Backfire

59

Judge Sherlock’s home

Pacific Heights

Early Thursday morning

Thanksgiving Day

Sherlock opened her eyes to see Dillon standing over her.

A big smile bloomed because, quite simply, how could it not? Sherlock yawned and stretched. “What time is it?”

“A bit after six a.m. How are you feeling?”

Sherlock queried her head. The wound itself throbbed a bit, but there weren’t any voices inside her head screaming punk rock, and that was good.

“Like a million bucks. You tell a great bedtime story, Dillon. Every bone in my body is humming ‘Ring My Bell.’ What in heaven’s name are you doing up? Helping my parents with the turkey?”

“No, Molly is keeping the turkey to herself. Your mom’s in the kitchen, though, making sausage stuffing for you carnivores and a nice cornbread stuffing for me. I woke up a couple of hours ago, realized we’d all overlooked something, and went to work on MAX.”

She studied his face. “You know who he is? The man who shot me yesterday? The man who tried to kill Ramsey twice?”

He climbed into bed beside her, pulled her against him, and kissed her hair. “It’s all pretty straightforward once you look at it the right way.”

He was big and warm, his heartbeat steady against her chest. “What do you mean, ‘the right way’?”

“Remember, it was you, Sherlock, who suggested a long prison stay fit the bill, someone who’d had time on his hands to plan the bizarre attacks on Ramsey. And we knew the person who had that note delivered to me at the Hoover Building had joked to Ted Moody about calling him the Hammer-prison slang.”

She nodded.

“And Dane and Ruth have been checking inmates released since the first of this year, looking to find a father or a brother, someone with a relationship to one of our cases who was out now, who could be looking for revenge.”

Sherlock said, “Ruth told me she and Dane were going nuts, that they couldn’t find a prisoner who fit the profile.”

Savich said, “There’s a very good reason for that. I realized the one case that remotely connected Ramsey to me was more than five years ago, though I wasn’t all that involved. Remember Father Sonny Dickerson, the pedophile who kidnapped Emma?”

Sherlock clearly remembered the obsessed ex-priest who’d sexually abused Emma until she’d escaped and Ramsey had found her and hooked up with Molly to save her. So much violence, so much deception, and it had all ended in Dickerson’s murder in the hospital. And now Dillon knew. Sherlock snuggled closer, waiting. She enjoyed a good punch line as much as he did.

“I did a search on all of Father Sonny’s relatives. His father’s dead, his only other sibling, a brother, is dead. There was only one relative left who wasn’t dead, and that’s Sonny’s mother, in jail for killing her husband. She’s the Hammer.”

That was a kicker. “You’re kidding me-Sonny Dickerson’s mom shot me in the head?”

“Yes. We all believed it was a man, of course, since everyone who saw her-from Ted Moody, who brought us that note in the Hoover Building, to the lady who rented her the Zodiac-described a man. We even heard what we all thought was a man’s voice on that telephone message to Molly, never doubted it was Xu.

“She’s got a gravelly voice she’s learned to control, and she knows how to disguise herself as a man. She let us believe all the attempts on Ramsey’s life were Xu until Tuesday, when she shot you with Xu on the ground under you.” Sherlock came up on her elbow. “I just can’t get over it-Father Sonny Dickerson’s mother. But, Dillon, why didn’t her name pop right out when Ruth and Dane did their search, no matter if she’s female?”

“Because her name is Charlene Cartwright. Like I said, she was in jail for ten years for the murder of her husband, evidently a miserable human being who not only abused Sonny and his now-deceased brother but also his wife, Charlene. She snapped and shot a dozen bullets in his face with his own gun.

“From the court transcript I read of her trial in Baton Rouge, I think her shooting him was justified. I don’t know why her lawyer didn’t plead self-defense, but he didn’t. He went for the SODDI defense-Some Other Dude Did It-but the jury didn’t buy it, and no wonder, since there was so much evidence against her. They wanted her to serve hard time, and so she did. She was given fifteen years, paroled after ten.

“Father Sonny was murdered when she’d been in prison for about five years, so she had ample time to figure out who to blame and how to carry out her revenge.”

Sherlock said, “Why did she target you? Of course I remember most everything about the case, but you were hardly involved.”

“That’s why I didn’t make the connection sooner. When I found her, I realized that she saw me as making it all possible because of the facial-recognition program I modified from my friend at Scotland Yard. Remember we didn’t believe the sketch we inputted into the program would pay off? But it did, the program spit Father Sonny out right away.”

Sherlock said, “So Charlene read about the facial-recognition program, saw your name and your connection to Ramsey, and decided you were the one who fingered her son, that without you, he wouldn’t have been caught, which is totally wrong. Father Sonny tried to take Emma again in Monterey. In the end, that’s what brought him down.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking a very angry woman here.”

“Angry but irrational,” Sherlock said. “She used you as her focus, the hub of the wheel. She was going to punish you by killing those who mattered to you, as you had hurt her by supposedly killing her son.”

“Looks like. I guess there was no way she could know Father Sonny kidnapped the wrong little girl when he took Emma since he was ordered killed by Emma’s grandfather for it. She must have believed Ramsey killed him, that I and everyone else protected him, covered it up, and that’s why he was number one on her hit list.”

Sherlock recited, “For what you did you deserve this. I wonder how many lines she played around with before she came upon this one. It sounds highfalutin, doesn’t it? Like God is going to smite you and you deserve it. Why isn’t her name Dickerson?”

“It was a common-law marriage, and she kept her maiden name-Cartwright. She served her ten years in Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in Saint Gabriel, outside of Baton Rouge, until four months ago when she was paroled, completely rehabilitated, and, citing her exemplary behavior, willing to do whatever was asked of her, according to the warden himself. She was, naturally, a clerk in the prison library, spent many hours in there ‘studying,’ according to the parole board records.”

Sherlock said, “And I was second on her list after Ramsey? To hurt you?”

Savich nodded. “She must have decided to put Ramsey on hold, since she realized there was no way she could get to him again in the hospital, not after the elevator debacle.”

He shook his head. “I can’t get over her preparation for that attempt. She even took Boozer’s blood, remember, because she wanted us to think she was wounded, and that she was a man. She wanted to play with us.”

“And Boozer described a man as well.”

“Well, we thought Xu was a woman for a very long time, what with that Sue name mix-up. Turns out we were wrong on both counts.”

Sherlock said, “That stunt in the elevator. Amazing, what she did.”

“She failed, thanks to Eve and Kevlar.”

Sherlock said, “Dillon, how do you know it was Charlene, though? I mean, for sure?”

“There were samples of her handwriting in the trial record. They matched the notes she sent us. And she’s wanted in Louisiana again, for cutting out on her parole officer two months ago.”

Sherlock said, “She must have been following the FBI van, no other explanation for why she was there and ready to shoot just when I was out and visible at the Fairmont.”

“She would have had no idea you’d jump out of the van and go after Xu. That part of it was lucky for her.”

“Lucky for both of them,” Sherlock said. “And isn’t that a happy thought?” If her aim had been a hair better, I’d be dead. Sherlock’s hand was a fist on his chest. He felt her fingers tangle in his chest hair. He pressed lightly, flattening her palm.

Savich said, “I’ve got her photo. It will make a huge difference knowing who we’re looking for. You know, Charlene doesn’t look like a killer, not really. I saw two photos, one before her trial and one taken two years ago. She didn’t look beaten down anymore, like a battered wife. She looked fierce, the set of her head and shoulders was proud, like she was on a mission for justice, like some old Joan of Arc.”

Sherlock pushed off the covers. “Let me see.”

“No, you stay put. I’ll bring MAX in here to show you.” He felt her hand moving over his chest. He leaned down, kissed her.

“No, don’t bring in MAX just yet,” she said against his jaw. She kissed his throat. “Not yet.”