“I’m sure Tommy will come home soon,” Aunt Haddie said.
Mrs. Martin sniffled. “But what about Jay? They’re going to charge him.”
“What’s he getting charged with?” Jack pulled down the rearview mirror so he could see Mrs. Martin.
“Fraudulent use of an ATM card, larceny, and identity theft.”
Jack turned ninety degrees in his seat. “Seriously?”
“Jack.” Aunt Haddie raised a hand. “Eyes on the road.”
Jack straightened out the car.
“The police said he stole that missing woman’s wallet and then tried to use an ATM card that wasn’t his. He didn’t get any money out of the account, but they said that doesn’t matter, he tried to use the card. But he didn’t do it.” She gripped Aunt Haddie’s hand. “I know Jay. He said he found that woman’s wallet.”
“Do they believe that part at least?” Jack asked. “Or do they think he’s somehow involved in the Stacy Shaw disappearance?”
“They think he knows where Mrs. Shaw is,” Mrs. Martin said, her voice shaking. “But he couldn’t have been involved. He’s never hurt anyone. You know him, Jackie. Have you ever seen him have a temper?”
Jack crooked his head to the side. The truth was, J-Dog’s temper was notorious. Jack had seen him start fights a handful of times—and each time, it was a lopsided victory for J-Dog.
Jack chose to ignore the question. “So that’s why they’re charging him with all those felonies,” he said instead. “They’re leaning on him to get information on Stacy Shaw.” He turned to look at Mrs. Martin.
Aunt Haddie pointed forward. “Pay attention to your driving.”
“Sorry,” Jack said. “Where did the police find the wallet?”
“In Jay’s jacket. When they searched the house. I think Jay was going to try to figure out who it belonged to so he could give it back. I’m certain he didn’t steal it like they said…” She broke down and sobbed.
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but Aunt Haddie shook her head.
Mrs. Martin cried quietly as Aunt Haddie rubbed her back. They spent the rest of the ride in silence.
When they pulled into the prison parking lot, Jack got the door and the two women got out. Aunt Haddie patted Jack’s arm.
They walked down the long concrete path to the prison. Jack had been out here once before as part of a police ride-along. He’d been accompanied by a group of burly police officers, but even so, it was unnerving.
As they headed to the entrance, they could see the prison exercise yard in the distance. Several layers of fences crowned with barbed wire separated them from the prisoners. They called the exercise yard at the Bay “The Beast Pit,” because all the weights and illegal steroids turned guys into creatures that only vaguely resembled humans. Right now, a dozen men snarled and growled as they tossed massive steel weights into the air like they were beach balls. The prisoners looked at the guards like wolves trapped in cages, with contempt and loathing.
It all put Jack on edge, from the cold, indifferent tone of the guards to the prisoners who glared at him with nothing but hate. The place had the antiseptic smell of a hospital mixed with the stale air of a tomb, and although the concrete and tiles looked as if they belonged in a university, to Jack it was like walking into a morgue.
When the first heavy metal gate clanged shut behind them and the unseen lock sealed it with a loud click, Jack recalled what he hated the most about this place: he was trapped. Locked behind steel doors and concrete.
Jack flexed his hands and his breathing sped up. Panic rippled through him as flashbacks from his childhood hijacked his brain. It felt as if the floor was rolling out from under him. Everything inside screamed at him to turn around and run—to tear down the door and barrel outside. Sweat ran down his back and the room spun. He stretched his hand out and felt cold concrete.
Get out! yelled a voice in his head but his feet didn’t move. He watched Aunt Haddie and Mrs. Martin walking down the corridor ahead of him, the two old women holding each other up.
He couldn’t leave them alone in here.
His fist smacked the wall and the pain helped a little to stop the spinning and wake him out of the nightmare. He hurried to catch up.
After showing their IDs several times, enduring two pat-downs, and handing over their bags and everything in their pockets, Mrs. Martin, Aunt Haddie, and Jack were silently escorted to a long, stark room. The cinderblock walls were painted a drab gray and green, and with no exterior windows, the air smelled stale and musty. Warning posters were everywhere, informing prisoners that biting, spitting, or throwing of bodily waste would result in thirty days added to their sentence.
This was the visiting room.
The space was cut in two by a metal and glass divider partitioned into five individual sections. Each section consisted of two metal stools cemented to the floor on the visitors’ side, one stool on the prisoners’ side; between them, a thick Plexiglas window atop a waist-high metal counter. No phone, no speakers, just small holes drilled through the glass. Speaking through the holes forced people to raise their voices to a level that enabled the guards and everyone else to hear their conversations.
Mrs. Martin was directed to the visitors’ section at the far right. She took a seat on one of the metal stools and waited anxiously. Jack and Aunt Haddie stood by the wall, behind the yellow line painted on the floor.
There was no doubt in Jack’s mind that if he were ever in here for any length of time, he would go mad. His chest tightened. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was pain. At the far-left visitors’ section, a prisoner in a bright-orange jumpsuit sat on the edge of his round metal stool. The tendons in his neck stood out as he jabbed a finger toward the emaciated girl on the other side of the Plexiglas. Each time his hand thrust, she winced. Hot bile rose in the back of Jack’s throat.
He turned away, but his new view was no easier to watch. A young mother held up a toddler to the partition. Curious little hands reached out toward the man on the other side, who had tears in his eyes. His enormous hand pressed hard against the Plexiglas as the toddler’s fingers traced its outline.
Jack wondered whether the boy and his father had ever actually touched, skin to skin. He fought the urge to scan the faces of the men in the room to look for similarities to himself. Jack didn’t know anything about his own biological father. No name. No details.
Two guards escorted J-Dog into the room on the other side of the glass. J-Dog normally walked with his chin up, looking down his nose at everyone, but today he kept his chin tucked down. With one hand moving back and forth as though he was pulling himself forward with it, he strutted over to the metal stool.
When J-Dog raised his head, Jack was shocked and Mrs. Martin’s hand flew to her mouth. His face was bruised, his right eye swollen shut. His upper lip was fat and cut; his right hand was bandaged.
“Oh, baby…” Mrs. Martin’s voice broke.
“I’m fine.”
“Who did that to you?”
“Some of the welcoming committee. It was nothing. I can handle it.” He leaned close to the window and peered out with his left eye. “I told you not to come here.”
“I spoke with your lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” J-Dog scoffed. “The court-appointed guy’s a dumb old white guy. He’s an idiot. He’s already trying to get me to take a deal.”
“Mr. Carlson believes you should cooperate with the police.”
“They can keep on me. But I’m not sayin’ nothin’.”
“But Jay, they think you had something to do with that woman who went missing.”
“Like I’d go anywhere near a white woman. Too much trouble.” Jay glanced at the beefy, pale guard standing in the corner. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. I didn’t know her.”
“The police say you met her. They say you delivered baby furniture to her house.”
“So what? She didn’t even look at me. That’s not meeting someone.”
Mrs.
Martin shook her head. “Jay, why won’t you just tell the police where you found the wallet? That young lady is missing. If you tell them where you found it, they said they’d consider reducing the charges.”
“You can’t believe a word the cops say. That Detective Vargas tricked me.” Jay’s nostrils flared. “He lied. He said the lady just wanted the wallet back and since I had no record I’d get probation, and even that would go away if I kept my nose clean. He said all I had to do was just admit I found it. He lied. He never said she was missing, or anything about an ATM.”
Mrs. Martin put her head in her hands. “Jay…they have a picture of you at the bank.”
J-Dog turned his face away from his mother. His lips pulled back and he bared his teeth, but he didn’t say anything.
“They also found blood. On your shoes. Is it that woman’s? Jay, did…did you have something to do with it?”
Jay glared at the ceiling. “No. I didn’t.” His lip curled back and the muscles of his jaw throbbed.
“Oh, Jay.” Mrs. Martin reached out and placed her hand on the Plexiglas. “Please talk to Attorney Carlson.” Her shoulders shook as a small sob jolted her slender frame.
His mother’s tears extinguished the fire in Jay’s eyes. The anger burning there flickered and died. “Shh, Momma. Everything’s gonna be good. You always say that. Everything’s gonna be good. We’ll figure it out.” He leaned down and angled his head so she would look at him. “I got a little money. In my bureau, the top drawer. In a white envelope. You gotta use it for the bills.”
“I’ll use it for your bail.”
“It’s only enough for bills. I’d never have the money for bail.”
“I’ll put up the house.”
“No! I won’t let you.”
“But Jay…” Mrs. Martin held her hand over her mouth to cover another sob.
“It’s good, Momma. Everything’s gonna be good.”
She nodded, and J-Dog’s eyes met Jack’s. Jack expected to be on the receiving end of a nasty sneer, but instead, the eyes that looked back at him were hollow. J-Dog was broken, and Jack knew it. He’d seen that same dead look on his own face in a mirror a thousand times.
For a split second, Jack remembered when they were kids, and an innocent young Jay riding his ten-speed bike in the parking lot behind their elementary school flashed in his mind.
Then the door behind J-Dog opened and a guard led in another prisoner. The man looked like an experiment gone wrong, trying to cross a linebacker and a Russian super-soldier. Tattoos covered half of his bald head, while a jagged scar wrapped upward around his neck and then down the other side. A chunk of his top lip was missing, resulting in a permanent snarl.
J-Dog sat up straighter, and a tiny bead of sweat formed on his forehead. The other prisoner’s eyes locked on J-Dog as he was led over to his own window. Even as he sat down opposite a pregnant woman, he was glaring at J-Dog with murder in his eyes.
“Jay, please talk to them,” Mrs. Martin begged.
J-Dog’s eyes shifted back and forth between the enormous man and his mother.
Aunt Haddie reached out and squeezed Jack’s hand.
Jack knew child molesters, rapists, and men accused of violent crimes against women were typically kept isolated in prison—for their own safety, since general population wasn’t exactly kind to that sort of criminal. But J-Dog had been put in general population in the Bay, and Jack realized why: the cops were putting pressure on him to talk.
J-Dog’s dead if he had anything to do with a missing lady.
Jack glanced back at the musclehead seated four sections away. He wouldn’t want to fight the monster in an open field with a bat, let alone in a concrete cell, and that mutant was just one of many in here who might want a piece of J-Dog.
Jack shuddered. How long did they have to stay here?
Mrs. Martin folded her hands in her lap and stared at her son. Her shoulders pulled back and she lifted her chin. When she spoke, it was deliberate and steady, with no lurking tears. “Your father would want you to tell the police the truth.”
J-Dog shut his eyes and shook his head.
Mrs. Martin sat motionless, saying nothing.
“Momma, I didn’t have anything to do with that missing lady. I swear it on Daddy’s grave.”
The oath slammed into Jack. J-Dog loved his father. In fact, Jack had been jealous of their relationship when they were kids. J-Dog had followed his father everywhere; he was Jay’s hero. They had a falling-out when J-Dog was a teenager and got in trouble with the law, but when his father died, J-Dog was inconsolable.
“I believe you.” Mrs. Martin looked around the room and her shoulders slumped again. “I just don’t know what to do.” She rubbed the back of one hand with the thumb of the other. She took a deep breath. “Jay, there’s something else. Tommy hasn’t come home since you were arrested.” She passed a tired hand over her forehead. “He hasn’t even called. I phoned his girlfriend, but Nina hasn’t seen him.” She looked up at Jay. “Do you know where he could be?”
J-Dog leaned back. His initial look of confusion was quickly replaced by a flash of anger. “Momma, don’t look for Tommy.”
“What?”
“I need you to leave Tommy alone right now. Leave him be.”
“Why?”
“You just do. Don’t stir the pot.”
“I can’t. He’s my boy too.” Mrs. Martin looked distraught. “Maybe I should file a missing person report?”
A guard strutted forward and barked, “Time.”
J-Dog jumped up. “Tommy’s fine, wherever he is. Don’t get the police involved.”
The guard stepped forward.
“Do you know where he is? Is Tommy in trouble? Jay? Jay?”
J-Dog stepped back. “Just take care of yourself.”
“Jay?” Mrs. Martin called out as she touched the window. “I’ll get you help.”
J-Dog looked at his mother. There seemed to be a brief flicker of optimism, but it was quickly extinguished, and in the ashes all that remained was hopelessness.
As J-Dog was escorted from the room, Aunt Haddie stepped forward and wrapped her arm around Mrs. Martin’s shoulders. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
An impatient-looking guard opened the door for them, and they headed back the way they’d come. Jack felt like a diver who’d stayed underwater too long and his oxygen was running out. He wanted to sprint for the exit, but he forced himself to keep the slow and steady pace set by the women.
When the fresh air outside finally hit his face, Jack drank his fill. Just the atmosphere of the prison had felt crushing, and now he was free. He flexed his hands and stretched. But he could see that Mrs. Martin was having trouble. She was breathing so heavily, Jack worried she was going to hyperventilate.
Aunt Haddie stopped. “It’s all right, Charlotte. Everything will be all right.”
J-Dog’s mother covered her face with her hands. “Did you hear him? Why would Jay say that? Did you hear what he said?”
“What, Charlotte?”
“Not to look for Tommy. What does that mean?” She shook her head. “Where is Tommy? I’m so worried about him, Haddie. Maybe he’s thinking of doing something foolish? He’d do anything for Jay.”
Aunt Haddie said soothingly, “I’m sure Tommy will show up.”
“But I don’t know where else to look.” Mrs. Martin’s hand shot out and grabbed Jack’s wrist. “You’re his friend, Jackie. You grew up with my boys.” Her grip was tight. Her eyes pleaded. “Please, Jackie. Please find Tommy.”
“I’d like to, Mrs. Martin, but I don’t know where he would go.”
“You know his friends. You can find him.”
“I don’t even know where to start looking.”
Mrs. Martin stared up at him. “You’re smart. You’ll think of something.”
Jack looked at Aunt Haddie and then into Mrs. Martin’s big brown eyes, filled with tears. He knew that you don’t always get the missions you want.
8
The Game
After dropping off Aunt Haddie and Mrs. Martin, Jack drove straight to Kelly’s. There were so many expensive cars lining the long driveway, he had to park at the end, behind a Porsche Boxster. He left at least three feet in front of him to avoid even a remote chance of dinging its smooth red paint.
As he walked up the driveway, Jack glanced back over his shoulder at his Impala. All the other vehicles—BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes gleaming in the afternoon sun—looked like they had just come off a dealership’s lot. Jack’s car was as out of place as a sumo wrestler in a ballet.
Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are. Remembering one of Aunt Haddie’s lessons, Jack stiffened his backbone.
Kelly and a girl with sandy hair walked down the driveway. When she saw Jack, Kelly stopped, clasped both hands behind her back, and rose up on her toes. “Hey.” Her cherry-red lips, only inches away, spread into a warm smile.
Jack also smiled, remembering those lips. “Sorry I’m late.” He offered his hand to Kelly’s friend. “Jack Stratton.”
Kelly turned to her friend. “This is Courtney.”
Courtney eyed Jack up and down. “You’re a brave man.”
Kelly shot her a look, then turned to Jack. “I tried to call and warn you this was turning into a shindig.”
“I wasn’t home. I had to visit someone in prison.”
Courtney’s eyes widened. Kelly’s expression was a mix of shock and excitement. Courtney mouthed, Bad boy, but Jack pretended not to notice.
“I should have known my dad was up to something when he gave in too easily,” Kelly said. “He told my older brother to invite some of his friends.”
“That’s fine. Let’s go say hi,” Jack suggested.
Detective Jack Stratton Box Set Page 57