Jubal planted his hands on his hips and nodded seriously. "Okay, we need the full file on Jimmy Barnett. And I want to talk to the entire courthouse security team."
Duncan Davis, the lone night-shift deputy, glanced awkwardly at his boss before hesitantly pointing at himself. "Uh… there is no team. It's just me. I'm the only one on duty at night."
Jubal stared at him for a long moment before finally processing the ridiculousness of the situation. "Alright… What about surveillance? There are cameras in the courthouse, right?"
Sheriff Simone Long scratched his nose, clearly uncomfortable, and answered for his deputy. "Not in the offices. But there are cameras in the second-floor hallways and at the entrances to the underground parking garage. The monitoring room is in the basement. I can take you there."
"Great. Alice and JJ, go with the Sheriff. We'll meet you there shortly."
Jubal turned back to the increasingly anxious deputy. "The courthouse has an ID card system, correct?"
"Oh, yeah. I can access it from my desk," Davis quickly confirmed, pointing toward his small security office just outside the DA's office.
"Aubrey, you're with me. The rest of you finish processing the scene and meet us in the monitoring room."
With their assignments clear, the team split up.
The crime scene processing was quick. Hanna retrieved evidence bags from the car, while Clive helped Jack carefully remove Hardy's tie—the murder weapon. It would be tested for DNA, in case the killer had left skin cells behind.
Fingerprint collection was left to the forensic team. While all the FBI agents were trained in crime scene work, they weren't forensic specialists, and they hadn't brought a full evidence kit.
Once they finished photographing the scene and securing the office, Jack led Hanna and Clive downstairs.
Thankfully, the courthouse had modern security cameras, not outdated VCR systems. The image quality was decent, but there were only a handful of cameras, mostly covering entrances and exits.
Jubal arrived at the monitoring room at the same time, bringing Duncan Davis with him.
"The last person to leave the courthouse last night was public defender Joanna Orr," Jubal announced, scanning the computer screen. "She clocked out at 12:30 a.m. But her records show she also left at 5:30 p.m. and returned twenty minutes later. She was here the entire night after that."
Duncan Davis tensed. "It can't be Joanna. That doesn't make sense."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Joanna Orr is over six feet tall and weighs more than 180 pounds?"
Davis shook his head so fast it looked comical. "Of course not! She's a… um… she's a very graceful woman."
Jack smirked. "Then it wasn't her. But someone may have used her ID."
Jubal glanced at Jack, then back at Davis. "Aubrey and a deputy are on their way to Joanna Orr's residence. She lives near the Walmart nearby."
"12:30 a.m., right? What car does Joanna drive?" Alice asked, still at the computer.
"A 2014 red Mazda," Davis replied instantly. Then he hesitated, looking sheepish.
Alice, an expert in reading body language, immediately recognized the signs. Another lovesick deputy. She suppressed an amused sigh.
"Then can you tell me who owns this black SUV?" Alice enlarged a frame from the security footage, showing a Chevy Tahoe pulling out of the parking garage.
The entire team perked up.
A black SUV had been used at the first crime scene—the drive-by shooting that killed the three assistant prosecutors outside the pool hall.
Davis squinted at the screen. "That's a… Tahoe? I—uh, a lot of people at the courthouse drive those." He was stalling.
Alice smiled politely. "Of course. Red Mazdas do tend to stand out more." She clicked again, zooming in on the SUV's license plate.
"All courthouse employees register their plates, right?"
"Yes, yes." Davis fumbled through the system, and within seconds, the name popped up. "Howard Roark."
"Who's that?" Alice asked.
Sheriff Long's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "Judge Roark! No way! He's one of our criminal court judges! His courtroom is upstairs!"
Jubal's expression darkened. "Get him on the phone. Now."
Sheriff Long wasted no time, stepping away to make the call.
At the same time, Jubal's own phone rang. Seeing Aubrey's name, he answered and put it on speaker.
"Aubrey, go ahead."
"We found Joanna Orr," Aubrey reported. "She says she never returned to the courthouse last night. She left in the afternoon and didn't go back.
However, someone bumped into her in the parking lot, and after that, she realized her courthouse ID was missing. She remembers who hit her."
Jubal didn't wait for him to finish. "Let me guess. Howard Roark?"
Aubrey hesitated before confirming. "…Yeah. That's what she said."
The room went silent.
Jubal sighed, looking around at his equally stunned colleagues. "So, the fugitive we're about to hunt down… is a sitting judge."
Calling this situation unusual was an understatement.
In America, judges held immense power. If the average person knew just how much, they'd be horrified.
While Jack and his team mostly dealt with jury trials for serious criminal cases, those were exceptions. The reality was that:
97% of all federal convictions 94% of all state convictions
…were decided through plea bargains, meaning no jury was involved. It was just lawyers negotiating directly with a judge.
One of the most infamous cases of judicial corruption was the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, where two judges had sold out over 4,000 children—some as young as 14—to for-profit prisons in exchange for kickbacks.
Their victims had been locked up for years over minor offenses—shoplifting, backtalking a principal, even just pranks.
The judges had eventually been convicted and sentenced to 28 years and 17.5 years in prison, along with over $206 million in fines.
But… none of their victims got a dime in compensation.
Why? Because the fines were personal penalties, not government-ordered restitution.
The two judges declared bankruptcy, dodged their payments, and—adding insult to injury—were quietly released after just a few years in prison.
Naturally, those who benefited most from America's wonderful legal system weren't too eager to see judges arrested.
"If we were dealing with a random corrupt judge, I'd say screw it. Let's pack up and go home," Jack muttered.
But Roark had killed a prosecutor. That made this an internal feud within the justice system itself—a dogfight among the elites.
And that was their opening.
Jubal had been on the phone for the past ten minutes, making calls to clear the arrest warrant. He finally hung up and exhaled.
"We're good. The higher-ups don't care what happens to Roark. They just don't want this turning into a scandal."
Jack grinned. "So, we definitely shouldn't screw this up and let him escape."
Jubal gave him a long, tired look. "Jack. I swear to God."
(End of Chapter)
[Get +20 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Mutter"]
[Every 100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]