The 9th Judgment

Chapter 114

IT WAS SEPTEMBER 25, and Joe and I were having friends over to toast one another and the good days ahead.

A ham was in the oven, baking under a peppery mango glaze. Martha was begging for a taste and got a Milk-Bone instead. I was wearing a kimono and an avocado mask as I peeled the potatoes and Joe sliced apples for the cobbler. The 49ers were playing the Cowboys, the cheers of the crowd coming over the TV, when Joe’s cell phone rang.

I said to him, “Don’t answer that, honey.”

I wasn’t joking, but he grinned at me and picked up the phone.

I hadn’t had a call in weeks that hadn’t sent me down a tunnel of horror, and frankly I was so strung out from my job, I couldn’t take even a lightbulb burning out. Or a broken fingernail. Or even a dip in the temperature. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Joe brought the phone into the living room, and I rinsed the potatoes and put them on to boil. I was in the bathroom washing avocado off my face when Joe said my name. I shut off the water and patted my eyes with a fluffy towel, and when I turned, I saw Joe looking at me, gray-faced and grim.

“There’s a plane full of people on the tarmac at Dulles International,” he said. “There’s a guy on board, used to be an informant of mine years back. He smuggled C-four in with his hand luggage. He’s threatening to blow up the plane.”

“Oh my God. And the Feds want you to advise them?”

“Not exactly. The guy with the C-four, Waleed Mohammad, wants to talk to me and only me.”

Joe had been deputy director of Homeland Security when we met and had become a high-level security consultant when he moved here from DC-a consultant who worked from home.

“So you need to call the guy,” I said. “Talk him down.”

“I have to fly to Washington,” Joe said, walking to me, enfolding me in his arms. “A car’s picking me up. I have to go right now.”

It felt like my heart stopped in its tracks.

It was stupid, but I just wanted to bawl in Joe’s arms and tell him he couldn’t go, and if he did, I’d keep crying until he came back.

“Do what you have to do,” I said.

Chapter 115

I WAS DRESSED by the time Yuki and Miles arrived. Miles, that too-cute-for-words bartender, presented me with a bottle of wine, telling me about its special qualities. I barely heard him, but I’m pretty sure I thanked him. Yuki asked where Joe was, and I told her with my voice catching, my eyes watering up, that he had rushed off to Washington.

I turned away so she wouldn’t have to endure my disgraceful wet-eyed funk. So she followed me into the kitchen and helped me plate the olives and cheese. “What’s going on, Lindsay?” she asked me.

“Don’t look at me. It’s just that everything finally got to me. You know. Everything.”

“When’s Joe coming back?”

I shrugged and the doorbell rang, Martha yelping happily when I opened it to Edmund and Claire. Claire surrounded me in a big hug and smothered me with flowers.

Edmund said, “Lindsay, you look gorgeous in red. Gorgeous in any way, but red’s definitely your color.”

Edmund joined Miles in front of the TV, the two of them having a football bonding moment as Claire went into the kitchen and poked around for a vase.

When Cindy and Rich showed up, I realized it was the first time I’d seen them together on a date. And maybe it was the first time they’d really been out in the world publicly. That their debut was happening at my home was pretty cool. I told them that Joe was MIA and why.

Rich said, “You want me to pick out some music, Linds?”

“Thanks. That would be great.”

Richie was digging through the CDs and I was pulling the ham out of the oven when the phones rang, each of them, one in all four rooms ringing together.

“Are you getting the phone?” Claire asked me.

“Phones are no friends of mine.”

“Could be Jacobi.”

“He’d call me on my cell.”

My mobile rang from my handbag. I reached in and looked at the caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number. Maybe, I thought, it was coming from Jacobi’s mystery date’s phone.

“Warren, are you lost?”

“Sergeant Boxer?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Commander John Jordan. I’m afraid there’s been an incident. I wanted to reach you before you heard it on the news.”

My mind skittered like a needle across an old-fashioned vinyl record. This couldn’t be about that hostage crisis in Washington. Joe couldn’t have gotten there-not yet. His plane had just lifted off. I looked at the television set through the wall opening to the living room.

Talking heads had replaced the football game, and I read the breaking-news banner: CHARTER JET DOWNED IN CALIFORNIA.

Chopper footage came on, showing a green valley blemished by airplane wreckage and a blooming column of black smoke.

The commander was speaking to me, but I didn’t really hear his words. I already got it. Joe’s plane had gone down. They didn’t know what had happened, why it had blown up or simply crashed.

The lights faded to black, and I went down.

Chapter 116

I SWAM UP out of the darkness, hearing Claire talking to Cindy, feeling something cold on my forehead, Martha’s paws on my chest. My eyelids flew open. I was looking up at the ceiling of my bedroom.

Where was Joe?

Claire said, “I’m here, baby. We’re all here.”

“Joe? Is Joe…?” I wailed. “Oh no. Oh God no.”

Claire looked at me helplessly, tears rolling down her face. Cindy grabbed my hand and Yuki cried, paced, and cried some more.

I was overwhelmed with a horrible emptiness, a pain so deep, so shocking, I wanted to die. I rolled onto my side so I couldn’t see anyone and covered my head with a pillow. Sobs poured out of me.

“I’m right here, sugar,” Claire said.

“Tell everyone to go home. Please,” I said.

She didn’t answer me. The door closed, and I took Joe’s pillow in my arms and rocked myself into a sleep that was more falling down a bottomless hole than floating in a dream.

I woke up not knowing why I was drowning in dread.

“What time is it?” I asked into the pillow.

“It’s almost five,” Claire said.

“In the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve only been out for an hour?”

“I’m going to get you something to put you out,” she said. “I called in a prescription.”

I pulled the blanket over my head.

I came up from the deep again, this time into a roar of voices, cheers-What the hell? Was I still dreaming? The bedroom door opened, and lights blazed. Joe was standing over me.

I screamed his name.

Was it really him? Was it? Or had I gone insane?

Joe opened his arms, and I threw myself against him, feeling the wool of his jacket scrape my cheek, hearing his voice saying my name.

I pulled away and looked again to be sure, and now the room was filling with my friends, standing-room only.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, sweetheart. I’m here.”

I was crying again, and I was asking Joe to tell me what had happened.

“I was at the airport,” Joe said. “Ours-SFO-when I got a call from my contacts in Washington saying that the passengers on that plane had overpowered Waleed. It was all over. I could go back home.

“I was arranging a car. I didn’t know about that jet going down, Lindsay, until my driver turned on the radio and told me the news.”

I was helped out of the bedroom and brought to the table. Joe sat beside me. The food was rubbery and cold, and it was the best damned meal I’d eaten in my life-in my whole entire life.

Wine was poured. Toasts were made. I looked around the table, and it finally sank in-Jacobi wasn’t there.

“Rich, did you hear from Jacobi?”

“He hasn’t called,” Rich said.

We raised a glass to Jacobi’s new girlfriend. We ate Joe’s apple cobbler with gusto and, by the way, the 49ers won. I was weak from emotion and didn’t even try to stop people from clearing the table.

By eight o’clock, I was in bed for the night with my arms wrapped around Joe.

Chapter 117

THE TELEPHONE RANG several times that night and the next morning, too. I told Joe that if he picked up a phone, he was a dead man, and then I pulled out the cord to the landline, put both our cell phones in the wall safe, and changed the combination.

Joe and I took Martha for a run, and when we got back, Joe made ham-and-cheese omelets with leftovers. It was after noon, so we opened the wine Miles had brought, Joe sipping, looking at the bottle, and saying, “Wow.”

We had bought, but never had had the time to watch, the complete season-one set of Lost, so we pulled up armchairs to the TV and went through six episodes, broke for pizza and beer, and watched the news. We learned that the downed plane hadn’t been sabotaged. The cause was pilot error, terrible enough because four people had died but a relief in that it hadn’t been a failed attempt on Joe’s life.

We soaked up another five hours of Lost, and I suppose some would say it was a waste of a day, but Joe, beer, and fantasy TV, in that order, were what I needed. I fell asleep in Joe’s arms watching a recording of Bill Maher on the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. I turned off the television and shook Joe awake.

“Huh?”

“I love you,” I said.

“Of course you do. I love you, too. I wish there was a better, more expressive way to say it. Too bad you can’t slip into my skin and feel how much I love you.”

I laughed.

Boy, did it feel good to laugh.

“I believe you, sweetheart,” I said.

When I woke up again, it was morning. I took Martha for a walk, and when we returned, I watched Joe sleep as I dressed. I plugged the phones back into their sockets and slugged down a glass of orange juice.

I strapped on my gun, opened the safe in the closet, and took out our cell phones. I put Joe’s on the night table and gave him a kiss.

He opened his blue eyes.

“How’re you feeling, Blondie?”

“Never better,” I said. “Call me later.”

Martha got into bed with Joe, and I went out to my car, remembering as I got into the front seat to check my phone messages.

I’d missed four calls, all of them from Jacobi. I was alarmed and swamped with guilt. I love Jacobi. Love him like the father I wished I’d had. What happened to him? How badly had I let him down?

I pressed the buttons and listened to Jacobi’s first message.

“Boxer,” he said, “I’m sorry not to be at your dinner party, but I’ve been in lockdown at the Hall with Tracchio and the mayor. This is the bottom line: Tracchio has had enough. He’s resigning and I’m moving up to captain.”

I was openmouthed and peeved when the beep cut him off. So I dialed up the next message.

“As I was saying, Boxer, you can have your old job back,” Jacobi said, in a message he’d left several hours before.

“You’ll be lieutenant again, with all the perks, ha-ha. But for damned sure you can call the shots in Homicide. I’ll get you more manpower, I promise you that. If you don’t want the job, I’ll give it to Jackson Brady. You have first call, but you have to let me know right away. The chief is making the announcement first thing Tuesday morning.”

The next two calls from Jacobi were brief: “Boxer, call me back.” The final one was last night. I’d missed a deadline I didn’t know I had.

What had Jacobi decided to do? Replace himself with me? Or with Jackson Brady? Clearly I’d lost my chance to vote. I tried Jacobi’s phone and got a busy signal. It happened when I called him the next time, too.

I started up my car and headed toward the Hall of Justice, but where was I really heading? I had no idea.