SCOTUS: A Powerplay Novel

by Selena Laurence

  Silence greeted her accusation, and she wondered for a moment if the connection had been dropped.

  “You don’t have any proof,” Brice gritted out.

  “But Teague Roberts does,” she answered.

  “So you do know him.

  “I do. And I know that you’ve had a hard-on for him all this time. Is it because he’s black that you want to annihilate him in the press? Or you really believe that a bunch of sensationalist crap about a SCOTUS nominee will move enough papers for you to keep your little dictatorship?”

  “You’re fired,” he growled.

  “That’s fine. I already packed up my things, but I’ve also left a letter for the editorial board telling them about what you’ve been up to the last few weeks. If you haven’t yet crossed an ethical line you’re well on the way to doing it. They have a right to know just how far you’d go to sell a few more papers.”

  She pressed End, then before she could lose the nerve, she clicked on her contacts and hit the fifth one on the list.

  “Hey,” Marcus’s friendly voice came through the speakers. “You missed a hell of a press conference at the White House today. Where were you?”

  “You know how you’re always saying I should move to cable?” she asked. “I think I’m ready.”

  Marcus chuckled. “Good, because I think we might be looking for a new investigative reporter.”

  Deanna sat in the chair, watching the monitors blinking above Roland’s head. The rasping sound of his labored breaths sent a chill through her. Dammit. She’d been waiting for his attorney for seven hours now. The woman was on her way from Los Angeles, a six-hour drive at best, and with California traffic, it could easily become much longer. The problem being that Deanna was genuinely afraid Roland wouldn’t survive that long.

  She’d been shocked to find that he was in the prison infirmary when she arrived to see him. Neither he nor his attorney had contacted her to let her know that he’d contracted pneumonia and had been in the infirmary for close to ten days. He was being given the standard course of antibiotics, nebulizer treatments, and oxygen, but it was clear to Deanna that something else needed to be done. The prison doctor, however, refused to admit what he was doing wasn’t working. There wasn’t money or staff for any “alternative” treatments. The prisons followed standard treatment plans according to diagnosis, and that was all they would do.

  And then there was Teague. His flight was arriving in about twelve hours, and he was expecting to see his brother, pour out his soul, and hopefully start the process of being forgiven. She couldn’t tell him that Roland might not be here when he arrived, on top of everything he’d just been through, she couldn’t bear to give him this kind of news over the phone. No matter how strong he was, no man should have to go through what he had in the last few days. Because of that, she’d been avoiding his calls all day. If she could just get him to California, stand and face him, touch him, hold him. Then she could break the news. Then she could make sure the news didn’t break him.

  Finally, she shot off a quick text indicating that she was caught in traffic and would talk to him later. She felt sick with guilt.

  Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked down at it, hoping that it wasn’t Teague yet again. But it was Roland’s attorney, and she breathed a sigh of relief that she must finally be here, coming in through security, which could take up to thirty minutes.

  “Hello?” she said softly, watching Roland for any signs that she was disturbing him. But he was still unconscious as he had been the entire time she’d been there.

  “Ms. Forbes?” The attorney’s voice was weak on the other end of the call.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but I’ve been in an auto accident.”

  Deanna’s heart sank to her stomach. “Oh my goodness. Are you okay?”

  The attorney assured her that she would be fine, although she was in the hospital for twenty-four hours of observation due to a concussion. She had called a colleague at her firm to come in her place, but he couldn’t leave LA until the morning, meaning he wouldn’t be there until late the next afternoon at best.

  Deanna ended the call and slumped in the chair, watching those blasted lights on the monitors. She’d watched Roland’s pulse ox levels diminish over the course of the day, and his pulse had slowed as well. He wasn’t getting better.

  “Excuse me,” she said, approaching the glass-walled office where the prison physician sat doing paperwork.

  “Yes, Ms. Forbes,” the doctor said wearily.

  “I’m very concerned about Mr. Smith’s condition. He’s not improving. His pulse ox is continuing to decrease, and his pulse has slowed over the last two hours.”

  The doctor looked up from his desk and raised one eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware you had a medical degree as well.”

  She sighed. “You know that I don’t, but I know the basics, and anyone with eyes can see that Roland isn’t improving.”

  The doctor’s stony countenance finally cracked a touch. “Ms. Forbes, I’m very sorry, I really am. This isn’t a hospital, though. I don’t have access to anything but the standard medications and treatments. We have routine treatments that we give so that we’re humane in our treatment of the prisoners, but we can’t do the things for them that a hospital on the outside could.”

  She nodded. “I understand that, and I realize it’s not your fault, but his attorney can’t be here for another twenty-four hours at least, and the warden won’t send him to a hospital without his attorney filing the request. Roland might not be alive by this time tomorrow.”

  The doctor looked at her, his face carefully neutral. Finally, he said softly, “I’m permitted to have outside physicians come to see the inmates if an inmate’s family can pay for it.” He looked at her with a weighted stare.

  “Okay, yes, I can work with that,” she said, hope rearing its pretty little head for the first time all day. “Do you know of a good doctor in the area?”

  He sighed. “I’m afraid that part’s up to you, Ms. Forbes. Once you’ve found someone, just give me their name, and I’ll have it sent to the gates so they can be processed. But I’d suggest you hurry. It’s nearly five o’clock. Most medical offices will be closing soon.”

  Deanna gritted her teeth and went back to Roland’s bed, pulling out her iPad and connecting to the prison’s Wi-Fi in order to look for local doctors. It was 4:50 p.m., and her nerves were frayed as she searched. But she didn’t know the area, she didn’t know the doctors, and without reading through ratings and descriptions of their practices, it was impossible to tell who was a good candidate. It was now 4:55. She was never going to be able to find someone. Tears threatened as Roland took a particularly rattling breath.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Roland. I promised I’d always take care of you, and look at this.”

  Then it came to her, like a bolt of lightning. She knew one of the foremost pulmonologists on the East Coast, and if he got into his private plane in an hour, he could be there before midnight. And he would know exactly what the most current treatments for pneumonia were. He could bring medication with him. Hell, he could bring an entire medical team with him if he needed it.

  She took a deep breath, looked at Roland, then at her phone, Teague’s latest text still filling the screen. Dammit, she hadn’t spent the last ten years watching out for Roland and missing Teague to fuck this up now.

  She swiped the phone screen and tapped in the number she still knew by heart. “Dad?” she said, “It’s Deanna. I need you.”

  Chapter 18

  Teague anxiously waited for the passengers in the rows before him to deplane. Even in business class, he felt like there were a thousand people ahead of him. His nerves were strung taut as a zip line, and he struggled to stand still. He also had the sense that more than one of his fellow passengers had recognized him. It was a sensation that was foreign to him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  When he finally m
ade his way through the airport, he texted Dee to tell her he was on his way to the prison. She didn’t respond, which concerned him, but she’d been mostly uncommunicative since she’d left for California, so he decided he’d deal with it when he got to her. He hoped that she wasn’t trying to hide his brother’s antipathy from him, but he wouldn’t be surprised to arrive at San Quentin and discover Roland had refused to see him.

  The drive from the Oakland airport took ninety minutes, but he was glad he’d chosen to drive himself. It gave his nerves an outlet, his hands and feet something to do. As he pulled up to the enormous prison complex, he was struck by the contradictions. It sat on the edge of San Francisco Bay, a lovely setting for a distinctly ugly place. The grounds were a compilation of different architectural styles built at various times. The biggest, main portion of the compound was Spanish Mission style like so many other buildings in California—red-tile roofs and light stucco walls.

  He parked his rental car in the small strip parking lot that lay along the western edge of the peninsula that held the prison. Then he began the lengthy and disconcerting process of entering a maximum security facility—past the razor wire, the guard towers, the armed personnel, the layers of chain-link fencing, the fingerprinting, the paperwork, the ID checks, and finally, the sliding doors as a guard walked alongside him.

  The guard was silent as he led Teague across a small yard between the main offices and the solitary confinement block. The prison held one of the most severe units in the country. Known for the extreme conditions in which the prisoners in this area were kept, the solitary confinement block was as depressing and as harsh a place as any Teague had ever seen.

  Outside the block, they passed a batch of what looked like large dog kennels—seven feet high, ten feet long, eight feet wide. Each was topped with razor wire and sported a rolling electronic gate that locked with a three-inch-thick bolt. Teague knew that this was where they exercised the men who lived in his brother’s block, prisoners who were believed to be such serious offenders that they couldn’t be let into the yard with the other prisoners. Roland and the other solitary confinement inmates were placed in the cages to walk in circles for an hour each day—like dogs in an animal shelter. He shuddered as bile rose in this throat.

  He imagined Deanna coming here multiple times now, and wondered again at her devotion, her courage, and her tenacity.

  They entered a concrete-block building and checked in with another guard. Then his escort led him down a hallway that didn’t house cells but rather small offices and what looked to be medical examination rooms. Teague’s brow furrowed in confusion. He’d expected to meet with Roland in a visitation room, but none of these appeared to be for visitors.

  Then the guard opened a door to one of those examination rooms, and Teague strode through and froze in place, all the worst pieces of his life zooming in on one another until they exploded in a haze of shards like a windshield shattering in a violent auto crash.

  Because there in front of him was his brother lying motionless in a hospital bed as Deanna stood next to it looking distraught while her father, the man who had ruined Teague’s life all those years ago, bent over Roland, injecting him with something.

  Deanna’s gaze found his immediately, and her mouth opened, but before she could say a word, his adrenaline and his sense of self-preservation kicked in.

  “Teague!” she cried as he turned and strode out of the room, his heart pumping as though it might burst out of his chest.

  He heard her call after him again, but then there were the sounds of others—talking, shouting, and Deanna’s voice growing farther away. He strode down the hallway, one step short of running, the guard who’d escorted him telling him to slow down the whole way. At one point the man’s hand was on his arm, and he heard the warning, “Sir, you need to stop walking now or we’ll have to restrain you.”

  But then he was at the door out of the building, back to that dusty yard full of kennels for humans. The guard caught him in the doorway, and he struggled, his adrenaline so high, he couldn’t have stopped himself. And finally, as the two of them stumbled into the yard, the guard gritted out, “You’re not leaving me a choice here,” and took him down. When Teague finally stopped moving, it was with his face in the dirt, his thousand-dollar suit ground into the pale dust, his lip split and spilling blood on the soil that his brother had walked across each day for the last fifteen years.

  An hour later, the door to the waiting room he sat in opened, and the prison warden strode in, putting out his hand.

  “Mr. Roberts? I’m Warden Jansen.”

  Teague shook the other man’s hand cautiously. Because for the first time in his life, he was a black man on the wrong side of the law, and he wasn’t sure how to play that role.

  “How are you feeling?” the warden asked. “Did they do okay cleaning that lip up?”

  Teague nodded. “Everything seems to be in working order.”

  “Good. You want to come with me?”

  Teague followed along as they left the waiting room and began to walk down a long tile-floored hallway.

  “I’m sorry you were injured. Please believe me that it wasn’t anyone’s intention. My staff rarely lays hands on anyone who’s not an inmate, but needless to say, no one can walk around the facility without an escort, so when you refused to slow down as he requested…” The warden’s voice faded away, and he watched Teague.

  Teague nodded stiffly. “I understand. And I apologize for being impulsive. I was shocked by seeing my brother ill, in addition to being treated by a doctor who is anything but a friend to my family.”

  The warden nodded. “You’re not the first person to have an adverse reaction to seeing your family member incarcerated.”

  Teague realized that they were making their way toward the exit to the facility. He slowed, his wariness increasing.

  “So, where’s my brother now?”

  “He’s still in the infirmary. Roland has contracted a very serious case of pneumonia. Dr. Forbes was flown in by his daughter to care for Roland when the treatments we have available weren’t effective.”

  Teague’s head spun with the information and the emotions it all triggered in him, but he pushed it aside, focusing on what he’d come for. “So may I see him now?”

  The warden gave him a sad shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Roberts, but we have a rule that visitors who violate policy aren’t allowed back in the facility for forty-eight hours.”

  “What?” Teague snapped, nearly losing his cool again.

  “It’s written policy. Not up to my discretion. Trust me, if I could overrule it, I would. Your brother is one of the best inmates we have here. He’s very popular with the guards and administration. For him to have a chance to see his brother, especially at a time like this, well, we want that for him as much as you do.”

  “A time like this?” Teague asked quietly.

  “His pneumonia’s very bad, Mr. Roberts. We’re not sure he’ll make it until morning.”

  Deanna paced the small hotel room as she waited for Teague. If she could wish hard enough, maybe he would appear like magic. Of course, what she would do with him once he did appear, she wasn’t sure. And truthfully, she didn’t even know if he would come to the room she’d reserved for both of them when they’d planned the trip. The prison warden had let her know when Teague was released and told to leave the prison for forty-eight hours, but she’d been too late to catch him as he peeled out of the parking lot in his rental car.

  She tried texting and calling. Now all she knew to do was wait here and hope that he’d come to her.

  Meanwhile, her father was still at the prison, watching over Roland all night, doing everything he could to keep inmate number 70991-32 from dying. She wondered if Roland would be grateful if he survived this, or if he’d wish they’d just let him go.

  The electronic locking mechanism on the door clicked and the door swung open, revealing a shell-shocked Teague. A small sob left her lips before
she moved toward him. He stepped into the room but put his hand out.

  “Don’t. Not right now.”

  She stopped, frozen in place, her body a coiled spring of anticipation and fear.

  “Teague, let me explain—”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t think that the fact my brother might be dying was something I needed to know?”

  “Of course I did—”

  “Yet, I got on that plane not having heard a word from you.”

  She crossed her arms protectively over her middle. “I got here yesterday and discovered he was in the infirmary. No one had told me. I could tell they weren’t doing enough, so I called his attorney, but she had a car accident on the way up from LA, so there was no one to file a request to have him transferred to a better medical facility.”

  Teague slammed a fist into the door frame. “Fuck! I’m a goddamn attorney. One of the best in the country.”

  “But you’re not on record as his attorney. You know that. You can’t make motions on his behalf unless he’s agreed to be represented by you.”

  “So when the attorney couldn’t get here, you decided to fly in your father? What the hell? The man who destroyed us all those years ago? The one who already thinks I’m worth less than other human beings. You think a racist is going to give my black convict brother who’s in prison the best medical treatment?”

  She started sobbing, quietly, unable to get the words out that would explain her choice to contact her father.

  Teague was livid, hurt, and lashing out. “I’m his brother—me. I should have been notified of his medical condition. I should have been given the choice about his medical care.”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” she said, anger gradually replacing the tears. “You aren’t even listed on any of his contact forms. But I love him, Teague. I’ve been making sure he was taken care of for years. I talk to his attorney when he needs anything, I make sure he has money to buy the luxury items he’s allowed, I gave him a computer when he earned privileges, and yesterday, I had the resources to get him the medical care he needed, so I did. I brought one of the best pulmonologists on the Eastern Seaboard to his bedside in under five hours. There was no way for me to explain all of that to you in between flights and your press conference and the time differences. You needed to be here, where I could explain it all to you in person. I wanted to do the best for Roland and for you. I won’t apologize for that.. ”