“But Asia said Ted’s father was mean. That’s probably where Ted got his mean streak.”
Max suggested, “Maybe Ted thought taking a drug would mellow him out.”
“People who have had Rohypnol say they felt paralyzed. They collapsed and couldn’t move. They experienced confusion. Drowsiness. Their eyes stayed open, and they observed events, but the drug impaired their memory. It’s said to be ten times stronger than Valium.”
“It’s illegal, but we both know it’s available in clubs and alleys. Ted could have gotten his hands on some.” Max sipped his coffee. “Angelo might be right on this. Accidental overdose. None of the paper cups have tested positive.”
Joy set up her laptop and punched the keys. She searched the criminal database for the Dr. Draven Blackmoor Institute. She set filters to identify a list of names of all youth who had entered the program—or at least those assigned by a judge. It took time to reach back over a decade. Time slipped away.
Max’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “Hi, Angelo. Were you able to put a rush on that item?”
“I was. It’s negative. I think that’s a good thing.”
“I do too. Thanks for expediting it.”
“Sure thing.”
Joy asked, “Anything important?”
“Not important right now. Let me dig through these reports and witness statements and we’ll head to the airport.”
“Right. I’ve got some digging to do too.”
Max finished reading through witness statements and digging into the suspects’ past lives. Christie had had a run in for shoplifting shortly after her mother had died. Tony must have stepped into the picture by that time, because she had to go to court and he vouched for her by promising that she was seeing a counselor for an eating disorder and attending school, despite her mother’s death.
Max also found a surprise. An old arrest for Victor for hiring an underage girl to dance in the club in its early days, but Victor produced the fake ID the girl had used to dance. Still, Victor was held accountable. There were no citations after that.
Before they knew it, it was time to leave.
Joy hesitated. “I’ve just hit print. Can’t we wait? I could review it on the plane.”
“It will still be here when we get back. Have Steele pick it up.”
Joy walked over to Steele’s desk. “I printed a stack of papers. Can you collect them and put them on my desk?”
“Sure thing. You ready for this?” asked Steele.
“More ready every day, Steele. My nightmares are taking on super-woman qualities.”
“Stay away from the kryptonite,” warned Steele.
On the way out the door, Joy asked Max, “Does Captain Banks know we’re headed back to Chowchilla?”
“I didn’t think she’d give us permission to go again. I barely got it the first time, and only then because I took vacation time. We’ll be back before she even knows we were gone.”
Officer Ray Reyes met Max and Joy at the Chowchilla Airport and drove them to the outskirts of town. The octagonal monolith of the Central California Women’s Facility—a drab set of dirt-colored buildings with a few grassy plots inside the walls and farmlands outside the walls—had been built along sparsely used farm roads. The prison sat across the street from Valley State Prison for men. The irony was in the name of the location selected for the prisons: Chowchilla came from the corruption of an Indian word for “murderers” due to the history of a nearby tribe often at war with its neighbors.
The flat arid landscape reflected the sun’s rays, producing a warm day that had to be in the nineties. The blue sky was expansive and bleak, like a calm sea.
Officer Reyes had tawny skin, a thick mustache, dark brows, and slicked-back hair. “Ursula was happy to hear you’d accepted her offer.”
“You’ve gotten close to her over the years?” asked Joy.
“I started to work here in ‘96. Around the time she got here. A few years later, I transferred to Level IV—continual armed coverage and a secure perimeter. But I like working with the ladies in AdSeg. Can you imagine—twenty-three hours a day in solitary lock-up and one hour to exercise and shower, which is also without company.” Reyes’s voice conveyed a tone of protection in trying to understand why Ursula had been placed in permanent Administrative Segregation.
“That would be tough,” said Max. “But I’m sure there are reasons for it in Ursula’s case.”
“I don’t get it. She’s been in AdSeg since she got here, which never made sense to me. That’s for violent or high-risk offenders and not usually, at least these days, for extended periods. I’d go nuts.”
“Maybe that’s why she wants to see us,” Max said to Joy. “Company.”
Reyes turned right on Road 22. “Yesterday, she told me that she isn’t even Belladonna. That Belladonna isn’t one person. It’s like some kind of assassination ring or something.”
“Sounds like the makings of a good thriller novel or a movie,” said Joy, disinterested in gossip.
“She is at the top of our famous criminals list, but she’s just not that scary, you know. She’s funny.”
“I presume she gave you the nickname Ray-rey?” asked Joy.
Reyes let out a short burst of laughter as he pulled into the parking lot. “Yeah, the inmates have nicknames for all of us, pretty much.”
“Any word on the investigation? Do we know who poisoned Ursula?” asked Max.
“Nothin’.” Reyes hopped from the car. He led Max and Joy through the visitor’s check-in process and remained with them as an escort. They passed through one security checkpoint after another and through door after door. Each opened and closed with mechanical clicks as they unlocked and locked. Each hallway was as bleak and utilitarian as the outside: a blur of white and metal.
The group stepped through the last door and into a wide corridor. The door closed and locked behind them.
Ursula walked toward them, handcuffed in front of her, and escorted by two armed guards. She had her head down. Her unkempt chestnut hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her chest.
Max wondered if she was well enough to see them, the way she shuffled her feet and kept her head down.
With a click and an electronic whir, the door to a meeting room slid open.
Max eyed the security camera. Clearly someone from a central control room watched the group and had sent a signal to open the door at the moment they all convened at the meeting room gate.
Max took a step forward to enter the room.
Ursula threw a double punch and let out a grunt. She socked Ray-rey in the gut. She let out a high-pitched squeal as she spun around. Her foot flew through the air. She kicked one guard, then the other, knocking them off balance.
An alarm bleated.
A red light flashed on and off overhead.
Ray-rey dropped to his knees, holding his stomach. Max knelt beside him.
Joy engaged. Her FBI combat training instincts empowered her limbs. She threw precision punches to take Ursula down.
Ursula blocked each series of punches: to the throat, blocked, to the gut, blocked, to the ribs, blocked. Ursula moved with precision, too much precision, too well-executed—like special forces combat training precise.
The guards withdrew their weapons and aimed them at Ursula.
Joy succeeded in landing a punch to Ursula’s jaw. It spun her around.
Ursula dropped to her knees and flopped onto her stomach. Her body convulsed. Her legs bent at odd angles. Her neck twisted about like a dying crane. Foam spewed from her mouth,
Joy knelt down beside her. “I smell almond! Cyanide!”
Max pulled Ray-rey’s hand away from his gut. It was covered in blood. “She shoved a shiv into him!”
Ray-rey’s eyes flashed a disbelieving, confused plea for help. He groaned. “I gave her the…”
“The Baclofen?” asked Max.
“A short holiday.” Ray-rey closed his eyes.
Another door opene
d and guards flew at them. Max rushed to Ursula and flipped her onto her back. “Joy!”
“I see it, Max. This is a look-alike. It’s not Ursula.”
“What the hell is going on?” asked Max.
“She escaped, Max. She used Ray-rey and she used us.”
The guards swept them away. Once again, Max and Joy flew through a process of search and inquiry before being released. The prison staff hadn’t noticed any difference when Ursula had returned to prison—that is, when the fake Ursula had returned.
Max yelled at the staff, “Ray-rey admitted to slipping Ursula the Baclofen that sent her to the hospital at our last visit. I suspect that the ambulance wasn’t an ambulance but a team who swapped the two women. How could you not notice?”
No one had explanations, and Max realized the bizarre plot seemed outrageous even to him, but some of the most notorious prison breaks through time had seemed equally implausible.
Neither Max nor Joy spoke a word to each other until safely on the plane. They didn’t trust anyone, especially not the guard who drove them back to the airport.
Max pondered Angelo’s DNA findings—this was the time for Joy to know the truth about Ursula Winters. But how would Joy react? It would leave the trail cold.
21
Once aboard and in the air, Max leaned close to Joy. “This was professional. That girl back there sacrificed her life to get Ursula out of prison.”
“I know, Max.”
“No witnesses! That’s why she killed Ray-rey. No loose ends!”
“I know, Max.”
“Well, I know something you don’t know, Joy!” Max seethed. After speaking to Angelo, he wasn’t sure how or when he wanted to deliver the news, but the moment had arrived. He guarded his words, because of the pilot. Even though the guy was just hired to fly them up and back and even though he wore a headset, Max couldn’t take any chances. “Ursula—the first Ursula we met—is not a DNA match.”
Joy’s face turned angry. “What happened to no secrets, Max? And how did you—”
“I had to be sure! Isn’t that what this damn quest is all about, Joy—finding the truth?”
The pilot turned his head. Max reined in his anger.
Joy calmed down too. “How?”
Max leaned over and whispered, “In the turmoil, I snatched a swatch of hair at our last visit. We ran it against my DNA.”
“Angelo?” asked Joy.
Max nodded. “No match.”
Joy let out a sigh. “Well, that’s good news. Ursula was a bitch.”
“The best news ever, I think.”
Joy stared out the window. “Where is she, Max?”
“Long gone by now. That’s the point of sending a double to take your place. It buys time. But I’m more interested in who she is, Joy.”
Joy turned to face him. “Ray-rey said that Ursula only told him yesterday that she wasn’t Belladonna. That it was some kind of ring of assassins.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That message was meant for us, Max. Why else say it? We didn’t believe Ursula the last time she said it.”
“And we still can’t believe it.”
By the time the plane landed, Joy and Max had both gone quiet, each stewed in his or her own turmoil. “Max, I’m calling it a day when we get back to the station.”
“That’s fine. I’ll fill in Captain Banks. She’s not going to be happy.”
Joy dropped her bag next to the distressed white table in the entryway and trudged to the living room out of steam. She fell into the canary yellow and floral sofa that sprouted red and white irises on green leafy stalks. It was like falling into a patch of wildflowers on a random hillside. The afternoon sun that streamed into the room did nothing to perk up her energy level.
Joy picked up her phone and dialed the private number of her former boss, FBI Director Reno Webb. After Yale Law School, he’d worked his way up from a position with an international law firm to a presidential appointment as the assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice, where he sat on several high-security task forces in counterterrorism and counterintelligence, and finally, he climbed the ladder to his current position as the Director of the FBI.
Director Webb—a black man with high cheekbones and naturally fierce but droopy eyes—picked up. He stood tall and had foreboding shoulders. He looked like a football player: an offensive tackle wearing a suit and tie. He leaned back in his leather chair. “Why didn’t you inform me of your visit?”
“Director Webb, it was spontaneous. The guard only called last night.”
“I need to know! You should have called me.” His voice softened. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly. I’m hoping you have some answers for me. When we set up the first visit with Ursula, did you have any intel that suggested she was planning an escape?”
“Nothing. Look, Joy. I don’t know much more than you do. When you handed me your resignation, you wanted nothing more than to get out of here and go home. To live your life in peace. But after Sam died, you called me. Remember? You wanted answers. So did I and I still do.”
“Who is she? Because this was well-orchestrated. Too well-orchestrated for a woman with a history of poisoning high-level drug lords and the other dead folks buried in her yard.”
Director Reno Webb paused, as if considering what information to give her. “Ursula was rumored to be running a spy ring from prison.”
Joy burst in anger. “Don’t you think I should have known that beforehand?”
“You and Max are the only connections we had to her—she poisoned you. Why? You wanted to meet with her, because you wanted to know? Me too, Joy. Why were you there in the first place? When she was arrested, my colleagues cheered. But I’ve always thought that someone set her up. She’s too smart to be sitting in a house on a property with two little children and a dozen dead bodies buried in the yard.”
Joy remembered combing through the box in Sam’s storage facility months after he had died. She found Belladonna’s files. And she had started this ball rolling. She had no right to be angry at anyone but herself. The director was right—she’d called him and asked for his help. “I just thought it was her dumping ground.”
Director Webb paused again. He leaned forward. “What I’m about to tell you is classified. The soil samples taken from the bodies came from different locales.”
“What does that mean? Someone dug up the bodies and planted them in my yard, if that was even my yard growing up, because I don’t remember a whole lot? Who would do that?”
“Someone who wanted to put Ursula away for good or Cyrus—he owned the property. Maybe he framed her. He’s missing. That’s why I put you undercover, Joy.”
Joy felt manipulated. Again! First Blackmoor and now Director Webb. Her anger flared. “Let’s be clear—I agreed to meet Ursula—that’s all—I do not to work for you!”
“Joy, whoever is behind this has the answers you want. I want them too. But that requires reciprocity. You do still want answers, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Life is pretty good here. I don’t need any more turmoil. Besides, curiosity killed the cat, remember?”
“What did you find out about Max? Anything?”
Joy became defensive. At this point, she didn’t trust anyone. She wished she’d never even asked Director Webb about Belladonna. She still remembered the moment that his eyes lit up with purpose, and he offered to arrange the Belladonna meeting. “Max is a homegrown nice son-of-a-gun. That’s all. End of story.”
“I was able to suppress news of Ursula’s escape. We fed the news agency a story. They’ll report that Ursula Winters died of assisted suicide and that Officer Ray Reyes, feeling sorry for her long incarceration, snuck her cyanide after their first attempt at assisted suicide had failed.”
“Plausible.”
“What did she say to you? Anything?”
“Indirectly, Ursula or her double passed a message. She said that the real Belladonna is rumored to be a
n assassination ring of some kind.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I also heard about Evan Owens. At least now you know who was behind Sam’s death. That’s one answer, right?”
“Right. And maybe it’s enough, Director Webb.”
“Joy, watch your back. Ursula is out there, somewhere.”
Joy disconnected the call. She let out a heavy sigh. Her brain struggled to process and sort. She felt smothered by a fog of uncertainty. Flashes of memory assaulted her: Ursula convulsing, Max on a ventilator, Steele spinning her on a dance floor; her holding a dead kitten.
Joy leaped to her feet to stop the slide show. She headed to her bedroom with her head hung in defeat and fatigue crushing her spirit. Two things always brought back her equilibrium: Sam and Monty. Sam was gone. She needed to reach for Monty, to pick up her heavy dark chocolate body with rings of cream. She needed to feel her scaly bulk slide over her skin.
Joy opened the door of Monty’s enclosure. Her eyes searched the rocks, the ground, the small pond and flew up into the foliage. No Monty. She turned to look at the floor behind her, but simple reasoning told that her Monty could not have escaped. When she had opened the door, the latch had been secure. She’d escaped from the smaller aquarium in the living room but never from this enclosure.
Her heart leaped into her throat.
Her head pounded.
Her eyes searched the room. There was a note lying on her pillow along with a white rose. She gasped. “Draven!” She remembered his words when he first brought her a single white rose. “White is for pure love. And in some cultures, it also stands for death. Such a lovely combination, yes? As the saying goes ‘I love you to death.’”
A shockwave of nerve impulses shot through her body, putting her on high alert. She breathed harder and faster as she walked toward the pillow. With a trembling hand, she picked up the paper and read, “Call for help and I’ll be wearing snakeskin books. Text me and wait. I’ll come for you.”
Joy marched to the living room and sank into the sofa. Her brain exploded with multiple scenarios: call Max and Monty will die; don’t call Max and Monty will live; text Draven and she may die. One by one, she discounted the options, until only one remained. She texted him and sat down to wait.
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