Jury Town (28 page)

JURY TOWN

As Victoria hurried out of her office, she nearly ran headlong into George Garrison coming out of his. “Good morning, George.”

“What was Rex Conrad doing in your office?” Garrison demanded, glancing at Dez before blocking Victoria’s path down the admin wing.

“I’m sorry?”

“I just saw Rex Conrad exit your office. What was he doing in there?”

“Speaking to me.”

“Well, I’m head of the guards—”

“I’m aware of that, George,” she said, moving past him.

“Wait just a minute,” he hissed, catching her by the elbow. “We need to have a chain of command here. We need to—”

“Get your hand off her,” Dez ordered, stepping between Garrison and Victoria so Garrison had to relinquish his grip, “and don’t ever do that again.”

“Or
what
, you—”

An instant later, Garrison was flat against the cinder-block wall outside his office, both feet dangling a foot off the tile floor, gasping for air as Dez held him up with one arm and pressed the other to Garrison’s throat.

“Or
that
, Mr. Garrison.”

CHAPTER 35

JURY TOWN

“Watch yourselves in the back row,” Hal Wilson called loudly to the other thirteen jurors—including the two alternates—as he reached for the button on the wall. “I’m going to lower you. You people in the front row, watch your heels and toes.”

The defense team in the Commonwealth Electric trial had rested ten minutes ago, and after receiving instructions from the judge, Wilson wanted to get started. They could have taken a break, even waited until tomorrow morning to initiate deliberations. But, last night, as he’d been lying in bed tossing and turning, he’d finally bought into Kate Wang’s hype about being the first jury to reach a decision at Jury Town.

One of the other trials going on inside the old Archer Prison walls was close to being completed, according to something he’d overheard at dinner last night. And he didn’t want to give that jury a chance to catch up. Suddenly he wanted to be the first foreman to reach a verdict here. He’d never been noted as a leader for anything in his life, never even been close to being famous. This would be a nice middle-aged change.

“The first order of business,” he said, returning to his seat in the back row, which had now descended so that it was level with the front, “is to find out where we stand. Let’s do a quick anonymous vote with this scrap paper I’m going to pass—”

“They’re guilty,” Kate blurted before Wilson could finish. “We all know it. The only question is how much CEP has to pay. There’s no need for a straw vote.”

Wilson grinned nervously and held his hands out. He’d been anticipating this from Kate. But, no matter how accurately he’d anticipated, he still hated confrontation. “Easy, easy, Ms. Wang, let’s just take the vote. Let’s follow procedure.”

“They’re
not
guilty,” Felicity called loudly from the far end of the jury box. “I say the executives are being framed. I say it’s all the work of one disgruntled employee. It’s the guy driving the front-end loader. And nothing’s gonna change my mind.”

“Ms. West,” Wilson begged, “please let’s not jump the gun here.” He’d
not
been anticipating this from Felicity. “You and Ms. Wang will both have plenty of time to—”

“What’s wrong with you?” Kate snapped at Felicity. “You were rock solid on them being guilty until yesterday. We certainly didn’t see or hear any evidence yesterday or this morning that would have changed that. To think one guy dumped that ash on his own is
ridiculous
. Did someone get to you, Felicity?”

“Hey, hey!” Wilson shouted, shooting out of his chair. “That’s enough of that, Ms. Wang. We’ll have no accusations of that kind of—”

“No, Kate,” Felicity shot back, “no one got to me. But I think that pot you smuggled in here to Jury Town must have gotten to you.”

“You bitch!” Kate yelled shrilly.

“You’re the bitch!” Felicity screamed back. “You’re probably stoned right now!”

As Jury Room Seven turned chaotic, and other jurors scrambled to get between the two women, Wilson hustled for the emergency button on the wall beside the button he’d just pushed to lower the back row of the jury box.

Garrison hit redial again, trying desperately to reach Billy Batts. He had a very bad feeling about what Victoria and Rex Conrad had been discussing in her office. He hadn’t liked her tone or that accusatory gleam in her eye when they’d nearly run into each other out in the corridor. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t take the chance. He had to do
something
.

“Damn it!”

For the eighth time in the last thirty-five minutes, Garrison’s call went directly to Batts’ voice mail. The kid wasn’t working today. He should have picked up immediately.

Garrison ran a hand through his thinning hair. If Victoria or Conrad or both somehow suspected Billy Batts of being involved in getting that note to Felicity West’s room, and they could get Batts to confess what he’d done, Victoria wouldn’t give a damn about bringing Batts up on charges. In fact, the first thing she’d do would be to give Batts full immunity so Batts would start singing about where everything had started.

Garrison took a deep, troubled breath. Then he’d be the next one to have immunity offered up. But that immunity might as well be a death sentence.

Clint Wolf grabbed the landline receiver of his office phone as soon as he saw the number of the extension flash on the screen. He’d been deep into writing the speech Victoria had asked him to give to the Virginia General Assembly in two weeks, and the last thing he needed was a distraction. He wasn’t much of a writer, and he’d hated public speaking ever since he could remember.

But this was the control room calling. He had to pick up.

“What?” he growled.

“One of my guys was monitoring Jury Room Seven through the camera, and there was an incident.”

Wolf checked the slate of trials on his computer. According to the screen, the foreman of the Commonwealth Electric trial in JR7 was a man named Hal Wilson. “Did Mr. Wilson push the emergency button?”

“Almost.”

“But he didn’t push it, did he?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“They just went to the deliberation phase, and two of the jurors got into it over the verdict right away.”

“So?”

“While they were yelling at each other, one of the two jurors screamed at the other about smuggling marijuana into her room here at JT.”

“Christ,” Wolf hissed to himself. Prisons would be such wonderful places without prisoners. “Which one supposedly has the stash?”

“Kate Wang.”

Wolf tapped his keyboard and brought her file up on his screen, topped by her smiling-sweetly photograph. “I’ll take care of it,” Wolf muttered.

“Yes, sir.”

“And no word of this to
anyone
.”

“No, sir.”

Wolf hung up and speed-dialed Garrison, whose office was three doors down the corridor.

“What’s up, Clint?” Garrison asked.

“I need a dog.”

“Why?”

“Just get one,” Wolf ordered sternly, checking Kate Wang’s room number on her file. “Organize a camera crew, too. You and I are going to Wing Three in five minutes. And I want it documented so there are no questions later about what happened while we were inside juror quarters. Five minutes, George.”

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

“Open up!” Dez called loudly as he banged hard on the front door of the run-down little house with brown clapboard siding. He had one of his security team watching the back door so no one could get out that way. “Open up!”

“Break the door down,” Victoria called from the backseat window of the second Escalade. “Hurry.”

“You sure?”

“This is the address,” she answered, checking a piece of paper she was holding. “This is where the woman on the Jury Town cleaning staff lives. We have to get to her
now,
before someone else does.”

He pulled his pistol from the holster at the small of his back, took one step away from the door, kicked the lock in, and headed inside with his gun leading the way.

Moments later he found the older woman sprawled on the floor of the upstairs bathroom, a deep, bloody gash across her forehead. He pressed two fingers to her neck as he crouched down over her. Dead.

He glanced into the tub. It was full of water. And there was blood on one corner of the sink. “Must have slipped getting out of the tub and smashed her head,” he muttered to himself.

Dez smiled sadly at the silver fawn pug, which had been sitting beside the woman’s body when he’d entered the bathroom. “Sorry, pal, but it looks like you’re coming with me.”

He rushed back down to the front door, and waved to Victoria, who, accompanied by three others of the crew, sprinted inside and up the stairs to the bathroom.

She winced. Another dead body.

“Looks like she slipped getting out of the tub,” Dez said.

Victoria shook her head. “Don’t bet on it. Let’s go.”