The elevator doors opened at the main floor, and Sarah was led through the lobby of her building, past the gaping faces of WRY colleagues and visitors. The security guard sprang from his station and held open the door. Sarah saw the awaiting police cruiser and froze like a mule in the doorway.
Macias heaved her forward into the brilliant sunshine. Sarah squinted and dropped her head. She thought of how long it would be until she was in sunshine again. She went limp. Macias jerked up on the handcuffs. A bolt of pain shot between Sarah’s shoulder blades and made her gasp. Macias tucked her head roughly to one side and dropped her into the rear passenger seat of the cruiser. Officer Cruz belted her in and shut the door.
Macias drove and Cruz rode shotgun. He screeched the tires as he pulled out, then lit up the light bar, its red and blue flashes parading Sarah out of the WRY parking lot. She would never return.
It was as quiet as a wake back on the floor where Sarah had once held court. Colleagues huddled in tight clumps, whispering. No doubt a few were already scheming to take possession of Sarah’s now vacated office, with its panoramic view and close proximity to Peter Smith. Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
No one paid any attention to the muffled shouts coming from Sarah’s office, faint exhortations from the phone on Sarah’s desk. Right where she’d dropped it when the cops rushed into her office. The call had remained open throughout her entire arrest.
Frank Luce had heard everything.
Chapter Forty-Three
December 22, 2016
Attorney Gerry Gonzalez’s Office
NoMa, NE WDC
Sarah was now booked into the custody of the DC Department of Corrections. She had spent the past three nights at its Correctional Treatment Facility, in a six- by eight-foot cinder block cell, one of thirty-two identical cells in the housing unit on the sixth floor of the brick tower facility. Each unit had a television and access to the recreation yard. These were privileges Sarah no longer enjoyed, however; she had fought with an inmate soon after her arrival and had been isolated into a single room, segregated from the general population.
I had barely slept since Sarah’s arrest. My first call was to Doyle, my second to the only attorney I knew, Gerry Gonzalez. I convinced Gerry to take Sarah’s case, and he had visited her in jail the morning after her arrest. Nicole had visited her as well, bringing messages from Doyle and me with her. It killed me not to visit Sarah, to not be there to comfort her. But this was impossible. Doyle and I both knew Prisha was using Sarah as bait to lure us out into the open. I hated her even more for it. It took me to a whole new level of rage I promised myself I would rain down upon her at first opportunity.
Doyle simmered as well. He had been on the phone nonstop, contacting old friends and calling in old debts. We were getting ready to go to war.
Silvia stood up from her desk and motioned Doyle and me through the door with the gaudy gold “GERALDO GONZALEZ, Esquire” stencil. Doyle paused and gave me a questioning look before entering the office. Same bright, retina-burning color scheme. Same Gerry too. All slicked-back hair, eighties mustache, and pinkie rings. He came around the desk, shook our hands, and motioned for us to sit down.
This was the first time that Doyle and I had been out in public together since I’d shot Karlsson. We had immediately changed burner phones and vehicles; Doyle had bought another beater, a Ford this time, off some guy on Craigslist for twelve hundred dollars cash. He checked out of his hotel room, I abandoned my apartment under the overpass, and we rented a little two-bedroom outside Baltimore from a landlord that liked cash and didn’t ask any questions. This was where we’d been holed up for the past two weeks. It felt good to be out of that apartment. I wished it were under better circumstances.
I watched Gonzalez size up Doyle, saw the glint of recognition in his eyes. He knew a made guy when he saw one. A serious guy. It made Gonzalez less flashy, more deferential. More matter-of-fact than when I’d first met him, three months ago to the day. Everything was different now.
“This case against Sarah is bullshit,” Doyle said. “What do you intend to do about it?”
“She didn’t kill anyone, Gerry,” I added. “And neither did we.”
“I don’t want to know if you did it or not,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t even care if you did it.”
“We didn’t do this, Gerry!” I shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Gerry said, hands raised. “Do either one of you know anyone who would set you all up like this?”
Doyle and I said nothing. Gonzalez stared at us through steepled fingers.
“Okay, so you do know,” he correctly surmised. “Does it have anything to do with that twenty-five K you gave me, for that little kiss-and-fall lawsuit?”
I looked at Doyle, then started to mumble a response.
Gonzalez interrupted me, hands again raised. “Wait! Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know that either.”
“What are we gonna do to get Sarah out of jail—now?” Doyle deadpanned.
Gonzalez said that was not going to be easy. He’d been in touch with the DA’s office, some young assistant district attorney, last name of Calderon.
“This Calderon bitch, he’s coming after you two hard,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t know what you two did to spill his milk, but he wants to put you up under the jail, Frank.”
I asked Gonzalez when he’d visited Sarah last. He said he’d seen her again yesterday afternoon, had told her everything he was about to tell us. We asked how Sarah was holding up. He answered tactfully, I think in deference to Doyle. Sarah was doing better now that she had been placed in a single cell, he said. Her first night there she had been labeled “Princess,” and a couple of women had taken a particular interest in her. Sarah had rebuffed her suitors. They’d insisted. The princess had punched back.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” Gonzalez assured me, eyes on Doyle, whose silence was beginning to unnerve Gonzalez a bit. “She’s got a bruise on her face and such, but she’ll be fine.” He paused. “She’s tough, but jail is no place for a woman like her.”
Doyle finally spoke. “So what are we looking at here?”
Gonzalez explained that I had been charged with first-degree murder, Sarah with first-degree felony murder. The government had me as the trigger man, Sarah the getaway driver. We were both facing life imprisonment. I had a felony warrant out for my arrest, and, based on false informant information that I had fled back to Boston, the locals had convinced the FBI to file an “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution” felony warrant on me as well. That made me an FBI fugitive now too.
Sarah’s bail had been set at ten million dollars, an outrageous amount given Sarah’s lack of criminal record and her ties to the community. Gonzalez had argued hard but failed to budge the magistrate to lower it to a more reasonable amount. Something didn’t smell right at the bail hearing, he told us now, like he had been left out of something between Calderon and the magistrate. Gonzalez could spot a fix when he saw one.
Sarah couldn’t get her hands on one million cash. She wasn’t that fluid, and it was too rich for the local bail bondsman’s blood. Doyle had put his feelers out, but it’s not that easy to get your hands on one million cash overnight. He would keep trying.
“We can beat this case, right?” Doyle asked.
Gonzalez explained that it wouldn’t be that easy. They had a DNA match for my hair at the crime scene, and my skin cells were under Hewitt’s fingernails. They had pulled my fingerprints from Hewitt’s front gate, and they had boot prints matching my size (11W) in Hewitt’s blood in his bedroom.
I exhaled hard and raked my palms over my face.
“Yeah, I know, Frank,” Gonzalez said. “And that’s not all. Calderon says he has a rock-solid eyewitness who saw you running out of Hewitt’s residence, with what appeared to be a gun in your hand, then jump in a car and speed away.”
“But nothing on Sarah?” I asked.
“The witness will testify that
Sarah was driving the car.”
“Bullshit!” Doyle said.
Gonzalez explained that Calderon was clubbing him with this witness, but that he thought he was bluffing. Gonzalez had called a few friends in the DA’s office, and these friends had done some checking around on his behalf.
“Do you know a woman by the name of Linda Webb?” he asked me.
A bomb went off in my head. I slammed my fist on the arm of my chair. “Linda Webb?”
Gonzalez nodded.
“She’s lying,” I said. “She must be working with… them.”
I exchanged looks with Doyle.
“You’ve managed to piss off some powerful people, Frank,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t understand it. You seem like a nice enough guy to me. But then, I really don’t know you, do I, Frank?”
I got out of my chair and began to pace the room.
“So you’re a Medal of Honor winner? Big-time war hero?” Gonzalez said, his voice rising. “And then on to the CIA, where you’re fired by a boss who just turned up dead—with your hair and skin all over him?” Gonzalez’s face was turning crimson. His voice was no longer friendly. “This is the kind of shit you’re supposed to tell your lawyer, Frank, so the DA doesn’t jam it up my ass. You made me look like some fucking amateur.”
“I’m sorry, Gerry,” was all I could say. “But it’s not like that.”
“No? Then tell me—what is it like?”
I walked back to the desk, stood behind my chair, hands jammed into my pockets.
“Hewitt wasn’t my boss,” I said. “They’re lying.” I paused to check my rising anger. “They had no good reason to fire me, and now they’re trying to ruin me again. Finish the job.”
“Well, as your lawyer, I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job of it.” Gonzalez spun his pinkie ring once, then again. “You got a problem, Frank. A big problem. Sarah too.” More ring play. “In my experience, once the government turns on you like this, puts you in its crosshairs…” He shook his head and puckered his lips. “No Bueno, my friend.”
“What are our chances of beating this?” Doyle asked.
Gonzalez blew out a protracted breath. He sat back in his chair, swiveled around a bit, eyes upturned to the ceiling. He drew another long breath and then regarded us both.
“Not good,” Gonzalez said evenly. “They got a lot stronger case against you, Frank, than they do Sarah. I might be able to bargain a bit for her, but you, my friend—they want you bad. I think they’re gonna go to the wall on you. Calderon’s not bluffing on that score.”
Doyle pressed. “What are the odds?”
I sat for his answer. Gonzalez stroked his bushy mustache in thought.
“Now, don’t hold me to this—because trials can be a crapshoot, and you never know what those jury puppets are going to do—but I see it as eighty-twenty for acquittal for Sarah… and the opposite for you, Frank.”
Twenty percent? A twenty percent chance Sarah would be convicted of first-degree felony murder and sentenced to life in prison? This beautiful woman. A woman I had never stopped loving, and had only recently learned still felt likewise. They were now trying to ruin her, as they had me. And for what? So Prisha could get to me.
Twenty percent? Two chances in ten? No! Sarah had returned my faith, given me hope that I could be the man I knew I was. She had trusted me, joined me in this fight without reservation. Now it was my turn to fight for her. My number for Sarah was zero. She would not spend another day in jail, not as long as I had the power to do something about it.
It’s never too late to become what you might have been.
“Call Calderon. Cut a deal,” I said. “Tell him I’ll surrender on my warrant if he drops all charges against Sarah.”
“No! You surrender and they’ll kill you in prison, Frankie,” Doyle said. “I can’t protect you in there.” He was shaking his head vigorously. “No, we will find another way.”
“No, Quinn. I can’t live another day with Sarah in jail because of me.” I whirled back to Gonzalez. “Tell him I’ll plead guilty to everything. All of it. And in exchange, I want Sarah out of jail and home by Christmas. Call him. You’ve got three days. Can you do it?”
“You sure you want to do this, Frank?”
I nodded.
“They got no case on her. It’s you they want. I think he’d go for it.”
“Then do it.”
“I’ll call Calderon today. See if he bites. I’ll ask for a bail reduction. If Calderon doesn’t fight me on it, yeah—I can have Sarah home for Christmas. But you—”
“Do it.”
“Now, Frank, you really need to think this through. You plead guilty to first-degree murder, the way they’re looking at you…” Gonzalez whistled low, “… they’re gonna put a life sentence on you.”
I stood. “They already gave me a life sentence. Five years ago. I won’t let it happen again.”
Doyle stood as well. Stepped over to me. Took my face in his hands. Tears filled his eyes. He rested his forehead against mine. He gathered himself, then pulled away to arm’s length.
“You sure about this, Frankie?”
“Let me do this, Quinn.”
The old mobster nodded.
I turned to Gonzalez.
“Call him.”
Chapter Forty-Four
December 28, 2016
CDF/DC Jail
Washington, DC
“How was your Christmas?” I asked.
Sarah shrugged. “Better than yours, I bet.”
“I’ve had worse.”
Sarah searched my face. I put on a brave smile. She tried to do the same but fell short.
“What happened to us, Frank? I don’t even recognize my life anymore.”
Sarah looked away. She was in casual clothing and light makeup. Jeans, a long leather coat, and a pale green sweater that picked up her eyes. I breathed deep to catch her scent. Jasmine and citrus. Held on to it for as long as I could before exhaling.
It was the Wednesday after Christmas. We were in a DC Jail visiting stall, talking through scratched plexiglass. I was on the inside of the glass, Sarah on the outside. Gerry Gonzalez had called ADA Calderon with my surrender offer and he’d jumped at it. Things had moved rapidly after that. Sarah had protested my sacrifice, but I had made up my mind and things were already in motion. I was booked into DC Jail on Saturday morning; Sarah had been released seven hours later. All this had happened over Christmas weekend. We’d paid Gonzalez for the inconvenience. It amused me how fast the government had moved, how many rules they’d bent and broken to get me behind bars so quickly. Rules were made for rule followers, not the people who make the rules. The rule makers have always done as they pleased.
Sarah was my first jail visit. Gonzalez had negotiated this as part of my surrender. He said it was the best he could do, that we would have to meet behind glass instead of the standard open visit. Apparently, this was a new rule just for me; I would soon come to appreciate how much the rules didn’t apply to me and my case. The invisible hand of power was behind it all. Prisha’s hand. It infuriated Gonzalez. Another thing I found amusing: righteous indignation from a man who staged fake car accidents for a living.
But none of this mattered to me now, because I was staring through milky glass at the woman I loved. I was grateful for that. Grateful that she and Doyle were back in my life. Grateful for my son Teddy, the lone secret I still held back from Sarah and Doyle. For the first time in years, I had hope, real hope—while locked away in a place that breeds hopelessness.
The bruises on Sarah’s face had almost healed, now just trace blotches of pale yellow and blue. The scratches on her neck were dried and scabbed over. Her crying had run her eyeliner. She hadn’t slept well since she was released back into the mess that was now her life. She still looked beautiful to me. I ached to hold her.
“How are things at home?” I asked. “How’s Victor taking all this?”
Sarah grunted. “Not good. He’s catching a lot o
f shit at work.” She ran her hands through her blonde hair, which she was wearing down around her shoulders for our visit. “At least he has a job.”
“Sorry about that.”
Sarah waved me off. “WRY boxed my office up the day the cops walked me out. Peter won’t even talk to me. What do you call it when they expel you?”
“PNG. Persona non grata. ‘Person not welcomed’ in Latin.”
“Well, I got PNG’d from WRY, that’s for sure.”
Sarah blew out a big sigh. She combed her fingers through her hair, then tucked it behind her ears. That gorgeous blonde hair was luminous, even in this dark place.
“I don’t know, Frank. I haven’t been happy for a long time. You’ve been a lightning bolt into my life. Burning out old growth, regenerating new. I think I needed that.”
“So you and Victor… are you two…?”
“We’re getting divorced. I filed on him yesterday.”
My heart fluttered. I suppressed a smile.
“How are you feeling, Frank?”
“I’m okay.” I tugged at the collar of my white cotton shirt under my prison orange V-neck.
“I mean with your cancer. Are you going to be able to get treatment in here?”
“Haven’t told them yet. Thought I’d wait until after I get my life sentence to tell them. To see the look on their faces.”
Sarah snorted, then teared up again. She paused to swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand. A hand that no longer wore her wedding ring.
“That’s not funny, Frank.” She sniffed.
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