

“Out of the jury box, all of you,” Nixon said.

Motion, clatter. Sunlight poured through the window onto the backs of people streaming out of the jury box.

Digging her fingers into Frankie’s sweatshirt, Rory stood up. Nixon was staring at her.

She said, “He has an inhaler.” Her voice cracked. “Asthma. He needs it.”

The gunman seemed to think about it. Finally, he nodded and indicated the inhaler with the barrel of the gun. “One shot.”

Jesus, why’d he have to use that expression?

Frankie’s eyes shone with fear. He looked about to rabbit, to bolt, suicidally, right through the window. He needed air.

Rory nodded and released Frankie’s arm. His hand flew to his mouth. Gulping, he pumped the inhaler.

Nixon said, “Toss it here.”

Shaking, Frankie stole a second pump. Then he tossed the inhaler to the gunman. Nixon caught it and put it in his pocket. Rory could swear that behind the balaclava he was smirking. Bastard.

She edged down the steps. Her leg ached, the one with the pins in it. She joined the rest of the jurors in front of the bench. Helen Ellis was swaying. Frankie’s wheezing eased.

At the defense table, Jared Smith and Lucy Elmendorf were bent forward, foreheads on the table, hands locked behind their heads. The gunmen must have instructed them to do it, though Rory hadn’t heard it. The tabletop had been swept clean. No pens or pencils or anything that could be used to stab the gunmen.

Nixon looked around. “Everybody listen. You will do exactly as we say. You will not hesitate. You will not hold back. You will not scream or cry out for help, and if anybody has held on to a cell phone”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small electronic device—“we will find it, and we will punish you.”

Nixon raised the device like a police officer waving his badge. Reagan held his gun at port arms, aimed at the ceiling.

“Well?” Nixon said.

“Here.”

A man scrabbled in his pants pocket, pulled out a phone, and tossed it on the floor like it had bitten him.

“Anybody else?” Nixon said.

Nobody spoke up. He pushed a button on the device and walked up the aisle.

“Okay.” Crying, a woman pulled a phone from her bra.

He grabbed it. “You do what we say, and you’ll survive. Play Rambo, you won’t.”

He stalked to the defense table and climbed on top of it. “Everybody on the floor. Facedown, hands behind your heads.”

People began dropping to their knees. But one of the defense attorneys, a ravenish man named Pritchett, edged back from the table, hands in the air. “Tell us what’s going on. What do you want here?”

Nixon turned his head, slowly, and lodged a stare at Pritchett. Without a word he swung the butt of his shotgun and cracked Pritchett in the face. People gasped. Pritchett staggered back, legs like bamboo. He crashed into his chair and toppled, hand to his bloody forehead.

Nixon swung the shotgun back up, finger on the trigger. “Any other questions?”

The lobby of the courthouse was empty. Two lawyers strolled in and stopped chatting. The weapons checkpoint was unmanned.

“Hello?” one said.

A moment later, she heard banging sounds. The noise came from beyond the checkpoint, around a corner. It was repetitive and heavy. Like shoes kicking wood.

The lawyers glanced at each other and, with a shrug, went through the
metal detector. It rang but nobody came running. They rounded the corner. The banging grew louder. Down the hall, a closet door shook with each thud. The lawyers glanced around. The administrative offices for the courthouse were in the opposite direction at the far end of the hall, behind closed doors.

“Hey, anybody here?” she said.

The kicking got louder and was accompanied by muffled shouts. The lawyers jogged down the hall to the closet.

It was locked, the key broken off in the door.

“Anybody in there?” the lawyer called.

The kicking resumed, and more desperate shouting. The lawyer pulled out her phone. Her colleague dropped his briefcase and ran down the hall toward the administrative offices.

The lawyer called 9-1-1.

O
ne by one people dropped to the courtroom floor. Frankie Ortega lay down, breathing like a wheezy metronome. Rory held still. A voice within her said,
Stand up.
Don’t get on your knees.
Around her, shuffling, crying, people prostrated themselves.
Don’t let them shoot you in the back.

Pritchett, the defense attorney, lay collapsed by his chair, his face creased red with blood. Atop the defense table, Nixon swept his gun barrel slowly across the courtroom. He looked like a tank turning its gun turret. A wire of anger and fear heated in Rory’s chest. Nixon’s gun veered toward her.
We’ve lost.

She dropped to her knees and stretched out on the floor, facedown.

She laced her fingers behind her head and rested her cheek against cold stone. Two feet away, the court reporter stared at her. The woman’s eyes were wet. In a staccato whisper she began reciting the Hail Mary.

“Faces
down,
” Nixon said. “Stare at the floor.”

People placed their foreheads against the stone. Rory heard heavy breathing, whimpers, the percussion of a woman’s charm bracelet shivering against the tile. She heard a small airplane buzz overhead, and traffic on the street. In the hall: nothing.

Didn’t anybody know what was happening?

From the table, Nixon said, “Stay exactly as you are. Do not roll over. Do not raise your heads.”

Across the well of the court, the defense attorney breathed in broken,
wet gasps. The court reporter murmured, “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners…”

Behind the woman’s prayer, Rory heard another voice.

“One. Two. Three.”

It was Reagan. His footsteps scuffed across the floor.

“Four.” He paused. “Stand up.”

A cry. “No. Please, don’t…”

“Stand up.”

Nixon’s voice boomed out. “If you are tapped on the back, stand up.”

“No, please…
no.
”

Nixon jumped down from the table. His boots hit the floor. “He touched you with the barrel of his weapon. He didn’t shoot you. But if you lie there mewling, you’re going to get hurt. Now
stand up.
”

Rory heard a man clamber to his feet.

The court reporter opened her eyes, desperate. “Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Nixon’s voice again, slow, metallic. “One. Two. Three. Four.”

A choked cry.

“Stand up,” Nixon said.

Shoes scraped the floor.

Reagan’s footsteps moved again, inching across the courtroom. “One. Two. Three. Four.”

Nixon: “Stand up.”

Fabric rustled.

“Pray for us sinners…”

“One. Two. Three. Four.”

The barrel of the shotgun tapped Rory between the shoulder blades.

Her breathing faltered. Behind her closed eyes, the view burst with yellow stars.

“Stand up,” Nixon said.

She pushed to her knees. The court reporter watched, her expression brimming with relief and pity. Rory climbed to her feet.

Reagan stood in front of her. His eyes were hazel. His skin, the bare ring of it visible beneath his balaclava, looked pasty.

Amid the crowd massed on the floor, three other people stood with their hands raised. A man in his sixties in a red-checkered shirt. Prosecutor Cary Oberlin. And Judge Wieland.

Nixon nodded at the door to Wieland’s chambers. “You four. Walk.”

Stepping cautiously over people on the floor, they picked their way toward the door. Rory went last in line, hands raised. Nixon trailed her. Reagan stood to one side and urged the four past him, like a gun bull guarding a chain gang.

Where were they going? Were the four of them being released? If so, would they be given a message to take to the world outside?

She didn’t think they were being released.

She walked. Ahead, the older man in the red check took care to avoid juror Daisy Fallon, who lay crying in his path.

Nixon said, “Speed it up.”

Oberlin got about ten feet from the door to chambers. Reagan wiped his nose with a gloved hand. Judge Wieland drew even with him.

Rory saw a blur of blue to the left, off her shoulder. A swift movement, somebody sitting up. Then fumbling, a grunt. She turned.

A man from the public gallery was sitting upright, unzipping his Dodgers jacket. His eyes were spiked with panic. He yanked the jacket open and reached inside.

Things went clear and smeared all at once. Beneath the jacket, the man wore a searing yellow
Justice!
T-shirt. He was breathing hard enough to blow out candles on a cake. He drew a handgun.

He raised the gun and aimed at Reagan. And fired.

Orange flame flashed from the barrel. The report cracked through the courtroom. Screams erupted. The pistol rose in his hand with recoil.

Reagan spun and raised the shotgun. The man in the
Justice!
shirt leveled his handgun. He fired.

Reagan fired.

At such close range, it sounded like the world coming apart. The roar of the blast reverberated through Rory’s chest. A dark form dropped to the floor. The man in the
Justice!
T-shirt pitched backward onto a young woman. His gun clattered to the tiles.

Nixon ran across the room, stepping on people. He bellowed, “Do not touch the weapon.”

No chance of that. People shrieked and crawled away from the
Justice!
man, mouths wide, hair falling in their faces. The man was dead. His eyes stared at the ceiling and his yellow shirt glistened red with blood. Rory stumbled back.

How did he get a gun into court? How did any of them?

Nixon grabbed the handgun from the floor. “Everybody shut up and hold still.”

People cowered, sobbing. The air swirled with cordite. Nixon turned in a slow circle and took stock.

Judge Wieland was down.

The
Justice!
man had fired at Reagan but missed and caught the judge in the shoulder. The man in red check knelt near Wieland. He tentatively put a hand on the judge’s shoulder. Rory dropped to a crouch and inched forward to his side.

Wieland gazed up at her with surprise in his eyes. Rory felt the world seem to tilt and slide away. He was bleeding profusely. Without immediate medical care, he wouldn’t stay alive for long.

The man in red check said, “What do we do?”

Rory turned, lips parting. Nixon loomed above her.

He grabbed her by a handful of sweater, fingers twisting into the fabric and into her hair. She cried out.

“Up.”

He dragged her away from the judge. She struggled for balance, knees sliding along the stone floor.

“On your feet,” Nixon said.

“Let me—”

“Up.”

He lifted her by the scruff of her sweater. She flailed to her feet. He pointed at the man in the red shirt. “Move it, pops.”

The man looked up with shock and complete loss. “But…”

Nixon swung the barrel of the gun toward him. The man threw his hands in front of his face.

Nixon pointed at Cary Oberlin. “You too. Come on. Now.”

Then he shook his head at the dead wannabe hero in the
Justice!
shirt. He turned sharply toward Reagan. “Fucking idiot—”

Outside the main doors, noise. Voices in the hallway, footsteps, the squawk of a radio. The door handles rattled.

Reagan and Nixon turned toward the doors.

A man in the hall called, “Open up.”

More rattling sounds. “Sheriff’s Department. Open the doors.”

Beyond the windows, the first of the sirens floated on the morning air.