by Allen Eskens
“Jail can be a dangerous place,” Gideon said. “Lots of accidents. Prison’s even worse if you piss off the wrong people.”
“What’s going on, Gideon?”
“Word is, you have some enemies in the big house.”
“Big house? What are you talking about?”
“Stillwater, Oak Park Heights, Lino, St. Cloud...It don’t matter which prison you go to—there’s some folks who are pretty pissed off at you.”
“I don’t even know anyone…”
“But they know you.” Gideon reached across the table, picked up Gavin’s Salisbury steak in his fingers, and took a bite. “That’s the thing about prison,” he said. “It’s like its own little world with rules and…What’s that word? Hi-er…hierarchs…?”
“Hierarchies?”
“That’s it. You’re a smart fella.” He took another bite of steak and tossed the remains onto Gavin’s tray, licking the gravy from the tips of his fingers.
“What’s any of that got to do with me?”
Gideon opened his jumpsuit and pulled the collar of his T-shirt down enough to show Gavin a tattoo on his chest, a lightning bolt with an A on one side and a B on the other. “I’m bettin’ a smart man like you can figure out what this is.”
Gavin’s stomach knotted up. “Aryan Brotherhood?”
Gideon smiled—a teacher pleased with a slow-learning student. “Remember how they sent me up for beatin’ that spic some years back? Well, it put me in good with some mighty particular folks. They asked me to pass on a message to you.”
“Wait—you knew what they were going to do to me?”
Gideon pursed his lips in disappointment. “You don’t get it. What happened today ain’t nothin’. You’re a marked man.”
“Why?”
“What you did—raping that white girl and throwin’ her in the river? I mean, that by itself’s gonna get you hard time. But you fucked up. That girl—she’s connected. They say her uncle’s inside, and he’s put the word out on you.”
“What…” Fear swallowed Gavin’s words.
“I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re fucked.”
“What’ll they do?”
“Not much till you get sent up. They’ll mess with you a bit here in County, but the real stuff won’t start until later. That little tussle in the hallway was just to show you how far they can reach. The guy that hit you, he’ll do some time in seg for it, but he did what he was told to. We’re just—you know—like soldiers following orders.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are, but that don’t make no difference.”
Gavin’s brain clamored—fear bouncing off the walls of his skull. “Are they…going to kill me?”
Gideon leaned back in his seat, his desolate features bringing to Gavin’s mind an executioner. “They’re gonna have a high time with you. It pains me to say this, Gavin, but there’ll come a day when you’re gonna wish you was dead.” Gideon shook his head. “You done fucked up.”
With that, Gideon stood and left.
* * *
After dinner, Gavin headed straight for his bunk. On his way, he passed a cell that had its door open, and a large hand reached out and pulled him in. A man—different from the man who attacked him in the corridor—punched Gavin in the stomach three times, fast. Then he drove a fourth blow into Gavin’s ear and shoved him back out the door. Gavin stumbled to his cell, the pain so intense that he could barely walk.
He didn’t leave his cell for the rest of that day, remaining on his bunk, his back to the corner, his legs and feet ready to fend off any new attackers.
That night, he fought to keep thoughts of failure from poisoning his mind. He had a plan—and a backup plan. They would work. But if they didn’t, these men would kill him, a slow, torturous death that would take years. Gavin would do the hardest time a man could do.
Chapter 53
Lila’s memory sometimes seemed like a quilt that she could never quite stitch together, the patches lying around her, visible to the eye, tactile against her fingertips, but forever disconnected. As she lay in bed that night, she stared at that picture of Gavin Spencer sitting in a chair at the party in Uptown. He was looking at her the way a lion watches a fallen wildebeest.
She held in her hand proof that he had not been in Indiana on the night of her rape—the final puzzle piece tying his lisp to her panic attack. She had found the man who raped her, yet she could summon no memory of him, or of his partner.
There were moments, in those dark hours, when she retreated into self-pity, mourning the events that befell her that long-ago night, the attack that would happen within a couple hours of that photo being snapped. There were other moments when she could not hold back the guilt she felt for letting Gavin walk free for so long. If Lila had remembered what had happened to her, Eleanora, Virginia, and Chloe would be alive, and Sadie—the only other survivor—would never have suffered at the hands of a monster.
Joe would have told her that none of that had been her fault. He would have kissed the top of her head as he explained that she had done everything right. She almost called him but stopped herself. He would race home and lift this burden from her shoulders, but this time that wasn’t what Lila wanted. She loved him to hell and back, but she knew she needed to stand against this wind on her own.
She had managed only a thin dappling of sleep before her alarm clock woke her.
The first item on her agenda—assuming Dovey didn’t fire her first—would be a discussion with Andi, another cause for her sleepless night. Lila had become a witness in Minnesota versus Gavin Spencer. It didn’t matter that she had no recollection of Gavin raping her; Lila had uncovered evidence that she had been Gavin’s first victim. She could no longer be involved in prosecuting his case.
But how could she walk away? She had been the one to devise the plan to send him to prison for what he’d done to Chloe, Virginia, and Eleanora. It killed her to do it, but those were the rules.
And what was worse, those rules might get Andi kicked off the case as well. Lila’s conflict of interest might spread like an infection to the person best suited to take Gavin’s case to trial. What if Gavin walked free because Lila found the thread that connected them?
When she arrived at Andi’s office, Lila was surprised to see Niki Vang and Matty Lopez sitting across the desk from Andi. They looked over their shoulders at her, their expressions hollow. Andi’s eyes were red and heavy, her hands folded in front of her as if in prayer. Lila had never seen her so shaken.
Lila stopped in the open doorway. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
It was Niki who spoke. “Sadie Vauk is dead.”
Chapter 54
Gavin left his cell that next morning to claim a spot in the common area as close to the guard station as possible. Feeling like a picked-on child, he walked to breakfast at the head of the line, a jailer only a few feet away. Back in the pod, he dealt himself a game of solitaire and looked out from under heavy-lidded eyes at the faces of the other inmates, trying to decide which of them meant to do him harm.
So when the jailer told Gavin that he had a visitor, he simply had to lean across the control panel and say, “Spencer, your attorney’s here.”
Gavin found Leo Reecey sitting comfortably in the small room reserved for attorney visits, one leg crossed over the other, a briefcase on the floor next to him. He didn’t stand to greet Gavin, but motioned for him to take a seat, as if Gavin hadn’t planned to do that anyway.
“You here to talk about the omnibus hearing?” Gavin asked.
“In a way, yes,” Reecey said. “I got a call this morning from the prosecutor. There’s been a development.”
Reecey seemed determined to drag this out, but the mere possibility of what that development might be sent a rush of relief through Gavin. He swallowed his excitement and played along. “What development?”
“Sadie Vauk died last night.”
Gavin feigned confusion, with a touch of surprise tacke
d on for good measure. Inside he jumped and screamed and turned imaginary cartwheels, but outside he cocked his head slightly and blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she’d dead. She was murdered outside of a fitness center where she’d been swimming.”
Gavin paused as he pretended to take in this information. Then he perked up and said, “You think the guy who threw her in the river finished the job? I mean, it kind of proves that I’m innocent, doesn’t it?”
“Doesn’t matter. They can’t prosecute you, not with the evidence they have now.”
Gavin furrowed his brow to deepen his pretense of disorientation. “I don’t understand,” he said, even though he did.
“An accused has the right to confront his accuser—force them to testify in open court and be subject to cross-examination. They have to testify, especially in a case like this, where they have nothing more than her word. They have no forensics, no corroboration, just her picking you out of a lineup. They have no case without her testimony.”
“So…the stuff she told the cops…and the lineup…?”
“They can’t use it unless they can prove that you had a hand in killing Sadie Vauk.”
“I was in here. How could I…?”
“That’s their only path forward, and Fitch would have said something if they had any evidence that you were involved last night. We’ll know for sure by the time we have the hearing today.”
“What’s gonna happen at the hearing…now that…?”
“I have my probable cause motion on the table already, but I drafted a habeas corpus petition to go along with it.”
“Habeas corpus?”
“It means produce the body—your body. It’s a mechanism to get someone out of custody if there’s no basis to keep them there. I want to make sure that if they have an argument to keep this case going, they lay it out today. If not—”
“I’m free?”
“Yeah,” Reecey said, with a hint of regret. “As free as the wind.”
Chapter 55
Clouds to the west painted the sky in shades of gray and black, promising a heavy rain. For now, though, people moved through the city unencumbered by the impending storm—or the death of a hairstylist named Sadie Vauk. Lila didn’t have that luxury.
After learning that Sadie had been murdered, Lila left the office and walked north, pulled by some need to be near the place where Gavin had thrown the women into the river. She was now his lone survivor. She walked until she found herself in the middle of the Stone Arch Bridge, a structure that looked like it belonged in the Middle Ages, its graceful limestone arches leapfrogging across the river. Originally built for trains, it now supported bicyclists, joggers, and pedestrians.
Lila leaned against the steel rail and gazed up the river at St. Anthony Falls. Beneath her, the river’s coppery foam carried a tree branch past the spot where it had once carried the bodies of Eleanora Abrams, Virginia Mercotti, and Chloe Ludlow. Sadie Vauk would have made that same journey had she not been such a good swimmer.
Sadie’s father had told Niki that swimming laps helped Sadie deal with what Gavin Spencer had done to her. That’s why she had gone to the fitness center, to clear her head of those poisonous memories. They’d found her in the parking lot, one bullet in her head and one in her chest. The night-shift detective identified Sadie by her driver’s license but hadn’t made the connection to Niki’s case until morning.
Niki had brought surveillance footage to show Andi. It showed Sadie leaving the gym and walking to the parking lot. A light-colored SUV pulled up. The view was grainy and the car was near the end of the lot, but they could see Sadie stop as if someone in the SUV was talking to her. Then she walked up to the car and pointed north.
“Probably asking directions?” Niki had said.
Two muzzle flashes sent bullets ripping into Sadie. Then Lila watched Sadie fall to the ground as the car drove away.
“We’re ninety percent sure it’s an SUV, smaller, white or silver,” Niki had said. “It’s just too grainy to get a lock on the make or see the driver. But we all know who’s responsible.”
“But can we prove it?” Andi had asked.
Niki dropped her head in defeat. “No.”
As Lila stood on the Stone Arch Bridge, she ran through their few remaining moves. Andi would go to the hearing and argue that Sadie’s statements be allowed to go before a jury under a good-faith catchall of inherent reliability, but that argument would fail. With no proof that Gavin helped to plan Sadie’s death, they couldn’t use the lineup or anything she had said without violating Gavin’s constitutional right to confrontation. Andi’s final line of defense remained a dismissal without prejudice. They could refile the charges in the future if they found new evidence, but to go to trial now meant an acquittal and double jeopardy.
Lila looked out over the river, searching for a strategy that might bend fate, but no matter how she moved the pieces, it always ended with the white king tipped on its side. Lila had gone to law school to stop men like Gavin Spencer and to protect women like Sadie Vauk. She had failed, and now Gavin was about to walk free.
He would hunt her. They didn’t have enough evidence to put him away for what he did to her eight years ago, because proving that he was in the state that night was a far cry from proving that he’d raped her. But she was onto him, and he knew it. He would have no choice but to put an end to her as a threat.
If Gavin had orchestrated Sadie’s death, he would have needed an accomplice—like the one he had with him eight years ago. And if Sadie’s killer was that second man in the car that night, was he already looking for Lila?
Lila glanced in both directions across the bridge and spotted a man forty yards away, elbows resting on the rail, his gaze cast toward the churning of the falls. He paid no attention to Lila, but his presence shook her. Was he Silas Jackson? He was about the right age and had a similar build.
Lila looked at the lampposts that lined the bridge, hoping there might be a surveillance camera, but saw none. There were a few walkers passing by, which eased her fear. He wouldn’t try anything with witnesses around, would he? Lila wanted to run, but where would she go? If Gavin wanted to get to her, he would get to her—if not on the bridge then somewhere else.
The flurry of possibilities muddled Lila’s thoughts as she watched the man. Then he turned toward her and started walking, a smile on his face. He raised a hand and waved. Lila shook her head slightly, confused, but then looked behind her to see a woman approaching, her hand in the air, waving back. Lila looked at the man’s face again and saw that he couldn’t be Silas.
Feeling foolish, she turned toward the rail and waited as the couple embraced and walked away. She hated Gavin for making her see threats in the faces of strangers. She hated him for the evil he brought to the world. And she hated him because he was about to get away with his fourth murder.
Lila, and Andi, and Niki were bound by rules, and yet he could cheat. If only she didn’t have those constraints.
Somewhere in that thought a seed took root, its tendrils reaching to the sky in search of inspiration while its roots burrowed down to find strength. She could feel it grow inside her, consuming all her air until she understood—the time had come to start playing by a new set of rules.
And just like that, she saw what had to be done. She tapped her fingers on the rail as pieces of a plan moved through her head, cogs and wheels locking into place one by one. Gavin had chosen the playing field. He had chosen the game. He had been controlling the moves from the beginning, and the time had come to turn that around.
She started walking, and by the time she stepped off the Stone Arch Bridge, Lila knew how she would finally get Gavin Spencer.
Chapter 56
Sitting at his table near the guard station, Gavin wanted to crow. Even with the added curveball of Lila’s involvement, his plan had worked just as he had conceived it. In a matter of hours, he would be free to take the next steps, the ones that would ensure that he
would never again lose sleep over his mistakes. He would put a stop to Lila before she could put a stop to him.
Like a child waiting for Christmas, he felt as though time had slowed to a near dead stop, the clock’s second hand cruelly lingering before sliding to the next dot. Yet at the same time, Gavin’s mind spun at a fever pitch, jumping from one idea to the next.
He finally calmed himself by thinking about war, specifically the idea that in every war there has to be a last soldier to die—that guy who did everything right, surviving battle after battle, dodging bullets and bombs, only to get shot by some asshole who refused to believe that the end had come. That last soldier let down his guard, believing that some finish line had already been crossed when in truth it remained miles away. Gavin resolved that he would not be that last dead soldier.
The dismissal of his case would not mark the end of a war but merely the start of a new battle. There was still much that Gavin needed to do, beginning with the task of eliminating Jack and any other path that might lead back to him. Once again Gavin’s mind turned to war, but this time he thought of the great generals who in the midst of loss and disarray, ignored calls for retreat and instead ordered counterattacks. They understood that opportunity is found in chaos, and that victory belongs to the bold and to those who kept their wits.
Gavin would not fall back. He would not watch as detectives drew a line from Sadie to Jack to him. Gavin would be bold.
At two-thirty, Gavin walked with a guard through the tunnel that led to court. He carried his green folder and secret SIM card with him because he expected them to toss his cell while he was gone. How could they not? Sadie Vauk had been murdered, and no one in the world wanted her dead more than he did. They would know he orchestrated her death. But it’s not what they knew that mattered, but what they could prove. Those were the rules.