the judge began organizing the documents on his desk into piles so he could return them to the file in State v. Crease with some sense of order. Quinn put a rubber band around the police reports that he had examined when he was deciding Cedric Riker's motion to exclude evidence of Martin Jablonski's criminal record. He was about to put them in the accordion file where he kept all of the documents pertaining to the motion when he noticed something that was written on the top report. Quinn slipped the report out from under the rubber band and examined it. It was the arresting officer's account of a six-year-old home burglary committed by Jablonski. His conviction for this crime had sent him to the penitentiary until his release last year. As Quinn reread the report his heartbeat accelerated. He tried to calm down so he could figure out what his discovery meant. When he was certain of his reasoning, Quinn phoned Ellen Crease.
'Crease residence,' James Allen said.
'Mr. Allen, this is Judge Quinn. Is Senator Crease in?'
'Yes, sir.'
Allen put Quinn on hold. When the phone came back to life, Ellen Crease was on the other end. Quinn told her about Junior's connection to Marie Ritter and what he had learned from Karen Fargo. Then Quinn explained his discovery of the police report and the conclusions he had drawn from it.
'My God,' Crease said when Quinn was finished. 'This is so hard to believe.'
'But it makes sense.'
'Yes, it does.'
Crease sounded like she was in shock.
'What do you think we should do?' Quinn asked.
Crease thought for a moment.
'The courthouse is only a block from the Justice Center. Wait for me in your chambers. I'm coming down. We'll go to the police together.'
While Quinn waited for Crease, he organized his files. The busywork helped him take his mind off the terrible events of the past few days. Periodically, Quinn checked the time. He thought it would take Crease about half an hour to drive downtown. Quinn had placed the call to Crease a little after three and it was already three-thirty. Quinn expected the phone to ring at any moment.
At three-fifty, Quinn heard the door between the anteroom and the corridor open. Quinn walked to the door to his chambers. He reached for the doorknob, then stopped himself. A peephole had been installed for security purposes. Through it, Quinn saw the man who had attacked him in the garage quietly closing the door to the corridor. His face was still concealed behind a ski mask and he was carrying a large hunting knife.
Quinn locked his door just as the man reached for the knob. Quinn saw the knob turn slowly. He backed against the desk. There was a second door in his chambers that opened onto the bench. Quinn realized that he could escape through it into the courtroom, then he could get out through the courtroom door.
Quinn started to leave when he remembered the gun that had been left on the hood of his car. It was in his desk drawer. He had meant to turn it over to the police, but he never had the chance. Quinn raced around the desk and got the gun. He had never fired one and had only a vague idea, picked up from television and the movies, of how to shoot it, but he felt better holding the weapon.
Quinn opened the door behind the bench as quietly as possible and slipped into the courtroom. He closed the door silently and crept down the stairs from the bench to the bar of the court, praying that the person in his anteroom would not think of his escape route.
Rain clouds had darkened the sky and very litde light came through the courtroom windows. The weak light that illuminated the courthouse corridor seeped into the courtroom. The empty benches were cloaked in shadow. Quinn hurried to the door. It was locked, but he had the key. As he stepped into the corridor, the door to his chambers opened and he and his attacker were suddenly face-to-face.
Both men paused for a second. Then the man in the mask took a step toward Quinn. Quinn pointed his weapon down the corridor and fired. In the narrow confines of the marble hallway the gunshot roared like a cannon. Quinn's aim was terrible. The bullet ricocheted crazily as it bounced off the walls. The man ducked back into Quinn's chambers.
The courthouse was a square. The fifth floor consisted of four corridors built around an open center. At the front of the courthouse were the elevators and broad steps that led down to the front door. Quinn wanted to run down those stairs, but that would mean passing the door to his chambers, so he headed to the hall in the rear of the courthouse. There, two enclosed staircases at either end of the hall went down to the back corridor on the first floor. If he could make it to the first floor, Quinn could run into a tiny alcove where he would find the elevator that went up to the courthouse jail. If he got that far, he could call for help through an intercom on the wall of the alcove. Armed corrections deputies would be moments away.
Quinn took off. As he rounded the corner, he heard pounding footsteps racing after him. Quinn flung open the door to the near stairwell and leaped down the steps. He slipped on the third-floor landing and slid down half a flight before checking himself. In the second it took Quinn to regain his feet, he strained to hear his pursuer and thought he heard the sound of feet descending.
Quinn hit the bottom stair. The corridor in the back of the courthouse was dimly lit. He held his gun in front of him. His stomach was cramped and his breathing grew ragged. His senses were intensified. All he had to do was make it to the end of the hall.
Quinn sprinted for the alcove. The moment he reached it the door to the other stairwell flew open and the man in the ski mask ran into the hall. Quinn had been certain that he had heard footsteps in the stairwell he had just descended. Could there be two people hunting him? Before he could consider the question, the masked man sprang. Quinn backpedaled into the alcove and raised his gun, which was halfway up when the knife struck it. The impact jarred the gun and the knife loose and sent Quinn stumbling backward. He tripped on his own feet and fell heavily to the floor. His head smacked against the wall. Quinn's eyes wouldn't focus. He shook his head. When his vision returned, Quinn saw that the masked man was holding the gun.
Time slowed to a crawl and a feeling of overwhelming calm flooded through Quinn as he accepted his death. He saw the attacker sight down the barrel of the gun. His eyes locked on Quinn's. Then there was an explosion. The assailant's knees buckled, the gun fell and the front of the ski mask dampened with blood. There was a second shot. Quinn tried to push his way through the wall. The attacker collapsed at Quinn's feet and Ellen Crease stepped into the alcove holding a smoking .38-caliber revolver.
The jail elevator opened and two men stepped into the alcove. They were dressed in the light green shirt and dark green pants worn by the Multnomah County Corrections deputies. The first person out was Sergeant Art Bradford, a huge man with a marine crew cut who had been in Quinn's court guarding prisoners on many occasions. Clyde Fellers, the second deputy, was a black man with massive arms, a thick neck and a gut who had played football for Portland State. Bradford and Fellers stared at the dead man. Then they stared at Quinn, who was slumped on a bench outside the alcove.
'The judge is okay. He's just shaken up,' Ellen Crease said.
Quinn looked up. He was pale and spoke softly.
'The dead man attacked me in the parking garage two days ago. He just broke into my chambers and chased me downstairs. Senator Crease shot him.'
'I was supposed to meet Judge Quinn in his chambers,' Crease explained. 'I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Someone raced around the far corner of the hall just as I came into the corridor where the judge's courtroom is located. No one was in the judge's chambers, so I ran down the back stairs looking for him.'
Crease stopped her narrative. She looked as bad as Quinn.
'I had to shoot. He was aiming at the judge.'
'Someone should call Portland Homicide,' Quinn said. 'Ask them to send Detectives Lou Anthony and Leroy Dennis over here. This is connected to one of their cases. And make sure that Anthony and Dennis are told that I know who murdered Lamar Hoyt.'
'You can turn him over now,' Dr. Marilyn Kinsey, the assistant medical examiner, said to Sergeant Bradford. Quinn, Detectives Anthony and Dennis, Ellen Crease and the other people in the group surrounding the dead man waited expectantly as Bradford rolled the corpse onto its back. Kinsey knelt down and slowly peeled back the ski mask.
'Looks like you were right,' Anthony told Quinn.
The judge looked down on the lifeless face of Jack Brademas.
