The Trial (8 page)

Jorge Sierra's funeral was
held at a Catholic cemetery in Crescent City, a small northwest California town on the ocean named for the crescent-shaped bay that defined it.

Among the seventy-five hundred people included in the census were the fifteen hundred inmates of nearby Pelican Bay State Prison.

It was either irony or payback, but Elena had picked this spot because her husband had asked to be imprisoned at Pelican Bay and now he would be within eight miles of it—forever.

The graveyard had been virtually abandoned. The ground was flat, bleak, with several old headstones that had been tipped over by vandals or by weather. The chapel needed paint, and just beyond the chapel was a potholed parking lot.

Several black cars, all government property, were parked there, and a dozen FBI agents stood in a loose perimeter around the grave site and beside the chapel within the parking lot with a view of the road.

I was with Conklin and Parisi. My partner and I had been told that Sierra was dead and buried once before. This time I had looked into the coffin. The King was cold and dead, but I still wanted to see the box go into the ground.

Conklin had suffered along with me when Sierra had terrorized me last year, and even though justice had been cheated, we were both relieved it was over.

The FBI had sent agents to the funeral to see who showed up. The King's murder inside the courthouse was an unsolved mystery. The smoke and the surging crowd had blocked the camera's view of the defense table. Elena Sierra and her father, Pedro Quintana, had been questioned separately within twelve hours of the shooting and had said that they had hit the floor after the blast, eyes down when the bullets were fired. They hadn't seen the shooting.

So they said.

Both had come for Sierra's send-off, and Elena had brought her children to say good-bye to their father.

Elena looked lovely in black. Eight-year-old Javier and six-year-old Alexa bowed their heads as the priest spoke over their father's covered coffin at graveside. The little girl cried.

I studied this tableau.

Elena had many reasons to want her husband dead. But she had no military background, nothing that convinced me that she could lean over the railing and shoot her husband point-blank in the back of the head.

Her father, however, was a different story.

I'd done some research into Mexican gangsters and learned that Pedro Quintana was the retired head of Los Toros, the original gang that had raised and trained Sierra on his path to becoming the mightiest drug kingpin of them all.

Sierra had famously disposed of Quintana after he split off from Los Toros and formed Mala Sangre, the new and more powerful drug and crime cartel.

Both Elena and her father had motive to put Sierra down, but how had one or both of them pulled off this shooting in open court?

I'd called Joe last night to brainstorm with him. Despite the state of our marriage, Joe Molinari had background to spare as an agent in USA clandestine services, as well as from his stint as deputy to the director of Homeland Security.

He theorized that during the power outage in the Hall, a C-4 explosive charge had been slapped onto the hinges of Judge Crispin's courtroom doors. It was plausible that one of the hundreds of law enforcement personnel prowling the Hall that night had been paid to set this charge, and it was possible for a lump of plastic explosive to go unnoticed.

A package containing a small gun, ammo, and a remote-controlled detonator could have been smuggled in at the same time, left where only Sierra's killer could find it. It could even have been passed to the killer or killers the morning of the trial.

Had Elena and her father orchestrated this perfect act of retribution? If so, I thought they were going to get away with it.

These were my thoughts as I stood with Conklin and Parisi in the windswept and barren cemetery watching the lowering of the coffin, Elena throwing flowers into the grave, the first shovel of dirt, her children clinging to their mother's skirt.

The moment ended when a limo pulled around a circular drive and Elena Sierra's family went to it and got inside.

Rich said to me, “I'm going to hitch a ride back with Red Dog. Okay with you?”

I said it was. We hugged good-bye.

Another car, an aging Mercedes, swung around the circle of dead grass and stone. It stopped for me. I opened the back door and reached out to my baby girl in her car seat. She was wearing a pink sweater and matching hat knit for her by her lovely nanny. I gave Julie a big smooch and what we call a huggy-wuffle.

Then I got into the front passenger seat.

Joe was driving.

“Zoo?” he said.

“Zoooooooo,” came from behind.

“It's unanimous,” I said. “The zoos have it.”

Joe put his hand behind my neck and pulled me toward him. I hadn't kissed him in a long time. But I kissed him then.

There'd be plenty of time to talk later.

The limo driver who
was bringing Elena Sierra and the children back from a shopping trip couldn't park at the entrance to her apartment building. A long-used family car was stopped right in front of the walkway, where an elderly man was helping his wife out of the car with her walker. The doorman ran outside to help the old couple with their cumbersome luggage.

Elena told her driver, “Leave us right here, Harlan. Thanks. See you in the morning.”

After opening the doors for herself and her children, Elena took the two shopping bags from her driver, saying, “I've got it. Thanks.”

Doors closed with solid thunks, the limo pulled away, and the kids surrounded their mother, asking her for money to buy churros from the ice cream shop down the block at the corner.

She said, “We don't need churros. We have milk and granola cookies.” But she finally relented, set down the groceries, found a five-dollar bill in her purse, and gave it to Javier.

“Please get me one, too,” she called after her little boy.

Elena picked up her grocery bags, and as she stood up, she saw two men in bulky jackets—one with a black scarf covering the bottom of his face and the other with a knit cap—crossing the street toward her.

She recognized them as Jorge's men and knew without a doubt that they were coming to kill her. Mercifully, the children were running and were now far down the block.

The one with the scarf, Alejandro, aimed his gun at the doorman and fired. The gun had a suppressor, and the sound of the discharge was so soft the old man hadn't heard it, didn't understand what had happened. He tried to attend to the fallen doorman, while Elena said to the soldier wearing the cap, “Not out here. Please.”

Invoking what residual status she might have as the King's widow, Elena turned and walked into the modern, beautifully appointed lobby, her back prickling with expectation of a bullet to her spine.

She walked past the young couple sitting on a love seat, past the young man leashing his dog, and pressed the elevator button. The doors instantly slid open and the two men followed her inside.

The doors closed.

Elena stood at the rear with one armed man standing to her left and the other to her right. She looked straight ahead, thinking about the next few minutes as the elevator rose upward, then chimed as it opened directly into her living room.

Esteban, the shooter with the knit cap, had the words
Mala Sangre
inked on the side of his neck. He stepped ahead of her into the room, looked around at the antiques, the books, the art on the walls. He went to the plate-glass window overlooking the Transamerica Pyramid and the great bay.

“Nice view, Mrs. Sierra,” he said with a booming voice. “Maybe you'd like to be looking out the window now. That would be easiest.”

“Don't hurt my children,” she said. “They are Jorge's. His blood.”

She went to the window and placed her hands on the glass. She heard a door open inside the apartment. A familiar voice said loudly, “Drop your guns. Do it now.”

Alejandro whipped around, but before he could fire, Elena's father cut him down with a shot to the throat, two more to the chest as he fell.

Pedro Quintana said to the man with the cap, who was holding his hands above his head, “Esteban, get down on your knees while I am deciding what to do with you.”

Esteban obeyed, dropping to his knees, keeping his hands up while facing Elena's father, and beseeching him in Spanish.

“Pedro, please. I have known you for twenty years. I named my oldest son for you. I was loyal, but Jorge, he threatened my family. I can prove myself. Elena, I'm sorry.
Por favor.
”

Elena walked around the dead man, who was bleeding on her fine Persian carpet where her children liked to play, and took the gun from her father's hand.

She aimed at Esteban and fired into his chest. He fell sideways, grabbed at his wound, and grunted,
“Dios.”

Elena shot him three more times.

When her husband's soldiers were dead, Elena made calls: First to Harlan to pick up the children immediately and keep them in the car. “Papa will meet you on the corner in five minutes. Wait for him. Take directions from him.”

Then she called the police and told them that she had shot two intruders who had attempted to murder her.

Her father stretched out his arms and Elena went in for a hug. Her father said, “Finish what we started. It's yours now, Elena.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

She went to the bar and poured out two drinks, gave one glass to her father.

They toasted. “Viva Los Toros.”

Their cartel would be at the top again.

This was the way it was always meant to be.

James Patterson
has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

Maxine Paetro
has collaborated with James Patterson on the bestselling Women's Murder Club and Private series. She lives with her husband in New York State.

Gary Soneji, the killer from
Along Came a Spider,
has been dead for more than ten years—but Cross swears he saw Soneji gun down his partner. Is Cross's worst enemy back from the grave?

Nothing will prepare you for the wicked truth.

 

Read on for a special excerpt from the riveting Alex Cross story, available only from

A late winter storm
bore down on Washington, DC, that March morning, and more folks than usual were waiting in the cafeteria of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School on Monroe Avenue in the northeast quadrant.

“If you need a jolt before you eat, coffee's in those urns over there,” I called to the cafeteria line.

From behind a serving counter, my partner, John Sampson, said, “You want pancakes or eggs and sausage, you come see me first. Dry cereal, oatmeal, and toast at the end. Fruit, too.”

It was early, a quarter to seven, and we'd already seen twenty-five people come through the kitchen, mostly moms and kids from the surrounding neighborhood. By my count, another forty were waiting in the hallway, with more coming in from outside where the first flakes were falling.

It was all my ninety-something grandmother's idea. She'd hit the DC Lottery Powerball the year before and wanted to make sure the unfortunate received some of her good fortune. She'd partnered with the church to see the hot-breakfast program started.

“Are there any doughnuts?” asked a little boy, who put me in mind of my younger son, Ali.

He was holding on to his mother, a devastatingly thin woman with rheumy eyes and a habit of scratching at her neck.

“No doughnuts today,” I said.

“What am I gonna eat?” he complained.

“Something that's good for you for once,” his mom said. “Eggs, bacon, and toast. Not all that Cocoa Puffs sugar crap.”

I nodded. Mom looked like she was high on something, but she did know her nutrition.

“This sucks,” her son said. “I want a doughnut. I want two doughnuts!”

“Go on, there,” his mom said, and pushed him toward Sampson.

“Kind of overkill for a church cafeteria,” said the man who followed her. He was in his late twenties and dressed in baggy jeans, Timberland boots, and a big gray snorkel jacket.

I realized he was talking to me and looked at him, puzzled.

“Bulletproof vest?” he said.

“Oh,” I said, and shrugged at the body armor beneath my shirt.

Sampson and I are major-case detectives with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Immediately after our shift in the soup kitchen, we were joining a team taking down a drug gang operating in the streets around St. Anthony's. Members of the gang had been known to take free breakfasts at the school from time to time, so we'd decided to armor up. Just in case.

I wasn't telling him that, though. I couldn't identify him as a known gangster, but he looked the part.

“I'm up for a PT test end of next week,” I said. “Got to get used to the weight since I'll be running three miles with it on.”

“That vest make you hotter or colder today?”

“Warmer. Always.”

“I need one of them,” he said, and shivered. “I'm from Miami, you know? I must have been crazy to want to come on up here.”

“Why did you come up here?” I asked.

“School. I'm a freshman at Howard.”

“You're not on the meal program?”

“Barely making my tuition.”

I saw him in a whole new light then, and was about to say so when gunshots rang out and people began to scream.