Jury Town (5 page)

That last question wasn’t really fair. If danger was lurking, Mitch didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in San Juan of surviving. And it wouldn’t do for Judge Eldridge’s nephew and chief of staff to be caught up in anything scandalous. The ramifications of that were far too risky for far too many important people around town.

Acosta checked the rearview mirror again as he passed the north end of the bridge. Those headlights were still back there.

He raced across the East Branch of Tuckahoe Creek, which paralleled the north bank of the James, and slowed as he approached the stoplight at River Road. Crenshaw Field was only half a mile from the light, and he should be taking a left here.

But a voice in the back of his head was urging him to go straight through the light. And he never ignored that voice.

He sped through the intersection, paralleling the golf course of the Country Club of Virginia to his left now, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds. Halfway between River Road and the next left turn, the trailing headlights flashed into view. They seemed nearer. The vehicle was closing in.

Acosta wheeled the Explorer hard-left and gunned the engine. He raced a quarter mile up Three Chopt, headed hard-right onto Grove, veered left onto Somerset, skidded to a stop behind a Mercedes sedan, cut the lights, and turned quickly to peer over his shoulder.

A vehicle flew by on Grove. That had to have been the trailer. But was the car chasing him?

And it hadn’t just looked like your average car. It had looked like a limousine from here, though it was hard to tell for certain through the darkness. If it was a limousine, that would make all this even more strange.

Acosta jammed the accelerator down and made a quick left onto York after flipping the headlights on again.

Moments later he turned onto a narrow lane across College Road from the University of Richmond, pulled off to one side, and cut the engine. He climbed out and went to the back of the SUV, exchanging his long, tan raincoat for a shorter, dark-blue slicker, which would be easier to move in. The rain had eased to a mist; however, green echoes on the weather app covered his phone’s screen. Any second it might start pouring again.

He pulled his 9 mm from his shoulder holster beneath the slicker, made certain the first round was chambered, and then moved to the passenger side of the SUV, where he picked up the portfolio and glanced at Sofia. He considered slipping the photo into his pocket, but finally decided against it. This shouldn’t take long.

He put it back down, grabbed the envelope, locked the doors, and began jogging toward College Road.

Rising all around him were stately brick colonials, like Mitch’s. Except these homes cost twice what Mitch’s did on the South Side. This was the West End of Richmond, the city’s highest-rent district.

He wasn’t familiar with the university grounds, so he kept glancing down at his phone as he jogged, letting it lead him. He turned off the lane, cut through several wooded yards, passed behind a massive home overlooking College, and then waited until he was certain no cars were approaching in either direction before dashing across the two lanes of pavement and quickly heading into the cover of trees lining one end of a soccer field.

Now he was on university grounds.

He remained inside the tree line until he was forced to emerge to cross a large parking lot, which lay just west of Crenshaw Field. At the other end of the field, the Modlin Center for the Arts rose up into the gloom, lights gleaming despite the late hour. But he no longer needed physical landmarks or the phone to guide him, so he slipped it into his pocket. Through the gloom, he’d spotted someone standing near the far corner of the field from the building. Who else would be out here at this hour of a nasty morning?

He drew his gun, prepared to fire if the individual made a sudden move. If this became an incident, Judge Eldridge would protect him.

The subject wore a long, dark raincoat but that was all Acosta could discern as he approached from behind. He couldn’t tell if the person was holding a gun, but he’d rather have surprise on his side than
anything
else.

“Hands up,” Acosta called from ten feet away, pistol out and aimed.

The figure threw both arms in the air and whirled around. “Don’t shoot!” he begged when he spotted the 9 mm. “I don’t have a gun.
I swear to God I don’t have a gun
.”

Acosta had been concerned that associates might be hiding in the area. But the overwhelming fear inscribed in the voice instantly convinced him otherwise. This young man was alone.

“What’s your name?”

“Dominick.”

This guy was no Dominick. He looked more like a Brendan or an Ian. In fact, he reminded Acosta of Mitch with his cherry-blond hair and boyish good looks.

Acosta reached below his slicker and pulled out the envelope, which was wedged into his belt. “Here, kid,” he muttered, tossing it to the young man, who nearly dropped it. All he wanted to do now was get home to Sofia. “Peace out.”

He backed off a few steps, keeping his pistol trained on the young man’s chest. The kid looked harmless, but you could never be too careful. Finally, at fifty feet, he turned and jogged back the way he’d come, checking over his shoulder several times.

After recrossing College, Acosta emerged from the trees of a back lawn out onto the lane fifty feet east of where he’d parked the Explorer. For an instant, he didn’t believe his eyes. The SUV doors were wide open, and two individuals were rooting through it.

“Hey!” he yelled, blasting a bullet into the air. “Get away from there!”

A retaliatory shot rang out from behind a car parked up and on the other side of the lane, directly across from the Explorer. The bullet caromed wickedly off something to Acosta’s right.

He bolted back into the trees, dodging tall oaks and maples as he sprinted from the scene. Bullets tore through the low branches all around him, shredding leaves, as sharp voices shouted out to each other through the night.

As he closed in on the Explorer, Acosta hurled himself against the trunk of a huge oak, using the tree to steady his hand as he fired five shots in rapid succession.

A sprinting silhouette pitched forward and tumbled onto the lane; someone screamed, and car doors slammed. Acosta fired three more times as another shadow helped its fallen comrade. An engine fired up, another door slammed shut, and the car raced past. He ducked as more bullets raked the branches around him, and then everything went eerily silent, as if the battle had never occurred.

He sprinted to his SUV. Shattered glass covered both front seats, and the portfolio was missing. “Damn it!”

He lumbered around the front of the truck, and a wave of relief rushed through him when he spotted something familiar looking on the pavement. He snatched the portfolio off the wet blacktop and gently smoothed water from its surface.

Only then did he feel a searing pain in his gut. He glanced down as he yanked his shirt from his pants and lifted it high.

“Oh, God,” he muttered.

Blood was pouring from a gaping bullet wound beside his navel. This was the last straw. Once he was out of surgery, he was going to call Judge Eldridge and tell him what was happening with Mitch—the odd behavior tonight, the visits to the limousine downtown, the limousine that had tailed Acosta tonight. He just wished he hadn’t mentioned all of it to Sofia. Mitch was no idiot.

As Acosta eased down to his knees, he found the photo of Sofia inside the portfolio. “Get me through this, baby,” he gasped. “Get me through this.”

CHAPTER 6

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

Victoria climbed from her Lexus and walked to the front of the car, all the while staring up at the dark brick wall. She’d just pulled in beside Cam’s BMW, in almost exactly the same spot her mother had parked that July day twenty-three years ago, when they’d come here from the Shenandoah Valley to pick up her father.

How had Cameron known? They’d never parked in this lot before. They usually parked in the south lot, where the four big buses that would transport the jurors up from Richmond tomorrow—and away from the facility in case of emergency—were kept.

Cam parking here couldn’t be a coincidence. She didn’t believe in coincidences—which, she had to admit, was odd because she was completely superstitious. But life wasn’t a cookie-cutter proposition.

“You okay?” he asked, rising from the 3 Series and moving beside her in front of the Lexus.

“Yeah.”

“Ironic, huh?”

“What?” She knew what he meant. They had no secrets. No lasting ones.

“It’s ironic that this would be the venue for Jury Town.”

Cameron had created the name for the facility a few months ago, but neither of them had told anyone yet. They were waiting for the opening of the facility tomorrow to play it for the press. They’d waited so it’d have more of an impact. Everyone would be calling it that after tomorrow night.

“I’ll give you credit, Victoria.”

“Why?”

“You could have chosen Mecklenberg for this. That mothballed prison down on the North Carolina border. But you didn’t.”

She shrugged as if she didn’t understand. “Archer was better suited for what we needed, more central and much less expensive to refurbish. It wasn’t a difficult decision.”

“If you’d chosen Mecklenberg, you wouldn’t have had to deal with the ghosts . . . and the demons.”

He hadn’t mentioned any of this before today, and the project had been under way for a year. “Why have you waited until now to say this?” she asked.

“Every time we drove up here together, I’d see the stress building in your expression. You always stopped talking about ten miles out, and your posture would get as rigid as a piece of thick plywood. As soon as you saw the prison wall through the trees, your eyes would go down. You wouldn’t look at it, not even while we were walking toward it to go inside.” Cameron gestured at the wall. “But today’s different. You’re staring straight at it. You’re drinking it in. The same way you did before you made the announcement at the Supreme Court Building.”

Her gaze ran along the top of the tall, dark wall to the nearest surveillance tower and then up to the observation deck—no Devil’s angels up there today. “My father died of lung cancer before he could go after Judge Hopkins and make things right.”

Cameron nodded. “And Judge Hopkins died of a stroke before you could go after him, which I’m sure you would have.”

“I promised my father on his deathbed I would. But you’re right. Hopkins died before I had the chance. Before I could expose him for the criminal he was.”

“But that doesn’t explain why today is different, why you can look at the wall without all that bitterness.”

“It’s not a prison anymore, Cam. It’s actually Jury Town.”

“Thanks to you.”

She reached out for his hand and squeezed his fingers. “Thanks to both of us.” She took a deep breath. “Where’s that envelope you got last night?”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled it out.

She took it, ripped it open, and read.

“What is it?” he asked.

Her heart was suddenly racing. “Nothing.”

“Come on, Victoria. What’s going on?”

The door to Archer opened, and a man stepped out. Victoria shook her head at Cameron—now wasn’t the time—and pulled him toward the wall. “Let’s go.”

Once the security guard had let them in, Victoria and Cameron hurried down the facility’s long administrative corridor. One wall was cluttered with broken furniture and large cardboard boxes bursting at the seams with junk. These were the final, unusable remnants of Archer Prison, which would be hauled off later today. When the last of it was gone, the renovation would be complete and the facility ready for the nation’s first professional jurors.

“Does all this clutter remind you of anything?” Cameron asked, pointing at the debris as they hustled toward Clint Wolf, who was standing outside his office.

“What are you talking about?” Victoria asked, waving to Wolf.

She’d hired Clint a year ago to oversee reconstruction of the prison—and then run the facility’s day-to-day operation after the jurors arrived.

“It looks a lot like the top of your desk.”

“Thank you very little,” she retorted, laughing.

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised FEMA’s never shown up at your door.”

“Be glad they haven’t,” Wolf said loudly with a wry grin. He was a tall, thick, full-blooded Cherokee who wore his straight black hair in a tight ponytail that fell from beneath his wide, white Stetson all the way to his belt in the back. “Things usually get worse after they do. I know from experience.” Wolf nodded at Cameron, then at Victoria. “She’s disorganized?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cameron confirmed.

“Really,” Wolf murmured as if the revelation came as a surprise.

“That’s the great thing about working for her. I’ll always have a job because—”

“Never would have thought that,” Wolf interrupted, motioning them to follow as he turned away. “Let’s go. Things have changed quite a bit since you two were here last.”

Clint Wolf had spent seventeen years at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. His last post had been assistant director in charge of the massive Correctional Programs Division—where he’d been responsible for over a hundred federal prisons and more than two hundred thousand inmates. During his three-year tenure as head of CPD, only seven prisoners had escaped. Six had been recaptured within four days, while one had been killed in a gun battle after just an hour of freedom.

As far as Victoria was concerned, Wolf was eminently qualified and completely capable of keeping two hundred jurors inside this facility . . . as well as keeping their enemies out.

She wasn’t as convinced of Wolf’s ability to keep influence out and, just as importantly, of his ability to maintain peace at the facility. She wasn’t convinced anyone could maintain that on a permanent basis. The team of psychologists who’d advised her on the project had predicted that the “cabin fever syndrome” would erupt at Archer Prison at some point.

A few strides down the corridor, Wolf turned right into another hallway, which had a pungent, fresh-carpet odor.

“Welcome to Jury Room One,” Wolf said, holding open the first door on the left. “There are fifteen more exactly like it. Remember, this entire wing is new. It was not here when Archer Prison was operational.”

“I love it,” Victoria said as she followed Wolf. “It’s sharp looking and roomy.”

“As we discussed at the start of all this a year ago,” Wolf said, “I’ve tried hard to make everything at the facility as spacious as possible. We don’t want people ever feeling claustrophobic if we can help it. We’re doing everything possible to fight that cabin fever you’re so worried about, Victoria. Fortunately, Archer Prison was designed for a thousand inmates, so we started from a good place in terms of space for two hundred.” Wolf pointed at the jury box. “Have a seat, both of you.”

Fourteen chairs were arranged stadium-style in two rows against the far wall. Seven chairs in front and seven behind, those in back offset with those in front and raised eighteen inches for maximum viewing capability with plenty of room to pass by to get food and drink or take a bio break without disturbing others. Fourteen seats—two extras for alternates in case of illness or emergency—with a solid-oak, waist-high partition in front and to the sides of the chairs, perfectly replicating an actual courtroom jury box.

Victoria pulled back the gate at one end of the back row, climbed the solitary step, and eased into the first chair. “Comfortable but not too comfortable,” she said approvingly. “We don’t want people nodding off while court’s in session.”

“We’ve got the climate control programmed so that temperatures in the sixteen jury rooms will vary automatically and constantly between sixty-eight and seventy-four degrees. Research indicates that if the temperature varies that way, people have a harder time dozing.”

“This
is
nice,” Cameron said, relaxing into a seat in the middle of the front row. “Hey, they spin,” he said, rotating toward Victoria.

“That’s so we can use these as deliberation rooms as well,” Wolf explained. “So people can face each other like they would if they were sitting around a table after the two sides have rested.”

“Any concern that jurors in the back are physically higher than those in front and therefore will have a psychological edge as they argue?” Cameron asked.

“Fair point,” Victoria agreed. “Maybe we instruct the foreman to—
Oh God!
” she shrieked as the entire back row began to descend until it was level with the front.

“Thought of that,” Wolf said with a satisfied smile. He gestured toward the wall opposite the jury box and the four huge screens affixed to it. “Ninety-five-inch Samsungs,” he said as he picked up a remote and aimed it at a stack of electronic equipment in one corner, which was encased in thick, clear plastic. The screens quickly flashed to life and to a trial in session. “You’re watching a video of a trial that ended last month in Petersburg. But you get the idea. The jurors will have constant views of the witness stand, the defense table, the prosecutor’s table as well as a panoramic perspective of the entire proceeding.”

“Those pictures are
really
nice.”

“They should be for what the screens cost.” Wolf pointed above the stack of electronic equipment to a large camera bolted into the wall. “Through a feed to their laptops, the judge, the attorneys, and the defendant will be able to see the jury at all times through that camera.”

“Good.”

“Audio will also be two-way. So jurors can hear everything said in the courtroom, and the judge can communicate at all times.” Wolf held up the remote again and pushed several buttons. A moment later the trial disappeared and was replaced on all four screens by the movie
Avatar
as the lights in the room dimmed. “When juries aren’t in session, this wing will turn into a multiplex. We’ll have sixteen different movies playing. We have a library of five thousand films, and we’ll publish a schedule every morning of what will be playing once court is over for the day.”

“Any chance somebody clever could hook these screens up to outside programming?” Cameron asked. “We can’t have that.”

“The only outside programming available to them will be the trials themselves,” Wolf answered. “Every morning our technical people will be required to make each connection to each courthouse individually. They will continue monitoring those connections all day from the control room. And, every afternoon, when court’s over, the techies will cut each connection to each courthouse individually. But listen,” he said somberly as he placed the remote down on the jury box banister and headed for the door, “I learned in my nearly two decades at FBP that people are very smart and very creative, especially people with time on their hands. We’ll have to monitor everyone and everything very, very carefully.”

Victoria and Cameron followed him out, hustling to keep up.

“As you know, your office is that way, past mine,” Wolf called to Victoria, gesturing to the left as he came out of the jury-room hallway and turned right onto the administration wing corridor. “The office of the head of the guard corps is also up there.”

“The guard facilities are in a different building, right?” Cameron asked.

“Their lockers and lounge are in that brick building on your left just as you come through the main entrance to the property.” Wolf waved at several doors on the right. “These are the medical facilities.”

“Wait,” Victoria called, taking a moment to check the large infirmary. New equipment glistened beautifully. “Remind me about procedure here, Clint.”

“All visits will be recorded and carefully reviewed by staff afterward
unless
,” Wolf said loudly as Cameron began to object, “the visit involves something of an intimate nature. A gynecology exam, a colonoscopy, a breast X-ray,” he said, ticking off examples. “In those cases, of course, no recording will be made. However, there will be two members of the medical staff present at all times, and which members of the medical staff are in attendance will be determined by a random-number system generated by computer just prior to the exam. When the exams are over, everyone will be thoroughly searched, and the medical staff debriefed by me personally as long as I’m on premises. If I’m not, it’ll be my second in commands doing the interviewing.” Wolf removed the Stetson for a moment to run his hand through his ponytail. “We’ll limit contact between the jurors and staff as much as possible, whether it’s cleaning people, guards, medical people, or administrators. But the reality is, some minimal amount of interaction is unavoidable.” He put his hat back on. “The key to securing those interactions will be the random nature of the staff present and the duplication of staff involved. It will be very, very hard to sneak information to jurors, whether it’s to bribe them or intimidate them, if the sender has no idea which staff member will be in attendance
and
there are always at least two staff members around. In addition,” he continued, “no schedule for anyone will be consistent week to week, not even for the administrative assistants. And schedules won’t come out far in advance, two days at most. Finally, even jurors will have a hybrid lottery system in terms of doctor and dental visits, unless it’s an emergency, of course.” He held up his hand. “And I’ll be all over every emergency visit. It’s the easiest and fastest way to gain separation from the general prisoner—sorry,” he interrupted himself, “the general
juror
population. I’ll personally review in detail every emergency situation.”