by Alex Gilly
The courtroom was dead silent, waiting for an answer.
“No.”
“You mean to tell me that you do not recognize anyone in this courtroom from the four years you spent at Saint Ignatius College in Yorba Linda?”
“That’s what I said,” said Marvin. He was visibly sweating.
Mona said, “If it please the court, I wish to introduce new evidence.”
Scott jumped up.
“What new evidence?” said Judge Ross.
“A photo,” said Mona. She asked Joaquin to give copies of the photo to the judge and Morrison Scott.
Then she put a copy on the projector for the jury to see. It was a photo of nine young men in singlets sitting in a rowing eight. The one Katrina Wakefield had shown her on the wall of the Great Hall at Saint Ignatius.
“Mr. Marvin, can you name the people in this photo?”
Marvin said nothing.
“I’ll start,” said Mona. “Second person from the right—that is, the first person holding an oar—that’s you, isn’t it, Mr. Marvin?”
No answer.
“You’re in what they call stroke position, aren’t you? The most important position, the one who sets the rhythm for the other seven rowers?”
Still no answer.
“And here, in position number five, is the late Mr. Edward Maws, the CEO of AmeriCo, the catering company that supplies Paradise Detention Center. Number five: that’s commonly known as the meat wagon in rowing parlance, isn’t it, Mr. Marvin? Number five does the heavy lifting?”
Marvin said nothing.
“And finally, here at the front—right in front of you, actually, we have the smallest and lightest member of the crew and the only member without an oar. We can’t see his face, because he’s facing forward. But you can. In fact, sitting where you are in stroke position, you’re looking directly at him, aren’t you? He’s the coxswain, isn’t he? The one who steers the boat?”
No answer.
“Mr. Marvin, do you recall the name of the person who sat a foot in front of you and steered your boat for four years at Saint Ignatius, between the years of 1988 and 1991?”
No answer.
Mona did not smile. “Let’s zoom in. Do you see this birthmark on his neck, sir? This diamond-shaped birthmark?”
She waited.
“Mr. Marvin, I remind you that you are under oath. Can you please tell the court when was the last time you saw the man in the picture?”
“I don’t recall.”
Mona did not say anything.
She waited.
Marvin kept sweating. The judge kept shrinking into his seat. Mona waited some more. Then she turned around, looked at Marius Littlemore, and said, “The man in front of you in this picture, sir—the man who steered your boat for four years at prep school—is Phillip Ross. He’s sitting right there.”
She pointed at Judge Ross.
A long, stunned silence filled the courtroom. Then a shocked murmur.
Michael Marvin looked like a deer in headlights. The judge had his gavel in hand but seemed unsure what to do. Mona allowed herself a moment to turn around and look at the audience. She could see the reporters frantically scribbling. And she could see Littlemore tapping into his phone, even though no one was supposed to bring a cell phone into court. She doubted if, at this point, Judge Ross was going to eject the DA from the room. She turned to face him.
After a long moment, he said, “Well done, Ms. Jimenez.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“You’re right, Mr. Marvin and I were at school together. I did not recuse myself, and I should have.”
“No, you didn’t. Your Honor.”
“I will declare this case a mistrial, and you can begin again with another judge. I hope that satisfies you, Ms. Jimenez.”
“No, Your Honor. It doesn’t.”
The murmur that had been steadily building behind her now fell off a cliff.
Mona put the BSCA’s annual report back on the projector.
“Let us return to the operating costs, Mr. Marvin. Can you please read this line here?”
She used her laser pointer to highlight the line where the BSCA had paid AmeriCo $5,837,700.
“It’s a payment to one of our suppliers.”
“What’s it for?”
“Catering.”
“What’s it for, Mr. Marvin?”
“They’re a catering company. A food supplier.”
“Mr. Marvin, don’t tell me it’s for catering. What did you get for your $5.8 million?”
He fell silent.
“Allow me to jog your memory,” said Mona.
She hobbled back to her table on her crutches and got two transparencies from Joaquin. Joaquin distributed paper copies to Morrison Scott and Judge Ross.
“Your Honor,” said Mona, with some irony, “if it please the court, I wish to introduce further new evidence.”
Scott didn’t bother getting up to object. Mona put the first transparency on the projector.
“When the late Mr. Maws got divorced last year, he was obliged to disclose his financial situation. This chart represents the moneys that, according to documents filed in the Orange County court, AmeriCo paid out to an entity in the Cayman Islands called Loyola Holdings.”
She pulled the transparency off and put on another. “This chart shows the number of migrants sentenced to at least three months’ detention in Paradise Detention Center by Judge Ross over the last twenty-four months. Now, if you superimpose these two charts”—the charts on the screen merged—“you will see that there is a perfect month-by-month correspondence between the amount of money that AmeriCo paid to Loyola Holdings in the Cayman Islands and the number of migrants sentenced by Judge Ross to at least three months in the Paradise Detention Center.”
Mona glanced at the jury. Every jaw had dropped. She knew it didn’t matter in legal terms, since this trial would be declared a mistrial, and a new trial, with a new jury, would eventually decide the punitive damages against the BSCA. But still. It was gratifying.
“Over the past year, this court has sent 853 migrants to Paradise, where they have served a total of 233,508 days, for an average of just over nine months each. Which brings me back to the figure of $5,837,700.”
She paused. “That’s the amount, ladies and gentlemen, that the BSCA paid AmeriCo to feed its inmates last year. When you divide that number by 233,508, you get the oddly round number of $25 per person, per day.”
She paused again. “Half of that—$12.50 per person, per day—was funneled through AmeriCo to an entity in the Cayman Islands called Loyola Holdings. In other words, for every day a migrant sentenced by Judge Ross spent in Paradise Detention Center, the beneficiary of Loyola Holdings received $12.50.”
Mona looked at Judge Ross.
“I was on the phone to Edward Maws when he was killed. I heard his last words. I thought he said, ‘Lawyer is lost.’ I couldn’t make sense of it. But last night, I listened to it again, and I realized I had heard it wrong. Maws didn’t say ‘Lawyer is lost.’ He said, ‘Loyola is Ross.’ He was telling me that it was you.”
Judge Ross stood. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense, counsel. I declare this trial a mistrial. Ladies and the gentlemen of the jury, you are free to go home. I know that’s where I’m going,” he said.
There was a great deal of commotion behind her. Mona turned and saw Littlemore rushing for the door, yelling into his phone—arranging warrants, she expected.
Michael Marvin was still on the stand, looking like a lost schoolboy. “Can I go, too?” he said.
“Of course you can, Michael. It’s over,” said Judge Ross.
EPILOGUE
AFTER the trial, Mona didn’t think she would ever go back to Paradise, but in April of the following year, on the anniversary of Carmen’s death, she did. She had recently found the entire season of Aprendí a Llorar on a streaming channel and had binge-watched the whole thing again—all 160 episodes. After the one-hour fin
ale, her cheeks still wet with tears, and basking in the warm glow brought on by strong feelings and Zinfandel, Mona remembered her mother’s comment that only people who repressed their emotions refused to enjoy telenovelas. (In Mona’s childhood home, “people who repressed their emotions” was code for Anglos.) The show really had every hammy hook: an aristocratic, virtuous young heroine; a brave and capable young man; a stereotyped villain; a riches-to-rags-to-riches plot; improbable twists; forbidden longings; clear moral boundaries. The heroine, Dolores Romero, was so much Carmen’s doppelgänger that Mona wondered whether she had just watched eighty hours of television in order to see Carmen’s story told again, except this time with a happy ending, one in which the effects of the poison are reversed, in which the young woman is healed, and her story ends not with her body in a box but with a wedding party in a garden, complete with mariachis.
Mona went to bed but struggled to find sleep, and when she did she slept lightly, and the next morning at 5:00, before the sun was up and Finn had returned from patrol, she left a note on the kitchen counter explaining where she was going, got into her new lava-red car, picked up a cup of coffee and bag of doughnuts, and headed inland.
Nine months had passed since the day in court when she had joined the dots connecting Judge Ross to Michael Marvin. Ross and Marvin had been arrested, charged, tried, found guilty, and sentenced. Separately, so had Keith Klein. They would all die in jail. Dr. Woods had lost his license to practice medicine.
On Maws’s laptop, Anaheim PD had found video footage of him with an underage girl. The footage had been emailed to him. It had been filmed with a hidden camera in a brothel in Tijuana, according to the sender, who had threatened to send the video to his wife, his parents, and the police unless Maws cooperated. Anaheim PD had turned it over to the DA’s office, who had turned it over to the FBI. The FBI had revealed that the Tijuana brothel belonged to the Caballeros de Cristos cartel. They also said that the Papas Santas chip company was a cartel front. The Caballeros had been using AmeriCo to traffic cocaine into the country inside tubes of potato chips.
Mona asked Littlemore if she could see the video. Within seconds, she recognized the girl: Carmen, age fifteen, looking younger. She asked the investigator to turn it off.
Finn had spent five days in the hospital, then had taken a month off to convalesce. When he returned to work, he was appointed station director.
After the case before Judge Ross was declared a mistrial, Mona filed her suit again. This time, it didn’t make it to court. The Border Security Corporation of America settled, and Clara Vega’s future was now secure. Mona had helped Maria Elena Vega set up a charity in Carmen’s name.
Under intense political pressure, the Department of Homeland Security had revoked its contracts with the BSCA, forcing the company to shut down several detention centers, including the one in Paradise. Its share price tanked.
After four hours’ drive, Mona pulled into the PDC parking lot. Tumbleweeds had collected along the fence. Someone had spray-painted swastikas on the wall by the entrance. The entrance had been boarded up, but someone—Mona assumed the same young men who had tagged the walls—had prized away the boards. She squeezed through. Sand had found its way inside, a thin layer scattered evenly over the floor. She passed through the silent metal detector. She walked down the corridor, sand crunching underfoot, until she reached the canteen. She stood for a moment behind the counter and listened for ghosts. Hearing none, she made her way out to the yard. The tent was gone. A breeze was blowing. Mona walked the length and breadth of the empty yard, carefully searching the dirt ahead of each step she took. She saw crumpled beer cans, cigarette butts, and spindly bushes; she saw small yellow flowers growing close to the ground.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you first and mostly to my editor at Forge Books, Kristin Sevick, for her patience, belief, and sharp eye.
Thank you to my agent, Farley Chase, for regularly checking for signs of life.
This novel proved a tricky knot to unravel. Thank you to my wife, Karen, for listening while I worked the kinks out, and for everything else along the way.
ALSO BY ALEX GILLY
Devil’s Harbor
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEX GILLY is a writer and translator who was born in New York City and has lived in Australia, Canada, France, California, and the United Kingdom. Devil’s Harbor was his first novel. He currently lives in Sydney with his family. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Alex Gilly
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEATH RATTLE
Copyright © 2020 by Alexander Gilly
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs © Getty Images and Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Daniela Medina and Esther S. Kim
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Gilly, Alex, author.
Title: Death rattle / Alex Gilly.
Description: First edition. | New York: Forge, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016314 (print) | LCCN 2020016315 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780765377333 (hardback) | ISBN 9781466855144 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.I4517 D43 2020 (print) | LCC PS3607. I4517 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016314
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016315
eISBN 9781466855144
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First Edition: 2020
