Fenway opened her eyes and turned her head. Everyone was still in the same spot except for Rose Morgan, who sat on the floor, her back against the rear wall, shrouded in shadow.
Fenway focused on the ratty backpack sitting on the chair next to Piper. There was a mountain of evidence against Professor Cygnus on the laptop in there. She took a few steps and caught Piper’s eye. “Hey.”
“Hey, Fenway.”
Fenway’s shoulders were tight, but she forced herself to smile. “Kind of weird, you not being on my team anymore.”
Piper nodded. “Not as weird as Professor Cygnus getting shot and killed right in front of us.” She cocked her head. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Fenway shuffled her feet and pointed at Piper’s ratty backpack. “You have your new laptop in there?”
“Yes.”
“Can you use it to help figure out what’s going on?”
Piper hesitated.
“You want me to talk to your boss first?” Fenway asked.
“Uh—yeah, I guess I do.” Piper screwed up her mouth. “You know that the paint in the courtroom blocks cellphone signals, right?”
“Oh—no, I guess not. So that’s why my cellphone wouldn’t work in here. There’s actually paint that can kill a signal?”
“Yeah—the team consulted me on some of the security measures when they were figuring out the construction.” Piper’s eyes lit up. “The paint reduces signals significantly. Wi-Fi, and radio and tv, too. emf-shielding paint, they call it. Fifty liters for three hundred bucks.”
“I didn’t even know anti-cellphone paint existed.”
“They put a special type of alloy in the paint. Sure, a lot of people say you can mix iron oxide in regular paint, but it’s not the same. See, the molecules of the nickel and cobalt in the special paint actually vibrate at the same frequency—"
“I don’t need a chemistry lesson right now, Piper.”
“Right, sorry.”
“How do we get connected to the sheriff?”
Piper nodded. “Yeah—okay, near the clerk’s station here, there should be an Ethernet port.”
“Like an old-school wired connection?”
“Right.”
“Your brand-new laptop doesn’t have an old-school Ethernet port though, right?”
Piper rolled her eyes. “Like I’d ever buy a laptop without the proper dongles.” She turned and picked up her backpack from between the rows, then hurried through the gate into the front of the courtroom. Fenway followed.
Her father and Charlotte, still standing together in front of the prosecutor’s table followed her with their eyes. Fenway tried not to notice. She still was angry with her father, and even though Charlotte had taken her advice to hire Piper, she had no idea what to say to either of them.
Piper recoiled when she saw Cygnus’s dead body in front of the defense table. “Oh, holy shit.”
Fenway put a hand on Piper’s shoulder. “Sorry. But we’ve got to do this. It’s an active shooter scenario.”
Piper took a deep breath. “I—I knew he was there. I just—crap, Fenway, I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a dead body before. I certainly have never had to work so close to a dead body, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never been in an active shooter situation in a public building.”
Piper eyes, like ada Kim’s, were still fixed on Cygnus’s dead body.
Fenway scanned the side of the dais below the judge’s bench. There were two panels, about six inches wide by four inches high. One panel was on each side of the bench, each the same matching mahogany as the dais. She chose the one on the prosecutor’s side, farthest from the body, and knelt down. Digging a thumbnail underneath the edge of the panel, she pried it up.
Bingo. Two power outlets, two microphone jacks, two usb ports, a couple of video ports—and, all by itself, an Ethernet jack.
“Here it is.”
Piper hurried over with her bag, getting out a plastic adapter box shaped like a shark fin. She pulled two power cables out of her bag, then a coiled gray cable and a usb cable. Within thirty seconds, she had the adapter box and the laptop plugged in, and cords running from the laptop to the box to the Ethernet jack.
“Impressive,” Fenway murmured. She’d had her back turned to everyone else for over a minute, so she straightened up and turned around. No one seemed to pay any attention to her except her father.
“How are you doing?” he said.
“Okay,” Fenway replied. “Considering.”
Nathaniel Ferris nodded, then, taking Charlotte by the hand, led them around the back of the prosecutor’s table to sit.
Piper sat on the floor, legs tucked behind herself, and opened her laptop. She clicked around for a moment.
“You doing okay, Evans?” Fenway asked the lawyer, who was still sitting in the second row with his left leg up.
He took off his round-rimmed spectacles and wiped his face with his sleeve again. “Do we have any water in here?”
Fenway looked around but didn’t see a water fountain.
“Judge Miller might have a bottle up there,” Evans said. “Maybe a couple, since she was planning on being in the courtroom all morning.”
Fenway walked around side of the judge’s bench to the back, and sure enough, there were two unopened bottles of water on the desk. There was another panel inset to the wood above the desk. When Fenway pried the cover off, she found jacks and plugs set up identically to the one below on the step.
“I found another plug set up here,” Fenway said to Piper. “You might be more comfortable sitting.” And being farther away from the dead body.
“Let me get my settings taken care of,” Piper said, a distant note in her voice.
“Can you communicate with McVie?” Fenway asked, stepping down from the dais and leaning across the rail to hand the water bottle to Dahl. “Maybe from an instant-message program?”
“Yes, and I’ve already texted him from my laptop. But I want to see some stuff.” She clicked around some more, typed, paused, and typed again. “Okay, she said in a low voice. “Here are the feeds from the courthouse cameras.”
“What?”
“They didn’t turn off my username and password yet. They turned off my remote access on Friday, but I thought if I was using a trusted computer inside the building, I might still have access. And I do.”
“That new laptop is a trusted computer?”
Piper screwed up her mouth, trying to hide a grin. “As far as the system is concerned, anyway.”
“I’m going to have to forget everything I see here, aren’t I?”
“Shush. Do you want to see the feed from the courthouse cameras or not?”
“Yes.”
Piper clicked one final time and two screens showing wide-angle camera shots came on. “All right, this is last week, when they were testing the system. You can see a couple of the workers installing the plugs and ports. One camera on each side of the court, both facing the judge.”
“When did they start recording the proceedings?”
“Uh—I think the California Supreme Court made that decision a long time ago. It was intended for appeal review, but also to reduce the number of violent incidents in the courts.”
“Like this one.”
Piper shrugged. “Reduce, not eliminate.”
Fenway nodded. “Do you have footage from today?”
“Sure do.” Piper clicked again.
A black screen. A second later, the other screen also went black.
She frowned. “That’s weird. Maybe if I….” Piper typed a couple of commands and hit Enter with a flourish.
The screens flashed, then went black again.
“I don’t understand,” Piper mumbled. She opened another video file. “This one’s from yesterday.”
“The courts were closed for Veterans Day yesterday.”
“I know, but I need to figure out what went wrong.”
More black screens.
After another ten minutes of searching, Piper found the end of the feed. On the video recording of Sunday afternoon around three o’clock, the first camera flickered and went dead, followed about thirty seconds later by the failure of the other.
“Interesting,” Piper murmured.
“What?”
“Well—if it had been an equipment failure, most likely both cameras would have failed at the same time. The fact that it went about half a minute between failures possibly means that someone disconnected the camera feeds, one right after the other.
“Where would they have done that?” Fenway asked. “Certainly not at the cameras themselves.”
“I don’t think it would be possible. The cameras are mounted in the ceiling.”
“Was anyone here over the weekend?”
“Yes—the people who installed the audio and video equipment. They installed the video first and then, I believe, they worked over the weekend to install the wiring for microphones and the speakers.”
Fenway folded her arms. “Maybe we should interview the people who were here. It’s possible that one of them saw something.”
“Or did something,” Piper muttered.
Fenway turned it over in her mind.
“Is the audio working?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cameras were disconnected, sure, but that doesn’t mean that the audio was disconnected.”
“Huh.” Piper dug through her backpack and pulled out a set of corded earbuds. “Let me see if I can hear anything.”
She plugged the headphones into the laptop and listened intently for about fifteen seconds.
“There’s nothing here,” she said. “That makes sense if the video was unplugged from the control room.”
“I would assume,” Fenway started, “that whoever turned the video off wanted to do something in the courtroom that they didn’t want recorded. Maybe there’s some audio later that can help us piece together what they were doing.”
“That makes sense.” Piper sighed. “I wish I had my old computer setup back. I mean, this laptop is super-fast and top-of-the-line, but I miss the two big monitors.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to deal with this for too much longer. I bet McVie is arresting the shooter right now. I predict Dez or Mark or one of the bailiffs will open up those double doors any second now and tell us it’s all over.”
Piper smiled and shook her head. “It’s like you’ve never worked for a public service organization before.”
“Can’t be any more bureaucratic than working for the hospital was.”
“Don’t hold your breath. Things move glacially at City Hall. Even if you are dating the sheriff.” Piper elbowed Fenway jokingly. “He’ll be so focused on catching the bad guy that he won’t even remember you’re in here until the paperwork is submitted.”
“Ha ha.” Fenway looked back at Piper’s laptop screen.
Piper’s fingers paused over the keys on her laptop.
“What is it, Piper?”
“Well,” Piper said, “I’m not sure my new boss would want me to tell you this, but over the long weekend, I found out more information about the payments to and from Global Advantage Executive Consulting.”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was planning to tell you after your father’s arraignment, when you and McVie were together.”
Me and McVie together. Fenway closed her eyes and for a moment, they were on the floor again, his confession of love warm on the side of her face. Fenway took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “That makes sense. Let’s make another stab at talking with McVie, and then if we can’t reach him, you might as well tell me now—I don’t know how long we’ll be in here.”
Piper nodded and clicked on her messaging app. “McVie hasn’t responded to your message yet. I’ll ping him again.” She typed a short message and clicked.
A swoosh from the computer told Fenway the text had been sent. “I wish there were some other way to communicate with him. I mean, in crisis situations like this, I’m sure there are communication plans in place, right?”
Piper bit her lip, her brows knit. “There must be. Shall we look?” She disconnected her laptop and brought it to the desk of the judge’s bench. She and Fenway began to search through the drawers. Almost all the drawers were empty except for the large, wide bottom drawer, which had two flats of bottled water.
“What about walkie-talkies? Bailiffs have those, right? That must be something we can find in here.”
The back wall behind the judge’s bench had several low cabinets. They were all empty.
“They’ll never be this clean again,” Fenway mused.
A cord led from a wall plug and threaded through a small hole in the back of a counter next to the witness stand. “Isn’t that the spot for the bailiff?” Fenway asked Piper.
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
Fenway pointed. “Is that a cabinet too?”
“Maybe?” Piper cocked her head to the side.
Fenway walked to the side of the counter and ran her hand around the side. She pushed slightly and the whole side of the cabinet swung open. “Abracadabra.”
The door opened smoothly, revealing three walkie-talkies docked in a charging station. A small green light shone brightly next to each of them. There were five empty spaces in the dock as well.
“That’ll be better,” Fenway said, grabbing one of the walkie-talkies. “Hopefully McVie has one of the others.”
“There’s one problem—” Piper began as Fenway turned the dial to the on position and turned up the volume.
A crash of static greeted their ears.
“Dammit,” Fenway growled, turning down the volume. “Walkie-talkie frequencies too?”
“All electro-magnetic and radio frequencies,” Piper said.
“Pretty much anything that’s not plugged in, then.”
“That was the idea. This is a courtroom—people shouldn’t be contacting anyone or anything outside for any reason.”
“Unless there’s an active shooter in the building.”
Piper shifted from foot to foot. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay.” Fenway pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes tight. “So how else can we get communication out of here? Is there a land line somewhere?”
“Not that I see. I think the clerk’s area was supposed to have one set up, but maybe they thought they’d do it later, or maybe the order hasn’t come in yet.”
“Maybe there’s a spot in the room where all the planets align just right, and we can get a trace of a signal, either for our phones or for the walkie-talkies.”
Piper nodded. “And I’ll see if anyone else is responding to texts other people besides McVie. Maybe Dez. I bet Rachel’s in her office.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Fenway turned the volume up about halfway, so the static was a low hum, and began to carefully walk around the courtroom.
“What I want to know,” Evans Dahl said from the second row, his eyes glinting, as Fenway and her crackling walkie-talkie passed in front of the gallery divider, “is how someone cooked up a plan to get a gun in here in the first place.”
“Pretty obvious that they got past the guard and the metal detector, isn’t it?” Cynthia Schimmelhorn said from the back.
Fenway set her mouth in a line. She hadn’t checked the perimeter for open doors or other ways into the courtroom that didn’t go through the metal detector, but hoped that McVie or one of the other law enforcement people would find something. She couldn’t imagine what the guard was going through after hearing a gun was in the courtroom.
“I wonder if the shooter managed to get out of the building,” Leda Nedermeyer piped up.
“The protocol is set up to shut the building down immediately,” Piper said. “So it’s not very likely they were able to escape.”
“Yes, well,” Bryce Heissner said huffily, “it wasn’t exactly plain sailing, was it?”
Piper shrugged and turned back to the laptop.
“And anyway,” Heissner said, walking up the center aisle of the gallery, “how would you know what the building protocol is, anyway? You can’t be more than—what? Seventeen?”
“I’m twenty-four. I was on the security planning committee during the design phase.”
Heissner let out a snort. “Well, you all really run a tight ship here.”
Fenway bristled. Not only had Piper not been on the implementation team, ada Kim had insisted on Piper’s resignation before the weekend, when the final walkthroughs were happening. She wrenched a smile onto her face as she passed Heissner. “Sorry—would you mind being silent for another few moments? I’m trying to find a spot where I can get a decent signal.”
“A decent signal?” Heissner had a confused look on his face.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Cynthia Schimmelhorn said. “Have you paid no attention? There’s no reception in here. No phones, no Wi-Fi, no radio signals.”
“My cell doesn’t work?” Heissner pulled his phone from his pocket and stared at it without comprehension.
“No,” Fenway said.
“Is that legal?” Heissner asked.
“I assume it is,” Fenway said, “but even if it isn’t, we’re all stuck in this room together without reception. So, please, Mr. Heissner, don’t say anything for another minute or two so I can hear the walkie-talkie.”
Heissner harrumphed and glared at Fenway, but didn’t say anything. She kept walking up the aisle toward the double doors. The static changed for a half-second and lowered in pitch. She stopped in her tracks, raising walkie-talkie over her head, then lowered it all the way to the floor. A short snap interrupted the buzzing halfway down to the floor, but there was no additional change in the static.
Fenway continued moving slowly. Cynthia Schimmelhorn watched her take careful steps until she stood in front of the double doors. When she turned left to go behind the last row of the gallery, Fenway could feel the woman’s eyes on her.
The wall curved gently, and Fenway slowly walked past a white in-wall speaker enclosure, and the static was loud all the way to the side wall, where the back aisle ended..
She looked to her left. Next to the narrow side aisle was a small nook. She peered through the archway. The tiny, oddly-shaped room was only about six feet wide near the entrance, with an angled wall that narrowed to about three feet. Two chairs, the same dark wood seat and brushed-nickel legs, were in the small space. Was this a closet that hadn’t been finished? An architectural mistake?
Fenway sighed, staring at the angled wall. Would her search for a spot where she could communicate with the outside world be fruitless?
She rotated her head, and her neck made three satisfying little pops. Maybe when this was over McVie could give her a neck and shoulder massage. Starting to raise her arms above her head to stretch, the static swooped to a high-pitched squeal, not unlike the sound of a theremin. Even in the awkward position, her arms bent at the elbow and her hands level with the top of her head, Fenway rotated the walkie-talkie in her hand and the squeal’s volume decreased.
This was it!
She pushed the call button.
“Coroner Fenway Stevenson in the new courtroom,” she said. “Can any officers hear me?”
She released and the loud squeal was back, but after raising the walkie-talkie an inch, a fuzzy voice came through.
“Hey, Fenway, you sure know how to get out of a weapons search.”
“Dez!”
“Oh—Fenway, thank God. McVie thought Professor Cygnus was hit.”
“Yeah. Professor Cygnus. Shot in the head—it looks like he died instantly.”
“Is anyone else hurt?”
“Looks like the defense lawyer sprained his ankle. Everyone else seems to be okay. Any injuries out there?”
“Nope. I’m out here with two hundred of my closest friends. I’m sure glad I got the industrial vat of hand sanitizer at Costco last week.”
Fenway chuckled, a sense of relief flooding her. “Oh, man, am I glad to hear your voice. Do you know what’s happening?”
“The courthouse is on lockdown—as soon as the shots were fired, the guards initiated the security protocol. Kept everyone inside before the doors locked automatically.”
“Oh—good. Did anyone get a look at the shooter?”
Dez scoffed. “You would think with fifty or sixty people walking in and out of there, someone would have seen something. But no one saw anything—or if they did, they’re not saying. Lots of confusion. Everyone seems to think the shots came from the back of the room, though.”
Fenway clicked her tongue. “Does anyone have a timeframe on when we can get out of here?”
“McVie is leading the questioning right now.”
“There are a dozen people stuck in the courtroom besides me.”
“Who’s in there?”
“My father and Charlotte, Jennifer Kim and the defense attorney, Cygnus’s wife and his”—Fenway almost said mistress but caught herself—“uh, colleague, two of his students, two Ferris Energy board members, Piper and me.”
“And a partridge in a pear tree.”
Fenway lowered her voice. “And Rose Morgan is here, too.”
“What? Isn’t she in Mexico by now!”
“I know—I don’t understand why she showed up either. Do you think I should arrest her?”
There was silence on the other end, and a slight hum. Then Dez came back on. “I’ll talk to McVie. See how he wants to do this. I don’t think we have enough to charge her on.”
“She attacked me in Cygnus’s office last week, remember?”
“She threw a book at your head. I’m not sure that will be enough to give her more than a slap on the wrist.”
“But it will let us hold her until we can figure out what else can stick.”
Silence again, only for a moment. “I’d rather get McVie’s take on this.”
“Fine.” Fenway cleared her throat. “So, speaking of McVie, should we get out of the courtroom so he can question everyone?” Fenway released the button and got a loud buzz of static. She turned it about forty-five degrees in her hand again.
Dez’s voice melted in again. “—separated into groups. So no, not for a while.”
“You broke up there for a minute.”
“We’ve separated them in several different rooms, and once they’ve all been searched, they’re all be questioned separately. You won’t be able to leave for a while, because McVie wants to keep your group separated too.”
“Why?”
Then it hit Fenway—hard enough to make her knees wobble.
They hadn’t found the gun.
No one who had left the courtroom in the shooting’s aftermath had been permitted to leave the building—but not one of them had a gun in their possession. She knew Dez, McVie, Mark, and others would thoroughly search the building—vents, ducts, trash cans, drawers—anywhere a gun was small enough to fit. They’d probably already started.
But if they still couldn’t find it?
That meant the gun was still in the courtroom.
And that meant it was pretty likely that the killer was in with them too.