The Judge’s List
- Автор: Гришэм Джон
- Серия: Lacy Stoltz #2
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Doubleday/Random House
- ISBN: 978-0-385-54602-7
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Judge’s List». Краткое содержание книги:
Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.
Suspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law.
He is a judge, in Florida — under Lacy’s jurisdiction.
He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?
The Judge’s List is by any measure John Grisham’s most surprising, chilling novel yet.
Bannick plotted and schemed for an hour, discarding one ruse after the other. When inspiration finally hit, he set up another email account and sent Tabor a note:
Dear Mr. Tabor. I’m a physician in Birmingham and I need the services of a private investigator in the Mobile area. A possible domestic relations matter. You have been highly recommended. Are you available? And if so, what is your hourly rate? Dr. Albert Marbury.
Bannick sent the email, tracked it, and waited. Thirty-one minutes later, Tabor opened it and replied:
Dr. Marbury. Thank you. I am available. My rate is $200 an hour. RT
Bannick scoffed at the $200 an hour. Obviously the Doctor’s Rate. He sent back an email agreeing to the rate, and attached a link to a hotel website in Gulf Shores where he suspected his wife might be staying. When Tabor opened the email and looked at the attachment, Rafe slid through the back door and was on the prowl. He began by looking for current clients. Tabor’s record-keeping was rudimentary at best, at least for the data he entered into his computer. Bannick knew full well that a lot of PIs kept two sets of books — one for the IRS, the other for themselves. Cash was still a popular lubricant. After an hour, he had found nothing. No mention of Lanny Verno, or Jeff Dunlap, or the trip to Pensacola and Seagrove Beach a month earlier. And certainly no clue as to the identity of the client behind the investigation.
He ate ibuprofen and took some Valium to settle his nerves. He realized he was weak with hunger but his systems were raging and he was afraid to tempt his stomach with more food. He was tired of the Vault, and at the moment he wanted to get behind the wheel and just drive, just go, hit the open road and get the hell out of town for the weekend. Maybe from a distant pier or beach or mountain he could look back with an unclouded eye and make sense of it.
Someone knew. And that someone knew a lot.
He walked out of the Vault and went to the small room in the rear where he stripped to his boxers and pulled on gym shorts and a T-shirt. He needed fresh air, a hike in the woods, but he couldn’t leave. Not at this crucial moment. He found an orange in the fridge and ate it with black coffee.
Maggotz had been hiding in the shadows of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department since the killings of Lanny Verno and Mike Dunwoody. After they were found, Rafe came to life and began nosing around.
When the orange was finished, Bannick said hello to Rafe and sent him to the files of Detective Napier, the chief investigator in Biloxi. In a daily log, Napier had entered a note on March 25: Meeting today with Lacy Stoltz and Darren Trope of the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, re the Verno/Dunwoody murders. Allowed them access to the file but nothing was taken or copied. They made a vague reference to a suspect but would provide no details. They know more than they are willing to say. Will follow up. ENapier.
Bannick cursed and walked away from his desk. He felt like a bleeding animal stumbling through the woods as the bloodhounds drew closer and louder.
Eileen was number four. Eileen Nickleberry. Age thirty-two at the time of her death. Divorced, according to her obituary.
He loved collecting his obits. They were all in the files.
He found her thirteen years later, thirteen years after she mocked him in his frat house bedroom, thirteen years after she had stumbled downstairs, drunk like all the rest, and broadcast to the rest of the party that Ross “couldn’t get it up.” Couldn’t perform. She laughed and ran her big mouth, though by the next morning most of the hell-raisers had forgotten the incident. But she kept talking and word spread through their circles. Bannick has a problem. Bannick can’t perform.
Six years later he found his first victim, the scoutmaster. His killing had gone as perfectly as planned. There was not one shred of remorse, not even a twinge of pity as he stepped back and looked at the body of Thad Leawood. It was euphoric, actually, and filled him with an indescribable sense of power, control, and — the best — revenge. From that moment on, he knew he would never stop.
Seven years after Leawood, and with three under his belt, he finally found Eileen. She was selling real estate north of Myrtle Beach, her pretty, smiling face splashed on every yard sign possible, as if she were running for city council. She had listings in a beachside development of forty condos. He rented one of the others for the summer of 1998, before he became a judge. On a Sunday morning, he lured her to an empty unit, one she was trying to sell, price reduced! and the very second when she froze as if she remembered him, he splintered her skull with Leddie. As the rope cut deep and she breathed her last, he hissed into her ear and reminded her of her mockery.
Five hours passed before there was a commotion. As things became frantic and people yelled, he sat with a beer on the balcony of his rental and watched across the courtyard as first responders scurried about. The sounds of sirens made him smile. He waited a week for the cops to come around knocking on doors and looking for witnesses, but they never showed. He paid his lease in full and never returned to the condo.
The crime occurred in the seaside town of Sunset Beach, in Brunswick County, North Carolina. Nine years passed before the county digitized its records, and when it happened Bannick was waiting with his first generation of spyware. As with all the other police departments, he updated his data often, always on the prowl for any movement, always watching with the latest hacker’s toys.
The Eileen story had gone cold after a couple of years. There was never a serious suspect. The file reflected some occasional interest from crime writers, reporters, family members, and other police departments.
Late Friday afternoon, Bannick sent in Rafe to snoop around for the first time in months. Based on the latest digital time and date stamp, the file had not been touched in three years, not since a reporter, or someone claiming to be, wanted to have a look.
23
The orange stayed down. He tried to nap but was too wired. He grabbed his gym bag and walked around the corner where he spent two hours spinning, rowing, lifting, and pounding the treadmill. When he was beyond exhaustion, he stuck his head into the steam room. When he was certain he would be alone, he stripped and entered and stretched out on his towel.
It was a mistake to call Norris Ozment, but he’d had no choice. Ozment could now link him directly to Verno, the same way Tabor had linked him. But it was unlikely that the authorities in Mississippi would ever find Ozment, and even unlikelier that he would bother to go to them. Why should he?
The judge massaged his temples and tried to breathe slowly as the steam soothed his lungs. The person who filed the complaint with BJC did so anonymously and with the understanding that nothing would be entered into a digital file. Everything would be kept offline. The person who hired Rollie Tabor to pose as Jeff Dunlap and snoop through the old court case did so with the agreement that Tabor would store nothing online. The person who mailed the two anonymous letters went to great lengths to remove all possible clues.
The person knew about Eileen Nickleberry.
All these persons were the same. There was simply no other explanation. The evidence was far too coincidental. It was imperative to find this person.
And if he found him, what would the good judge do? He could certainly kill him, that would be easy enough. But was it too late? Did Ms. Stoltz at BJC have enough damning evidence to go to the police? He told himself the answer was no, and he believed it. Accusing and indicting were easy enough, but convicting would be impossible. He presided over murder trials, studied forensics and knew more about the science than the experts, and, most importantly, he knew how much evidence was needed to convict. A helluva lot! Beyond a reasonable doubt. Far more than any low-paid cop had been able to find along his graveyard trail.