The detective stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “Look, Agent Lloyd, I am going to the hospital anyway, so you can come with me or you can stay here, the choice is yours.” He turned to walk out of the door but then stopped suddenly before turning back towards her. “Oh, by the way it’s either Tooms or Joshua, I think we have outgrown the formalities, don’t you, Agent Lloyd?”
Cassandra nodded with a friendly smile and took his outstretched hand and shook it. “Okay, Joshua. Let’s go.”
*
Nobody saw a cautious ‘DC’ Williams enter the main entrance of the safe house. He nodded to the two armed men who sat around acting like bums just squatting, their .50 calibre Desert Eagles and MP5K machine pistols hidden safely under their long coats.
He made his way up to the top floor, where his brother and fellow escapees had called home for the past couple of days.
The corridors and staircases were left dimly lit, so as not to draw the attention of the outside world. A musky smell of an aging building filled DC’s nostrils as he walked towards the last apartment on that floor.
He tapped the door three times with his boot, as his arms were full of groceries.
The lack of any noise made DC suddenly become uneasy. Where were they, he wondered? They couldn’t have gone out during the day, the cops were looking for them. DC tapped on the door again, this time a little harder.
The silence continued. He was just about to throw down the bags and go for his keys when he heard the sounds of the deadbolts and chains being taken off. The door opened slightly and the familiar face of Tyrell peered around it.
“What’s up, man?” Tyrell asked.
DC scowled disapprovingly as he raced past his yawning brother, then re-locked the door behind him.
“What took you so long, man?” DC snapped. “I thought you motha’s had bolted!”
Tyrell looked strangely at his maddened brother. “Oh yeah, we were gonna take off to the mall or catch a friggin’ movie!” Tyrell laughed at the comedy of his brother’s statement.
DC headed for the kitchen, where he found Darius making chilli from items he had found in the refrigerator and cupboards. Darius looked almost excited at the sight of the new groceries, and Tyrell looked at the man in surprise as he watched him examine each packet as if he had some grand plan for each of the items, almost making up menus in his head.
“So—what, you’re a chief now?” Tyrell joked.
Darius shrugged and smiled. “See, before the cops grabbed me and locked me up I was due to open a new restaurant. I guess someone didn’t want some black dude stealin’ their business, so I figure that’s why they got me out the way.” What Darius was saying made sense to Tyrell. Hell, they had both bad histories, but they were both trying to start legitimate businesses before they got stung.
Tyrell had to laugh. For years the cops had tried to get them, yet the moment they were going legit they arrested them on something they never did!
As they cleared the stuff away DC looked around with a suspicious look on his face. “So, where’s the professor?”
Tyrell nodded towards the back room with half a doughnut in his mouth. “The man has been a bit of a loner since we got out. Something is bugging him.”
Darius had wondered about the teacher. He kept to himself and he would slip out at night on his own, sometimes for hours.
Tyrell looked at his brother and rubbed the top of his head to break a smile, but DC’s face looked more troubled than usual.
“Hey, man, what’s wrong with you?” Tyrell asked as he packed the milk into the refrigerator door.
DC looked over at the closed door. “You remember that bitch lawyer who put you away?”
Tyrell’s face soured as he stopped halfway to the cupboards next to the stove. “Yeah, she was hard to forget. She made a career out of screwing me, goddamn counsellor Carmen Mathews.”
Darius looked over towards the two men. His mouth fell open at the mention of her name. “She was your prosecutor? You’ve got to be kidding me, man! Shit, she screwed me over as well, damn bitch,” Darius growled as he impaled a red pepper to the chopping board with a large knife.
“Yeah well, she was a Supreme Court judge,” DC said.
Tyrell gave his brother a sudden look of panic. “What do you mean was?”
DC leaned against the wall and shrugged as he stared straight into the eyes of his brother. “Somebody took her out this afternoon. In her own courtroom too.”
Tyrell crossed his arms to defy the implication. “You think I would be dumb enough to kill a friggin’ judge, in her own damn courtroom?” He saw the questioning look in his brother’s eyes.
“You do!” Tyrell declared. “You think I killed her!”
DC shook his head after a moment. “When you didn’t answer the door I thought you had gone to settle up, but I figured how would you have got past my boys and the guards at the courthouse, especially with that huge ugly head of yours, I mean, man, cops would spot you a friggin’ mile away.”
Tyrell threw a damp dish cloth at his laughing brother.
There was a click. The front door opened and the hooded figure of the teacher walked in. His expression was stony, and he nodded a greeting, then disappeared into his room and shut the door. The three men stood open-mouthed at the door as it closed. DC shook off the confused look as it changed to anger.
“Hey, Teacher,” Darius asked casually, as if it was a daily routine. “Where you been, man?”
Armstrong shrugged and a smile broke the corner of his mouth. “I have been to see, er, an old friend.” And with that he disappeared into his room and shut the door.
The three men shrugged it off and continued packing the groceries away until DC stopped and looked at the front door, his eyes burning with rage.
“Wait a minute, how the hell did that motha fucka get out?”
*
Steel and McCall returned to the courtroom to be greeted by CSU teams with body suits and buckets. The acid had reacted quickly and was turning the judge into soup. McCall headed for Tina, who was standing to one side, with the jug and a glass in two evidence buckets.
“What have you got?” McCall asked curiously on seeing the two items.
“I’m not sure,” Tina replied, “but these things are made from plastic not glass.” McCall shrugged, unable to see the point that her friend was trying to make.
“I get it,” Steel chipped in. “The acid would have melted the glass, but it wouldn’t melt the plastic?”
Tina gave Steel the thumbs up. “Gold star for you. My question is, who brought the plastic to the party?”
McCall looked back at the door to the judge’s chambers. “Could it have been the bailiff? After all, he brought her the glass.”
Steel pondered the question, for anything was possible and it would make sense.
“Let’s go ask him, shall we?” McCall said.
As they walked away, Steel received a text. He stopped as he read the message and his gaze fell onto the courtroom doors. Distracted, Steel put the cell phone back into his pocket, his gaze still locked onto the doors.
“Hey, Steel. You okay?” Sam asked him.
John Steel turned back to face McCall and smiled. “Yes, sorry, it was nothing.” He beckoned her forwards with a flat palm towards the door to the chambers. McCall turned the handle and opened the door to the empty room.
“Okay then, that’s a problem.” Steel joked, causing McCall to give him a stern look.
THIRTY-TWO
Tooms and Agent Lloyd arrived at the Manhattan Hospital. Its long sterile corridors shone with cleanliness and overhead lighting gave everything a brighter illumination, but the smell of disinfectant hung in the air like an invisible smog.
Joshua Tooms did not care for hospitals, he had lost too many friends in them; but on the other hand a lot of them had also pulled through. It only seemed like yesterday that he and Tony had rushed in with the medical team accompanying McCall, who was being
wheeled on a gurney. He had been surprised that so much blood could come from just one wound.
That was their first case they’d worked on with unorthodox Detective John Steel. It had involved catching a serial killer and breaking a weapons-smuggling organization, during the course of which McCall had taken a bullet in the shoulder after a fire fight. A year had passed since then and he had never forgotten that day in the hospital—in fact it was this same hospital.
The injured men from the crash were in separate rooms so they could not plan or confer: the last thing they needed was the same lie from all of them. Tooms knew that some would lie at first, but at some point someone would tell the truth, it was inevitable.
Detective Tooms and Agent Lloyd met with one of the doctors as they approached the rooms. He was a short man in his mid-thirties. Black-rimmed glasses gave him a kind of authoritative look, as if he might have all the answers. Tooms figured that the spectacles had clear glass instead of lenses, and the man was using them to make himself look more distinguished. His brown hair, brushed neatly to the left side, was neatly trimmed.
“I am Doctor Clarke,” he introduced himself, then they all shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“Hi, I am Detective Tooms and this is Agent Lloyd,” Tooms told him. “So, Doctor Clarke, can any of the survivors talk yet? We need to get a statement.”
The doctor pointed towards the last room on the right. “In there is Miguel Sanchez. He is pretty banged up but he’s the only one who can talk.”
Lloyd looked puzzled. Was it convenient for someone, or just coincidental that only one of them could talk, she wondered? But then she knew that it was in her nature to be suspicious.
As they entered the room they saw Miguel in a full body cast: both his legs and right arm had been broken in several places and his left one was dislocated at the shoulder. Heart-rate monitors and morphine drips fed into the cast, and his body looked as if it belonged in a science fiction movie.
“Miguel Sanchez,” began Joshua, “I am Detective Tooms and this is—”
“—You here about the crash, ain’t you?” the injured man interrupted, as if he was trying to save the detective from having to ask questions. “Well sorry, man, but I don’t know shit apart from being thrown about like a pińata.”
Cassandra Lloyd walked to one side of the bed and Tooms stood at the other. The latter reached into his pocket and pulled out the digital recorder McCall made them all carry, which he didn’t mind so much because his shorthand sucked.
“What’s that for, man?” the injured man asked when he saw it, almost in a panic.
Tooms raised the device and shook it to show there was nothing abnormal about it.
“Don’t worry, man, you know us cops are too dumb to write so we got to use these to record your statement.”
Sanchez smiled at the quip and coughed as he tried to get a lungful of air.
“All we want to know is what happened on that bus,” Tooms continued. “Anything you can remember, no matter how small or unimportant you think it is. Someone tried to take you guys out and we want to know who.”
Sanchez could only move his eyes. However, as he stared into Tooms’s palpably honest face he judged that he was an honourable man. “Okay,” he relented. “So where do you want me to start?”
Tooms switched on the recorder and placed it onto the small bedside cabinet on Miguel’s right. “The prison. Start from there.” The detective could see Sanchez lick his lips and so he picked up the drinking vessel and placed the straw next to the man’s mouth. Miguel sucked up enough to wet the inside of his mouth before he began his tale:
“We were loaded on as usual, but this time it was different.”
Lloyd looked over at Sanchez, who was staring at Tooms, not her.
“Different, how?” she asked.
Miguel’s eyes shot over to her, which made him flinch in pain at the sudden movement. “It was the bus for the parole hearing. Most of us didn’t need to be on it but we were thankful for the time out, you know? The guard said they had to fill the bus or something.”
Tooms coughed, making Sanchez look over at him. Again the injured man felt the pain of even moving his eyes.
“Miguel, don’t worry about being polite. Just keep looking at me, man, even if she asks you a question, okay?” Tooms could see an almost relieved look in his eyes after he said that. “So you get put on the bus, then what?” Tooms gave the man another drink then waited patiently for him to gather himself.
“We get locked down, but then the usual guard says he has to split because he got a text to say his mama was in hospital. Well, they load on some other guy who sits up front with the driver.” Sanchez stopped for a moment to gather air.
Tooms could see the pain in the man’s eyes, pain that even hospital-strength medications couldn’t control completely. “Okay. So you’re on the bus and it’s raining.” Tooms urged the man on, trying to jog his memory.
“Yeah, man, never seen so much friggin’ rain. Was hard to see out of the windows it was so damned thick, but I remember thinking that we were going the wrong way.”
Tooms looked puzzled for a moment. “How did you know that?”
Miguel smiled like a kid with a big secret. “Man, I have done that trip hundreds of times and each time, just to amuse myself, I would plot a getaway route. You know, a kind of fantasy, that if something happened and I got out. How do I know we were off our usual route? Because I didn’t recognize a damned thing, that’s why. The street was different, the stores, hell, even the coffee shop at the corner of one of the streets had gone. No, we were going a different route.”
Lloyd looked at Tooms, who had also shot her a look of surprise.
“So you’re going along,” Tooms encouraged. “Did anything seem strange or out of the ordinary to you?”
Sanchez seemed surprised at the question, as if Tooms should have known the answer. “Yeah, just a bit. First off we were all put onto the left and the guys who got away were stuck on the right near the back. Then there was the driver and the guard next to him screamin’ at each other.”
Tooms drew closer, his interest piqued. “Why was the guard telling the driver he was going the wrong way?”
Sanchez tried to shake his head, but couldn’t manage it. “No, man, the guard was tellin’ the driver where to go and that if he fucked up his family was dead.”
Tooms’s gaze lifted towards Lloyd, who now had the same panicked expression as he did. “Then what? You’re going along, it’s raining and the driver and the guard are arguing. Then what? Did the driver lose control over the bus because of the argument?”
Sanchez’s face went white with fear as the memory came back to him. “No, the guard was looking at his cell phone and shouted ‘now’ to the driver and stuck the gun next to his head. The driver swerved and...”
Tooms placed the drinking straw next to Sanchez’s mouth and he began to drink to calm himself.
“There was a loud explosion or something to the right-hand side,” the man continued, “and the whole bus shook and next thing I know we are on the side, hanging upside down being smashed around. The noise, man, I will never forget the fuckin’ noise! People screamin’, the sound of the metal on the ground like nails down a friggin’ chalk board, but constant, you know? Next thing I know, I am in here.”
Detective Tooms nodded in appreciation of the man’s statement and reached for the recorder. As he was about to switch it off, something Sanchez had said at the start bothered him.
“At the start you said the trip was strange because not all of you should have been there,” the detective probed. “Who shouldn’t have been there?”
Sanchez swallowed hard as he fought back the memory of the crash. “What? Oh yeah, the four guys on the back row on the right. I know for sure that they were not due for parole for another year as they had been interviewed by the parole board not long ago.”
The detective suddenly had a horrified look on his face. “Four guys?” he ques
tioned. “No, Miguel, surely you mean three guys?”
The injured man looked puzzled at the question. “No, Detective. It was four guys: Teacher, Darius, Tyrell and Monster.”
Tooms looked over at Lloyd with a terrified look on his face.
“We have four missing prisoners not three,” he said to her, trying to suppress the panic in his voice.
THIRTY-THREE
McCall put in a call for uniforms to take a look at the judge’s house for anything that may explain her murder. She had also a warrant request on her computer ready to go in just in case her husband refused them entry.
They were looking for anything, even hate mail. Normally Sam would get another detective to do it, however there was a shortage in manpower, including the services of their newest detective, Jenny Thompson who was on ‘personal time’, and who could blame her?
Jenny had had a rough year, they all had, and others had taken holiday time to cut down their hours. So McCall had to resort to the ‘boys in blue’.
John Steel had found the bailiff. He had been in the bathroom emptying his breakfast into one of the cubicles in the men’s room. After being asked about the glass and the jug he had to confess that he never really noticed them, he just thought that the judge had brought them in.
After Steel had sent the bailiff to the medics for a check-over, the Englishman joined McCall in the judge’s chambers.
“Find anything yet?” he asked hopefully but knew the reality of the situation: the judge was a smart woman, so she wouldn’t just leave something lying around.
McCall shook her head as she finished looking through the judge’s jacket and purse. “Nah, nothing, just her wallet, cell phone. The usual stuff.”
Steel listened to her as he walked around the large desk and sat down on the thick hard leather of the office chair. All the time his gaze was fixed on the heavy-looking wooden desk, as if he knew it was hiding something within.
False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) Page 20
