Jury Town (30 page)

“I don’t have time for this,” George Garrison growled as he sat down on the opposite side of the conference-room table from Victoria and Wolf. “I’ve got way too much going on to waste time like this.” He glanced at Wolf. “Come on, Clint. What is this?”

“I wouldn’t worry about what else you have going on, George,” Victoria said calmly. “What you need to worry about is the following. Billy Batts is dead.”

Garrison’s mouth fell slowly open. “What?” he whispered.

“Someone threw Billy out the window of his fifth-floor apartment in Charlottesville. We haven’t actually proven that he was thrown yet. But I doubt it’ll take the CSI people long to confirm that.”

“My God.”

“A woman named Melinda Jones has also died under very suspicious circumstances,” Victoria continued. “It looked like she’d slipped in her bathroom while she was getting out of the tub. But we think she was slammed on the head with a blunt object, and her death was made to look like an accident.”

“Who’s Melinda Jones?”

“Ms. Jones
was
a member of the cleaning staff here at Jury Town . . . until she turned up dead.”

Garrison’s face went pale.

“You want to tell me anything about those two deaths?” Wolf spoke up angrily.

“Why would I know anything?” Garrison asked, running his hand nervously through his thinning hair as he stared at the floor between his feet.

“Because—”

“For starters,” Victoria cut in, “you called Billy Batts eleven times in less than an hour. But he never answered.”

“That doesn’t mean I know anything about him being pushed out a window, for Christ’s sake.”

“Five minutes ago,” Victoria continued, “I fired one of our jurors. Her name is Felicity West. Ring a bell?”

“No.”

“She told me a very interesting story, George.”

“Oh?”

“She found a note under her pillow in her room. That note threatened to reveal very personal and damaging information about her to me unless she voted ‘not guilty’ in the Commonwealth Electric trial currently being heard in Jury Room Seven. Ms. West was being extorted, George. You know, do what we want, or lose four million dollars. Obviously, whoever was responsible for that note assumed I’d fire Ms. West as soon as I found out about her past.”

“That’s despicable on several counts, but what does it all have to do with me?”

“Melinda Jones was one of the cleaning staff on Wing Three the day Felicity West’s room was cleaned. I think Ms. Jones was working for whoever was ultimately responsible for that note. I think Ms. Jones was the one who physically put that note under Felicity West’s pillow, probably for a lot of cash, which she’ll never get to use, if she ever actually even got it. And I think Billy Batts was the one who approached Ms. Jones about planting the note.”

“Why Billy?”

“Billy was observed approaching a woman on the kitchen staff, and, later, approaching Ms. Jones.”

“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”

“Billy Batts reported to you,” Wolf hissed.

Garrison shrugged. “Still, I don’t know how—”

“I trolled you,” Victoria interrupted as Wolf grimaced and looked away, obviously frustrated at the man he’d personally hired to be head of the guards. “I wanted to see if you were loyal. And I wanted to see how fast someone might try to influence a jury.”

“What do you mean, ‘trolled’ me?”

“I allowed eight people into Jury Town who could be vulnerable to influence,” Victoria answered, “who I believed had backgrounds that potentially made them targets to those who would seek to manipulate verdicts inside these walls. But I didn’t let on to those jurors that I knew about their pasts.” She paused. “You aren’t supposed to know the names of any of the jurors, George. Only Clint and I are to know the names of the people inside Jury Town. But I made certain you saw eight juror names in a folder I had someone ‘accidentally’ leave in your office. I wanted you to see those eight names. One of the juror names in that folder was Felicity West. Are you connecting the dots here?”

“No.”

She leaned over the table toward Garrison as his eyes finally rose to meet hers. “You and I are the only ones inside these walls who saw the names on that list, the
only
ones. Let me translate, George.” She forged ahead before Garrison or Wolf could say anything. “You are obviously part of the influence chain when it comes to Ms. West. I don’t think it starts with you, but you’re undoubtedly a crucial link.” She pointed at him. “I want to know everything you know. And every second you hesitate to tell me, I’m going to have Judge Eldridge add another month to your sentence.” Victoria tapped the table three times with her forefinger, jingling the pennies on her bracelet, as she glanced over at Wolf, who was looking at her the same way Judge Eldridge had been looking at her that day onstage at the Supreme Court Building—transfixed. Her gaze moved smoothly back to Garrison as the three pennies touched the table. “Let’s go, George. You’ve already bought yourself another year. Pretty soon, I’ll have you in there for life.”

Garrison winced as he glanced at Wolf. “Help me, Clint, for old time’s sake.”

“Not on your life,” Wolf replied firmly, “or mine.”

CHAPTER 37

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

“Trent.”

He opened his eyes slowly to a dark bedroom, so dark he wasn’t convinced at first that he’d really opened them, that he was even actually awake. Perhaps Angela’s far-off call had been part of a pleasant dream he’d been drifting through.

“Trent!”

The bedroom door burst open and light from the hallway streamed in. Not a dream.

“What’s wrong, Angie?” he mumbled, lifting a hand to his face to keep from being temporarily blinded.

“I expected this at some point,” she answered, seething. “I told myself it would probably happen. But it’s still tough to take when you actually see it on the screen, when you see the words right there in front of you.”

“What words?”

“Come and I’ll show you,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten after five.” She stepped to the bed and grabbed his hand. “Come on.”

“Easy, easy,” he pleaded as she pulled.

After so many seasons of running up and down basketball courts a hundred times a game and banging for rebounds against other huge men, he needed time to get out of his specially made, eight-foot-long bed. He’d escaped the NBA without major injury. But his knees and back ached constantly from years of sprinting, jumping, and changing directions on a dime, and they always required a good stretch to limber up—especially at five in the morning.

“Sorry,” Angela apologized. “It’s just . . . I can’t believe it.”

He heard the tremble in her voice. “What’s going on?” He swung his size-nineteen feet to the carpet. “And why are you always up so early? Don’t you need sleep like the rest of us?”

She wasn’t swayed by his attempt at levity. “This is serious, Trent. My name is all over the Internet. So is Gaynor Construction’s. Not in good ways, either. I need you to look at this. I need my baby’s help.
Now
.”

WASHINGTON, DC (GEORGETOWN)

“Is it in there?” her husband asked as he hustled into the kitchen of their Georgetown home, an expectant expression riding shotgun.

Martha glanced up at him over her reading glasses and nodded. “A major piece right on the front page of the
Washington Post
.” She tapped the headline. “Angela Gaynor’s company allegedly bribed government officials in order to win projects all over the Tidewater. It says Gaynor Construction is accused of paying councilmen and women in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Hampton Roads hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence decisions on huge construction deals over the past two years.” She shook her head incredulously. “It’s one thing to see it on TMZ, but this is the
Washington Post.
”

Lehman squeezed her shoulder. He was more buoyant than he usually was before he’d had his OJ—but he wasn’t surprised. He’d known something like this was going to happen. “It must be true if it’s on the front page of the
Post
,” he agreed. “They want Angela Gaynor to beat me. You know they would have endorsed her outright now that we’re a month off from the election.” He smiled ear to ear. “Not now. Not even they could justify that now. It must have been so hard for them to print this story.”

“The article doesn’t link Gaynor directly to payoffs.”

“Does it matter? In this day and age, she’s guilty by association. There will be no stopping the social media express train at this point.”

Martha raised a considering eyebrow. “The article goes to great lengths to explain that she hasn’t been linked to any wrongdoing yet.” She pointed at a paragraph halfway down the page. “It says here she stepped away from the day-to-day operation of the corporation when she entered local politics. They don’t even say who at Gaynor Construction was responsible. They don’t even name the people who were paid off.”

Lehman sat down beside her. “Is anyone going to believe she didn’t know exactly what was going on at the company she built from the ground up? I mean, her entire reputation is wrapped around her being Miss Hands On with everything she does.” He looked over her shoulder. “Does the article reference who actually broke the story?”

“A local newspaper in Norfolk, I think,” she said. She glanced over at him. “I’m still amazed at you, Chuck, even after all these years.”

“Why?”

“Your confidence. That’s what drew me to you the first time I saw you, even from across the room.”

“You mean it wasn’t just my fabulous looks?” he teased.

“You seemed to know something like this would happen to Gaynor. You kept telling me to wait and see. It’s eerie how clairvoyant you are sometimes.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I love you.”

“Love you too, honey,” he said, then pulled the paper across the table so it was in front of him. “She’s finished,” he muttered ecstatically as he focused on the article, “at least in this town. And she’s getting what she deserved. Thinking she could challenge me.”

“It’s like you knew something,” Martha whispered as she slipped her arm through his. “Did you?”

“Did I what?” he asked.

“Did you know something like this was going to happen to Angela Gaynor?”

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

“How could this twenty-three-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears punk reporter from the
Daily Press
get this kind of information?” Trent snapped angrily. He scanned the story on his laptop for the hundredth time today. He’d refused to let Angela leave his place and risk being mobbed by the press.

“Does it really matter?” Angela asked.

“You’re damn right.”

“Why?”

“It smells bad to me,
really
bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“This kid had to get records somehow, right? Even some small-town editor isn’t going to print a story like this without some kind of evidence. Somebody hacked into your system or broke into your offices.”

She perched on the edge of the desk next to him, her restless hands revealing a nervousness he’d rarely seen her fall prey to. “I already told you. There’s no record of anything like that. No alarms were triggered at the office. No video of anything. No firewalls breached as far as the company network is concerned. The reporter is claiming someone sent him the data anonymously.”

“A whistleblower?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it,” Trent snapped, leaning forward to grab his phone off the coffee table. “It doesn’t sit right. It’s too coincidental.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too easy to connect the dots from this to your campaign.”

“Who are you calling?”

“A guy I know at that paper.”

“Trent, I don’t think—”

“We’re not rolling over on this, Angie. We’ve worked too hard to get where we have. We’re too close to something very good to roll over. If there’s one thing I learned playing all those basketball games, sometimes you have to attack. Offense starts with defense, but defense can’t win games. I’m on it. The counterattack starts now.”

“Social media will destroy me.”

“Angie, you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back at your campaign.”

“What campaign?” she asked despondently.

JURY TOWN