She raced across the street, put her hand up to screen the smoke, and ran over the broken glass. She fell once on the slippery shards, then got up and darted inside the building. She found herself in a darkened and destroyed reception area that had been intact only seconds earlier. All she could see was that the front counter was splintered and smoldering from the blast. A huge framed picture on the wall had been blown to smithereens.
“Don’t shoot! I’m here to help!” Judy screamed, but realized in the next second that it wasn’t necessary. The reception area was deadly silent. The smoke on the tile floor was lifting. Judy felt something at her feet and looked down.
It was a security guard, his stilled eyes staring wide in death. Gunshot wounds strafed his chest, shredding his blue uniform in a soaked red line. Judy’s hand flew to cover her mouth and she forced herself to move on.
Ahead lay a dark, smoke-filled corridor, and she ran a hand along the wall for guidance. In her path lay two more bodies, in uniform. Guards. Judy scrambled from one to the next, pushing up their tight cuffs and feeling for a pulse. Their wrists were still warm with life, but their pulses had ebbed away. Three men dead. How could this be? It was awful. Judy felt her gorge rise but willed it back down. She couldn’t lose control now.
“Marco!” she shouted through the smoke, without knowing why. Yesterday she had wished him dead. Today she wanted to save his life. She ran down the corridor and heard moaning when she reached an office at the end of the hall.
It was large, dark, windowless. Judy couldn’t see anything but she guessed the desk would be on the back wall, with Marco behind it. A moan confirmed it and she ran in its direction, then fell to her knees and fumbled for the body lying on the floor. The outline of Marco Coluzzi was faintly visible. But it had stopped moaning. Wetness gurgled dark from the corner of his mouth. Judy could feel it hot under her fingers. Blood.
She went into autopilot, tucking the cell phone under her ear and pressing rhythmically on Marco’s chest. “Tell me what to do!” she called to the 911 dispatcher, but the connection was breaking up. She pumped frantically up and down. A siren blared nearby, joined by another. They were on the way. They had gotten her message.
“Marco, Marco!” she called out, but no sounds came from the body on the floor. She leaned on his chest with all her might, let off, then did it again. He still wore a knotted tie, even at this hour, and somehow that touched her. But he wasn’t coming around. She couldn’t save him.
“Operator, what do I do?” she called, panicky, but the dispatcher’s voice vanished into static.
“No!” Judy dropped the cell phone and gathered Marco in her arms. His head fell back instantly, and Judy could see the glistening black blood staining his neck. His shirt was soaked. He had lost so much blood. He was bleeding to death. It was her fault. She had pitted one brother against the other. She never realized it would come to this. She should have known.
“Help!” Judy shrieked, cradling her enemy in her arms, but she knew they would come too late. He was already gone and she couldn’t do anything but hold him.
“No! Please! Stop! This has to stop!” she heard herself cry out and she didn’t know if she was talking about the blood or the killing or the vendetta. And Judy was relieved when she felt the warm tears fill her eyes and stream down her face, because they told her she was still a human being, with a heart, a conscience, and a soul, and nobody could take that away from her, least of all the poor man who was dying in her very arms.
The next hours blurred paramedics and gurneys and uniformed police asking her questions. There were Mobile Crime techs in jumpsuits and booties and Dr. Patel from the coroner’s office, acknowledging her with a grim nod, and then there was yellow crime-scene tape and bodies being carried out in bags. Then came TV cameras and klieg lights and anchorpeople in orange makeup and Judy’s cell phone ringing nonstop.
She said “no comment” to anybody who didn’t wear a badge, and she must have said it at least a hundred times. Someone handed her a paper towel, and she wiped her face with it. When she pulled it away, it was streaked with blood redder than any oil paint.
Judy bore up under all of it and answered the police questions numbly, describing to Detective Wilkins, who came later, what she had seen and why she had been there, racking her brain for details of the sedan and the men and anything that could help him prove who did it, though they both knew it had to be John Coluzzi. He didn’t make her go down to the Roundhouse because Bennie arrived and scared him and the press off, scooping Judy up like a lost child and hurrying her back to the Saturn and sitting her in the driver’s seat next to a completely agitated Penny, who became frantic sniffing the blood on Judy’s clothes.
“How are you?” Bennie asked, kneeling down in front of the open door on the driver’s side, so that she was eye level with Judy. “Do you want to go to a hospital?”
“No, not at all. I’m fine. I really am fine.” Saying it seemed to make it so, and Judy could feel herself coming back to herself, in a way. Penny scrambled over and licked her face. Judy laughed, despite the situation. “Dogs are good.”
“Dogs are essential.” Bennie grinned. “Now, I want you to get out of here. Do you want to stay at my place tonight?”
“No, I have a hotel reservation and everything. I’m fine. I really am fine.”
“A hotel? You want me to take the dog? She can play with mine. Have a sleepover.”
Judy considered it. It only made sense. It was in the best interests of the golden. “No. I want her with me.”
Bennie laughed. “Meet me in the office at nine. We’ll talk then. Take the back way in. I’m hiring two new guards downstairs and two upstairs, every day until this trial is over.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Now get out of here. Here comes the press.” Bennie peered over the hood of the Saturn. Anchorpeople were advancing, with bubble microphones and whirring video cameras, and Bennie fended them off like a mother grizzly. Her concern remained with Judy. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Okay enough to lose those clowns,” Judy said, and Penny assumed the shotgun position.
“Then go, girl!” Bennie stood, rising to meet the press, as Judy gunned the Saturn’s engine, backed out of the space, and took off, leaving the orange makeup, the blue uniforms, the yellow tape, and all the other colors behind.
Judy had lost the last of the two press cars twenty minutes later, mainly because their pursuit was only half-hearted. She switched on the radio news, KYW 1060, and it was all Coluzzis, all the time. The big story was at the crime scene and apparently the home of Marco Coluzzi. Judy sympathized with Marco’s wife and small children. John Coluzzi couldn’t be reached for comment.
Judy felt a wave of guilt. She should have foreseen this. She had underestimated John’s ruthlessness. Killing his own brother. Three other men dead. Innocent men. Their blood stained her hands and clothes. Judy stopped at a red light but didn’t notice when it changed. A van driver honked her into motion, and she cruised down Broad Street toward the hotel. Exhaustion was catching up with her, as was sadness. Would the killing end now? Would it only get worse? Would John assume power? The questions bewildered her.
She cruised to another traffic light, barely concentrating on her driving, letting her thoughts run free, and they brought her to an insight. The Coluzzis had waged a war against her and had pushed her to the extremes of irrational behavior, namely driving over to the Coluzzi offices to confront Marco. So she was no different from Pigeon Tony. If they had pushed her as far as they had pushed him, killing someone she loved, would she have killed in return? It was at least conceivable, but she hadn’t known that before. It made her understand what she had been wondering about from the beginning of the case. Bennie had asked her to decide whether Pigeon Tony was innocent or guilty.