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.
“Well, it’s now your case, so I guess anytime you want. But I prefer to keep her out of it as long as possible.”
“Very well. And why is she involved?”
“Her father was murdered in 1992 near Gaffney, South Carolina. The case went cold, almost immediately, and she became determined to find his killer. She’s been obsessed with the case for years.”
“And we’re talking about eight murders, right?”
“Eight that she knows of. There could be more.”
“I think we can assume there are more. And all she has is motive, right?”
“And method.”
Vidovich looked at Suarez, who shook his head and said, “It’s the same guy. Same type of rope and the knot is his trademark. We got the crime scene photos from Schnetzer in Texas, same rope and knot. We’ve studied the autopsies, same type of blow to the head, same instrument. Something like a claw hammer that shatters the skull in one defined point of impact and radiates rupture lines in all directions.”
Vidovich looked at Lieutenant Harris and asked, “And the killer knew him in another life, right?”
Harris said, “That’s right. They were both lawyers here in town many years ago.”
“And you don’t know this judge — right, Ms. Stoltz?”
“No, I’ve not had the pleasure. He’s never had a complaint filed against him. A clean record, and a good reputation.”
“This is remarkable,” Vidovich said to the table and everyone frowned in agreement.
He continued, “Ms. Stoltz, what do you think he would do if we simply asked him to stop by for a few questions? He is a well-known judge, an officer of the court. He doesn’t know about the PTP. Why wouldn’t he want to cooperate?”
“Well, if he’s guilty, why would he cooperate? In my opinion he would either disappear or lawyer up. But he will not make himself available.”
“And he’s a flight risk?”
“Yes, in my opinion. He’s smart and he has assets. He’s done a superb job of avoiding detection for the past twenty years. I think this guy could vanish in a split second.”
“Thank you.”
Lacy sat down and looked at the faces around the table.
Vidovich said, “It’s obvious that we need his prints, his current ones. Agnes, talk to us about a search warrant.”
Still unsmiling, she cleared her throat and looked at her notepad. “I met with Legal yesterday in Washington, and they think we can do it. A prime suspect in a murder, two of them actually, the Biloxi case, and a mysterious partial print there that matches nothing. Legal says we can push hard for a warrant. The U.S. Attorney in Mississippi has been briefed and has a magistrate on standby.”
Lacy said, “May I ask what you plan to search?”
“His home and office,” Vidovich said. “They’re covered with his prints. We get a match, game over. No match, and we apologize and leave town. Betty Roe can go back to her Sherlock Holmes routine.”
“Okay, but he’s a fanatic about security and surveillance. He’ll know the instant someone kicks in a door or somehow gets inside. Then he’s gone.”
“Do we know where he is at this moment?”
A unified shaking of heads. Vidovich glared at Harris who said, “No, we haven’t been watching him. No reason to. There’s no case, no file. He’s not a suspect, yet.”
Lacy said, “He’s also on leave for medical reasons, claims he’s in treatment for cancer, according to a source we have here in Pensacola. His office told one of our contacts that he would not sit on the bench for at least the next two months. The district court’s web page confirms this.”
Vidovich frowned and rubbed his jaw as everyone else waited. He said, “Okay, let’s start with surveillance and find the guy. In the meantime let’s get a search warrant from the magistrate in Mississippi, bring it to the magistrate here, and sit on it until we find him. At that time, he can’t disappear and we’ll execute the warrant.”
They discussed surveillance for an hour: Who, where, how. Lacy and Darren grew bored, their initial excitement dissipated, and they finally asked to be excused.
Vidovich promised to keep them in the loop, but it was obvious their work was over.
Leaving town, Darren asked, “Are you going to report this to Betty?”
“No. She doesn’t need to know what’s going on.”
“Are we done with her? Can we close the case?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, aren’t you the boss?”
“Certainly.”
“Then why can’t you say that BJC is no longer involved?”
“Tired of it?”
“We’re lawyers, Lacy, not cops.”
The three-hour drive back to Tallahassee was a relief. It was almost noon on a Friday, on an oddly cool spring day, and they decided to forget about the office.
As they discussed his fate, Judge Bannick drove ten minutes to his shopping center and disappeared into his other chamber and his Vault. He wiped his computers clean, removed the hard drives, gathered the thumb drives from the hidden safes, and scrubbed the place again. Leaving, he reset the security cameras and sensors, and left for Mobile.
He spent the afternoon roaming a mall, drinking espressos in a Starbucks, drinking club soda in a dark bar, loitering along the harbor, and driving around until dark.
35
The plain, white, legal-size envelope contained copies of her three little poems. It was sealed and addressed in heavy black ink — Jeri Crosby. No postal address was given, but then none was needed. The words Hand Delivered were scrawled under her name. He waited until 9:00 p.m. and parked at the curb two short blocks away.
Jeri was idling away another Friday night, flipping stations on TV and resisting the temptation to go online and look for more murders. Lacy had called after lunch with the news that the FBI was in town and assuming control of the investigation. Jeri should be in a better mood now that her work was over and Bannick was being pursued by the pros. She was learning, though, that obsessions die hard and it was impossible to simply flip a switch and move on. She had lived in his life for so long, she couldn’t force him out of her being. She had no other purpose, other than her neglected work and her lovely daughter. And she was terrified, still. She asked herself how long the fear would last. Would she ever go a full hour without glancing over her shoulder?
The doorbell jolted her. She fumbled with the remote, got the TV muted, grabbed the nearest pistol from a table by the door, and peeked through the blinds. A streetlamp lit the front lawns of the four condos in her row, and revealed nothing. She wasn’t about to open the door, not at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night, and could think of no one who would be stopping by without calling first. Not even the political candidates worked such hours. She waited for it to ring again, gripping her pistol and resisting the urge to look into the peephole. Long minutes passed, and the fact that whoever was out there did not ring again, and did not really want to see her, made the situation worse. Could it be some kids pulling pranks? That had never happened before, not on her quiet little street. She realized she was sweating and her stomach was in knots. She tried to breathe deeply but her heart was racing.
Slowly, she stepped to the door and said loud enough to be heard on the stoop, “Who is it?”
Of course there was no answer. She found the courage to look through the peephole, half expecting to see some bloodshot eyeball leering back at her, but there was nothing. She took a step back, breathed deep again, kept the pistol in her right hand, and unlocked the deadbolt with her left. With the chain latched, she looked out through the storm door but saw no one. Was she hearing things again? Had the doorbell really been punched by someone?