Jury Town (18 page)

CHAPTER 22

GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

“Do we get David Racine or not?” Cameron asked as he sat down at the small wrought-iron table on the intimate slate patio. A small yard extended in a semicircle out from the slate. Otherwise, the quaint Cape Codder was an oasis in a desert of dense forest.

“We’ll know tomorrow,” she answered, taking three sips of her favorite Merlot. She’d offered Cam a glass of wine, too, as soon as they’d arrived. But he’d declined.

“Why are you so laser focused on David Racine joining Project Archer?” Cameron asked. “Why is he—”

“Ms. Lewis.”

She and Cameron glanced up simultaneously at the sharply dressed, African-American who’d just walked up to them from around one corner of the house. Tall and impressively fit, Dez Braxton was the man Cameron had hired to lead Victoria’s security detail after the attack on Stony Man Mountain. He was a highly decorated ex–Navy SEAL.

“Yes, Dez?”

“You need to move inside,” he answered as he held one long forefinger to the earpiece of his communication device. “I’ve got a number of my people here, but we can’t possibly cover the forest in front of you as well as everything else with any degree of confidence,” he said, pointing to the tree line at the edge of the grass. “You are vulnerable to sniper fire.”

“I’ll be fine,” she answered politely, “but thank you, Dez.”

“Victoria, you need to listen to him.”

“I’m not going to let my life be dictated by—”

“Ms. Lewis,” Braxton cut in, “I need you to go inside
right
now. A pickup truck is parked on the side of the main road less than half a mile away. No one’s in it, and we have no idea how long it’s been there. We’re running plates as we speak. Please, Ms. Lewis,” he said politely but persistently when she didn’t react, pointing over her shoulder at the patio door. “Let’s go.”

She picked up the glass of wine off the iron table and stalked toward the door. As she was about to go inside, she stopped and turned back. “Dez.”

He glanced up from a text. “Yes?”

“I know you’re just doing your job. I’ll try to be better about listening.”

“Good. Now
go
.”

“This is already getting to be a major problem.” She eased into the chair behind her study desk—tapping the desk three times gently—as Cameron relaxed into the chair in front. “Now I can’t go out on my patio and enjoy a nice evening?” As she glanced at the broken column inside the gold frame, she slipped the bracelet from her wrist and put it down in the only open spot amidst the clutter. “And my driveway looks like a Beverly Hills Cadillac dealership with all those black Escalades out there.”

“Dez Braxton is the best,” Cameron countered. “He doesn’t usually work outside DC, but I leaned on an old friend up in the District to help get him down here for you. You must listen to him.” Cameron pointed at the bracelet she’d just taken off, the plain silver band from which three pennies hung. “You’ve been wearing that a lot lately.”

“It’s a charm bracelet my mother made me,” she answered. “What’s the update from Jury Town?”

“We have four trials in progress, including the Commonwealth Electric Power case. Two more should start tomorrow, and no one’s reporting any issues. I spoke to Clint Wolf and George Garrison, the head of the guards. I also spoke to the judge in the CEP case. Everybody’s feeling good. Everything’s running very smoothly.”

“Good,” she murmured, picking up the bracelet as the Merlot began taking the edge off.

“Why did your mother take that particular lode of legal tender out of circulation?” Cameron asked. “There must be a story.”

Victoria smiled nostalgically. “I found these three pennies one day while I was hiking up Stony Man Mountain with my father. In fact, I found them right on the overlook. I was six.” She shook her head. “I know you’ll laugh because you aren’t superstitious at all, but ever since that day, three’s been my lucky number.”

“Yeah, that’s so hard to tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“You always tap the microphone three times before you start a speech. You tap a desk or table three times when you sit down. Sometimes you sip your drink three times in a row. And, of course, you never step on a crack anywhere.”

“That last one’s just the OCD kicking in.”

“If you were OCD, your desk wouldn’t look like a battle zone,” Cameron argued, nodding at the chaos.

“I gave these three pennies to my father the day he went to prison,” she said softly as she gazed at them. “Right before I said good-bye to him.”

Cameron’s eyes fell to his lap. “Oh.”

“He said he’d give them back to me as soon as he was released, which he did. Know what his cell number was at Archer Prison?”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t two or four.”

She took a long swallow of wine. “It was 333.”

“Wow,” Cameron whispered.

He’d shivered, Victoria noticed, as if her answer had sent an eerie chill up his spine. “And listen to this. With a year to go in his sentence, my mother was running out of money.” She took another guzzle of wine. She was finally starting to relax from the stress of the day. “The bank was about to take our farm, and she was a mess.”

“Understandably.”

“One night I had a dream about my mother playing the lottery using his prison cell’s number. So I convinced her to do it. I made her go to the store the next day, and I made sure she played 333. She won a hundred thousand dollars, and we saved the farm. That’s a true story.”

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely. My father gave these pennies back to me after he got out, just like he promised. Said they really helped him, and that they really were lucky. So my mother made the bracelet for me after he died two years later.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“You better stay off the cocaine,” Cameron said somberly. “Like I said the other night, I don’t want to experience that again.”

Victoria’s eyes flashed to his. He figured she was vulnerable after telling the story, so he’d attacked. For her own good, but still. “I know.”

“I’m just glad I never saw it while you were governor.”

“I never did it while I was governor,” she said sharply.

“Okay.”

She hadn’t liked his tone.
“Well, I didn’t.”

“So when did you—”

“About six months ago, I met up with an old friend from college, and she had some. We went out to dinner and when we got back to her house, we did it.” Victoria took a deep breath. “I’d done it with her at UVA all those years ago.” She sighed heavily. “She gets me some every once in a while. I don’t know, Cameron. I guess it was the pressure of getting Project Archer executed and, like you said, the ghosts and the demons from the prison. It’s not an excuse; it’s an explanation. I get that I’m weak, and I hate myself for it. And I’m not going to do it ever—”

Victoria was interrupted by the sound of the patio door bursting open and footsteps sprinting toward the study.

“Yes?” Victoria asked in a relieved voice as Dez rushed into the room. She had no idea who’d been coming at her. And, after what had happened on Stony Man, she found her heart suddenly beating a million miles an hour. “What is it?”

“I need to get you out of here right now, Ms. Lewis. We have a situation.”

CHAPTER 23

JURY TOWN

The front-end loader roared into the massive pile of gray ash towering over it, scooped up a huge bucket full of the toxic material, then backed off, turned right, and moved away from the cameraperson who was obviously filming from a stand of heavy brush.

A moment later the front-end loader was roaring toward another camera in the grainy video, toward a second individual who was filming from inside a grove of trees. The vehicle headed past the cameraperson and then out onto a short dock, where it dumped its load onto a small barge.

When the video finished and the lights in Jury Room Seven came up, Kate glanced first at Hal Wilson and then at Felicity West, who glanced back with raised eyebrows. It seemed obvious that both of them felt the same way she did: it was going to be very difficult for the Commonwealth Electric Power lawyers to convince them that coal ash had not been deliberately dumped into the river that ran beside the generating plant outside Abingdon, Virginia.

Kate had played pool many times with her four older brothers, two of whom were very good.

But not like Felicity. The tall redhead had just destroyed Hal Wilson in three straight games of eight ball. Wilson hadn’t been able to drop a single shot in. Now Kate felt like the next shark victim.

A dozen players in the large poolroom had stopped their games on the four other tables to watch, which wasn’t helping Kate’s nerves. They, too, had noticed Felicity’s skill as she’d wiped the floor with Wilson three times in a row.

“You break,” Felicity called as she chalked her cue.

“You beat Hal,” Kate called back, nodding at the foreman of the Commonwealth Electric jury, who’d stuck around to watch. “You get the break, right?”

“It’s okay. Go ahead.”

Kate wasn’t going to argue. She knew she needed all the help she could get.

She placed the cue ball on the tan felt near the left cushion, leaned down, curled her left forefinger around the smooth lacquered wood of the cue, took a deep breath, and fired.

“Excellent!” Felicity shouted as the cue ball slammed into the triangle of balls at the far end of the long table with a loud crack, sending a stripe and a solid into separate pockets as the rack dispersed. “Nice break. You got one of each. Call it.”

Kate heaved a sigh of relief as she glanced around the table. She’d been worried about scratching—whiffing on the strike or sending the cue ball flying off the table after hitting it. “Solids, I guess.” Neither option looked great given the way the balls had broken.

“Okay,” Felicity said, “I’m stripes.”

“Four in the side,” Kate called.

She lined up the shot and gently rolled the cue toward the purple ball. It caromed on contact and almost dropped in the pocket, then bounced away from the cushion at the last second, to the groan of the crowd.

In short order Felicity dropped the six stripes remaining on the table and then the eight ball—in a row. The crowd shouted and clapped.

“That woman is good,” Wilson said to Kate as he placed his cue back in the stand hanging from the wall. “See you tomorrow at trial.”

“Wait,” Kate called to him as he turned to go. “Let’s get Felicity and go to dinner.”

Thirty minutes later the three of them were finishing a delicious meal in the Central Zone.

“I’m going to gain twenty pounds while I’m in here,” Wilson muttered as he ate the last bite of apple pie, then patted his paunch.

Felicity laughed.

“It’s not funny,” he went back at her as he broke into a self-conscious smile. “Maybe you’re satisfied with the rabbit food,” he said, pointing at the large chef’s salad she’d barely touched, “but how could I possibly turn down a T-bone and baked potato with all the toppings?”

“Let’s talk about the case,” Kate suggested, pushing her tray to one side as she leaned over the table. The hum of conversation was loud with nearly two hundred people eating. “Commonwealth is so guilty. That video we watched today proved it. And it sure sounds like everybody up the chain knew what was going on, including the senior executives.”

“We’re not supposed to do this outside the jury room,” Wilson warned. “You heard the judge the first day.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Hal. What difference does it make?”

“And the video didn’t prove anything,” Wilson objected, unable to hold back. “It could have been made anywhere. We’ve got to hear from the guy who drove the front-end loader and the other guy who drove the barge. In fact, we’ve got a lot more testimony to hear.”

“CEP is guilty of dumping coal ash in that river,” Kate said confidently. “We need to get on with it.”

“What’s your rush?” Felicity asked.

“I want to make history,” Kate answered bluntly. “I want to be a member of the first jury to render a verdict at Jury Town. Fifty years from now, they’ll write about us, especially when all the other states and the Feds do the same thing as Virginia. Think about it. It’s our chance to be part of something
huge
.”

“I’m out of here,” Wilson said, standing up. “As foreman, I can’t listen to this. I’m going to watch
Dirty Harry
. I always loved that movie.”

“You think they’re guilty, don’t you?” Kate asked Felicity as Wilson walked off.

Felicity shrugged. “I guess. Like Hal said, we’ve got a lot more testimony to hear.”

“Where’d you learn to play pool like that?” Kate liked Felicity. She had right from the start, since they’d eaten lunch together the first day of the trial.

She shrugged again. “Around.”

“Did you ever play professionally?”

“Nah. You know, you’re pretty good yourself.”

“Are you kidding?” Kate asked, her expression coiled in disbelief. “You killed me.”

“I saw the way you broke. You’re good. Where’d you learn?”

“Four older brothers. Maybe you could teach me a few things they didn’t.”

“Sure.”

“What did you do before you came in here?”

“I was an engineer.”

“You design bridges and buildings?”

Felicity smiled. “No, I drove trains for CSX.”

“Cool.”

“I guess.”

“Do you party?”

Felicity’s eyes raced to Kate’s. “What?”

“Do you party? Do you get high?”

GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

“I’m bringing her out,” Braxton said calmly into the tiny microphone appending from the earpiece. “Get Vehicle Two as close to the front door as possible. I’m bringing the COS as well. I don’t want to leave him behind. Too dangerous.”

“What’s going on?” Victoria demanded.

“We’ve got unknowns in the perimeter. I want you out of here now,” Braxton answered as he stared through the narrow window beside the door, watching for the Escalade to pull up. “I don’t want you coming back here, either.”

“That’s ridiculous. I love living here. I love my house.”

“So do your enemies. You’re too vulnerable here. I was afraid of this right from the start.”

“I will not be a hostage, Dez. I will not be intimidated out of my—”

“Let’s go,” Braxton interrupted, grabbing Victoria’s wrist with one hand while smoothly withdrawing a pistol from beneath his black blazer with the other. “Stay close,” he called over his shoulder to Cameron as he shoved open the door and burst through it, pulling Victoria along with him. “Hurry!”

They raced a few short yards to the waiting black Escalade. The driver had already opened a back door for them.

Victoria ducked inside, followed by Cameron.

Braxton slammed the door after them, then jumped into the front. “Go, go,” he ordered the driver, pointing ahead through the windshield with his weapon. “Let’s get out of here.”

The Escalade took off down the narrow driveway, which was lined by tall trees on both sides, followed by two more black SUVs.

JURY TOWN

“Put this along the bottom of the door,” Kate instructed as she tossed a towel at Felicity, then opened a drawer of the desk in her room and grabbed an old Band-Aid box.

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe,” Kate admitted as she removed a joint from inside the box, held it up, and smiled devilishly.

“If we get caught, we’re out four million dollars.”

“Who’s going to catch us? As long as we’re quick about this, other jurors won’t smell anything. The guards don’t come into the living quarters unless there’s an emergency. Cleaning staff comes once a week, but we know when they’re coming, and, besides, they aren’t going through our stuff while we’re not here.”