Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

He nodded to himself, partly for comfort but mostly because he was glad they hadn’t changed the locks. He threw one last glance over his shoulder, then opened the door and went inside.

The air in the hallway was oppressive, the silence complete. It was the muffled dead silence of a cemetery. He paused just inside the door to let his eyes adjust to the dark. At first it was total, but after a few seconds, light from exit signs inside the door and at the end of the hall took the edge off. Shapes began to appear. Angles and walls and doorways. He remembered the layout from having drawn the diagram. The hallway that led to the lobby inside the main entrance to the west wing of the orphanage. The space on the wall where he’d grabbed the fire extinguisher. The double doors to the courtroom set, just across from the main entrance, where the makeup chair had been wedged between the doors. And the blood seeping from under those doors.

As his eyes adjusted so did his ears. The building wasn’t as quiet as he’d thought. Creaks and groans and whispered clicks made the walls and ceiling feel like living things. Settling noises. Straining sounds.

A clock ticked in the dark. McNulty walked on the balls of his feet and stood next to the makeup chair, which still lay on its side at the entrance to the courtroom. He paused again to gather his courage, then stepped through the double doors into the killing room.

The large windows let in more light. The room was just as he remembered it. The judge’s bench and the court clerk’s desk stood out from the shadows. The Stars and Stripes were hulking sentinels at either side of the judge’s bench. The witness box was just to the left in front of the door where most of the survivors had escaped. The bodies had been taken away but the blood remained. The police hadn’t cleaned it up. This was still a crime scene. They might have to come back when further evidence came to light. It would remain a crime scene for a long time.

The thing about leaving the blood is that you inevitably leave the smell as well. Not the rotting-flesh smell of the rat pit that McNulty had discovered at the cabin under the cloverleaf, but the freshly dead smell of body fluids and voided bowels. Nobody tells you about that until your first murder case. Muscles relax at the moment of death, and it’s only your muscles that keep your insides in. Then there’s the blood. Organic matter that degrades over time like spilled milk. It all paints a picture more vivid than the eyes alone can see. Death had entered this room and McNulty was inviting the man responsible to come back in. Maybe Susan was right. It was about time he got over his angry-man survivor guilt and started living sensibly.

He looked up into the corner of the ceiling where the dummy camera was a dull black spider pointing down. The clock above the judge’s bench ticked. The sound was loud in the quiet room. He mounted the wooden platform and walked behind the judge’s bench. It was just a façade. There was only a chair to make it look realistic and allow the actor playing the judge to sit down. The camera looked authentic enough, but the wire into the wall was fake, an added touch McNulty hadn’t thought Titanic Productions capable of. Downloading the CCTV images wouldn’t take place in here; it would be done from the hard drive in the next room.

McNulty stood behind the judge’s bench and surveyed the room. The main camera and tripod were still in the center of the floor; Larry had had to call in several favors to get a replacement. The double doors at the back of the courtroom, where the gunman had entered and exited, were in the area where Randy Severino had been filming reverse angles—the same point of view as the faux CCTV camera above the bench.

The building groaned. The clock ticked. McNulty looked up at the big white clock face that stood out in the light from the windows. Midnight. The time that cops never arrest anyone. McNulty wasn’t arresting anybody, either. He was just going to catch the bad guy on camera and duck for cover. He checked that his phone was secure in his breast pocket and that the flash had been turned off. He hadn’t pressed the record button yet. That would come soon enough.

He crossed the raised platform to the door that led into the room behind the judge’s bench—the place where he wanted to lure the gunman—a smaller space, for close-quarter combat. He tugged at the Kevlar vest where it rubbed against his throat. He’d never liked them, even when he was in uniform. He looked out across the courtroom again, then opened the door behind the bench, but didn’t enter. He ducked down beside the judge’s chair and listened.

Midnight plus one. The door from the street clicked shut. Quietly, but not quietly enough. McNulty wasn’t alone. The bait had been taken. He settled on his haunches and listened to the approaching footsteps.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Waiting was the hardest part of any police operation. McNulty had been on numerous undercover assignments and he’d sat for hours doing covert observations. The worst part was sitting in a car all night recording license numbers, hoping the right car would come along and spark an arrest. The burst of adrenaline when that car finally turned up was the rush all cops lived for. McNulty shuffled to the side of the judge’s bench, his heart racing and the small hairs sparking electricity up the back of his neck. The right car had finally turned up.

He listened to the progress of the intruder, which was pretty much identical to McNulty’s twenty minutes before: Footsteps approaching the double doors. A cautious entry into the courtroom, then a pause