by Stephen Frey
“A local newspaper in Norfolk, I think,” she said. She glanced over at him. “I’m still amazed at you, Chuck, even after all these years.”
“Why?”
“Your confidence. That’s what drew me to you the first time I saw you, even from across the room.”
“You mean it wasn’t just my fabulous looks?” he teased.
“You seemed to know something like this would happen to Gaynor. You kept telling me to wait and see. It’s eerie how clairvoyant you are sometimes.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I love you.”
“Love you too, honey,” he said, then pulled the paper across the table so it was in front of him. “She’s finished,” he muttered ecstatically as he focused on the article, “at least in this town. And she’s getting what she deserved. Thinking she could challenge me.”
“It’s like you knew something,” Martha whispered as she slipped her arm through his. “Did you?”
“Did I what?” he asked.
“Did you know something like this was going to happen to Angela Gaynor?”
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
“How could this twenty-three-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears punk reporter from the Daily Press get this kind of information?” Trent snapped angrily. He scanned the story on his laptop for the hundredth time today. He’d refused to let Angela leave his place and risk being mobbed by the press.
“Does it really matter?” Angela asked.
“You’re damn right.”
“Why?”
“It smells bad to me, really bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“This kid had to get records somehow, right? Even some small-town editor isn’t going to print a story like this without some kind of evidence. Somebody hacked into your system or broke into your offices.”
She perched on the edge of the desk next to him, her restless hands revealing a nervousness he’d rarely seen her fall prey to. “I already told you. There’s no record of anything like that. No alarms were triggered at the office. No video of anything. No firewalls breached as far as the company network is concerned. The reporter is claiming someone sent him the data anonymously.”
“A whistleblower?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it,” Trent snapped, leaning forward to grab his phone off the coffee table. “It doesn’t sit right. It’s too coincidental.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s too easy to connect the dots from this to your campaign.”
“Who are you calling?”
“A guy I know at that paper.”
“Trent, I don’t think—”
“We’re not rolling over on this, Angie. We’ve worked too hard to get where we have. We’re too close to something very good to roll over. If there’s one thing I learned playing all those basketball games, sometimes you have to attack. Offense starts with defense, but defense can’t win games. I’m on it. The counterattack starts now.”
“Social media will destroy me.”
“Angie, you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back at your campaign.”
“What campaign?” she asked despondently.
JURY TOWN
“Have you reached a decision, Mr. Foreman?”
Hal Wilson rose from his seat in the jury box’s back row—which he’d raised again for the verdict’s announcement—then stepped down to the floor, and moved out in front of the rest of the jurors so he was directly in front of the camera. In his peripheral vision, he caught a quick view of himself on one of the four giant screens on the front wall, and glanced away immediately. He’d already gained five pounds inside these walls, and he hated how his paunch was becoming even more obvious.
“We have, Your Honor.”
“What say you?”
Kate Wang and Felicity West had been removed from the jury. Wilson had gotten that message on the screen on the desk in his room. Apparently, they’d been removed from the facility altogether because neither he nor any of the other jurors had seen the women around at all, though no general announcement had been made. However, rumors were flying through Jury Town.
The only thing that mattered to Wilson right now was that their removal from the jury had made his job a great deal easier. He was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to take Felicity for money in pool, but this outcome was definitely for the best. And, thanks to the alternates who had been present every step of the way, the verdict had not been delayed nor a mistrial declared.
“In the first decision to be made here at Jury Town, we find Commonwealth Electric Power guilty as charged.”
Through the speakers, Wilson could hear wild jubilation explode in the courtroom, and the judge hammering for silence with his gavel. He hoped Victoria Lewis was watching or would at least hear about his preamble to the verdict. He’d missed a movie last night to draft the little speech and then practiced it in front of the mirror in his room.
“All right,” the judge called out loudly as the courtroom finally began to settle down, “now we go to the damages phase of the trial.”
“We already have, Your Honor,” Wilson spoke up. “We award the town of Abingdon, Virginia as well as Washington County one point two billion dollars.”
Once again the courtroom erupted. This time the judge could do nothing to control the elation.
CHAPTER 38
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
“Stay strong, Angie, stay strong.”
She let loose an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying. But it isn’t easy.”
She and Trent stood on the balcony of his condominium, overlooking the Atlantic. The day was crystal clear, and the sun’s rays sparkled beautifully across the ocean’s surface. She wished her mood matched the weather.
Trent shook his head. “Your CEO is really doing a number on you.”
“I don’t understand why Jack’s saying these things. How can he possibly accuse me of knowing anything about bribes at Gaynor Construction?”
“The whole situation is insane,” Trent agreed as he looked down, reading from the article he’d pulled up on his phone. “He’s saying you ordered the payments. How can anyone believe him?”
“I had no idea Gaynor Construction was doing any of this. The criminal conduct stops with Jack Hoffman. I haven’t been active in the business since I went into politics, since well before any of these alleged payments were made.”
“This is a case of a CEO trying to cut his losses by implicating someone at the next level. And, since you’re the only owner, you’re the only one he can implicate. Hoffman’s got a hungry young prosecutor all over him who’s looking to make a name. Taking down a prominent local politician who’s about to go big-time would do wonders for his career. So Hoffman figures if he can pull you into the conspiracy and testify against you for the prosecutor, maybe he can steer clear of prison.”
She refused to give in to the tears lurking in her eyes. This whole thing was surreal. “How can they say they have e-mails showing I ordered the bribes? That’s absurd. I’m being railroaded here,” she said angrily. She snatched Trent’s phone.
“Don’t keep looking at the numbers,” Trent advised, slowly letting his forehead fall to the railing.
“I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself.” She held the phone up. “The latest USA Today poll has me down twelve points to Chuck Lehman. We were even with him, and now we’re twelve points behind. That fast.”
Trent groaned. “All that work and all those possibilities, and now everything is destroyed.”
“Hey,” she said, touching his arm. “Hey!”
Trent lifted his head slightly off the railing and gazed up at her. “What?”
“Nothing’s destroyed yet. Get your head up. Right now!”
He smiled grimly as he straightened to his full height. “That’s the Angela Gaynor I know.”
“I’m not gonna roll over and just take this thing, Trent. I’m not giving up this election, either. You’re right. We’ve come too far.”
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Trent slipped his arms around her. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“Are you still with me?”
“Absolutely. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a—” A knock at the door interrupted him. “Who can that be?”
Angela followed him inside but peeled off toward the kitchen to get a drink when he headed for the door. As she reached for the refrigerator, she heard raised voices and hurried for the front door.
“There she is!” a young man wearing a plain, gray suit and a solid-blue tie called over his shoulder to someone Angela couldn’t see. “I told you she was here!”
“What’s going on, Trent?”
“Get back, Angie!”
“Stop right there, Ms. Gaynor!” the man in the gray suit yelled. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of bribing multiple public officials.”
“Don’t come in here!” Trent warned the young man, who was trying to push his way past. He was a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, and making no progress. “I’m warning you, son!”
Suddenly the doorway filled with uniformed policemen.
“On your knees!” one of the cops shouted. “Now.”
As three policemen slammed Trent up against the wall, the man in the gray suit finally barged past. “Turn around and get your hands behind your back, Ms. Gaynor,” he ordered, producing a pair of silver handcuffs from beneath his coat. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“They’re doing this just to ruin you in the election, Angie!” Trent yelled as the cops forced his arms behind his back. “That’s all this is! You’re innocent!”
“I know!” she called back. “I’m gonna get this to court right away. Right away!”
CHAPTER 39
JURY TOWN
“You got ’em, didn’t you, Victoria?”
She glanced up at Wolf as he moved into her office. “Who do you mean?”
“George Garrison, Billy Batts, the cleaning woman, Felicity West. You tracked them all down. And in the nick of time, so you could pull Felicity from Jury Room Seven and get the verdict I’m sure you wanted in the Commonwealth Electric case.”
Victoria put down the file she’d been reviewing. “I don’t want any particular verdict here,” she replied deliberately. “I want the right verdict, Clint. And it’s bittersweet for me that two people died, even if they were involved in the conspiracy. It makes me hate whoever’s at the end of the chain that right now stops at George Garrison. Powerful people are pulling strings, and I hate that I can’t get my hands on them yet. But I’m trying.”
“Yeah, well one of the people I brought in here for our team turned out to be a bad guy. If you want my resignation, I’ll understand. I’ll have it for you first thing in the—”
“Stop,” she interrupted, glad that he’d offered his job to her. Now she could be sure that he was innocent of any complicity. “You’re a loyal man, Clint. And I want you here at Jury Town for as long as you’ll stay.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled gratefully, pushing back the brim of his white Stetson. “Garrison still isn’t talking?”
Garrison was sitting in a jail cell outside Washington, DC, where Victoria felt more confident about her prospects of keeping him alive. So far, he’d steadfastly refused to say anything—even as much as to proclaim his innocence. But she remained hopeful.
“No,” she answered, “he’s not saying a word.” It was imperative to her that Wolf truly believed he still had her full support. “By the way, I need your recommendation on who should replace Garrison.”
Wolf nodded. “For now it’s me, but I’ll get working on it right away. I hate to say it, but I think it’s best if I work from a candidate pool with which I’m not familiar.”
Victoria picked up her phone when it alerted her to an incoming text. Her eyes raced through the message, which had been written by one of her friends inside the Virginia General Assembly. Barney Franz, the majority leader, was quietly stirring up trouble for Jury Town within the ranks of his party. She’d heard the rumblings for a while, and now Franz was close to putting his plan into motion, according to her source.
Cameron’s prediction was coming true. Franz was furious that she hadn’t kissed his ring, and he intended to make her pay.
Well, Franz better make sure he knew what he was doing. She’d always considered him a colleague. Not one who typically saw eye to eye with her, but that was all right. That was government.
At this point, he was quickly becoming an enemy.
NORTH WOODS, MAINE
“It’s a bad news, good news night,” said the Gray who was easing into the big chair to Rockwell’s left.
That was the senior official at CIA, Rockwell remembered from the picture of the man he’d found on the Internet.
Rockwell took his seat in the semicircle of easy chairs positioned before the cabin’s big stone fireplace. These meetings were much better now that he was being ferried to and from the cabin by helicopter. He didn’t miss that hard wooden chair or the blindfold, either.
“My brother is looking at prison because of what we failed to accomplish at Jury Town,” the man from the NSA growled. “Commonwealth was found guilty.”
Rockwell winced. Hopefully, he wouldn’t end up shouldering the blame for the verdict. It wasn’t his fault Garrison had been foiled. But they might not see it that way.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” the Gray from DHS cautioned. “That was a civil case. The guilt bar in criminal trials is much higher. And don’t forget, we can hide your brother if it comes to that.”
“Nice life that would be.”
“The really bad news about what happened,” said the fourth man, “is that it seems obvious we’re going to have a very difficult time influencing verdicts inside Jury Town.”
“Should we take care of Mr. Garrison? The way we took care of Billy Batts and that old woman.”
Rockwell made certain not to look up from the floor at what he took to be more confirmation that someone else in this room was communicating with JD. He’d read about Batts’ death on the Internet. The only conclusion he could draw was that JD had carried out that murder. Or maybe it wasn’t JD, he realized. Maybe they had other assassins on the payroll—which made him feel even more nervous about his usefulness to them.
“Perhaps.”
“Let me look into that one.”
Rockwell hadn’t been able to locate the fourth man anywhere on the Internet—at any of the “usual suspect” agencies—the way he’d found the other three Grays.
“Where’s the good news tonight?” the man from the NSA wanted to know.
“Angela Gaynor now has an arrest record. So does the basketball player.”
“And the Gaynor Construction CEO, Jack Hoffman, is deep in our pocket, and Ms. Gaynor has no idea.”
“Plus she’ll never find out how we penetrated the company network from across the Pacific. It’s beautiful.”
“Even more beautiful,” the fourth man spoke up, “Ms. Gaynor is fifteen points behind Chuck Lehman and falling like a stone.” He pointed at everyone in turn. “Let’s make tonight even better. Let’s go ‘no limit’ on Victoria Lewis.”
“Hear, hear!” the men shouted in unison as they stamped the floor hard.
Rockwell tried to keep up, but he was late on both the vocal and the stamp.
“Mr. Rockwell?”
“Yes?”
“It’s time to let JD loose with his sniper rifle. It’s time to put Victoria Lewis six feet in the ground. We’re going ‘no limit’ on this.”
He hated to ask a question, but there was no choice. “What does—”
“Tell JD to use any and all means necessary. She thinks she can get in our way? Well, no, hell no! Tell JD to blow her goddamn head into a thousand pieces.”
“Hear, hear!” the men shouted again, stamping their feet on the floor in unison. “Hear, hear!”
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
&nbs
p; “How we doing?” Dez asked cheerfully as he looked up from cleaning a Glock 17. Parts of the pistol lay spread out on the table in front of him, surrounding a rag and a can of solvent. “Better?”
Victoria sat at the other end of the couch, clad in jeans and a baggy, UVA sweatshirt, watching him. It was almost midnight, and neither of them could sleep. She’d never needed much sleep, even as a kid. Dez never seemed to need any.
“I’m fine.”
“Was it a good day or a bad day?”
She shrugged. “It was fine.”
“Fine and fine. Good to know. Glad I’m on the inside here, Victoria.”
“Sorry, I’m just—”
“You’re frustrated,” Dez preempted. “You feel like a prisoner here at my house because I won’t let you go anywhere or do anything unless it involves Jury Town, including go back to your little house in the woods you love so much.”
“Exactly.”
It was Dez’s turn to shrug. “Now you understand how celebrities feel.”
“I don’t think it’s this bad for them.”
“Not quite, but close. I’ve protected a few, and they get frustrated, too.”
She was longing for the white powder, for just a line or two. But she’d made a pact with herself today—at Jury Town. She was giving it up forever, in Cameron’s honor.
She pictured a mirror on the table beside the pistol parts, with a pile of it on there. Could she resist? That would be the struggle for a long time, but she had to do it—for Cam, but even more, for herself.
“Yeah, well, I bet they wouldn’t switch with me.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but how about something to take the edge off?”
“Like what?”
“I’ve got a bottle of Absolut you can hit.”
“How’d you know I was a vodka girl?”
He made a face. “Come on. What, are you gonna drink … bourbon?”
“Right. So that sounds good. A little vodka. You know, to help me sleep.”
