by Stephen Frey
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kate snapped.
“Take it however you want to take it,” Felicity retorted as she stood up. She was voting innocent no matter what. She had no choice after reading that note. Kate might as well get an inkling of what was on the way. Commonwealth Electric would not be found guilty—not on this go-round, anyway. “See you in the jury room,” Felicity muttered as she stalked off.
“Hey. Hey!”
Fifty seconds after Racine pressed the emergency button on the desk, three guards burst into his room.
“What is it?” one of the uniformed men demanded gruffly as he knelt down. “What hurts?”
“My stomach,” Racine gasped, glancing up from his coiled-tight, fetal position on the small Oriental rug he’d brought from home. One of the other two guards was filming everything. “My gut feels like it’s gonna burst.”
Three minutes later they eased Racine gently down on a small, uncomfortable infirmary bed.
“The doctor will be right in,” the guard who’d knelt down next to him in the room advised.
“Tell him to hurry,” Racine groaned.
When the guards were gone, he kept the act going, kept his knees to his chest, concerned he might be on camera.
“David.”
Racine’s gaze shot toward a closing door and a silhouette standing before it. “Victoria?” he asked, sitting up. The string at the bottom of the jurors’ screens was a code detailing when she would physically be present in her office at Jury Town—so she could meet him this way when he ignited his emergency button, which she was immediately alerted to. Apparently, he wasn’t too bad at deciphering.
She moved out of the shadows. “What do you have for me?”
“Are you all right?” A deep sadness was etched into Victoria’s expression. It reminded him of the dark halo he’d noticed about Sofia that day outside Victoria’s office.
“Cameron died.”
“I’m sorry,” he said as he rose from the mattress. “What happened?”
“What do you have for me, David?” she asked deliberately. “We don’t have much time. The doctor will be in here momentarily.”
“But—”
“We must keep up appearances. Tell him you think you ate something bad. Now, what do you have?”
“A woman named Kate Wang on the Commonwealth Electric Power jury has an agenda. Apparently, she knows people in Abingdon. She’ll vote guilty no matter what.”
Victoria shook her head. “I was afraid of this on the first few cases. Thank you, David,” she called over her shoulder, moving back toward the door through which she’d just emerged. “Don’t hesitate to do this again.”
“Hey,” he called back, “we still have our deal, right?”
Dez leaned into Victoria’s office at Jury Town. She’d just made it back from seeing Racine. “Yes?”
“Rex Conrad to see you. He’s one of the guards.”
Her eyes narrowed. The name didn’t ring a bell. The guards were George Garrison’s purview. Why was this man coming to her? “Okay.”
“I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“Thanks, Dez.” She nodded at the clean-cut young man who entered her office wearing his Jury Town uniform. “Good morning, Mr. Conrad. Please sit down.”
Conrad placed his guard hat down on her desk but didn’t sit. “Good morning, Ms. Lewis.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Conrad? She was exhausted. She’d finally fallen asleep at two o’clock this morning with her head on Dez’s shoulder. But it had been a fitful rest, punctuated by a sequence of nightmares in which she couldn’t save Cameron’s life. “Why me? Why not George Garrison?”
“I’m not sure I trust Mr. Garrison with this. I felt it was necessary to go outside the chain of command. It occurred to me Mr. Garrison might have … an interest.”
Victoria’s eyes raced to Conrad’s. Suddenly she was wide-awake. “What are you talking about?”
“I observed another one of the guards approach a member of the cleaning staff in one of the satellite parking lots,” Conrad explained. “That guard is a guy named Billy Batts. I also observed him approach a kitchen worker. I thought you should know. I admire you very much, Ms. Lewis. Even when you were governor, I always thought you were honest.”
WASHINGTON, DC (GEORGETOWN)
“I just heard a very disturbing sound bite.” Martha pointed at a small TV on the opposite counter as Chuck strode into the kitchen of their Georgetown home.
“What was that?” he asked, opening the refrigerator.
“Angela Gaynor has pulled even with you.”
“I heard that, too,” he said, reaching for the orange juice.
As if, Martha mused, she was telling him about tomorrow’s weather, but he had no plans to go outside. As if he couldn’t care less about what should have been shocking data.
“And it doesn’t bother you, Chuck?” She watched as he pulled a glass from the cupboard and poured.
“We’ll be fine.” He smiled and nodded at the now-full glass of OJ. “Want some?”
She shook her head in amazement. He never lost his cool, even under immense pressure. She loved that about him. But was he misguided in this case?
“I hope you’re right about being fine. I want to live in the White House.”
He chuckled. “I know you do, Martha. Don’t—”
“I’m not sure you really do,” she snapped. “I haven’t waited all this time to see you end up being beaten by some upstart.” She didn’t care that he was suddenly looking at her like someone he’d never met. All she cared about was that he understood how she wanted this as badly as he did. If he lost this election, there would go the White House. “Do you understand me?”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her, still gazing at her with uncertainty. “Someday you’ll be sending out Christmas cards with a return address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I promise.”
As if he knew something he wasn’t telling her. He’d better.
JURY TOWN
As Victoria hurried out of her office, she nearly ran headlong into George Garrison coming out of his. “Good morning, George.”
“What was Rex Conrad doing in your office?” Garrison demanded, glancing at Dez before blocking Victoria’s path down the admin wing.
“I’m sorry?”
“I just saw Rex Conrad exit your office. What was he doing in there?”
“Speaking to me.”
“Well, I’m head of the guards—”
“I’m aware of that, George,” she said, moving past him.
“Wait just a minute,” he hissed, catching her by the elbow. “We need to have a chain of command here. We need to—”
“Get your hand off her,” Dez ordered, stepping between Garrison and Victoria so Garrison had to relinquish his grip, “and don’t ever do that again.”
“Or what, you—”
An instant later, Garrison was flat against the cinder-block wall outside his office, both feet dangling a foot off the tile floor, gasping for air as Dez held him up with one arm and pressed the other to Garrison’s throat.
“Or that, Mr. Garrison.”
CHAPTER 35
JURY TOWN
“Watch yourselves in the back row,” Hal Wilson called loudly to the other thirteen jurors—including the two alternates—as he reached for the button on the wall. “I’m going to lower you. You people in the front row, watch your heels and toes.”
The defense team in the Commonwealth Electric trial had rested ten minutes ago, and after receiving instructions from the judge, Wilson wanted to get started. They could have taken a break, even waited until tomorrow morning to initiate deliberations. But, last night, as he’d been lying in bed tossing and turning, he’d finally bought into Kate Wang’s hype about being the first jury to reach a decision at Jury Town.
One of the other trials going on inside the old Archer Prison walls was close to being completed, according to something he’d overheard at dinner last ni
ght. And he didn’t want to give that jury a chance to catch up. Suddenly he wanted to be the first foreman to reach a verdict here. He’d never been noted as a leader for anything in his life, never even been close to being famous. This would be a nice middle-aged change.
“The first order of business,” he said, returning to his seat in the back row, which had now descended so that it was level with the front, “is to find out where we stand. Let’s do a quick anonymous vote with this scrap paper I’m going to pass—”
“They’re guilty,” Kate blurted before Wilson could finish. “We all know it. The only question is how much CEP has to pay. There’s no need for a straw vote.”
Wilson grinned nervously and held his hands out. He’d been anticipating this from Kate. But, no matter how accurately he’d anticipated, he still hated confrontation. “Easy, easy, Ms. Wang, let’s just take the vote. Let’s follow procedure.”
“They’re not guilty,” Felicity called loudly from the far end of the jury box. “I say the executives are being framed. I say it’s all the work of one disgruntled employee. It’s the guy driving the front-end loader. And nothing’s gonna change my mind.”
“Ms. West,” Wilson begged, “please let’s not jump the gun here.” He’d not been anticipating this from Felicity. “You and Ms. Wang will both have plenty of time to—”
“What’s wrong with you?” Kate snapped at Felicity. “You were rock solid on them being guilty until yesterday. We certainly didn’t see or hear any evidence yesterday or this morning that would have changed that. To think one guy dumped that ash on his own is ridiculous. Did someone get to you, Felicity?”
“Hey, hey!” Wilson shouted, shooting out of his chair. “That’s enough of that, Ms. Wang. We’ll have no accusations of that kind of—”
“No, Kate,” Felicity shot back, “no one got to me. But I think that pot you smuggled in here to Jury Town must have gotten to you.”
“You bitch!” Kate yelled shrilly.
“You’re the bitch!” Felicity screamed back. “You’re probably stoned right now!”
As Jury Room Seven turned chaotic, and other jurors scrambled to get between the two women, Wilson hustled for the emergency button on the wall beside the button he’d just pushed to lower the back row of the jury box.
Garrison hit redial again, trying desperately to reach Billy Batts. He had a very bad feeling about what Victoria and Rex Conrad had been discussing in her office. He hadn’t liked her tone or that accusatory gleam in her eye when they’d nearly run into each other out in the corridor. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t take the chance. He had to do something.
“Damn it!”
For the eighth time in the last thirty-five minutes, Garrison’s call went directly to Batts’ voice mail. The kid wasn’t working today. He should have picked up immediately.
Garrison ran a hand through his thinning hair. If Victoria or Conrad or both somehow suspected Billy Batts of being involved in getting that note to Felicity West’s room, and they could get Batts to confess what he’d done, Victoria wouldn’t give a damn about bringing Batts up on charges. In fact, the first thing she’d do would be to give Batts full immunity so Batts would start singing about where everything had started.
Garrison took a deep, troubled breath. Then he’d be the next one to have immunity offered up. But that immunity might as well be a death sentence.
Clint Wolf grabbed the landline receiver of his office phone as soon as he saw the number of the extension flash on the screen. He’d been deep into writing the speech Victoria had asked him to give to the Virginia General Assembly in two weeks, and the last thing he needed was a distraction. He wasn’t much of a writer, and he’d hated public speaking ever since he could remember.
But this was the control room calling. He had to pick up.
“What?” he growled.
“One of my guys was monitoring Jury Room Seven through the camera, and there was an incident.”
Wolf checked the slate of trials on his computer. According to the screen, the foreman of the Commonwealth Electric trial in JR7 was a man named Hal Wilson. “Did Mr. Wilson push the emergency button?”
“Almost.”
“But he didn’t push it, did he?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“They just went to the deliberation phase, and two of the jurors got into it over the verdict right away.”
“So?”
“While they were yelling at each other, one of the two jurors screamed at the other about smuggling marijuana into her room here at JT.”
“Christ,” Wolf hissed to himself. Prisons would be such wonderful places without prisoners. “Which one supposedly has the stash?”
“Kate Wang.”
Wolf tapped his keyboard and brought her file up on his screen, topped by her smiling-sweetly photograph. “I’ll take care of it,” Wolf muttered.
“Yes, sir.”
“And no word of this to anyone.”
“No, sir.”
Wolf hung up and speed-dialed Garrison, whose office was three doors down the corridor.
“What’s up, Clint?” Garrison asked.
“I need a dog.”
“Why?”
“Just get one,” Wolf ordered sternly, checking Kate Wang’s room number on her file. “Organize a camera crew, too. You and I are going to Wing Three in five minutes. And I want it documented so there are no questions later about what happened while we were inside juror quarters. Five minutes, George.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
“Open up!” Dez called loudly as he banged hard on the front door of the run-down little house with brown clapboard siding. He had one of his security team watching the back door so no one could get out that way. “Open up!”
“Break the door down,” Victoria called from the backseat window of the second Escalade. “Hurry.”
“You sure?”
“This is the address,” she answered, checking a piece of paper she was holding. “This is where the woman on the Jury Town cleaning staff lives. We have to get to her now, before someone else does.”
He pulled his pistol from the holster at the small of his back, took one step away from the door, kicked the lock in, and headed inside with his gun leading the way.
Moments later he found the older woman sprawled on the floor of the upstairs bathroom, a deep, bloody gash across her forehead. He pressed two fingers to her neck as he crouched down over her. Dead.
He glanced into the tub. It was full of water. And there was blood on one corner of the sink. “Must have slipped getting out of the tub and smashed her head,” he muttered to himself.
Dez smiled sadly at the silver fawn pug, which had been sitting beside the woman’s body when he’d entered the bathroom. “Sorry, pal, but it looks like you’re coming with me.”
He rushed back down to the front door, and waved to Victoria, who, accompanied by three others of the crew, sprinted inside and up the stairs to the bathroom.
She winced. Another dead body.
“Looks like she slipped getting out of the tub,” Dez said.
Victoria shook her head. “Don’t bet on it. Let’s go.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
Conrad’s first clue to something amiss was the slightly ajar front door of Billy Batts’ fifth-floor apartment. The second was the shattered window at the far end of the short, carpeted hallway leading away from the door.
Gun drawn, Conrad entered the apartment cautiously, followed by a state policeman who also had his gun out.
Conrad had not met Batts, only observed through binoculars the young guard approach the kitchen worker and then the cleaning lady in the Jury Town parking lot.
“Stay by the door,” Conrad called over his shoulder quietly to the state trooper before moving slowly down the hallway. He glanced into the kitchen and the apartment’s lone bedroom—which was a wreck—before reaching the broken window.
Sprawled out on the pavement five stories below was a twisted body, blood trails seeping in several different directions out and away from the man’s mangled face.
JD drank a Coke from a large cup as he watched a guard and a state trooper enter Billy Batts’ apartment. All was perfect in his world, he thought happily.
An hour ago, he’d surprised the cleaning woman in the living room of the little house her late husband had left her when he’d died two years ago. In a strange way, the cheap furnishings and decorations had reminded JD of the trailer he’d grown up in outside Macon, Georgia.
He’d smashed the old woman’s head with a crowbar and then created the scene in the bathroom after cleaning up the blood in the living room. The crime scene investigators would probably determine, in the end, that it hadn’t been an accident, but it didn’t really matter.
One down and one to go, JD had driven here, smashed Billy Batts’ head in with the same crowbar after surprising him, and then tossed him out the window.
Again, the CSI experts would probably determine that not all of Batts’ wounds were a result of his impact with the pavement five stories below the window. But, again, it didn’t really matter. He hadn’t shot either of them, and he’d left no fingerprints. There was nothing that could link him to the murders if, in the unlikely event, the cases ever went to trial.
He slipped the silver Charger into gear and pulled away down the street.
CHAPTER 36
JURY TOWN
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kate demanded angrily as two large guards escorted her down the administration corridor. She yanked her arm away defiantly when one of them tried grabbing her by the elbow.
“In there,” the other one muttered, pointing at the open conference-room door, then to the lone chair on the opposite side of the table from Victoria Lewis and Clint Wolf.
“Why in the hell am I here?” Kate asked, hoping the utter desperation she was feeling didn’t show on her face. Goddamn Felicity. “What’s this all about?” she demanded defiantly.
When the guard was gone and the door closed, Wolf reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a small cellophane bag onto the table between them. It contained the joints Kate had been hiding in the Band-Aid box.
