Read Fighting Chance: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian series Book 29) for Free Online

camera lens was a little drop of something that looked like coagulated plastic, or maybe paint.
    There were a lot of reasons why someone might put black paint over a security camera’s lens. They could want to keep the camera from recording anything definite, without shutting it off completely, which might be noticed. But the act of painting might be noticed, because there were so many other cameras. Even if you were painting the lenses of every one, the others you hadn’t gotten to yet would record your progress.
    She made herself pick up speed. She was wearing tie shoes with soft soles, but she could still hear her own steps— slap slap slap, pound pound pound.
    She forced herself along, looking at the lens of each security camera she found. They all had that flat look, but now Janice knew that somebody had deliberately put black paint over the lenses of every single camera.
    Janice reminded herself that most things that looked like they had been done by the deep forces of conspiracy hadn’t been. That was another way the oppressors kept the oppressed in line. All you had to do was to start thinking you were crazy. If you were crazy, then everything you saw was an illusion. It wouldn’t be just the paint on the camera lenses that was a delusion. It would be everything everywhere.
    This leg of the corridor was short. There was another turn, and Janice found herself right at the edge of a long row of doors. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so relieved.
    She strode up to the closest one as quickly as she could. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob and found it turned without trouble. She looked at the nameplate by the door. It said MARILYN ALLEGETTI, but gave no other identification.
    Janice opened the door and looked inside. It was an ordinary office. There was a desk with a little L to the side, where the computer sat. There were some bookshelves. There were some chairs. It could have belonged to anybody, doing anything.
    Janice closed the door and stood very still. This corridor was not uninhabited. She could feel it. She could hear it.
    She could hear breathing.
    She went down the hall a little farther, stopping at each door and listening. Mostly what she heard was nothing. The names on the doors meant nothing.
    The name on the door in the middle of the line was finally one she recognized: JUDGE HANDLING, just like that. No first name. The other women in the corridor must be some kind of assistants. At any rate, they wouldn’t be judges.
    Janice stopped in front of Martha Handling’s door and listened some more. There was definitely breathing. It sounded labored and quick, unhealthy. Maybe Martha was in there having a heart attack. Maybe Martha was in there drinking.
    The breathing came on and on, heavy and shallow and rapid all at once. Janice rapped against the door as loudly as she could.
    For a moment, the breathing stopped.
    Only seconds later, it started up again.
    Maybe Martha was having a heart attack.
    Janice gripped the doorknob and twisted. The door swung open soundlessly, the hinges so well oiled, the door felt as if it had no weight.
    The two people in the room were both on the floor, and in the first few seconds, Janice recognized neither of them.
    Then the blood on the floor and the wall and the desk came into focus and the bloody gash in the side of the head came next.
    Janice would have screamed, but she was wondering if the white stuff all over the edge of the wound was brains.
    7
    Father Tibor Kasparian had not screamed, and was not screaming. He was sitting where he had been for the last four minutes, one hand holding Judge Handling’s heavy custom gavel, the other lying in the blood that covered both his knees.
    The room smelled of blood. Father Tibor knew the smell of blood. It had a hard metallic edge.
    It laughed at you.
    He wondered who the woman was who had come through the door. He wondered why she wasn’t screaming.
    Then he told himself that there