Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(89)
Suddenly, in her blazer pocket, her phone started ringing.
Chapter Forty-one
Judy reacted instantly, desperate. She grabbed the phone from her pocket and sent it slipping along the mucky floor, so the ringing came from the far side of the bin. Carlos started firing, but aimed a deafening volley at the bin next to her. Scattered bullets punched holes in the front rim of her bin. She bit her lips not to scream.
Abruptly the gunfire stopped. Smoke drifted into the bin. Her phone rang and rang.
“Freeze right there!” an officer shouted. “Police! Put your weapon on the ground! Put your weapon on the ground!”
Judy could only imagine the standoff outside. The police would train their guns on Carlos, thinking he would give up. She knew better. Carlos wanted her dead even if he was captured alive. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain from her murder. He wanted her silenced for good. Her phone finally went quiet.
“Keep lowering your weapon!” another officer yelled. “Lower it and put it on the ground! Put your weapon on the ground!”
Judy’s heart pounded like it was trying to get out of her chest. She knew what Carlos would do next. He would shoot the policemen. It sounded like only two cops. Carlos was waiting for just the right moment, tricking the police by lowering his weapon. She couldn’t let that happen.
She squeezed both hands around some manure, closed her fists, and jumped up. Carlos was standing five feet from the bin, facing her direction, his gun slightly lowered. She hurled the manure at Carlos’s eyes, then sprang out of the way.
Carlos shouted in surprise. His hands flew up reflexively, firing shots wildly into the air. Judy dove toward the floor for safety, just in time to see Carlos lose his balance, whirl away from her, and recover fast enough to aim his weapon at the police.
Pop pop pop! The police responded with a barrage of firepower.
Judy landed on the bottom of the filthy bin. She heard Carlos cry out, then he went silent. The gunfire stopped.
Judy lay perfectly still, afraid to move. She kept her eyes closed. She was in no hurry to get up and see Carlos’s bullet-ridden body, even as much as she hated him. She opened her eyes slowly, but didn’t understand what she was seeing, amid the brown manure that lay everywhere.
A bright patch of white-and-green paper stood out in the bottom seam of the bin. She reached for it instinctively and pulled. A twenty-dollar bill came from underneath the floor of the bin, attached to another twenty-dollar bill, like Kleenex out of the box. Astounded, she dug her fingers in the seam and pulled out a five-dollar bill and realized that the manure bin must have had a false bottom.
“Miss, are you okay?” the police officers asked, rushing over.
“Look at this, guys,” Judy answered, digging for more money.
Chapter Forty-two
Judy sat at the conference table in the mayor’s office at the Kennett Square Police Station, having finished giving her statement to a room packed with law enforcement personnel, including Detective Boone and two other detectives, three assistant district attorneys, and a fleet of FBI, DEA, and ICE agents who sat in the back of the room, taking rapid notes. The press thronged outside the building, their newsvans, reporters, and cameramen visible through the old-fashioned venetian blinds.
Before her statement, Judy had asked the police to contact her mother and her office to let them know where she was, then she had been photographed in her filthy clothes for purposes of the investigation, and finally showered in the locker room for female officers and changed into a KSPD sweatshirt and sweatpants one of them had lent her. Given the stink of manure on Judy’s skin, she doubted the female officer would want her sweatclothes back.
Judy’s filthy phone sat on the table between her and the law enforcement authorities, next to the silvery recording devices from the various agencies and Domingo’s scrap of paper that read BONIDE and MURIATIC. She had explained everything that had happened at the barracks last night, then what Domingo had told her this morning, playing the recording for them from her phone. Her eyes had filmed at the sound of Domingo’s voice, but she’d kept it together. She consoled herself with the notion that Father Vega was in federal custody and charged with an array of crimes, as well as being investigated for the death of Father Keegan. Carlos and Roberto had met their end, but Judy was enough of a lawyer to wish that they’d rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Luckily, they hadn’t succeeded in killing the two young girls from the Mini Cooper, the old man at the sandwich shop, or the Good Samaritans. The one girl had been hospitalized, but was expected to recover.
Judy met Detective Boone’s eye. “So how much money was under the manure bin?”
“I’m not sure it’s been counted yet.” Detective Boone kept his tone official, but not unkind.
“Ballpark it for me, would you?” Judy understood his reluctance, reading the body language of the FBI behind him, a collective stiffening of postures that were already stiff, in suits and ties.
“We are not at liberty to discuss that, Judy.”
“I think I’ve earned the right to know, don’t you? Modesty aside, nobody would’ve found any money but for me, and I almost got killed in the process.”
“Chester County appreciates your efforts, and as we’ve already said, you are to be commended as a private citizen for—”