Read Online Backfire by Catherine Coulter - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t he come out from his hidey-hole to make sure Ramsey was dead? No, what the shooter wanted was to kill Ramsey, and didn’t care too much if he missed with that rock. In the grand scheme of things, that attempt to sneer at us, to misdirect us, or whatever, wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t find the rock. So what?”
    Everyone chewed on that. Harry said, “Okay, one shooter, then. I can’t get over the timing—Ramsey postponed the trial and he gets shot. It’s got to be the Cahills behind this, or someone they’re involved with. The timing makes it too coincidental, and I, for one, don’t believe in coincidences.”
    “I don’t, either,” Savich said. “But as Sherlock pointed out, a stranger couldn’t predict Ramsey would be standing out here exactly when he needed him to, and so someone’s been studying him for at least a week, I’d say.”
    Eve rubbed her hands over her arms. “Someone who followed him around for a week? That’s hard to take in.”
    Harry said, “Okay, say it isn’t the Cahills. But the timing is still what it is—even if it was planned for some time, someone may be cashing in on a wonderful opportunity, since the Cahills are hanging over the crime scene like a black cloud.”
    “Judge Hunt closing down the trial was mentioned on the local news at noon yesterday,” Eve said. “If someone had already planned to kill him, they moved very fast.”
    “There’s another big question with the Cahills,” Savich said. “The way it looks now, there’ll be a mistrial because the federal prosecutor may have been compromised, and now he’s missing. Ramsey’s being shot doesn’t change that. It will all begin again for them, with a different set of players.”
    Eve said, “Molly said that was one of the first things out of Ramsey’s mouth when he woke up. Why shoot him? A judge’s job is to be impartial, unlike the prosecutor who’d spent months preparing for the trial. What difference did it make to the Cahills who was sitting up there in the black robe?”
    Eve looked over at the crime scene tape that marked where Ramsey had fallen. “Whoever it was made one big fat mistake.”
    Everyone looked at her.
    “The shooter didn’t manage to kill Ramsey. He failed. Now what’s he going to do? Try again? If it was the Cahills who targeted Ramsey, for whatever reason, they’ve already won, because he’s out of the picture for the near future. What if it was someone else?”
    “That’s why we’ve got to protect him, Eve,” Harry said.
    “No one will hurt Judge Ramsey Hunt on my watch,” Eve said. “No one.”
    Sherlock said, “I’ll be checking on the Zodiac, and Cheney has feelers out for any word about a shooter for hire.”
    “We need to talk to the Cahills,” Eve said. “Regardless, they’re certainly people of interest. It’s a place to start.”

Judge Sherlock’s home
    Pacific Heights, San Francisco
    Friday evening
    Sherlock’s eyes were closed as she listened to Emma play George Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue
on her parents’ magnificent Bösendorfer grand piano, which had been purchased for Sherlock when she was about Emma’s age. When Emma hit the final notes, there was a long moment of silence, then applause, Sherlock’s parents the loudest.
    “It’s been too long since I’ve listened to you play,” Judge Corman Sherlock said. “Thank you, Emma.”
    Harry couldn’t believe what he had just heard. An eleven-year-old kid, her thick dark brown hair veiling her face, had knocked his socks off. How could those small hands play with such passion and purity, even reach all those racing chords, those endless runs and trills?
    Evelyn Sherlock was still smiling. “That was grand, Emma. Thank you for the preview. We’ll be there to hear you at the symphony, of course.”
    Emma gave them a small smile, but it soon fell away. “I don’t know how well I’ll play with Daddy in the hospital.” She looked down at her clasped hands. “He smiled at me this