CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The courthouse was a zoo when Kate and Marcus arrived. There was a ladder truck, four ambulances, two SWAT vehicles, three news vans, and no fewer than nine patrol cars. A helicopter overhead shone a spotlight down on a single figure standing hear the edge of Chicago’s criminal courthouse.
Kate bummed a pair of binoculars off of a uniform and looked more closely at Emily.
She was an average looking woman in her early forties, just over five-foot-two with a rather dumpy build.
Her skin was pale and doughy, though that could have been partially because of the spotlight in the dark.
Her hands were small, the fingers short, and her shoulders slumped forward in a way that indicated poor posture.
She wore thick glasses on her head, behind which brown eyes leaked thick tears.
Her hair was shorter and wispy, dyed blonde but not in a while, with a sizable amount of gray at the roots.
She wore a pale-yellow blouse with flowers in stripes running down the front.
Her pants were baggy and gray, and her shoes were dirty and faded white sneakers.
A thick rope was tied around her neck, the other end tied around the emergency rail of the roof behind her, the balance coiled between.
“I want officers up there yesterday,” Marcus barked, taking charge immediately despite the presence of at least two police lieutenants. “She’s going to jump.”
“Yeah, no shit,” one of the lieutenants said. “She won’t talk to the negotiators. She keeps asking for a megaphone, but she won’t let us bring her one. She wants us to lower one down from a helicopter.”
“Any reason we can’t do that?”
“Because she’ll say what she needs to say and then jump,” Kate said. “I’m going to go talk to her.”
“Not alone you’re not,” Marcus said. “Lieutenant, I want a dozen officers with her.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Special Agent Marcus Reid, FBI. This is our case, and unless you want your name and badge number front and center on the report that tells my boss why shit went sideways, you’ll stop comparing sizes and do as you’re told.”
The lieutenant reddened, then his eyes shifted to the left. Kate could almost see the gears turning. Right now, everything was down to him and his fellow silver bar. Turn it over to the Bureau, and anything that went wrong would be out of his hands.
He picked up his radio and said, “Sergeant Coulter, take a dozen uniforms and follow Special Agent…” He looked at Kate. “What’s your name?”
“Kate Valentine.”
“Special Agent Valentine. She’s the slim redhead with freckles in a blue shirt and black pants. You’ll see her heading toward the building.”
Coulter acknowledged, and the lieutenant said, “Go ahead, Valentine. They’ll meet you there.”
“Give me a megaphone,” Marcus said.
Kate heard him as she ran for the building. He used the same gentle cajoling tone he used with Rosalyn Pierce. She hoped he would be as effective at holding Emily as he was at holding Rosalyn. She hoped she would be as effective at preventing this suicide as she was at preventing Rosalyn’s.
The officers, as promised, met her in front of the building. Coulter, a heavy-shouldered woman about her age, nodded briefly, then led Kate inside the seven-story concrete edifice.
The interior was much like every courthouse Kate had seen.
Marble floors and vaulted ceilings with Latin quotes inscribed into the walls, all to remind people just how incredibly important this place was.
She supposed that was true, but the pretense and pompousness sickened her.
She’d never been good with courthouses. She was worse with judges, and abysmal with lawyers.
Some agents could handle those interactions with aplomb.
Winters could have them eating out of her hand within minutes of meeting them.
She wasn’t here to talk to a judge tonight, though. She was here to convince another poor soul warped by Cox that there was another way to atone for her crimes than to forever deny the world a chance to know who was really behind all of this.
“We’ll take the stairs,” she said, heading for the appropriately labeled door.
“You sure?” Coulter asked. “It’s seven stories.”
“I run a lot,” Kate replied.
Coulter muttered something that sounded like “I don’t,” but she didn’t hesitate to follow Kate up the staircase.
Here, there was no need for facade. The stairs were bare metal, the walls plain concrete, no windows in sight save for the small rectangles in the doors at each floor.
Much like Cox, this courthouse was grand, imposing, regal on the outside but dig deeper and there was only emptiness within.
Get your head out of Cox’s ass and into the game, Kate scolded herself.
She nearly chuckled, imagining how Marcus would react if he heard that. Maybe she’d tell him later.
She reached the roof, and when she stepped outside, her rollercoaster of emotions steadied instantly. The officers behind her all shuffled and muttered anxiously when they appeared under the spotlight of the police helicopter and felt the wash of the rotors, but Kate was perfectly calm.
No, not calm. She still didn’t know what Cox intended for her part to be in all this. Until she knew that, she couldn’t be entirely sanguine about her situation.
But she was focused. She knew what she had to do.
“Coulter, I want you and your officers to give me space. Don’t approach unless I say so.”
Coulter’s brow furrowed. “I don’t like the sound of that, agent. What are you going to do?”
“You don’t have to like the sound of it. I’m going to talk to her. I’m going to try to convince her not to jump.”
Coulter sighed but didn’t argue further. “All right.”
Kate approached Emily, moving slowly so as not to frighten her. When she was about thirty feet behind her, she angled to the side so Emily would see her long before she was close. When she was twenty feet away, she lifted a hand for Marcus to stop talking over the megaphone and called, “Hey!”
Emily flinched. Her right foot slipped off the edge, and electricity crackled through Kate’s limbs, but Emily caught the railing and pulled herself back before she fell.
That was a good sign. She didn’t want to die.
Kate kept her hands up, fingers splayed. She approached until Emily called, “No closer!”
“Okay,” Kate said. “Okay. Listen, they’re not going to give you a megaphone, okay?”
Emily’s lips trembled. “Why not?”
“Because they don’t want you to jump, and they know that once you say what you need to say, you’re going to jump.” It was risky to be this honest with Emily, but Kate felt that was the right gamble to take right now.
The killer’s lips trembled. “I have to tell them. People have to know.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. You’re going to tell me. But first, I’m going to tell you something.”
Emily looked warily at her and said nothing.
“My name is Kate Valentine. Does that mean anything to you?”
Emily shook her head slowly, then stopped. “Wait. You imprisoned the Lawgiver. You took him away!”
“I brought him to justice, yes,” Kate said.
“That wasn’t justice! You perverted justice! You’re a sinner!”
“I’m definitely not perfect,” Kate agreed. “But I’ll give you your chance to talk when I’m finished, okay?”
Emily’s eyes narrowed, but she fell silent.
“Elijah Cox has been obsessed with me for a while,” Kate said. “Over a year, at least, and probably much longer than that. He believes that I’m supposed to be the culmination of his mission on Earth. He believes that I’m supposed to be the scapegoat.”
Emily flinched again. “You? But… I’m the scapegoat! I took on the sin of the violation of the Sixth Commandment to correct the errors of humanity!”
“Yeah, I know. That’s my point. I’m beginning to think Cox doesn’t believe anything about me.
Or you. Or anyone else. I think that Cox is very good at painting himself to look grand and imposing and important.
Connected to God. Conduit of His message on Earth.
But behind that? I think Cox is empty. I think he’s just a garden-variety psychopath who got tired of seeing nothing in the mirror every day and decided he was going to fill that emptiness through other people.
So, he created this image of himself as the Lawgiver and looked for vulnerable people to exploit.
Not so he could carry out God’s mission on Earth but so that he could convince himself that he wasn’t looking at a ghost every time he brushed his teeth. ”
“You’re a liar!”
“Sometimes. But not this time. This time, you’re getting the honest truth.
I think that when you strip away the Lawgiver, what you’re left with is an empty shell that can never, ever be filled.
And no matter how many times he tries to fill it, it will always run empty.
There’s a hole inside of him, and no amount of murder disguised as divine justice will fill that hole. ”
“Stop it!”
“But you don’t have to be his tool anymore, Emily. You don’t have to be his message. You can break free of the hold he has on you. I know you can because I’ve done it. I’ve shaken off this feeling that I belong to him. You can do it too.”
Emily’s lips trembled. She looked down at the police officers and paramedics gathered below. “They’re living in sin. If I don’t show them, they’ll keep living in sin.”
“Show them the way Jesus showed them,” Kate said.
“Show them by loving your enemies, doing good to them that persecute you, praying for them that despitefully use you. Show them by being kind to the poor, the fatherless, and the widow. Show them by feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, clothing the naked. Show them by being kind, Emily. Show them God’s love, not Satan’s judgment. ”
She moved closer to Emily and extended her hand. “Let’s go. We’ll do this together. Let’s both show them that we’ve shaken off Satan’s yoke.”
Emily looked at Kate’s hand. Then she looked at the ground. She looked back at Kate, and her lips started trembling again.