The Judge's List

Bannick makes his next move. He puts the three poems Jeri sent him referencing his murders in an envelope and hand-delivers them to her door.

Realizing Bannick has identified her, Jeri packs a bag and gun and flees, driving south. There is a car behind her, which seems strange because there is no other traffic, but when she turns north, the other car does not follow. In serious need of sleep, she pulls into a motel and gets a room.

Twenty minutes later, Bannick, following the tracker he planted on her car, pulls into the parking lot outside the motel. Breaking into their computer system, he finds Jeri’s room and books the one across the hall from her. He uses his spyware to disengage the electric locks on all the doors and cut off the electricity. He soaks a cloth in ether and slips into Jeri’s room. She barely has time to wake before Bannick has knocked her out. He carries her to his SUV and drives away.

Jeri wakes half-suffocating with a heavy cloth bag over her head. Her hands and ankles are secured. When Bannick sees she is awake, he pulls the bag off her head and releases the handcuffs securing her arms. He returns to the nearby fireplace and goes back to work burning a stack of office files. Jeri sees on the coffee table a coil of nylon rope with two sections cut off.

Bannick asks her why, if she knows who he is, she has not already killed him. She replies that she is not a killer, and he is not worth going to prison for; the important thing to her is that he knows she beat him. Everything she knows about him is in the hands of the police now.

Bannick wants to know how much Lacy knows about him, and Jeri claims ignorance as to how much Lacy might have uncovered in her own investigation. That leaves Bannick only one option: He must get his hands on Lacy and question her himself. Drawing a gun, he forces Jeri to telephone Lacy and convince her to come to the motel where Bannick found Jeri.

Bannick’s receptionist, Diana Zhang, is watching her son’s Little League game when an FBI agent draws her aside to question her about the judge. Diana has not seen him for two days. She thinks he might have returned to Santa Fe where he has been undergoing treatment for cancer, but she does not know the name of the treatment center.

Lacy receives a call from Clay Vidovich, one of the FBI agents on the case. They cannot find Bannick, and Clay warns Lacy that she needs to be extra careful of her safety. She should not be alone until they catch him. Unfortunately, Allie is away on a case, and her assistant Darren is on a getaway with his girlfriend.

She gets another phone call, this time from her brother Gunther. He offers to fly down for a visit, and exasperating as he is, Lacy is nevertheless comforted by the thought of having him around for company.

Gunther flies in and takes Lacy to lunch. She receives the call from Jeri, who tells her she found evidence that will prove Bannick’s guilt beyond question. Jeri does not want to convey the information over the phone. She asks Lacy to meet her at the hotel where—unbeknownst to Lacy—Bannick snatched her.

Excited by the news and reluctant to go alone, Lacy asks Gunther to go with her. Always up for a little excitement, Gunther is happy to come along.

Bannick stands over Jeri’s sleeping body debating whether to kill her. He hates her for putting an end to his game of murder, but he also admires her for her brains and determination in tracking him down. He gives her a shot of ketamine to keep her sleeping and goes to meet Lacy at the hotel. Driving away, he notices a couple of teenagers on ATVs.

Lacy and Gunther arrive at the motel and split up. Lacy goes straight to Jeri’s room. She knocks, and at that moment, the lights go out. Bannick lunges from his door across the hall, intending to subdue her with his ether-soaked cloth. Lacy manages to turn before Gunther barrels into them and pulls them both down. After a scuffle, Bannick manages to kick Gunther in the face and ribs, grab his laptop, and escape. When the dust settles, Lacy tries to call Jeri but gets no response.

Bannick heads back toward the cabin where he left Jeri, forcing himself to stick to the speed limit. Two miles from his destination, he is passed by two County Sheriff’s cars with lights flashing. He parks some distance from the cabin and approaches carefully. To his dismay, he finds the cabin surrounded by police vehicles. The two teenagers on ATVs waited until they were sure he was gone and then broke in with the hope of stealing something. Discovering Jeri unconscious, they called the police. A few hours later, Bannick is driving west.

The FBI launches a search of Bannick’s home and office. As far as they can tell, Bannick has not booked a flight to anywhere. His secretary does not know where he is, but there is a nationwide manhunt underway. They are sure they will catch him eventually.

Bannick stops long enough to send an envelope full of documents to Diana Zhang. Later, he arrives at a drug rehab facility in Texas that specializes, among other things, in the anonymity of its patients. He thoroughly wipes down his rental car to remove any prints and checks into the facility. In his room, he hides two sets of pills under a chest of drawers.

At the facility, Bannick enjoys a lavish breakfast and a magnificent sunrise. Returning to his room, he wipes everything down to remove fingerprints then removes the pills from under the chest of drawers. He fills the sink with acid, takes an overdose of oxycodone, then shoves all ten fingers in the acid. When his fingerprints have been burned away, he collapses on his bed and dies from the drug overdose.

At around the same time, Diana Zhang receives the FedEx envelope. It contains Bannick’s will and a letter designating her as his sole heir.

Lacy, Jeri, and Allie see Gunther off at the airport and go to meet with the FBI. The agents have not found anything in Bannick’s home or office. They start by praising Jeri’s work over the past 20 years. They take a statement from her and reiterate that, without her, no one would ever have connected the murders.

Jeri is anxious to get home, but her moods continue to vacillate between relief and a sense of incompletion. She struggles to imagine a life without her quarry. As much as she rejoices to have him out of her life, she is uncertain what she will do with the rest of it. She may not even bother to tell her daughter and brother that her father’s killer has been found. For her, the case will never be closed.

Bannick’s hands are too badly burned for fingerprints to be taken, but Clay Vidovich persuades Diana Zhang to let them remove his hands before the rest of the body is cremated.

Jeri continues to be relieved and inconsolable by turns. True, Bannick is out of her life; he will never kill again, and she is finally free of him. On the other hand, he will never be convicted for his crimes. In her mind, by dying on his own terms, he has gotten away with everything. She will never truly get justice for her father.

Lacy and the BJC team are happily retiring the Bannick case when they get another call from Jeri. Jeri has located the truck Bannick was driving the night he murdered Verno. It had been sold for parts. It might contain fingerprints. She talks Lacy into going with her to retrieve the truck.

Locating truck at the car lot, Lacy and Jeri start searching. In the glove box, they find a folder containing the owner’s manual and registration card. The FBI technicians who examine the papers find a few fingerprints and a thumbprint that matches the partial print they found on the phone.

During the conversation, Vidovich remarks again that they never would have caught the judge without Jeri’s work. At least they have stopped him; the FBI has several other active serial killers on their books.

Two weeks later, Lacy and Allie take a weekend at Key Largo. They stop to speak to the family of Mr. Kronke, letting them know that his killer has been identified and is now dead. Lacy mentions that Bannick was identified not by the FBI or the police but by an individual woman working alone. One of Kronke’s sons remarks that it sounds like the FBI should hire her

Later, Lacy and Allie go for a walk. They pass a small wedding chapel near the beach. Lacy remarks that it wouldn’t be a bad place for a wedding. Then she tells Allie that she reserved it for September 27. Allie asks why, and Lacy tells him that is the day they are getting married, and she will take the ring he was saving up to buy her. She decides they are going to quit their respective jobs and take a honeymoon in Europe, When they come back—assuming they come back—they will figure out what to do next.