I, Michael Bennett

For all the police presence outside, inside the courthouse, past the metal detectors, the halls were pretty empty. That was because all civil and all but the most urgent criminal cases had been postponed for the week due to the incredible circumstances.

Arriving early at the fourteenth-floor witness room, I declined a coffee from Tara’s assistant, but I did accept a bottled water. I didn’t ask her where Tara was and, fu

As I waited, I checked my smartphone for messages. There was only one that I was looking for—Mary Catherine’s, of course. She hadn’t contacted Seamus again, and I was worried as hell.

But there was nothing. No matter how many times I shifted all the stupid screens on the phone back and forth with my thumb.

“Detective Be

All eyes shifted to me as I came through the double doors into the soundproofed, windowless courtroom. The expressions from the rows of seated people were solemn and sort of surprised, as if I were a black-sheep relative arriving out of the blue for someone’s funeral.

It was a funeral, all right, I thought. Manuel Perrine’s. And it was high time we slammed the lid on his casket.

He was sitting up front, heavily shackled. I could hardly see him behind a larger-than-usual retinue of cops and court officers. He didn’t have a gag on, as the judge had promised, I noticed as I sat. Like all dangerous animals, he definitely deserved one. I would have preferred a dog muzzle or Ha

I glanced at the judge and shook my head. No wonder trust in the government was at an all-time low.

Prosecutor Vogel stood.

“Detective Be

“In an alley alongside Madison Square Garden.”

“Why did you go to the location?”

“We learned that Manuel Perrine had come to New York to see his daughter graduate from NYU law school.”

“Exactly!” Perrine screamed. “I come here to this shithole of a country to this utter shithole of a city only to see my daughter, and then I am accused of things I had nothing to do with.”

He stood and banged on the table with both fists.

“These are false accusations and lies brought against me. You think I’m afraid of you? Of these trumped-up charges? I’ll cut that black lying tongue from your throat, cop. I’ll cut it out and feed it to you until you choke!”

“That’s it,” the judge said. “Strike three. You’re out, Mr. Perrine. We’re going to try you in absentia. Officers, remove him now.”

At first, Perrine resisted, pushing the cops back and forth. But then he suddenly stopped completely. One second he was in a rage, and the next, he was calm, as though he had hit a switch. Strange, I thought. He actually smiled at me as he was leaving.

I sat there as the door closed.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. “Now back to what you were saying, Detective. You learned that Manuel Perrine had come to New York to see his daughter graduate from NYU law school. Please continue for the jury, Detective Be

I stood, a quizzical look on my face. This didn’t feel right. Not at all. Perrine was acting. It seemed like the whole outburst was staged.

“Wait,” I said, climbing out of the witness box.

“What in good God are you doing, Be

“This isn’t right,” I said. “Something isn’t right.”

CHAPTER 85

PERRINE AND HIS scrum of jailers were turning the corner of the outer corridor to my right, toward the elevators, when I pushed out the doors into the hallway. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, going solely on gut instinct, I hurried after them.

I was next to an ancient pay-phone recess ten feet from the hall corner when I heard it. It was a sudden, heavy wumpff sound, followed immediately by the trailing crinkle of breaking glass. It sounded as if, nearby, a giant baseball had just punched a home run into a giant windshield. I felt the floor shake a little under my wingtips as well.

What the hell now?

I barreled around the corner. Perrine and the police were in front of the elevators. The cops must have heard the weird sound, too, because they were all looking around, some with their guns out. Most of them were staring at a doorway opposite the elevators.

“We have a situation here,” one said into his radio. “Some sort of situation.”

There was the impatient click of the elevator call button being pressed over and over, and then the doorway opposite the elevator bank exploded outward with a concussive roar.

I fell to my knees and drew my gun, my ears ringing. When I looked up, thick yellow smoke was already billowing from the blown-open doorway and filling the hallway. When a waft of it passed over my face, I knew it was tear gas.

Eyes burning, snot pouring from my nose as from a faucet, I plastered myself into a recessed doorway on my right and covered my face with my tie. A moment later, a crisp gunshot went off so close it sounded like a pencil being snapped in my ear. Crouching, I found a doorknob and opened the door beside me, ducking into an empty courtroom.

Then I saw what was in the courtroom’s large south-facing window, and I wondered if I was hallucinating.

On the outside of the building, pressed against the window of the room just to the east of me, was a large yellow metal cage. It was a heavy machinery basket being suspended by the tower crane of the construction site nearby. In it, plain as day, maybe ten feet away from me, stood two men in tan construction coveralls, wearing gas masks and holding automatic weapons.

It looked like a SWAT team. But not our SWAT team.

They were trying to break out Perrine, I realized. Literally trying to break him out of the building from the fourteenth floor!

Without thinking about it, without saying “Freeze,” I lifted my gun and started shooting at the two men through the window. My Glock’s 9mm rounds sprayed holes through the heavy window glass, but the bullets were either deflected by the glass or the metal grate of the basket, because neither of the two armed-to-the-teeth men went down.

All I did was get their attention. A moment later, I backpedaled as they raised their weapons over the metal rim of the basket. I dove back into the hallway as the window and half of the empty courtroom’s wooden pews were ripped to shreds by automatic gunfire.

I peeked through the doorway a moment later when I heard a high-rpm hum. Through the shattered window, I saw the yellow basket on the move. The tower crane arm above it swung as it pivoted the metal rig away from the courthouse. I also saw, sitting in the basket between the armed men, a light-ski

The audacity of it was stu

They were really doing it, I thought, staring up at the basket as it started to ascend. As hard as it was to believe, it was happening before my very eyes.

Manuel Perrine was actually getting away.

CHAPTER 86