He sits by the window with a corner of the cloth tucked aside and stares out at the courthouse. He thinks about the three bullets. One for Joe. One for Melissa. And one spare. Hopefully he won’t need the spare. Traffic starts to build as eight o’clock arrives and builds even more the closer it gets to nine. Then a police car shows up and puts out road cones to block off the street. Good thing he got here early. Good thing he parked around the corner. Groups of people are walking from the direction of the bus station—he can see them from his viewpoint starting to fill the streets as they come his way. They’re carrying placards and signs down by their sides. Soon they start coming from every direction. If he went to the office across the hall and looked north he’d see the same amount of people carrying the same kinds of signs coming in his direction. The protestors are wrapped in thick jackets and have scarves to keep their vocal chords warmed up for the yelling to come. Some he recognizes from group. They’ve brought friends and family. Media vans start to show up. They drive around looking for parking spaces, but can’t find any, the drivers double-parking and reporters and camera operators jumping out. He sees brothers and sisters of people Joe has killed. He sees people carrying signs that say Execution is murder and Only God decides who lives and dies. He sees trouble brewing. He sees both signs as being wrong. He supposes that would make them bad signs. He sees Jonas Jones, the psychic who was on the news all day yesterday, arrive at the back gate and not go any further. Other people see that too, and a small squadron of them gather there, but mostly people are making their way to the front of the courthouse, where they are out of his view.
Around quarter past nine comes the chanting. “Two, four, six, eight, let us eradicate.” Over and over it comes from the front of the courthouse, the words traveling easily on the cold, still air. The numbers start to grow. Soon people are arriving at the end of the block and can’t go any further, the street right outside the courthouse is packed. They spill out onto the other roads. The intersection becomes jammed. Then Elvis appears. He’s walking with Dracula and they’re carrying a six-pack of beer. They are followed by four beer-drinking Teletubbies and a couple of thin girls dressed up as maids. There is a moment, a comical moment, where he wonders if he’s having some kind of stroke, but no, what he is seeing is real. He doesn’t understand why it’s real, but it is. They disappear into the crowd.
At nine twenty a car waits for the gate to roll open, then enters the parking lot behind the court. Detective Carl Schroder—or just Carl these days—climbs out. The gates roll closed behind him.
Walking past the gates is Magnum PI and two nuns, Magnum saying something to make the two nuns laugh. With them is Smurfette. Raphael observes as Schroder watches the group walk past, then Schroder is slowly shaking his head before he disappears inside. Raphael pulls more of the drop cloth aside and reaches around the back and opens up the window. The air is chilling. The murmurs of street life kick up a few notches, he can hear people shouting and laughing and people arguing. He secures the curtain back into place.
He changes into the police uniform. He stuffs his clothes back into the bag along with the thermos, then he reaches up into the ceiling and throws it as far as he can. He knows he’ll probably be in jail by the end of the day, but no reason to make it easy for the police.
At nine thirty Raphael lies down on the platform they made. He has the urge to unload the magazine and reload it, just to make sure everything is how it should be. The same urge makes him want to take apart the gun and put it back together. But ultimately there’s no point. It wouldn’t go any different to how he already has it—and he’s satisfied it couldn’t be any better. He looks at his hands for any sign of the shakes and doesn’t see one. He positions the gun and he waits for Joe and Melissa to arrive.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Which one of you has children?” Melissa asks.
“What?” the woman asks.
“She does,” the guy says, “but I don’t.”
“Then that makes this easy,” she says, and she hands him a syringe.
“What is it?” he asks, without taking it.
“It’s your chance to live,” Melissa says. “You take that shot, and you get to fall asleep for the next hour. You don’t take the shot and I shoot you in the face right now,” she says, wiggling the gun a little. “Take your pick.”
“Is it safe?” he asks.
“Safer than this,” she says, wiggling the gun again.
“No,” he says.
“If I wanted you dead, I’d shoot you,” Melissa says. “The fact is I need you very much alive, but right now I need you very much out of the way. Now I know you’re confused and scared, so I’m going to give you five more seconds to think about how you’d rather be unconscious than dead.”
“And what are you going to do with her?” he asks.
“She’ll get the same option when I’m done with her,” Melissa says.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“James,” he says, “but you can call me Jimmy.”
“This is a silencer, Jimmy,” Melissa says, tapping the end of the gun. “I can shoot you both in the head and nobody would hear a thing. I can drive the ambulance myself.”
Her words have an effect. You Can Call Me Jimmy takes the syringe. He rolls up his sleeve and uses his teeth to pull the cap off it, then holds the needle upright and taps the tube to get rid of any air bubbles. He looks like he wants to stab it into Melissa. Instead he puts the tip into his arm and keeps pushing until the needle disappears, then he pushes his finger down on the plunger.
“I don’t feel so good,” he says.
“Climb over into the back,” Melissa says.
“I . . . I don’t think I can.”
“Yes you can. Come on.”
He starts to climb over. He gets halfway then looks up at her. “I don’t feel so good,” he says again, and then proves just how un-good he’s feeling by collapsing.
“What did you do to him?” the woman asks.
“He’s only sleeping,” Melissa says, then drags him all the way into the back.
“What are you going to do to us?”
“Give me your driver’s license,” Melissa says.
“Why?”
“Because I asked nicely,” she says.
The driver lowers the sun visor. Her license is tucked into a pouch up there. She hands it over. Melissa looks at the photograph. It’s five years old. She looks at the name and at the address. Trish Walker. Lives in Redwood.
“This address still current?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Trish,” she says. “Rather than me explain everything to you, just listen in as we drive and you’ll figure it out.”
“Drive where?”
“You have a schedule, remember? Just stick to it.”
Melissa gets out her cell phone. Trish starts driving. Melissa dials a number that doesn’t exist and then talks to a person who isn’t there. Trish sits at a red light, which ten seconds later becomes a green.
“It’s me,” Melissa says. “Here’s the address,” she says, and she reads out the address from the driver’s license into the phone. “You got that? Now repeat it back to me,” she says, and she listens to nothing as the address isn’t repeated back. “No, I said sixteen, not fourteen. Repeat it back,” she says, knowing the small detail makes it believable. “That’s it,” she says.
She hangs up.
Trish has gone pale. Very pale.
“Okay, Trish, by now you’ve figured out that you’re in a very deep hole, and your children are in there with you. Think of it like this. Think of that hole slowly caving in, there’s dirt all around you, and you have one chance to claw your way out of it along with your children. Are we on the same page here?”