Finally, as the deputy let me out of the courthouse, I called Braxton. The call went to voice mail, but after a moment he called me back.
His voice was breathless, his excitement palpable. It was as if he’d forgotten that during the trial I’d done everything I could to humiliate and anger him on the stand, attempting to draw moral equivalence between the Aryan Brotherhood and the FBI agent to whom I was now turning for help in my time of need. “Bo Wilder’s dead. He was assassinated in San Quentin forty minutes ago.”
“I know.” I was walking fast through the chilly evening, blind with terror, my legs directing me toward my apartment. “I can’t get hold of my family,” I said. Frantically, I explained about sending my family to Anaheim during the trial, and then about Sims’s call this evening, revealing that he knew where they were.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Braxton said with the self-assurance of a man for whom “collateral damage” was just another cost of doing business. “Taking out Bo Wilder in a preemptive strike wasn’t the solution to his problems. It’s only the beginning. The organization is fractured now. Sims has no choice but to continue on this course. He has to eliminate each and every one of his rivals before they succeed in taking him out. For tonight, at least, he’s too busy to be settling personal scores.”
“But he knows where my family is, and they’re not answering.”
My voice sounded hysterical even to my own ears. And now, suddenly, I wondered again about what I’d argued to the jury, though I hadn’t believed the words as I spoke them: that Sims was the real informant, protected by Braxton to the point of being shielded from responsibility for numerous detestable crimes. Including, perhaps, my father’s murder.
“I’ve had an agent keeping an eye on your family all week,” Braxton revealed. “If Sims shows up there, it’ll be his last stop on the way to jail.”
I felt a surge of gratitude and relief that overwhelmed my doubts. Even in my distress, the double standard of my position wasn’t lost on me. Whatever suspicions I might have about Braxton’s motivations, no matter how viciously I’d attacked him in the courtroom, I had no choice but to trust the FBI agent with my family’s lives on the line, and I was more than willing to do so.
“Call your agent now!” I told him as I quickened the pace of my walking. “Have him check on them. I’ve contacted Anaheim PD, but who knows how long it’ll take them to send a car around. Please!”
“You’re asking me to blow my agent’s cover. I’m not going to do that. He’s not there as a bodyguard to protect your family. He’s there to spring the trap.”
I realized the full implications of what he was saying. “Are you telling me that you’ve been using my family as bait?”
“Protection wasn’t part of our deal. You had the chance to go that way, but you wanted to play your own hand. Ever hear the term ‘moral hazard’?”
“Just have your man look in on them. He doesn’t need to blow his cover.”
I hesitated before adding another heartfelt “Please.”
I was nearly back to my apartment. Once there, I’d have to decide what to do next. My impulse was to rent a car and drive all night, arriving in Anaheim before morning at best. I knew, however, that such a trip would accomplish nothing. If Teddy and his family were in trouble, I was already too late.
Braxton reluctantly promised to have his agent pretend to deliver a pizza. “It’s a developing situation, so if you don’t hear back from me, just assume no news is good news,” he said. “In the meantime, try to get some sleep.”
CHAPTER 23
What Braxton had suggested was impossible. With a jury out, Bo Wilder dead in prison, and Sims making threats against my family, there was no chance of my shutting my eyes even for a minute.
I hadn’t been back to my apartment all week, but, now, my half measures seemed foolish. Anyone who’d wanted to get to me could easily have done so by following me from the courthouse. The undeniable fact was that I’d survived the week. Even now, when my betrayal of Sims’s instructions had become crystal clear, I’d arrived home unmolested, finding the apartment just as I’d left it, dirty laundry on the floor and dishes in the sink.
Sims was four hundred miles away. I hadn’t for a second believed that my family was safe, as Braxton had claimed. This left me pacing back and forth, debating what to do, when my phone vibrated again.
“Mr. Maxwell?” It was an unfamiliar voice, emotionless but out of breath.
“Who is this?”
“Detective Jacobs. Anaheim PD.”
Something in his voice told me it was bad. “Have you found my family?”
“We’re at the condo now. We’ve got one dead, one wounded, door’s wide open. I’m sorry, Mr. Maxwell, but right now we’re dealing with an emergency situation. I need to know who did this and where you think he is.”
“One dead,” I repeated, stunned beyond comprehension. All I could think of was my father and Dot. Teddy and Tamara.
Carly.
“Two white males,” the detective clarified. “No ID yet.”
“Describe them,” I said, my voice hoarse. I didn’t want to know, but I had to.
“The deceased, mid-forties, thin, full tattoo sleeves. Shot through the forehead.”
Car. It had to be. I saw the scene as vividly as if I’d been there to discover it, and I knew it was my fault, that I’d forced him into a situation that went against his better judgment, making him a perfect target. My insides gave a terrible heave, and I had to spit on the rug to keep from throwing up. Car, loyal to the end, had paid the ultimate price.
The detective was speaking again.
“The other—younger, in his twenties, very fit. They’re taking him into surgery as we speak.”
I felt a surge of shameful relief. Not Teddy, then. It had to be the FBI agent Braxton had mentioned, the one who’d been sent in to check on my family.
“What about the others?” My lips felt numb. I was barely able to form the words. “There should be a woman, and a heavyset man in his late forties. And a little girl.”
“Seems they must have left in a hurry. There’s kids’ stuff here, but no kid.”
“You’ve got to find them,” I urged. “They have to be nearby. He has them.”
“So, help me. That’s what I called you for. Who are we looking for?”
“Jack Sims is the man who did this. As for the casualties, the wounded one is probably an FBI agent. He works for a man named Braxton, who’s based out of the field office here.” I began explaining about Sims’s ties to the Aryan Brotherhood.
Then a beep sounded in my ear.
It was Braxton.
“I’ve got to take this,” I said, and switched calls without letting the cop get in another word. Before Braxton could explain what was happening, I told him I was on the phone with the Anaheim PD.
“I’m getting on a chopper in a few minutes,” he said. “Something went very wrong tonight. I have a man in the hospital, but my first priority is finding your family and bringing them home alive. The minute we have a lead on their location, you’ll hear from me immediately. In the meantime, we’re sending an agent to you. Our best hope is that Sims will contact you in order to communicate some kind of demand, something we can at least work with as the start of a negotiation.”
“What if he doesn’t?” I asked. “What if he has something else in mind?”
I imagined Sims driving my family far from the scene of Car’s murder in Anaheim, Teddy and Tamara bound in the back of a nondescript van, Carly terrified, all of them becoming more irretrievably lost to me with each minute that passed.
“He’s no fool. He doesn’t want to end up dead at the end of the day. Being the top dog is still his foremost goal, and he knows even the AB would shun him if he hurt a woman and her child. All I can promise you, Maxwell, is that we’ll do everything we can. Now give me the name of the cop down there who contacted you, please.”
I did, then switched back to the cop in Anahe
im. I answered a few more questions, including describing the van I’d ridden in the day Sims grabbed me. But it soon became obvious that I had no specific information that could help them find my brother and his family. So he ended the call, promising to update me “as soon as we know anything definite.”
Bracing for a sleepless night, I paced up and down in my apartment, my fear mounting like a gasoline fire. At last I picked up my phone and called Jeanie.
She stood at the window, not wanting me to see her cry, or so I figured. A few inches taller than I was, with wispy brown-blond hair and a beauty that was in her attitude and intellect rather than in any summation of features, Jeanie was the first woman I’d ever kissed. It had happened just once, under extraordinary circumstances when I was fifteen, the moment coming back to me now, surfacing randomly through the raw storm of our shared grief and terror.
“You’re sure he’s dead?” she asked in a desolated voice that told me her thoughts and memories were in an entirely different place from mine.
Jeanie and Car had been lovers after her marriage to Teddy collapsed. Though no one had more right to be shocked by my brother’s transformation into a family man than Jeanie, her pleasure at Teddy’s newfound happiness with Tamara was clearly genuine. The tangled threads of her personal and professional life must have made tonight’s news all the more devastating.
“There’s been no official notification. I had a call from one of the officers responding to the scene, describing a body with full tattoo sleeves, and nothing since then. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s him. Car was there. I’m so sorry, Jeanie.”
“And now you’re telling me it’s the man we saw at the baseball game that did this.”
She turned, and I now saw that it wasn’t grief she’d been seeking to conceal by facing away, but, rather, a ferocious anger at me.
“Jack Sims,” I said, forcing myself to hold her gaze.
“You knew what he was and what he wanted the day he took Carly, and you didn’t go to the police. You even kept her kidnapping a secret from me. You knew something like tonight was a possibility, and now look what’s happened.”
“I thought they’d be safe if they were out of town. Car didn’t want to be ‘babysitting,’ as he called it, but I reminded him of everything Teddy’s done for him. I thought he could protect them—and I was wrong. It’s my fault.”
“You’re goddamn right it’s your fault,” she said, taking a step toward me as if she wanted to beat me with her fists. Instead, she grabbed me in both arms, wrapping them around me and squeezing me until the breath sighed out of me.
We stood that way for a long time, each holding the other in a fierce grip, like wrestlers grappling, or like two survivors of the storm that might yet rip us apart. At last Jeanie stepped back, wiping her eyes. “It’s a terrible thing to feel so helpless. I can’t believe there’s nothing we can do except wait for them to call and let us know the others are dead. If they even find the bodies …”
I wasn’t ready for this kind of talk. I hadn’t yet told Jeanie about Braxton, but now I did, explaining my father’s secret life working for the FBI behind bars, the FBI agent’s apparent loyalty toward Lawrence and my family. I also told her about Braxton’s conviction that Sims wasn’t suicidal, nor likely to sabotage his bid to take over the AB by harming a woman and child.
Jeanie listened with skepticism, deep in thought, processing the situation with her sharply analytical mind.
“I always figured Lawrence was hiding something. I just never guessed that any secret your father was keeping would raise my opinion of him.”
“He was a brave man; Teddy was right about him. There are so many things I’d like now to be able to ask him, so many things I’d like to say. But I’m never going to have that chance. Anyway. Braxton thinks Lawrence died because he confronted Sims, not because he was exposed as an informant.”
My doorbell rang. It was a young woman, Agent Sessions, dispatched by Braxton. I surrendered my cell phone and my kitchen table, where she spread out the equipment she’d need to monitor any call that came in.
Jeanie and I paced in despair as it became apparent my phone wasn’t going to ring with news of a miraculous rescue. Of course, we hadn’t really expected such a call. Better no news, I reminded myself, than the tragedy I feared most.
At last, hoping we could each get a few hours of sleep, I made up the couch for Jeanie. At my request, she’d showed up with a suit so that she could take my place if needed to receive the jury’s verdict tomorrow.
I lay fully clothed on my bed, listening to Jeanie toss and turn and to Agent Sessions’s restless movements, until, as usual, my alarm went off at six.
CHAPTER 24
When Jeanie and I arrived in court at nine, Sloane was already sitting at the prosecutor’s table. She glanced at me with wan sympathy but didn’t say anything, her gaze communicating that she knew what was happening. I spoke to Judge Ransom’s clerk, informing her that I had a family emergency and might need Jeanie to stand in for me. The jury was deliberating, the clerk informed us. Now that we’d checked in, we were free to leave, provided that we were able to appear back in court at a maximum of ten minutes’ notice.
After checking in briefly with Alice Ward, who was being kept in the holding cell adjoining the courtroom, Jeanie and I walked quickly to my office. Once there, she collapsed in my wing chair with her laptop, looking unbearably stressed as she sent emails and made phone calls to clear her calendar for the rest of the week. I paced from window to window. Normally the source of my anxiety would have been the jury deliberating six blocks away. Today, Alice Ward’s fate hardly entered my thoughts.
I checked in with Braxton, who had nothing to report. They were running down every lead they could think of, he said. In the meantime, our best hope was that Sims would make contact with me. However, the assurances Braxton offered were empty, and his voice, offering them, sounded grim.
Jeanie knew the basic contours of Alice Ward’s case from the news reports. I’d also explained the role Agent Braxton had played in the judicial theater we’d concocted, with such disastrous and tragic results. She passed the morning reading over the news stories about the trial, including reading aloud to me the Chronicle piece quoting an FBI spokesperson who said that Braxton’s testimony was “unauthorized in substance.”
“Who knew where they were staying, other than the three of them, you, and Car?” Jeanie set her laptop aside.
“Just Braxton. Last night, when I couldn’t reach them, I called him, and he revealed he had a man watching the condo in case Sims tried anything. I asked him to have the agent check on them. He was the other one, along with Car, who ended up taking a bullet.”
“So Braxton knew. And somehow Sims found out where they were.”
Her point was all the more forceful for being unsaid. Again my thoughts circled the theory I’d argued to the jury, that Sims, not Edwards, had been the informant Braxton had been protecting all these years. But certainly Braxton wouldn’t have sacrificed my family, nor would he have sent his own agent to be gunned down. Even if he hadn’t intended the outcome, however, it was plausible he’d deliberately used them as bait to lure Sims, just as he’d implied last night.
“We could talk to his superiors,” Jeanie suggested. “From the quote in this article, it sounds as if Justice isn’t happy about his testimony in your trial. He blindsided them. Clearly, he’s comfortable bending the rules. If you raise a stink, you could possibly get him taken off the case.”
I considered this for a brief moment before shaking my head. “He knows the AB better than anyone else. I know it looks bad, but I can’t believe he’d sacrifice my family to protect Sims on something like this. We’ve just to got to wait for his call.”
When a call did come, however, it was not from Braxton, but from Judge Ransom’s clerk. “We have a verdict,” she said.
For a long moment, my mind couldn’t attach this word to its context. I’d been expecting Braxton’s voice, an
d I’d anticipated instructions that would bring us closer, one way or another, to answers about my family’s fate. The trial had become an afterthought. I was even irritated by this demand on my attention.
Jeanie and I gathered our things and walked briskly to the courthouse.
“What’s going on?” Alice Ward whispered when the deputies brought me out. “I heard Sims has your family—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish.
“All rise,” a deputy called as Judge Ransom took the bench.
“All right, let’s bring the jury in,” he said, clearly impatient to be finished with this ordeal of a trial, and, more pertinently, to be relieved of his responsibility for these jurors who’d been sequestered because of the threats of a dangerous man. A man who, it now seemed, was all too willing to carry out such threats.
My client was renewing her whispered plea for information, but I shushed her, prodding her to rise. The deputy was bringing the jurors out. Tired-looking, the twelve filed into the box, several glancing somberly at my client as they mounted the steps.
Despite the consuming urgency of events outside the courtroom, my heart had started to speed up with a familiar rush of adrenaline, the world telescoping as time slowed down in anticipation of a verdict.
The forewoman, a pharmacist—a profession I normally associated with hostility toward the defense—passed the verdict form to the bailiff, who in his turn presented it to the judge. Ransom glanced at the form and handed it to the bailiff to read.
“We, the jury, find Alice Ward not guilty,” the bailiff intoned.
I waited for him to go on, assuming this was just the verdict on the first-degree murder charge. I figured that in a moment we’d hear that she’d been found guilty of manslaughter, an outcome I’d have chalked up as a win, the best possible result I’d predicted coming into the case. However, the bailiff now handed the verdict form to the clerk and returned to his desk. In a shocked voice, Sloane asked for the jury to be polled, and each of the jurors echoed the verdict the bailiff had read. Not guilty. Not guilty.
Wolf's Revenge Page 20
