On the next page began the story. You could almost hear the back-and-forth between Grimes and his editor as they decided on the subhead, which might have packed an even bigger punch than the headline.
JUDGE, JURY & EXECUTIONER!
Arthur Kingsman had brought to life the ultimate revenge fantasy for a sitting judge who was sick and tired of letting the guilty go free because of loopholes in the law exploited by slick, high-priced lawyers.
Or so claimed Grimes. Or, more specifically, so claimed his unnamed source.
This source had evidence that Kingsman had hired a contract killer who, of all things, had his attempted murder charges dismissed by Kingsman years ago because of an illegal police search of his car’s glove compartment. Grimes cited calls allegedly made by Kingsman to the contract killer from a pay phone inside the courthouse where he presided.
Having a surrogate commit the grisly murders? Using a pay phone to communicate with him? Kingsman was covering his tracks at every turn. Only that became the ultimate irony and the reason Grimes and the Gazette were so confident running with the story. Grimes’s source had led him to the contract killer…
At the city morgue.
Three days ago, a man in his twenties named Reginald Hicks had been found stabbed to death in his apartment in the Bronx. Multiple tenants told detectives they had seen a man wearing a black fedora and a gray duffle coat in the building around the same time. All of them remembered the coat having very large toggle buttons, the same buttons on the same coat, along with the same black fedora, that Kingsman had been photographed wearing on numerous occasions.
Kingsman was covering his tracks at every turn, all right. Every last one. He had killed the guy who was doing all the killings for him. Reginald Hicks had managed to escape justice in Kingsman’s courtroom. In the end, however, he wasn’t able to escape Kingsman. He became one more victim of his revenge.
Elizabeth turned the corner onto Centre Street, the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse directly ahead.
“Damn. So much for getting here first,” I said.
The front of the courthouse was a zoo of news trucks and reporters, all of them playing the same hunch we were. Grimes and the Gazette had treated the story as though they were carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor—they gave no warning. Not to the police and certainly not to Kingsman. The odds were good that the judge went off to work unaware of it.
Of course, Elizabeth and I still didn’t know where Kingsman had spent the night. Is there a chance he actually did know in advance?
We double-parked on the street, stepping out into the chaos. Courthouse guards were already keeping anyone with a camera, microphone, and/or perfectly coiffed hair off the steps and on the sidewalk.
We had none of that—especially the hair, after being up all night. But Elizabeth did have her badge.
“Go ahead,” said one of the guards.
No sooner did he move aside for us than one of the reporters pointed and shouted, “There he is!” as if he’d stepped out of some 1950s crime drama. All at once, the entire press corps began rushing madly up the steps. The guards never stood a chance.
Kingsman, standing front and center on the landing in front of the courthouse, was engulfed within seconds.
The judge had a statement he wanted to make.
He wasn’t the only one.
Chapter 88
“THIS WAY,” said Elizabeth. “Over here.”
I knew what she was thinking as I followed her up the rest of the steps, pushing past the media. They all needed to face Kingsman, but we didn’t. When he was done with the reporters and turned around, the first people he saw—the first people he spoke to—absolutely had to be us. Best we positioned ourselves accordingly.
Not too close to him, though.
I’ve managed to learn a few things about a few things, but the one thing I apparently knew next to nothing about was the optics of an impromptu press conference.
If you want to look like you support the person doing the talking, you stand behind that person, where the cameras can see you. Otherwise you get the hell out of the shot.
Thankfully, Elizabeth had been there, done that.
She yanked my arm seconds before every red dot on every camera lit up as they homed in on the judge. We were safely off to the side, out of frame.
“I’d like to comment on the so-called reporting in this morning’s Gazette,” began Kingsman, slowly and calmly. “Then I’ll be happy to take your questions, each and every one.”
Kingsman wasn’t wearing his robe. Nor was he behind the bench. But the judge was still the judge. He was laying the ground rules and instructing the jury. He knew as well as anybody—better than anybody, really—that the court of public opinion is more than just an expression. It’s real.
It’s also malleable. Like putty. Or a politician.
I stood next to Elizabeth, watching the horde of reporters collectively fall all over themselves so as not to miss a single word. Arms and shoulders bumping, they continued to jostle for position in the horseshoe that had formed around Kingsman. The space between him and the horde was disappearing fast. It was getting out of control.
“Please, everyone. There’s no need for pushing and shoving,” he said. That was far too polite, however, and he quickly realized it. Out wide went his arms, and up went his voice. “Calm the hell down or I won’t say another goddamn word.”
Much better.
All at once, the microphones and recorders fell still. Each and every one. No—wait. All of them except one.
An arm was still moving, a body pushing through the crowd. I couldn’t see his face, just the black recorder in his hand. Only it wasn’t a recorder.
“Gun!”
I saw it, but I didn’t yell it. You only yell it if you’re Secret Service. It acts as a birdcall, telling all the other agents to collapse around the intended target.
It was someone else who yelled it, a reporter next to the shooter. He blurted it out before I could even take my first step, before I could try to—
Pop! Pop!
The first shot missed Kingsman, but the second didn’t. His knees buckled, and his body collapsed at the top of the courthouse steps. I ran right past him, though. I had to. Everyone had run for cover except his killer. He was simply standing there, frozen. Except he wasn’t a he.
The second I saw her face, I knew who she was.
She was vengeance.
Chapter 89
“LOWER THE gun!” I yelled.
I was running at her full speed, hurdling people still on the ground while trying not to tumble down the steps.
I’d been in her house. I’d smelled the bleach she’d used to clean her husband’s blood off the floor. The blood was gone, but the stench of his murder would never fully go away in her mind, especially in its darkest corners.
She had read the Gazette and grabbed a cab, but not before first grabbing the 9mm Beretta that her husband had kept in his study. Jared Louden’s wife was out for blood of her own.