by Stephen Frey
“That was found in your room, Ms. Wang,” Victoria explained, pointing at the bag, “hidden in your closet.”
“It’s not mine,” Kate protested. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“We videoed the search of your room,” Wolf explained. “The dog is trained to smell drugs, and it scented to the marijuana very quickly. We took fingerprints from that bag and the box it was hidden in. We have your fingerprints on file, and I’m sure we’ll find the ones on the bag and the box match to the ones on file … if we really need to.”
“You went in my room,” Kate said in a hushed voice, “without my permission?”
“Don’t even try that,” Victoria volleyed back, leaning over the table. “The contract you signed with me empowers me to search your room at any time. You know that.”
“The weed was obviously planted in my closet by someone.”
“The contract also empowers me to go after you criminally if I determine that you lied to me in any way during the application process or during juror interviews.”
“I never lied,” Kate retorted.
“I’m betting if I dug deep enough, I’d find you to have a very personal connection to Abingdon, Virginia. And that you are not objective when it comes to Commonwealth Electric Power. I’ve got a witness who will testify to that, too.”
“Yeah, well, she’s—”
“It isn’t Felicity. You have no idea who it is.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Try me.”
Kate’s lower lip trembled. “Please don’t kick me out of here.”
“You’ve given me no choice.”
Kate’s chin fell as the outcome turned inevitable. As the possibility of earning four million dollars and traveling the world to find a husband evaporated. “Are you going to—”
“I want your signature,” Victoria interrupted, sliding a single piece of paper and a pen across the table. “It states that you permanently and irrevocably forfeit and forego any and all claims to financial compensation from Project Archer. It states that you will never take any legal action against Project Archer or any of its directors or employees. Finally, it states that you will never speak to anyone, including members of the media, regarding your time inside these walls. If you do, I can throw the book at you in criminal and civil court. In exchange for your signature on that piece of paper, I won’t turn you over to local authorities to face prosecution on a marijuana-possession charge. And I won’t charge you with breaking several sections of your contract with me. No harm, no foul, and we’re even. That’s how I’m looking at this, Ms. Wang.”
Kate stared at Victoria intently for several moments, then reached for the pen and signed on the bottom line, without bothering to read the language. What was she going to do now? Go back to teaching high school, this time in an even more remote location?
“Print your name beneath your signature,” Victoria ordered.
When Kate was finished, she put the pen down, hung her head, and sobbed. Her world had just disintegrated.
“Do you think Felicity West was influenced?” Victoria asked as she reached for the executed agreement. “Do you think someone got to her regarding the Commonwealth Electric trial?”
“What, is this a goddamn test?” Kate murmured as tears trickled down her cheeks and onto her blouse. “I can’t talk, remember?”
Victoria exhaled a frustrated breath. “Get out of here. Someone will take you back to Richmond. We’ll have the contents of your room shipped to you in a few days. Good-bye, Ms. Wang.”
Wolf eased back in his chair when Kate was gone. “That young woman just lost four million dollars so she could smoke a few sticks of marijuana. I’ll never understand the human race.”
Victoria gazed at the doorway Kate Wang had just exited through. What would Clint Wolf think of the human race if he knew everything about the woman sitting immediately to his right … and her cocaine habit? Not everything was as black-and-white as Wolf wanted. Maybe that many years in the Federal Bureau of Prisons had completely polarized him. Live long enough and shades of gray haunted every moment. That was more the reality, Victoria believed—for everyone.
She shook her head. She still couldn’t fathom that Cameron was gone. It hurt so badly. Thank God for Dez. She’d been so wildly tempted to seek refuge in a cocaine haze, but Dez had short-circuited that awful possibility—though he had no idea.
At least, she assumed he had no idea. Knowing her as well as he did now, maybe she shouldn’t be so sure.
Wolf chuckled. “You did a nice job bluffing Ms. Wang on your supposed witness.”
“I wasn’t bluffing, Clint.”
She knew she shouldn’t enjoy the look of shock on his face, but she did.
“Oh,” he spoke up. “Well, maybe it’s time I ask you about David Racine’s emergency.”
Now it was Wolf who seemed to be enjoying himself.
“What’s happening?” Felicity demanded as the two guards escorted her down the administration corridor toward the executive offices.
“In there.” One of the guards pointed at the open conference-room door, then to the lone chair on the opposite side of the table from Victoria Lewis and Clint Wolf.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered as she sat.
“Were you approached about voting a certain way on the Commonwealth Electric trial?” Victoria asked.
Felicity hadn’t liked Victoria when she was governor, and she liked her even less now. “Approached?”
“Don’t do that, Ms. West. This is as serious as it gets.”
Felicity crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “I’m now aware of certain matters you didn’t tell me about yourself when you were offered the opportunity to participate in Jury Town, matters that would have precluded your involvement here, matters that could land you in some very deep trouble if I choose to follow through.”
Felicity started to argue, but that seemed pointless. They obviously had her dead to rights. “What do you want?” she whispered.
Victoria slid a one-page agreement across the table. “Read that, print your name beneath the signature line, and sign it.”
Felicity grimaced when she got to the middle of the page. “I have to give up everything?”
“You lied to me.” Victoria paused, then smiled.
Felicity did not find that smile at all reassuring.
“But here’s what I will do,” Victoria continued. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars as a going-away present, if you tell me the truth. Were you approached on how to vote in the Commonwealth trial?” She wagged a finger. “Don’t tempt me to prosecute you.”
Felicity stared sullenly back for several moments, then finally nodded. “Yes,” she admitted, almost inaudibly.
“How did they get to you?”
“The tooth fairy left a note under the pillow in my room.”
Victoria shot a glance at Wolf, then looked back at Felicity. “Whoever it was wanted you to vote innocent?”
“Yes.”
“Or they’d splay your skeletons all over Jury Town for me to see.”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’m going to add something to your going-away package, Felicity, because, in my humble opinion, you’re going to need it very badly.”
“What?”
Victoria gestured at Wolf. “For a number of years this man ran the Correctional Programs Division of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In addition to managing over two hundred thousand federal inmates, he also ran something within CPD called the Federal Witness Security Program, aka WITSEC, aka the Federal Witness Protection Program.” She leaned over the conference-room table. “I’m going to ask Mr. Wolf to help get you into that program because I don’t want to read about you turning up dead somewhere on a lonely country road the victim of a hit-and-run. If my hunch is correct, without the program, you almost assuredly will.”
The bottom suddenly
dropped out of Felicity’s world. Witness Protection? “Okay,” she agreed hesitantly.
“Get out of here. And remember, that piece of paper you just signed absolutely prohibits you from discussing anything about your time inside these walls with anyone, including members of the media. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why do I feel like there’s something very important going on here that I’m not privy to?” Wolf asked, when Felicity was gone.
Victoria was impressed—he hadn’t asked her who her informant as to Kate’s bias was or how she’d found out about Felicity’s background. Maybe he was beginning to trust her, and not just because she paid him to.
“Because you’re a smart man, Clint,” she said, “and there is.”
“I don’t have time for this,” George Garrison growled as he sat down on the opposite side of the conference-room table from Victoria and Wolf. “I’ve got way too much going on to waste time like this.” He glanced at Wolf. “Come on, Clint. What is this?”
“I wouldn’t worry about what else you have going on, George,” Victoria said calmly. “What you need to worry about is the following. Billy Batts is dead.”
Garrison’s mouth fell slowly open. “What?” he whispered.
“Someone threw Billy out the window of his fifth-floor apartment in Charlottesville. We haven’t actually proven that he was thrown yet. But I doubt it’ll take the CSI people long to confirm that.”
“My God.”
“A woman named Melinda Jones has also died under very suspicious circumstances,” Victoria continued. “It looked like she’d slipped in her bathroom while she was getting out of the tub. But we think she was slammed on the head with a blunt object, and her death was made to look like an accident.”
“Who’s Melinda Jones?”
“Ms. Jones was a member of the cleaning staff here at Jury Town … until she turned up dead.”
Garrison’s face went pale.
“You want to tell me anything about those two deaths?” Wolf spoke up angrily.
“Why would I know anything?” Garrison asked, running his hand nervously through his thinning hair as he stared at the floor between his feet.
“Because—”
“For starters,” Victoria cut in, “you called Billy Batts eleven times in less than an hour. But he never answered.”
“That doesn’t mean I know anything about him being pushed out a window, for Christ’s sake.”
“Five minutes ago,” Victoria continued, “I fired one of our jurors. Her name is Felicity West. Ring a bell?”
“No.”
“She told me a very interesting story, George.”
“Oh?”
“She found a note under her pillow in her room. That note threatened to reveal very personal and damaging information about her to me unless she voted ‘not guilty’ in the Commonwealth Electric trial currently being heard in Jury Room Seven. Ms. West was being extorted, George. You know, do what we want, or lose four million dollars. Obviously, whoever was responsible for that note assumed I’d fire Ms. West as soon as I found out about her past.”
“That’s despicable on several counts, but what does it all have to do with me?”
“Melinda Jones was one of the cleaning staff on Wing Three the day Felicity West’s room was cleaned. I think Ms. Jones was working for whoever was ultimately responsible for that note. I think Ms. Jones was the one who physically put that note under Felicity West’s pillow, probably for a lot of cash, which she’ll never get to use, if she ever actually even got it. And I think Billy Batts was the one who approached Ms. Jones about planting the note.”
“Why Billy?”
“Billy was observed approaching a woman on the kitchen staff, and, later, approaching Ms. Jones.”
“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”
“Billy Batts reported to you,” Wolf hissed.
Garrison shrugged. “Still, I don’t know how—”
“I trolled you,” Victoria interrupted as Wolf grimaced and looked away, obviously frustrated at the man he’d personally hired to be head of the guards. “I wanted to see if you were loyal. And I wanted to see how fast someone might try to influence a jury.”
“What do you mean, ‘trolled’ me?”
“I allowed eight people into Jury Town who could be vulnerable to influence,” Victoria answered, “who I believed had backgrounds that potentially made them targets to those who would seek to manipulate verdicts inside these walls. But I didn’t let on to those jurors that I knew about their pasts.” She paused. “You aren’t supposed to know the names of any of the jurors, George. Only Clint and I are to know the names of the people inside Jury Town. But I made certain you saw eight juror names in a folder I had someone ‘accidentally’ leave in your office. I wanted you to see those eight names. One of the juror names in that folder was Felicity West. Are you connecting the dots here?”
“No.”
She leaned over the table toward Garrison as his eyes finally rose to meet hers. “You and I are the only ones inside these walls who saw the names on that list, the only ones. Let me translate, George.” She forged ahead before Garrison or Wolf could say anything. “You are obviously part of the influence chain when it comes to Ms. West. I don’t think it starts with you, but you’re undoubtedly a crucial link.” She pointed at him. “I want to know everything you know. And every second you hesitate to tell me, I’m going to have Judge Eldridge add another month to your sentence.” Victoria tapped the table three times with her forefinger, jingling the pennies on her bracelet, as she glanced over at Wolf, who was looking at her the same way Judge Eldridge had been looking at her that day onstage at the Supreme Court Building—transfixed. Her gaze moved smoothly back to Garrison as the three pennies touched the table. “Let’s go, George. You’ve already bought yourself another year. Pretty soon, I’ll have you in there for life.”
Garrison winced as he glanced at Wolf. “Help me, Clint, for old time’s sake.”
“Not on your life,” Wolf replied firmly, “or mine.”
CHAPTER 37
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
“Trent.”
He opened his eyes slowly to a dark bedroom, so dark he wasn’t convinced at first that he’d really opened them, that he was even actually awake. Perhaps Angela’s far-off call had been part of a pleasant dream he’d been drifting through.
“Trent!”
The bedroom door burst open and light from the hallway streamed in. Not a dream.
“What’s wrong, Angie?” he mumbled, lifting a hand to his face to keep from being temporarily blinded.
“I expected this at some point,” she answered, seething. “I told myself it would probably happen. But it’s still tough to take when you actually see it on the screen, when you see the words right there in front of you.”
“What words?”
“Come and I’ll show you,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten after five.” She stepped to the bed and grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
“Easy, easy,” he pleaded as she pulled.
After so many seasons of running up and down basketball courts a hundred times a game and banging for rebounds against other huge men, he needed time to get out of his specially made, eight-foot-long bed. He’d escaped the NBA without major injury. But his knees and back ached constantly from years of sprinting, jumping, and changing directions on a dime, and they always required a good stretch to limber up—especially at five in the morning.
“Sorry,” Angela apologized. “It’s just … I can’t believe it.”
He heard the tremble in her voice. “What’s going on?” He swung his size-nineteen feet to the carpet. “And why are you always up so early? Don’t you need sleep like the rest of us?”
She wasn’t swayed by his attempt at levity. “This is serious, Trent. My name is all over the Internet. So is Gaynor Construction’s. N
ot in good ways, either. I need you to look at this. I need my baby’s help. Now.”
WASHINGTON, DC (GEORGETOWN)
“Is it in there?” her husband asked as he hustled into the kitchen of their Georgetown home, an expectant expression riding shotgun.
Martha glanced up at him over her reading glasses and nodded. “A major piece right on the front page of the Washington Post.” She tapped the headline. “Angela Gaynor’s company allegedly bribed government officials in order to win projects all over the Tidewater. It says Gaynor Construction is accused of paying councilmen and women in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Hampton Roads hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence decisions on huge construction deals over the past two years.” She shook her head incredulously. “It’s one thing to see it on TMZ, but this is the Washington Post.”
Lehman squeezed her shoulder. He was more buoyant than he usually was before he’d had his OJ—but he wasn’t surprised. He’d known something like this was going to happen. “It must be true if it’s on the front page of the Post,” he agreed. “They want Angela Gaynor to beat me. You know they would have endorsed her outright now that we’re a month off from the election.” He smiled ear to ear. “Not now. Not even they could justify that now. It must have been so hard for them to print this story.”
“The article doesn’t link Gaynor directly to payoffs.”
“Does it matter? In this day and age, she’s guilty by association. There will be no stopping the social media express train at this point.”
Martha raised a considering eyebrow. “The article goes to great lengths to explain that she hasn’t been linked to any wrongdoing yet.” She pointed at a paragraph halfway down the page. “It says here she stepped away from the day-to-day operation of the corporation when she entered local politics. They don’t even say who at Gaynor Construction was responsible. They don’t even name the people who were paid off.”
Lehman sat down beside her. “Is anyone going to believe she didn’t know exactly what was going on at the company she built from the ground up? I mean, her entire reputation is wrapped around her being Miss Hands On with everything she does.” He looked over her shoulder. “Does the article reference who actually broke the story?”
