that was important at this point.
“Apparently, last night,” Jaxon said. “But nobody counted him missing until this morning. They found him out in the barn…. I have no idea why it took so long to discover he was missing and get word to me, but I flew out as soon as I heard.”
Karp heard the disgust, and the suspicion, in the agent’s voice. “How’d it happen?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I’d rather talk about some of this in person, tomorrow morning when I get back,” he said. “But he was strangled…with a set of rosary beads.”
There it is, Karp thought, the other shoe…or maybe better, the ax, has fallen. “Kane,” he said.
“Looks like it,” Jaxon replied. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He’d hardly hung up when the intercom on his desk buzzed again. “Your wife is here to see you, Mr. Karp?”
Karp slapped a hand to his head. “Shit. I forgot,” he said to Murrow, who got up and started to leave. “I’m having dinner with Marlene and…some old friends.” He was about to tell Mrs. Milquetost to send Marlene in when there was a squawk-some sort of strangled cry really-from the intercom and Karp’s office door flew open, nearly knocking Murrow off his feet.
“Well hello, Gilbert,” Marlene Ciampi said, her eyes narrowing. “Are you the reason my husband is having the gendarme stop me from entering?”
“Don’t hurt me,” Murrow squeaked, only half in jest, and scooted past her.
Marlene slammed the door on the still protesting Mrs. Milquetost. “The next time that woman tries to stop me, I’m going to scratch her eyes out.”
9
Ten minutes earlier, the security guards at the Justice Center tensed as the attractive woman with the dark hair and Mediterranean features nonchalantly pulled the Glock 9 mm from her purse. She’d already shown them her license to carry a concealed weapon and told them about the contents of the purse. But it wasn’t until she expertly slid the magazine from the handle, pulled back the slide to demonstrate there was no bullet in the chamber, and handed it to them that they were able to relax.
“Hold on, boys, there’s more,” she said, her hand moving slowly to the small of her back and lifting her shirt above the top of her blue jeans to expose the smaller Colt.380 tucked into a belt holster. She removed the gun, went through the same motions as with the first weapon, and handed it with a smile to the slack-jawed guards.
“Oh, and you’ll find a knife and a can of pepper spray in here,” she said, shoving her handbag toward one of them.
“Expecting a war today, Marlene?” asked Harry Kipman, the brilliant chief of the DAO’s appellate division. His security pass had allowed him to waltz in the building ahead of her though they’d arrived at 10 °Centre Street at the same time.
“I’m expecting a war every day,” Marlene Ciampi replied.
“I thought your hubby told me you’d given up gunslinging,” said Ray Guma, who’d seen them enter the building and had waited beyond the security desk.
“Times change,” Marlene said.
“Criminal masterminds escape,” Guma added.
“It’s just plain frickin’ dangerous out here,” noted Kipman, who absently patted his other arm, which was being supported by a sling. He was still recovering from being stabbed in the shoulder by Sarah Ryder and subsequent surgeries to repair nerve damage.
“I know, poor Harry,” Marlene said, passing through the metal detector and walking up to kiss him on the cheek. “Threw himself in front of me just like Superman and took the bullet.”
“Scissors.”
“Bullet…scissors sounds like you got in a fight with Hillary Clinton and she won.”
“Okay, bullet,” Kipman agreed.
“Machine-gun bullet, fifty cal,” Guma laughed.
“ ’Twas only a flesh wound,” Kipman replied with what he thought of as his “stiff upper lip” English accent as they walked to the elevator.
Even though it was almost closing time, they had to navigate through the human flotsam and jetsam that floated about the lobby. They skirted a mother who slapped her son, a hulking three-hundred-pounder, and scolded him for “hanging around that bad element.” The young man hung his head and took his medicine, though he looked like he would have preferred hearing it from a judge. “Yes, Momma. Sorry, Momma.”
A little further toward the elevators, a frightened young woman huddled against her husband and told an earnest assistant district attorney that she just didn’t think she could face the man who raped her. “I can’t handle having his eyes looking at me again. I’d rather drop the charges.”
Over near the water fountain, a wild-looking vagabond in a tie-dyed shirt shouted that the end was near. A cop moved to silence him.
A bleary-eyed drunk sailed out of the crowd to offer Marlene a business card proclaiming Jimmy Jones Bail Bonds to be the best. “Come on, lady, the faster I give these out,” he complained to Marlene who’d declined, “the sooner I get a drink and can stop this shakin’.”
Every step of the way toward the elevator there seemed to be someone crying, or a lawyer chasing a frightened or sullen client insisting that he “accept the deal or I am out of here,” or bewildered citizens running around with official-looking documents in their hands and lost looks on their faces. “God, sometimes I forget how depressing this place can be,” Marlene said as they stepped on the elevator and hit the button for the eighth floor and the offices of the New York District Attorney.
“You certainly see an interesting slice of the human pie down here,” Kipman remarked somewhat awkwardly, his face turning red. He hadn’t been kissed
Marlene smiled up at Kipman, her one good eye sparkling with a bravado she wasn’t really feeling. She’d lost the other eye more than two decades earlier when as an ADA she’d opened a letter bomb intended for Karp, whom she was dating. The injury marked the beginning of what had surprisingly veered from the normal life track of a Catholic schoolgirl raised in Queens, educated at Sacred Heart High School, then college at Smith and finally Yale Law School. Right after law school, she’d entered the DAO, eventually heading the sex crimes unit. Frustrated with the system’s inability to not only mete out true justice, but also its pathetic ineptness at protecting the innocent, her path had deviated away from the practice of law and entered the realm of dispensing street justice.
Whether as the head of a firm providing security for high-profile VIPs or volunteering to take on men who were terrorizing women and ignoring court-issued restraining orders to leave them alone, Marlene had discovered a latent talent for violence. Even the dogs she raised on a farm in Long Island weren’t the usual fare for a Manhattan housewife. No poodles or schnauzers for Marlene, no it was Presa Canarios, massive, potentially ferocious guard dogs that could be trained for bomb, drug, or simply protection duties.
At some point, the lines between protecting the weak and vigilantism had grown increasingly blurred; her response to confrontation more violent. In a sort of last-ditch effort to pull out of the dive into moral oblivion, she’d gone with her daughter, Lucy, to a retreat in Taos, New Mexico, for women suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. The retreat had steadied her nerves and left her psyche open to possibility. A possibility realized when she met John Jojola, the police chief of the Taos Pueblo who was investigating the murders of young Indian boys.
She’d liked Jojola right away-from his self-deprecating humor to his air of a man who was comfortable in his own skin. But it had taken some time to realize the depth of him. Jojola wasn’t allowed to talk to her about the details of his people’s beliefs.
