“Jackson Keller, you are charged with theft of a means of transportation, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and first-degree murder. Given the nature of the charges, the court will record a plea of ‘not guilty,’ unless you object.”
“No objection, sir,” Keller said.
“Without objection, then, we move on to the issue of counsel.”
A voice spoke up from behind him. “I’ll be entering an appearance for Mr. Keller, Your Honor.”
He turned slightly. A petite woman in a gray suit was striding up the aisle as if she owned the building. As she got closer, Keller got a better look at her. She appeared to be in her mid-fifties, her straight blond hair cut short and lying close against her head like a helmet. She was deeply tanned, with laugh lines around her eyes that made Keller instantly want to like her. He resisted the temptation. He regarded lawyers as a necessary evil. He’d only met two in his life that he actually liked. One of them was back in North Carolina, and the other was dead.
The judge looked surprised. “Ms. Alford,” he said. “We haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“I’ve been enjoying retirement, Your Honor,” the woman said.
“Approach, please,” the judge said. As she strode to the bench, she whispered out of the corner of her mouth to Keller, “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” Keller said dryly. He noticed that the briefcase clutched in her right hand was battered and cracked. It looked like something that had been left in the desert for forty years. He thought there must be a story connected with it.
The judge extended a hand as Alford reached the bench. She took it and the two shook hands like old friends. They had a brief conversation that ended with the judge chuckling. She stepped back and went back to stand beside Keller, who towered over her.
The judge returned to formality. “Will you be making a motion for bail, Ms. Alford?”
“Your Honor,” Alford said, “given the nature of the charges, we’ll reserve that motion for the time being. We do, however, request a probable cause hearing.”
The prosecutor, a young man who looked too young to be a freshman in college, much less an assistant DA, stood. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed nervously as he said, “Your Honor, the State intends to go to the Grand Jury on these charges in lieu of preliminary hearing.”
Alford didn’t look happy, but she nodded as if this was bad news she’d been expecting. “Very well, Your Honor.” She reached out and gave Keller’s elbow a squeeze. “I’m a friend of Lucas Berry,” she murmured. “Hang on a sec.” She turned to the deputy who was approaching to take him back. “Deputy”—she squinted at the nametag on his shirt—“Rojas…hey, are you related to Pete Rojas? Retired from the PD a couple years back?”
The deputy stopped, looking uncertain. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “He’s my uncle.”
“Awesome. Tell him Erin Alford says hi and I hope he’s enjoying his retirement. Ft. Lauderdale, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Lucky guy. I’m envious. Hey, can I have five minutes with my new client here?” Without waiting for an answer, she took Keller’s elbow and began steering him out the side door into the corridor.
“Wait…I…” the deputy started to protest.
Alford released Keller’s elbow and spread her fingers out like a child showing his age. “Five minutes. I swear.” They were in the corridor now and she nodded toward an open door. “You can stand outside the conference room door.” She smiled, steering Keller in the direction she wanted him to go.
“Well…okay.”
“Thanks, Deputy, I owe you one.”
Inside the tiny conference room was a small round table with two chairs. As soon as the door closed, Alford dropped the charm and became all business as she took a seat. “Okay. First rule. You—”
Keller sat down as well. “Say nothing to anybody. Not even a friendly cell mate.”
She looked annoyed at the interruption, but nodded.
“I didn’t kill her,” Keller said.
She nodded again. “Well, that helps.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Mr. Keller, it doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters is what the State can get a jury—”
“I’ve heard that speech, too.”
She snatched up the briefcase and stood up. “Well, good, since you’ve got it all figured out—”
“She took me to the airport. I must have been there when she was…” He choked on the word, the impact of what had happened closing his throat.
Alford’s expression softened and she sat back down. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Something to remember, Mr. Keller. I don’t like being interrupted. It makes me testy.”
“Sorry,” Keller said. “I’m a little tense myself.”
She chuckled. “Understood.”
“So…you’ve been retired.”
She leaned back and studied him. “Yes,” she said without expression.
“Mind if I ask why?”
Her face still registered nothing. “I didn’t screw up in some spectacular way that got someone convicted, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Well, maybe a little.”
She snorted. “Only lawyers in movies retire over silly shit like that. In fact, the real screw-ups seem to hang on forever. I retired because I could.”
“You did that well?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Partially. I also married money.”
“Good for you. So how do you know Lucas?”
The smile widened. “I’m supposed to be the one asking questions.”
Keller didn’t smile back. After a moment, her face became serious again. “You don’t know if you trust me.”
Keller didn’t answer. She sighed. “Fair enough, I guess.” She leaned back in her chair. “We met in the Army. I was a JAG lawyer. He was a witness in one of my cases. I was defending a young sergeant charged with assaulting a superior officer. I was trying to establish that my client had diminished capacity as a result of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder from the Panama invasion.”
“And Lucas helped you with that?”
She shook her head. “I wish. He was a rebuttal witness for the prosecution. He absolutely gutted my case. He said my guy didn’t have PTSD at all. As you might have noticed, he’s pretty impressive. When he stepped out of the box I wanted to throw myself off a cliff.”
“And yet you’re friends.”
“Yeah. The evening after the hearing, Lucas called me up and asked me out to dinner.” She raised a hand at Keller’s look. “Just to tell me some things he thought I needed to know. It was all business. Over one of the best seafood dinners I ever had, he gave me a crash course in post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, at the end of the night as we were paying our separate checks, Lucas made an offhand comment. ‘Look at Spheeris’s record.’ Spheeris was the captain my guy had slugged. Knocked his ass in the dirt, as a matter of fact.”
Keller was becoming intrigued despite himself. “So what did you find?”
“When I started poking around, people started coming out of the woodwork wanting to talk to me. This Spheeris guy was a nightmare. His unit had been on training maneuvers prior to shipping out for the Gulf. Every simulated engagement, he’d gotten his people wiped out. Couldn’t navigate, couldn’t manage simple deployments, and even in basic exercises, he froze and couldn’t make the easiest decisions. If he’d been sent to lead a combat unit, he’d have killed more people than the Iraqis.”
“So you put Spheeris on trial.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good. You can’t hit an officer, even if he is a total screw-up. But I let a few people know what I knew and what kind of evidence I could put up. The right people found out about it. Even though it wouldn’t have gotten me a Not Guilty, no one wanted the embarrassment. Not then, especially. Captain Spheeris was quietly reassigned somewher
e he couldn’t do any damage—at least not get his people killed—and my guy got a plea for time served, loss of a stripe, and a reduction in pay. Last letter I got from him, he was alive and well and running a snowmobile repair shop in Michigan. Pretty wife, two kids.”
“Good job,” Keller said.
Alford smiled tightly. “So, you trust me now?”
“More than I did a few minutes ago.”
As if on cue, the deputy began tapping on the door. His voice was muffled by the heavy wood. “Ms. Alford?” Alford picked up her briefcase and stood. “Good. We’ll talk again.”
“We need to,” Keller said. “There’s more to this.”
She nodded. “No doubt. First thing I’ll do is have someone check the surveillance cams at the airport. Maybe we’ll get lucky and put you there at the time of the…at the relevant time.”
“Ms. Alford!” The deputy’s voice was more insistent now.
“One second,” she called back. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “This seems like an awful lot to do for a casual acquaintance. Even one that helped you with a big case.”
She smiled. “Lucas Berry is a good man, Mr. Keller. And we were friends long after that one incident. I trust his judgment of people. And if he says you deserve help, then help you will get.” She opened the door and beamed at the deputy. “Thanks, Deputy Rojas,” she said. Then she turned back to Keller. “It doesn’t look like it now, Jack, but you’re a lucky guy to have friends like Lucas Berry.”
“I know,” Keller said. “Thanks.”
IT WAS another day before Keller saw Alford again. Even through the scratched and milky Plexiglas window that separated them, he could see that she looked troubled and uncertain, a far cry from the confidence bordering on cockiness she’d shown earlier.
“You look like you’ve heard some bad news,” he said.
She set her battered briefcase down on the narrow shelf on her side of the window and took her seat. “I’ve heard some news I don’t understand at all.”
“Did you get anything from the surveillance cameras?” he asked.
“Not yet,” she said. “They’ve been requested. I took the liberty of telling Ross about them.”
He frowned. “The detective?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “He’s a hard-ass, Mr. Keller, but he’s a good detective. Unlike some of those guys, if there’s something that’s going to bust up his case, he’s going to want to know about it sooner rather than later. And he can move the request along faster than I can.”
“So if he gets it, what then? I get out of here?”
She shook her head. “This is where we get to the part I don’t understand. There’s a federal detainer on you.”
“A what?”
“A federal hold. Even if they dismissed the murder charge, they have to hold you here for the feds.”
Keller sat back in his chair. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. He resisted the temptation once again to slam his hand down on the table or pound on the glass. “Son of a BITCH!”
She was looking at him intensely. “You got some kind of federal warrant you want to tell me about, Mr. Keller?”
He fought to get his anger under control. “No,” he said. He remembered Lucas’s words: This is fuckery on a higher level than you’ve ever had to deal with. He hadn’t wanted to tell Alford about where he’d been going, about the man who claimed to be his father, about his mysterious and sudden appearance on the no-fly list. For one thing, he figured, telling your lawyer you thought you might be the victim of a government conspiracy would mean wasting a lot of time getting court-ordered psychiatric exams. He barely believed it himself. For another, the whole subject of his alleged father was something he wasn’t going to share with anyone. Except Julianne, and she was…his mind veered away from that thought. He took a deep breath. He’d do what it took to get out of here and go after whoever had killed Jules.
“Okay,” he told Alford. “This is going to sound crazy. But hear me out.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
He told her everything. About Maddox, about the gun camera DVD, about the no-fly list. When he was done, she didn’t respond at first. When she spoke, her voice was thoughtful. “If it hadn’t been for the federal hold, I’d say that was just another crazy-ass client story. But you make it sound almost plausible.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“So you have any way I can reach this Maddox?”
He shook his head. “He was staying in the motel across the highway from the bar. But I get the feeling he’s the type who’s only going to be found if he wants to be.”
“How about your father?”
Keller tried not to snap at her. “I don’t know if he’s my father.”
“I don’t know why anyone would lie about that,” she said. “But fine, let’s just call him the putative father at this point.”
He thought of the number Maddox had given him to call when he reached DC. “I got a number. It’s written down. But it’s in my bag. They took it when I was brought in.
“Not a problem,” she said. “They’ll have you sign a form to release your belongings to me. I’ll get the number.”
“What good will calling him do? I doubt he’ll even talk to you.”
“I don’t know that. And maybe, if he’s who he says he is, he can help me figure out who’s pulling these strings.”
He nodded. He hated the idea of relying on this man who claimed to be his father for anything. But getting out of here was the primary goal.
“So,” she said, looking at him appraisingly. “We get these charges thrown out. You walk out of here a free man. What then?”
He returned her gaze. “I don’t know. Maybe I go see this guy Trammell. See what his game is.”
“It looks a lot like there’s someone pretty high up who wants to keep you from doing that. Someone who’s willing to kill an innocent girl then try to frame you for it. That person might come after you again.”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “They might.”
Something in the look on his face made her eyes widen. “That’s what you want to happen, isn’t it?”
Keller shrugged. “If it happens, it happens.”
“And then what?”
Keller didn’t answer.
“You know,” she said, “if you tell me you’ve committed a crime, that’s covered by attorney-client privilege. But if you tell me you’re going to commit one, like, say, murder, it’s not. I have to do what I can to stop it, including telling the proper authorities.”
“Really?” Keller said mildly. “That’s interesting.”
She sighed. “Okay, I’ll stop asking questions I don’t want to know the answers to.”
“Good idea.”
“I will, however, advise you against killing people, even if they did kill your girlfriend.”
“Thanks,” Keller said. “I appreciate your advice.”
“Sure you do. But I have the feeling you’re not going to take it.” She stood up. “Okay. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Ms. Alford,” Keller said as she started to turn away. She turned back. “Thanks,” he said. “I really do appreciate what you’re doing for me. I’ll do anything I can to pay you back.”
She nodded. “I’ll be happy if you just don’t do anything stupid.”
Anything except that, he thought.
“IT’S ME,” Riddle said over the phone. “Did you get the package I sent?”
“Yes,” Cordell answered. “The DVD.”
“Is it what you were looking for?”
Cordell looked at the silver disc sitting on top of the FedEx envelope it had come in. “I’ll know after I review it. Just sit tight and wait for further instructions.” There was a pause on the other end. “What?” Cordell said.
“Our competition may be back in the game. He lawyered up. The liability issue we talked about may not be as strong as we’d hoped.”
Cordell r
ubbed his eyes. “Any chance he’ll be back in business soon?”
“Maybe. Unless I do something else. Maybe force him into early retirement.”
The meaning was clear. “No,” he said. “This isn’t Colombia. Too much breakage raises eyebrows.”
Cordell heard the man sigh. “Understood. I’ll keep you posted.”
“I mean it. Stand down until further notice.”
“Roger that.” The words were innocuous, the tone bordering on insubordination. Cordell clenched his teeth in frustration and picked up the DVD. It was almost time for the meeting with Kathryn Shea. He hoped that this was the object she was looking for and he could cut Riddle free. He was starting to look more and more like a loose cannon.
SHE SAT in the living room, watching the incident on the DVD play out on a wide-screen TV in one corner. The picture was blurred and indistinct, but the voices over the radio left no doubt as to what had happened. After the spectacular explosion of the Bradley, the whooping and celebration was cut short by an unidentified voice over the clear channel. “Gunslinger, Gunslinger, this is Jumbo. This is Jumbo. Cease fire. Repeat, cease fire. Reports of friendlies in the area. Cease fire.”
The silence was only a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch for minutes broken only by the throb of the chopper’s rotors in the background. Finally Gunslinger Two-six’s voice came clearly over the now-hushed channel. “Fuck. Me.”
Kathryn turned the television off with the remote control held in her left hand. She took a sip of the drink in her right. She didn’t speak.
“Was that what you were looking for?” Cordell asked from the couch.
She raised the glass again, stopped it halfway to her lips, then held it away from her face and studied it for a moment as if expecting it to reveal something to her. A grimace crossed her face and she put the glass back down. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Well,” Cordell said. “That’s…unfortunate.”
“Yes, it is.”
Cordell was clearly trying to keep himself under control. “I have to point out that if you’d been a bit more clear about what it was we were looking for in the first place, we might have saved ourselves…” He stopped himself, then began again. “A good bit of trouble.”
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