CHAPTER 7
A searing pain shoots up the side of Julia’s skull from hitting the ground jaw-first after the massive blast. She opens her eyes to a sliver of gray sky and a barbed wire tattoo. She tries to get up and move the 220 pounds off her when she brushes against something warm and sticky. She quickly seizes back her arm when she realizes she is touching the remains of a man’s severed hand. The thumb and index finger have been blown away, and the base of the hand is now just a stump of exposed tendon, raw flesh, and jutting bone. A gold band speckled with blood remains on the hand’s ring finger.
The shrill peal of police sirens in the distance slices through the immediate eerie quiet after the blast. A second later, the yells and screams begin, as pandemonium ensues for the living and the dying beg for help.
“Julia, are you all right?” Navarro asks.
“Get off me!” Julia screams. “I’m not hurt. I have to find David and Logan.”
“That had to be a bomb. Hurry and stand up before we get trampled.”
Navarro jumps to his feet and pulls Julia with him as an oncoming wall of terrified people begin to flee from the scene of confusion, some pushing and shoving down the narrow sidewalk in their direction as pure survival mode kicks in. Navarro grabs Julia’s arm and thrusts her into the entryway of a coffee shop away from the wave of people trying to escape.
“Stay here until the scene is secure,” Navarro shouts, and sprints in the direction of the blast.
Julia feels as if she is outside her body, her world normal just one minute ago before the sonic boom. The ice-cold hand of fear begins to squeeze the life out of Julia as she follows Navarro, forcing her way against the tide, the air thick with an overpowering odor of acrid smoke, burned plastic, and something that smells like the spent remains of fireworks. As Julia moves forward, she takes in the devastation amidst the ruins. A plume of gray and white smoke rises in front of the courthouse entryway, and the exterior of the first three stories of the building has been completely shorn away. About two dozen bodies lie scattered on the ground, a few Good Samaritans hover over them as they wait for the first responders to arrive. Above them, a swirl of papers dances in a circle, then falls like confetti on top of the victims.
Julia begins to run, the courthouse just across the street from her now. She is so close, fueled by nothing but the primal instinct to protect her own. But what she sees in front of her path forces her to stop. A child, a boy, maybe Logan’s age, is spilled on the ground with half of his left leg blown off. A foot away from the boy is a man, probably his father. Shards of misshapen metal and what look like ball bearings are embedded in the man’s chest and torso. The lifeless body looks up at the sky almost peacefully without blinking. Julia knows the man is probably already dead and rushes to the side of the little boy. She feels for a pulse, which is thready at best.
“Hold on,” Julia pleads. “Help! We have a child over here, and he needs immediate medical attention.”
Julia’s voice is drowned out in the melee. Not knowing what else to do, Julia strips off the belt from her white trench coat and wraps it around the boy’s leg as a makeshift tourniquet.
The boy’s pale blue eyes flutter open. They look glazed at first but then focus in on the strange woman standing above him.
“Where’s my dad?” he whispers.
Julia shudders and grabs the child’s hand.
“I’m not sure,” she lies. “The police are going to be here soon to help you find him. Can you tell me your name?”
“Michael Cole.”
The little boy trembles against the frigid pavement. Julia closes the boy’s thin vinyl Detroit Tigers coat around his chest, as if that would somehow help him.
“I’m Julia. I need you to hold on until help gets here. Can you do that for me?”
“My leg hurts really bad. Can you please find my daddy for me?” the boy begs softly.
A choice has to be made. Julia’s eyes dart back to the courthouse, where she searches for any sign of Logan or David. The lobby, now obvious to Julia as the place where the bomb was detonated, has been reduced to a dark, gaping hole. A man in a blue business suit emerges from it, running full tilt as he carries what looks like a small body in his arms.
Julia’s choice is made for her. A caravan of first responders rush to the scene, including an ambulance that screeches up to the curb across the street. Julia yells louder than she ever has in her life as a paramedic exits the vehicle.
“Over here! Please,” Julia cries. “A little boy is badly hurt.”
Julia feels a tiny sense of relief as the paramedic hustles in their direction.
“Listen, Michael. You’re going to be all right. Someone is here to help you.”
Michael holds on to Julia’s hand, his weak grip tightening.
“Can you stay with me?” he asks.
The request stabs Julia through her heart.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I promise I’ll come back and check on you later, though.”
Julia keeps hold of the boy’s small hand until the paramedic takes over.
“His name is Michael Cole. Please take care of him.”
Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances line the front of the courthouse, the first responders assembling rapidly to the crisis. Julia searches the sea of quickly moving faces and the immobile victims who are being moved onto stretchers and wheelchairs while others still lie prone on the ground. Julia recognizes the battalion chief of the third district emergency crew team and latches her hand around his wrist.
“Brian, please help me! My husband and son are somewhere here and I have to find them. David is six feet tall with light blond hair. He may have been in the lobby waiting for a witness at the time of the explosion. My son Logan is eight. He has black hair and brown eyes. He’s here with his class field trip. He is such a good boy,” Julia cries.
The battalion chief, Brian Callahan, looks at Julia for a hard second and then back at the scene unfolding around him. “We just got here, Julia. You stay put and I’ll have one of my guys tell you if we find them.”
“No. You need to look for them right now. David is the assistant district attorney. I think whoever did this was trying to take out his witness.”
Callahan listens to Julia with half an ear, most of his attention drawn to trying to lead and assemble the madness in front of him.
“I promise, we’ll look for them.”
Callahan pushes inside the courthouse. The scene is still fresh and mobile, and no yellow police tape has cordoned off the area yet. Julia weaves through the exploded cement bits of sidewalk and edges toward the entrance.
On the other side of the now-shattered glass doors, Julia looks in the distance and sees Detective Russell, unconscious and bleeding badly from a deep, open gash to his head. A paramedic and Navarro load him carefully onto a stretcher.
“Oh God, Russell,” Julia cries.
Navarro looks up at Julia, rage and worry etched across his face over his downed partner.
“I told you to stay back,” Navarro yells. “Get out of here. The building isn’t safe.”
Julia ignores him and quickly scans the victims and the dead. A foot away from the courthouse entrance, a large man with slicked-back dark hair and a long wool coat is crumpled in a heap next to the two undercover police officers Julia thinks she saw earlier. The big man, whom Julia suspects is the prosecution’s surprise witness, Sammy Biggs, and the cop closest to him lie motionless on the granite floor. The other undercover cop is twitching uncontrollably, his body either undergoing shock or in the last throes of dying. Julia feels almost perverse in her relief that David is not among the group as she watches the man writhe beneath her.
“There’s a cop over here! He’s injured. Somebody needs to help him,” Julia says in a raspy voice that no longer sounds like her own.
Navarro looks up in her direction. Julia knows he will find someone to aid the officer, so she continues on.
An older, petite woman covered in dust from the explosion looks like a walking zombie leaving an apocalypse as she limps past the security gate. Julia knows the woman, Beth Watson, a court scheduler who manages all the activities of the courthouse, including arranging tours.
“Beth, please! There was a group of students who just got off the school bus when the bomb went off. Did you see them?”
Beth’s eyes snap back into focus, the task of her day-to-day job tipping her back into reality. “We had two school groups scheduled today. Carelton Elementary and University Hills Elementary.”
“University Hills. That’s Logan’s class. Are the students in the building?”
“No. I gave a tour to the Carelton Elementary school kids. I escorted them back out to their bus and then got a call from the University Hills principal. He said his class was going to be late because they were stuck in traffic.”
Julia feels her body ache with relief.
“What about my husband? David. David Tanner?”
Beth starts to pull away, her eyes narrow in fear. Julia realizes she is clutching the scheduler’s elbow with all her might.
“I don’t know. I just want to get out of here,” Beth says, sounding like a petrified child.
Julia lets go of the woman and begins to sprint, dodging the rubble and almost falling on the slick floor, wet from the overhead sprinklers that automatically came on immediately following the blast. She puts her hand over her nose and mouth to make breathing easier in the thick dust and debris that fill the air. She stops suddenly to regain her footing when the lights go out. She realizes the power to the building has most likely just been cut to ensure there are no further explosions or fires set off by broken gas lines or electrical shorts. Julia clutches her cell phone and uses its light to help her navigate inside the now-dim structure. Once she checks the entire lobby, Julia then heads toward the stairs to the upper stories, where she will search for her husband room by room.
She reaches the top of the second story and feels the floor underneath her list slightly, the building’s infrastructure weakened by the blast. Julia walks carefully down the corridor, sweeping past each of the courtrooms, but they are empty thanks to the lunch hour. Julia completes her check of the floor except for the last room on the right, courtroom number eight, where the Nick Rossi trial is being held.
Julia scans the aisle and shines the light of her phone across each row of the seats in the media gallery and the floor beneath them. She moves her tiny light to the prosecution table, hoping the impossible hope that somehow David will be there, having made it back to the safety of the courtroom before the bomb went off. The table has a legal pad on top of it. The light flicks across the yellow paper and Julia sees the initials I.R. with a question mark after it written in David’s script. She shines the light under the desk. David’s briefcase is underneath it.
“David. Are you in here?” Julia says, feeling the first flicker of hope since the blast.
A weak voice calls out from inside Judge Palmer’s chambers.
“Julia. I’m in here with Judge Palmer. We’re trapped. The judge is hurt. Go get help,” David pleads.
Julia pushes against the door to the interior chamber. It gives about three inches and then bangs against something solid wedged up against it on the other side. She flashes her light inside the narrow crevice. The ceiling above the judge’s chamber has completely caved in. Judge Palmer is unconscious on the floor, and a shattered wooden desk covers half his body. Julia darts the light to the other side of the chamber until she locates her husband, who is pinned on the ground underneath what looks like a metal beam.
“Oh, my God, David! Are you hurt?”
“Something fell on top of me after the blast. I can’t move. Where’s Logan?”
“He never made it to the courthouse. His bus got stuck in traffic. I’m going to try to push the door open.”
The ground underneath Julia undulates violently, and she grabs the wall to steady herself.
“Did you feel that?” Julia asks.
“This section of the building isn’t stable. You need to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The floor underneath them lets out a deep groan followed by a sharp snapping sound like thick metal cables beginning to sever. Julia throws her body against the door to the chamber, but it doesn’t budge against her slender frame.
“Go now!” David commands.
“I’m going to grab a chair and try to ram the door open with it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to get out of here. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Logan and Will. They need at least one of us around.”
“Don’t you say that. Not ever. Everything is going to be fine,” Julia says, the words sounding hollow and untrue as soon as she hears them. “Help! Please, someone! We have two men trapped in here.”
The floor begins to vibrate underneath Julia again, and she struggles to keep her balance.
“I love you, Julia. I always have,” David says, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m sorry. Please remember that. You and the boys were always the best part of my life. Now go.”
“I love you too. But this isn’t over. I’m going to get help.”
Julia runs faster now than she ever has, through the courtroom and down the hallway to the stairs. As she descends to the lobby, a massive crash rings out above her. Julia drops to the floor and covers her head as the weakened section of the second story severs and its remains free-fall down to the street below.