Cold wind carries snow into the corridor. Pieces of plaster and shards of the exit sign fall to the floor amid the flakes in a miniature avalanche. And then for a moment the wind’s whistle is the only sound in the basement.

Sergeant Briggs turns to the officer beside him, the only woman in the lineup. “Go,” he says. “Get a car. Radio when it’s outside this door.”

She takes off, almost slipping on the debris underfoot.

“Make sure it’s an unmarked car,” Stanley calls after her. “And no wires, either. No tricks. I’ll know.”

I know something too. Stanley emptied the chamber. And he didn’t do it smoothly. He’s used to knives, not guns. He can’t fire again until he pulls the slide and resets. The process takes about thirty seconds. Not a lot of time, but it’ll have to do.

I step out from the bars into the center of the hallway, both arms outstretched, the Lady Smith aimed into the cell at Stanley’s eye level. Harry is on his knees, bent down toward the floor, hands clasped behind his head. Stanley holds a 9mm Stallard Arms semiautomatic handgun against Harry’s left temple. A low-voltage work light sits on top of the disheveled cot, its beam aimed directly at Harry’s head. For once, it seems Stanley wants to see what he’s doing.

He doesn’t see me, though. He’s still facing the exit, keeping the line of cops in his peripheral vision. He presses his weapon harder against Harry’s temple and lets out one of his hiccup-laughs. Then he lifts the handgun up to pull the slide. My hesitation is almost nonexistent. Almost.

In a millisecond I make the decision to lower the Lady Smith before I fire. Stanley howls, topples forward, and his handgun hits the floor just before he does. Police officers storm the cell. Harry drops to the floor and reaches out for Stanley’s weapon. Stanley gropes for it too. And the cops, I realize, can’t get there in time.

I raise the Lady Smith again. Harry’s fingertips brush the handgun’s barrel, push it slightly in the wrong direction, toward Stanley. Stanley’s fingers reach the butt of the gun and-without hesitation-I aim at his head. But Harry lunges forward, into my line of fire.

Harry smacks the semiautomatic across the cell and it clatters against the iron bars, out of Stanley’s reach. One of the cops dives to retrieve it while the others surround Stanley and cuff him. He wails again and writhes like a wounded animal as they shackle his ankles. Instantly, it seems, an ambulance pulls up outside the bullet-riddled fire exit, and a team of paramedics rushes through the half-hinged door.

Harry gets to his knees again and stares as the cops disable their prisoner, then turns his ruddy, astonished face toward me.

Only then do I lower my gun.

I start toward Harry, but too many cops are in front of me. I can’t get there. My knees give out. I fall against the wall and slide down the cinder blocks to sit on the concrete floor amid the rubble, still clutching the Lady Smith in both hands.

Geraldine appears out of nowhere, the Kydd right behind her. They stare at the ruins on the floor, then shift their gazes to the battle-scarred fire exit and the crowded cell. For a moment, it seems neither one of them can speak.

Geraldine recovers first, of course. She lights a cigarette, then shakes her blond head and looks down at me, blowing smoke toward Stanley. “You missed,” she says.

I might strangle Geraldine.

The paramedics wheel the gurney out of the cell, Stanley strapped to it and still wailing, toward the open doorway. Harry emerges behind them. On hands and knees, he crosses the hallway and presses his face into my neck, breathing hard. Minutes pass, it seems, and neither one of us moves. Then Harry lifts his face up to mine. “Told you you’d end up on the cell block,” he says.

I might strangle Harry, too.

Joey Kelsey appears in the hallway and walks toward us, looking like a man on his way to the electric chair. He stops dead in his tracks before he reaches us, though, dumbstruck as he surveys the battlefield. After a moment, he shakes his head as if to clear it. It seems to work. “I’m sorry to bother you…”

Joey addresses Geraldine as if the rest of us aren’t here. It’s pretty clear she’s the only one he’s sorry to bother.

“But those jurors…” Joey shifts from one foot to the other. “The ones who wouldn’t leave?” He points at the ceiling, so Geraldine will remember where they are. “They’re done now.”

Chapter 48

Saturday, December 25

Joey Kelsey doesn’t normally work in Judge Beatrice Nolan’s courtroom. And that’s a good thing for Joey. Beatrice doesn’t have a positive impact on anyone’s nervous system. But Joey’s seems more fragile than most.

When it became clear that some unlucky bailiff would spend Christmas Eve tending our jury, though, Joey automatically got stuck. He’s the new guy, the rookie. Big Red wasn’t about to volunteer.

It’s eight A.M. When Joey called Beatrice at midnight to tell her the jury was ready, she informed him that she was not. Snow or no snow, she said, Judge Beatrice Nolan doesn’t drive in the dark. She’d leave her house at daybreak, she told him. Not a minute sooner.

Joey didn’t seem to remember that Beatrice somehow managed to drive home in the dark, and I didn’t mention it.

Beatrice’s trip to the courthouse will take at least an hour, and it’s been light only forty-five minutes or so. But Joey is watching the door to her chambers anyway, fingering his cheat sheet into tatters. After spending the night trying to justify the delay to our jurors, he’s a wreck. They’re all exhausted, he reports. And they’re mad as hell. Joey may never be fit for trial again.

Harry and I spent the wee hours in Geraldine’s office, the three of us drafting the tedious documents necessary to secure Sonia Baker’s release. By four o’clock, the papers were ready and Geraldine left the complex with them to track down the required signatures. She was back by six, mission accomplished, whereupon Harry and I hand-delivered Sonia Baker’s freedom to the Barnstable County House of Correction.

The jail has its own formal exit rituals and paperwork, of course, but Sonia Baker should be out soon. And in a rare accommodating gesture-explainable, perhaps, by the spirit of the season-one of the matrons offered to bring her to our courtroom when she’s ready. Maggie is twisted around in her front-row seat between Patty Hammond and Luke, watching the back door with all the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning. Which, of course, she is.

The Kydd went home as soon as he heard about Beatrice’s aversion to night driving. He’s back now, though, looking thoroughly refreshed. It’s obvious he’s had a few hours’ sleep and a hot shower. I feel a twinge of envy. He grins at Harry and me, then slips into the aisle seat of the front bench, next to Patty.

Reporters and photographers roam the courtroom in search of a scoop. Most of them were hanging around the hallways waiting for the verdict when the police evacuated the building. For the moment, at least, Buck Hammond’s fate is not their chief concern. They want to know what happened in the Superior Court holding cells.

The cops won’t let them anywhere near the scene, of course. The elevator is shut down, and the staircase leading to the basement is roped off and guarded. But they all heard the gunfire from the parking lot and they all saw the ambulance leave the county complex. They also see that Harry and I are disheveled, to put it mildly. And, with the reading of the verdict imminent, more and more of them are questioning the whereabouts of J. Stanley Edgarton the Third.

The steady rumble from the gallery rises a notch when Geraldine Schilling arrives. The reporters pelt her with questions about Stanley. Has he been taken ill? Called to another crime scene? Found to have a conflict?