Alone (Detective D.D. Warren, #1)(45)

Bobby'd been a fool to come here. He saw that now. James Gagnon had run a sucker play, and Bobby had walked right into it.

“Did you know my daughter-in-law before the shooting?” James was prodding.

Bobby forced his gaze back to the older man. Seemed like everyone was asking that question these days. Firmly, he said, “No.”

“You're sure?”

“I keep track of the people I meet.”

James merely arched a brow. “What did you see that night? The night Jimmy died?”

Bobby's gaze flickered to Maryanne, then back to her husband. “If we're going to talk about this, I don't think she should be in the room.”

“Maryanne?” James said softly to his wife, and she once more looked up at him. Seconds before, she'd been crying. Now Maryanne seemed to draw herself up, to find a reserve of strength. She took her husband's hand. They turned toward Bobby as a united front.

“I would like to know,” Maryanne drawled softly. “He's my son. I was there for his birth. I should know of his death.”

She was brilliant, Bobby thought. In four sentences or less, she had cut out his heart.

“I was called out to a domestic barricade situation,” he said as evenly as he could. “A woman had called nine-one-one saying her husband had a gun, and the sound of gunshots had been reported by the neighbors. Upon taking up position across the street, I spied the subject—”

“Jimmy,” the judge corrected.

“The subject,” Bobby held his ground, “pacing the floor of the master bedroom in an agitated manner. After a moment, I determined that he was armed with a nine-millimeter handgun.”

“Loaded?” James again.

“I could not make that determination, but previous reports of shots fired would seem to indicate the gun was loaded.”

“Safety on or off?”

“I could not make that determination, but again previous reports of shots fired would seem to indicate the manual safety was off.”

“But he could've put the safety on.”

“Possible.”

“He could have never fired the shots at all. You didn't witness him firing his weapon, did you?”

“No.”

“You didn't witness him loading the gun?”

“No.”

“I see,” the judge said, and for the first time, Bobby saw. This was the preliminary, just a brief taste of what would happen to him when things went to trial. How the good judge was prepared to show that he, Robert G. Dodge, had committed murder on Thursday, November 11, 2004, when he shot the poor, unsuspecting victim, beloved son James Gagnon, Jr.

It would be a war of words, and the judge had all the big ones on his side.

“So what exactly did you see?” the judge was asking now.

“After a brief interval—”

“How long? One minute, five minutes? Half an hour?”

“After approximately seven minutes, I saw a female subject—”

“Catherine.”

“—and a child come into view. The woman was holding the child, a young boy. Then the female subject and the male subject,” Bobby said emphatically, “proceeded to argue.”

“About what?”

“I had no audio of the scene.”

“So you have no idea what they said to one another? Perhaps Catherine was threatening Jimmy.”

“With what?”

The judge changed his tack. “Or she was verbally abusing him.”

Bobby shrugged.

“Did she know you were there?” the judge pushed.

“I don't know.”

“There were spotlights, an ambulance arriving at the scene, police cruisers coming and going. Isn't it likely that she noticed this level of activity?”

“She was up on the fourth floor, above street level. When I first arrived, it appeared that she and the child were hunkered down behind the bed. I'm not sure what it's realistic to assume she knew and didn't know.”

“But you said she placed a call to nine-one-one herself.”

“That's what I was told.”

“So therefore, she expected some sort of response.”

“Response in the past has been two uniformed officers knocking at her front door.”

“I know, Officer Dodge. That's why I find it so interesting that this time, she made certain to mention that Jimmy had a gun. A weapon made it an automatic SWAT call, didn't it?”

“But he did have a gun. I saw it myself.”

“Did you? Are you sure it was a real gun? Couldn't it have been a model, or maybe one of Nathan's toys? Why, it could've been one of those fancy cigar lighters in the shape of a revolver.”

“Sir, I've viewed over a hundred pistols of various makes and models in the past ten years. I know a real gun when I see it. And it was a genuine Beretta 9000s that the techs recovered from the scene.”

The judge scowled, obviously not liking this answer, but was swift to regroup. “Officer Dodge, did my son actually pull the trigger Thursday night?”

“No, sir. I shot him first.”

Maryanne moaned and sank deeper into her chair. In contrast, James nearly grinned. He started pacing, his footsteps ringing against the marble floor, while his finger waggled in the air.