Then there was Sam Blank. His file was nearly as empty as his surname indicated. Cesare had not spit out Samuel Blank’s name as a person of interest when the identities of the known protesters were fed into Cesare’s facial recognition sequence. But the Milltown police had been adamant that Landon’s men pick up Blank as part of the PPC operation.
Why?
The detailed record review shed no light. The man had no real record, save for some vagrancy and loitering charges. The Milltown PD had told Landon there was an outstanding warrant for Blank. It was for public urination, which was a misdemeanor at best. He also had no permanent address. Landon figured the man was either homeless or a gang lookout—the latter of which would explain the hard-on the local police had for him. But he had no known gang affiliations. He was a cipher. A dead end.
Finally, Charles Elijah Robinson, Jr., a professor of grassroots organizing and social justice, of all the ludicrous specializations. He was the wild card of the three. A professional, and yet … Cesare had flagged him.
Robinson was an adjunct professor, and Landon wondered if his long criminal record played a role in his lack of tenure. He’d been arrested, cited, and given warnings at dozens of protests for innumerable causes. He had no assaults, gun charges, drug charges, or felonies on his record. He did, however, have a decade-old charge for credit card fraud, which he’d pled out, and—not surprisingly—horrendous credit.
Unmarried and childless, the thirty-two-year-old Robinson cohabitated with a woman named Raquel Jones. Robinson and Jones were renters, hopping from apartment to apartment, never laying down roots. Robinson was a registered Independent voter who had dabbled in communism, socialism, and the Green Party. His medical records listed no religious affiliation. He had no known family.
In Landon’s experience—and according to Cesare’s algorithms—shiftless people like Robinson were volatile. Fiscal irresponsibility was an indicator of a propensity for recklessness. That trait, coupled with a clear disrespect for authority, made Robinson forty-seven percent more likely to commit murder than a financially stable Lutheran who voted but was otherwise not politically active.
Landon intended to use his time with Robinson to probe for a flash of temper, a hint of violence, something he could use to confirm Cesare’s finding. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, then he leaned back against the cold wall, crossed his legs at the ankles, and settled in to wait.
9
A heavy door clanged, rousing Charlie from his catnap. A pair of tall, well-muscled guards prowled down the hallway. They stopped in front of the cell and peered in at the cluster of tired, hungry men through the bars. The guard on the left, who stood maybe a quarter of an inch taller than his partner, looked down at a piece of paper in his hands, cleared his throat, and started reading off names.
“Cover, Adrian; Hernandez, Julio; Jackson, Troy; Marcus, Jayson; Proper, Carter; and Rodriguez, Evan.”
The men whose names were read shot one another a series of puzzled, worried looks. Then, one by one, they stepped forward, inching toward the bars. Jackson, whose first name was evidently Troy, licked his lips, a quick, nervous movement, and craned his neck toward Charlie.
Jackson didn’t speak, but his eyes pleaded with Charlie to find out what was going to happen to him. He eyed the six men queuing up at the front of the cramped cell. They were all young. In their late teens or early twenties. Students, probably. First-time protesters, maybe. Scared witless and afraid of making a mistake.
He nodded to the second guard, a light-skinned guy with a shaved head and the shoulders of a linebacker. “Hey, my brother, what’s going on?”
The guard narrowed his eyes, an almost imperceptible expression of disdain. He answered Charlie’s question with one of his own. “Did Officer Fox read off your name?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not your concern, my brother.”
Fox laughed. Charlie felt the quick surge of anger in his chest and flexed his hands. Once, twice. Release it. Let it go.
He tried for a placating tone. “I’m a professor at the college. Some of these young men are students. It’s my duty to look out for—“
“It’s a little late to act in loco parentis, don’t you think, Teach?” Fox smiled at him, baring his teeth.
In loco parentis was a term of art in higher education … and the law. Who were these guys?
“Officer, I’m just seeking some assurance that their rights are not going to be violated.”
He left unsaid the fact that the constitutional rights of every man in the cell had been trampled a dozen different ways from the moment the black van careened into the vigil.
Fox’s partner spoke up. “You don’t need to worry about your students’ rights. They’re being cut loose.” He jammed an oversized iron key into the lock and the metal bars swung open with a groan.
“Let’s go,” Fox barked.
Troy darted out of the slow-moving line and grabbed Charlie’s wrist. “What should I do? Tell a dean or something?”
“No. Go to my department and find my teaching assistant, Rush Winters. Explain what happened. He’ll know what to do. And Troy, ask him to call Raquel for me.”
“Got it.”
He released Charlie’s wrist. Charlie grabbed his hand and shook it. Troy nodded and slipped back into the line.
When the last man in line was clear of the cell’s entrance, Fox withdrew the key, and the door slammed shut with a click that echoed. Charlie watched as the group shuffled down the hall and pass out of sight. He turned back to the two other men who remained in the cell: Barefoot and a slight, watchful man who—as far as Charlie knew—hadn’t spoken a word since they’d been picked up.
Barefoot’s mouth twitched. “Well, this is bad.”
“Yep.”
The third man’s eyes darted between Charlie’s face and Barefoot’s.
“Do you know him?” Charlie cocked his head toward the guy.
“Nah. He doesn’t talk.”
“I noticed.”
“So it’s probably safe to talk in front of him, you know what I mean?”
Charlie studied the man’s face. He stared back at Charlie.
“You okay, man?”
The guy shifted his gaze to Charlie’s mouth as he asked the question. Lip reading. He nodded.
Charlie signed, “My name is Charlie. This is Barefoot.” His fingers were thick and clumsy, but the language came back to him as soon as he started moving them.
The man signed back his name, fingerspelling it so quickly that Charlie almost missed it. Sam.
“What’s that you’re doing? Flashing gang signs?”
Charlie bit back his sarcastic response. “No, we’re using sign language. His name is Sam.”
“Tell him I’m Barefoot.”
“I did. But I think Sam can also read lips, so if you face him when you talk, you can tell him yourself.”
“Cool.” He turned to face Sam. “What’d they pick you up for?”
Sam started to answer, then paused, his hands hovering while he thought. After a moment, he went on.
Charlie interpreted for Barefoot, hoping his rusty skills were enough to allow him to recount Sam’s story faithfully. “He went to the vigil. He knew the dead boy and wanted to pay his respects. He says he has an outstanding warrant.”
Barefoot’s eyes flashed.
“Do you, too?”
“Do I what?”
“Is there a warrant out for you?” Charlie asked in a mild voice.
“No.”
“Huh. Me neither. I’m trying to figure out why the three of us are still here, what we have in common.”
Barefoot flared his nostrils. “Well, I’m not a college professor. And I’m not a deaf guy with a warrant, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
Charlie thought back to their first exchange. Barefoot had kept track of time by noticing the shift change.
“Have you done time?”
Barefoot shot back instan
tly, aggression masking defensiveness. “Yeah, I did a stint. You?”
Sam followed the exchange, judging by the surprise that sparked in his eyes.
“No.” He figured radical honesty was his best chance of creating an alliance. He signed for Sam as he explained to Barefoot, “But I do have an old charge for credit card fraud. I pled out, but it’s there. And I’ve been arrested plenty—at demonstrations, protests, sit-ins, that sort of thing.”
His first arrest had come when he was just in middle school, at a protest against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the arrests had continued apace. The arrests had not—until now, at least—involved being abducted off the street by armed men with no obvious law enforcement affiliation and being held in an undisclosed location.
Sam hesitated. He positioned himself so his back was to the ceiling-mounted camera. His chest heaved and he signed, “I saw it.”
“You saw it? You saw what?”
His fingers trembled. “The boy. Vaughn. I was there when they killed him. I ran. But they know I saw.”
Holy sh—
“What’s he saying?” Barefoot demanded.
“He was there when the police killed Vaughn Tabor. He took off, but the cops know he saw it.”
“Aw, man, we’re fu—“
The metal door at the end of the hallway banged open, and Barefoot trailed off mid-profanity. Fox and his partner were back. Barefoot dropped his eyes to his dirty fingernails, and Sam jammed his hands into his pockets.
“Come on, professor. You’re up first.” Fox’s grin prickled the back of Charlie’s neck.
“Up first for what?”
Fox laughed. “You wanna tell him, Scott?”
“With pleasure. You’re going into the box. Now step up to the bars and turn around.”
For an immeasurable moment, he considered refusing. Reckless though the idea was, it felt safer than obeying. But Raquel’s face flashed in his mind. Her big, sorrowful eyes, the worry lines in her forehead, the tremor of her lower lip. And he trudged to the front of the cell on lead-encased feet and turned his back.
Charlie stood rigidly still while Scott wrapped the belly chain around his waist and padlocked it behind his back. Scott moved around to Charlie’s front and pulled his right wrist across his stomach to the handcuff on his left and secured it, then cuffed his left wrist to his right side. Finally, Fox shackled Charlie’s ankles into the leg irons that connected to the belly chain via another length of chain.
“Aw, c’mon, man. This is some Hannibal Lecter-type mess right here,” Barefoot protested.
His outburst caught Charlie off guard. Then Charlie caught a glimpse of Sam’s stricken face and understood. Barefoot and Sam knew they could be next. They were scared. Barefoot might hide it under bluster, but they were both scared.
Unable to move his hands to sign that he was okay, Charlie locked eyes with Sam and spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Nah, man. No muzzle.”
Barefoot barked out a laugh. Sam managed a thin smile.
Fox and Scott were less amused. Scott pushed him forward, and he stumbled into the cell bars.
As he shuffled along the hallway, his facade crumbled. He was scared, too.
10
Sasha scrolled through the screens of electronic discovery, searching for the keywords that would establish that her client had not deliberately engaged in price-fixing behavior with a cabal of competitors. Her focus was split between the sales team’s emails and the ghost she’d seen earlier.
Stop thinking about Patrick.
She rolled her neck and took a sip of not-quite warm enough coffee then dove back into the communications.
Concentrate on the task at hand. Distraction is your enemy. Her Krav Maga instructor’s voice echoed in her mind.
Funny how she seemed to apply Daniel’s self-defense strictures to her legal work and legal reasoning to her hand-to-hand combat drills. But it worked. For her, at least. Just last week, she’d used her trial attorney’s ability to read people to predict that Daniel’s elbow strike was a feint and dodge the real blow neatly. A witness’s body always tells the truth, especially when his mouth is telling lies.
“Seriously, pay attention,” she muttered aloud to herself.
A soft rap on her door rescued her from the task at hand. She raised her head to see her partner and best friend, Naya Andrews, standing in the doorway with two oversized ceramic mugs.
“My savior!”
Naya beamed and stepped inside. “I ran down to Jake’s for a mocha-pumpkin-cider-something and figured you could use a fresh coffee.”
“Always. You’re a goddess.” She took the warm mug and flashed Naya’s mug a skeptical look. “Is that whipped cream?”
“With caramel drizzle.” Naya licked the topping and eyed Sasha defiantly. “Say something. I dare you.”
“Carl’s still on his sugar-free kick, huh?”
Naya grumbled. “That man. It’s gearing up to the holidays, as anyone who’s been subjected to your incessant Christmas song playlists for the past month can attest. Who on earth cleans up their diet in November? Save that stuff for the new year.”
Sasha made a noncommittal hmm sound.
That first week of Carl’s clean-eating kick, the sugar-free Naya had been scary. At times, terrifying. Then she’d discovered that Jake’s specialty drinks were basically desserts in a mug. So, she drank her sucrose and made a big show of telling Carl that she’d sworn off Jake’s brownies and cookies. On balance, the subterfuge seemed worth it. Will no longer dove under his desk when he saw Naya coming.
She turned down her music and sipped the hot coffee. “Ah, I needed this. Thanks.”
Naya perched on the edge of Sasha’s desk with her confection. She peered at the screen. “Car-o-Tech discovery?”
“Yeah.”
“Please tell me they didn’t memorialize any price-fixing plans via email?”
Sasha pulled a face. “If they did, I haven’t found it … yet. But, you know if they did it, someone was reckless enough to put it in writing.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So far, a pair of the Northeastern Region sales reps have committed the details of their extramarital affair to email.”
Naya grimaced. “Yuck. Any porn yet?”
“What do you think?”
“There’s always porn,” Naya marveled, shaking her head. “At work. What are people thinking? I can’t say I miss document review.”
“Different strokes, I guess. I’d rather wade through grimy details of affairs and wish for mind bleach than stare cross-eyed at due diligence documents for some private offering or whatever it is you’re doing in there while you listen to musical soundtracks on a loop.”
“Hamilton will see a girl through a lot—including a round of angel investing. But I won’t lie, I was falling asleep. We need some more junior associates to do this grunt work.”
Sasha shrugged. She wasn’t wrong. “Talk to Will. That’s his job. I do have something more exciting for you, if you want to liven things up a bit.”
Her face brightened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Wanna play internet detective?”
“You know it.” She abandoned the drink and rubbed her hands in anticipation. “Hit me.”
Sasha scrawled Karyn’s full name and last known address on a bright purple sticky note and pulled it off the pad with a flourish and passed it to Naya. “Can you find this woman?”
“Karyn Bishop. Any aliases?”
“Karyn McCandless.”
Naya’s eyes snapped up from the note. “Any relation?”
Sasha cleared her throat. “She was married to Patrick.”
Naya’s expression didn’t change, but one perfectly shaped eyebrow shot up her forehead. “They were together when he … it happened?”
A quick nod. “Yeah. Bishop was her maiden name. I don’t know whether she’s still using McCandless or if she remarried or what. But I figured her maiden name would be a solid way to
track her down.”
“It should. She still live at this address?”
“Honestly? I doubt it. It was a fixer-upper in Dormont. And Patrick did almost all the fixing-up himself, with his buddies. If I were Karyn, I would have made it livable and sold it ages ago.”
Naya eyed her sidelong. Her eyes flickered under her long, thick, enviable eyelashes. She said nothing.
“What?” Sasha demanded.
Naya stared down into her drink. “Nothing.”
“Clearly it’s something.”
“It’s none of my business. But … why are you looking for this woman now? Isn’t it the …”
“Twentieth anniversary of Patrick’s death?”
“Yeah.”
Sasha leaned forward, itching to spill the burden of what she’d seen, to tell someone what she’d seen. Who she’d seen.
Before she could unburden herself, Jordana burst into the room, pale and shaky.
“Sasha! I need you to come to campus with me. Now.” She was trembling with urgency.
Naya cocked her head. “What the …? You know what? I don’t want to know. I got this.” She slipped the note into the pocket of her dress and gave it a pat. As she picked up her coffee and hurried out of the office, Sasha made a mental note to ask Naya where she found all those pocketed dresses.
Naya stopped and grasped Jordana by the shoulders. “You okay, Jay?”
Jordana shook her head no while she said, “Yes.”
The lack of synchrony was a classic tell that she was lying. Naya caught it, too. She turned and gave Sasha a look before heading out and closing the door behind her.
“What’s the matter? You look awful.”
“I went to Professor Robinson’s office like you said.”
Inevitable Discovery Page 5