Key Witness (51 page)

Walcott gave him a funny look.

“She hasn’t had any luck hooking up with a job, which explains her still being a deputy,” Wyatt continued. “So far she’s only been trying the private firms. If you saw what she looked like, you’d understand why she’s been shit out of luck. She did try the DA’s office,” he remembered, correcting himself, “but they’re way over budget on staffing, and they’ve got a three-year waiting list.”

“If she graduated last semester,” Walcott said, pursuing his own chain of thought, “that means she would have taken the spring bar, in March.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“The spring bar results haven’t been released yet,” Walcott informed him. “It takes four months—they won’t be out until July. We have two recent applicants on tap that we want to bring in. They both took the spring bar exam, and we haven’t been able to officially hire them yet.”

“Maybe I got the dates mixed up. Because she definitely knew her score.”

“You had to.” Walcott checked his watch. “I’ve got appointments piling up. We should mock-trial in about three weeks. Can you be ready?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Walcott turned to go, then turned back. “I forgot to ask—how’s your daughter?” His concern seemed genuine.

“As good as can be expected. The operation’s tomorrow.”

“I’ll light a candle for you.”

Wyatt watched him go. He’s not a bad guy, he thought. I’ve been selling him short. Then he thought, Who else have I been selling short?

T
HE EARLY-MORNING INFIRMARY
rush had come and gone. About a dozen inmates sat in various areas, awaiting examination, treatment, release to their tiers or jobs. The doctor moved from one to the next with his practiced bored efficiency. He handled the more serious cases. Dwayne worked alongside him, dispensing medicines, bandaging minor wounds, taking notes that the nurse would follow up on.

The nurse himself took care of the prisoners whose problems were minor. Throat swabs, bandage changing, eye care—easy stuff that was a waste of the doctor’s time. He had successfully avoided direct contact with Dwayne all morning long, although Dwayne had let him know, when he’d come down to start his workday, that they had business to discuss.

“I have done all I can for these poor unfortunate souls,” the doctor announced in a stentorian W. C. Fields voice to Dwayne and the air as he rolled his stethoscope and tucked it into his bag. “And now, kind sirs, with your permission, I shall take my leave.”

Out of here in fifteen minutes, in the bag in forty-five, Dwayne thought. “Have a good day, Doc,” he said. “Hoist a couple for me.”

The doctor belly-chuckled. “I shall, my friend,” he said with hearty bonhomie. “I shall, indeed.”

As soon as the doctor was gone the nurse began busying himself with paperwork, studiously avoiding Dwayne. The tattooed wonder finished his treatments of the last of the patients the doctor had left for him and walked down the buffed linoleum floor to the nurse’s workstation, positioning himself over the nurse’s right shoulder. The way the light fell from the ceiling cast his shadow over the nurse’s pages—a foreboding presence.

Hopkins ignored Dwayne as long as he could. “What do you want?” he asked finally, studiously not looking up from his work.

“You had company down here yesterday afternoon. They pulled me out of here for no good reason. Which meant you were meeting with someone they didn’t want me to know about, is how I figure it.”

Hopkins sat dead still, not moving a muscle.

“Marvin White’s lawyer?” Dwayne stated. “Was that who was down here? He was here a while back, before Marvin’s shit hit the fan. Then he was down here again yesterday, jawboning you.” He paused. “Wasn’t he.”

The nurse’s voice rose high, in fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got work to do,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster, “and so do you, so I suggest you get to it.”

Dwayne put a hand on the man’s shoulder, the tips of his fingers touching the collarbone, a light but firm touch.

Hopkins froze. “Take your hands off me,” he managed to say. His heart started going a mile a minute.

Dwayne increased the pressure slightly, his fingers pressing on the man’s thin clavicle. “What did you tell him?” The fingers stayed where they were.

He could snap my neck like a twig, the nurse thought. “He wasn’t down here,” the man lied. He had to lie—he couldn’t tell what had happened, or he would be a dead man for sure.

“Don’t fuck me around, pussyface. What did you tell him? Did you tell him anything about me?”

“What would I tell him about you?” Realizing he’d almost given his lie away, Hopkins continued hastily, “If he had been here, which he wasn’t.”

“What I do.” Dwayne paused. “Who comes to see me.”

The nurse turned as best he could, considering the pressure on his throat, and looked at Dwayne. He was scared completely shitless now. “Who comes to see you? What’s that supposed to mean?”

He couldn’t mention Blake by name. As far as he knew, no one had ever seen them down here together, not in a compromising way. “Anyone. Anything.”

Hopkins pulled himself together enough to turn and face Dwayne. “Who comes to see you is none of my concern,” he said, “and I want to keep it that way.” He turned further in his chair and looked up at the pale face staring down at him, the dead milky blue eyes that were locked into his own. “If you’re doing anything in here that’s illegal I don’t want to know about it, okay? Just don’t involve me in your crap. Now for the last time—take your hands off me. Or this will be your last day working down here,” he threatened: an empty threat; there was no weight to his actions.

“Where I work is not up to you, ace,” Dwayne reminded him softly. “And if you ever do talk to anyone about me—anything about me—you’ll regret it later. Are we in synch here?” He hovered over the nurse a moment longer, slowly increasing the pressure on the man’s clavicle.

The pain was almost unbearable. The nurse wanted to scream, but his throat was paralyzed.

Dwayne leaned down, his lips touching the nurse’s right ear. “I can kill you anytime I want,” he whispered. “Which no one will do a thing about, because your life isn’t worth shit compared to what they need from me.”

And then he pressed down, one sharp pressure-point jab.

The pain was excruciating. The nurse couldn’t even scream; he was unable to breathe—it was as if all the air had been sucked from his lungs. He fell to the floor in a ball, writhing in agony.

Dwayne knelt down next to the injured man, a hand at the nurse’s mouth to shut him up in case he caught enough wind to cry out. “That’s a calling card, ace,” he whispered. “A reminder of how we understand each other.”

Leaving the nurse in a fetus ball on the floor, Dwayne walked to the door and called out to the hallway for the guard. “You’d better call the ambulance, man. Hopkins fell off his desk trying to change a lightbulb. I think his neck’s broke or something.”

Blake was the one Dwayne was worried about.

She came down midmorning—he’d gotten word to her through the prison grapevine, once Hopkins had been taken away. The nurse hadn’t said word one to rebut Dwayne’s account of how he’d almost killed himself.

“I need to speak to this inmate,” Blake informed the deputy who was guarding the facility. “It’ll only be for a few minutes.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” the deputy said deferentially.

“I’ll take him to my office,” she said.

As soon as they were alone in her cubicle and she had closed and locked the door (another infraction, but getting caught flagrante delicto would be much worse), she came to him, trying to engulf him in her embrace, but he sidestepped her and moved away.

“Not now,” he said sharply. “We’ve got to talk.” He nodded toward the door. “You’d better unlock that. We get caught behind locked doors, we’ll be in more trouble than we already are.”

She walked over and undid the lock. “What kind of trouble are we in?” she asked, panic smothering her. “Did something happen down in the infirmary?” The word of the nurse’s accident had circulated throughout the place.

“That was a real accident,” Dwayne lied. He looked hard at her. “What did you and that hot-shit lawyer talk about yesterday?”

He had confirmed her unacknowledged fear. She had been waiting for this shoe to drop since Matthews had braced her in the lunchroom.

“I …”

“I know you talked to him, so don’t lie to me, Doris.” He crossed to her and held her hand. “I’m not mad. You couldn’t not do it. But I need to know what you told him.”

“He knew I’d worked up at Durban and asked if I knew you there.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I did. I’m not going to lie about that, that’s stupid. He already knew that, he was testing me to see if I was lying to him.”

“Okay,” he conceded. “What else?”

“He asked about your work here, in the infirmary. Whether or not I got you the job.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I didn’t. Which is the truth, luckily.”

“But if he finds out you wired it so I could bunk here, that wouldn’t be so lucky. That would be a lie.”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “That’s not a big deal. I knew you at Durban, I knew you were working in the infirmary there, the jail’s overcrowded. It’s not a big deal, Dwayne. Don’t worry, he isn’t interested in that,” she added, trying to convince herself that was so.

“The hell he isn’t! Lawyers like him don’t ask questions about things they’re not interested in. Every question he asked you had a purpose, Doris.” He exhaled a loud whistle, jittered on the balls of his feet.

“I can cover that,” she said. “Believe me, it is no big deal.”

“Yeah? We’ll see. What else?”

“He wanted to know if you’d had any access to a computer since you’d been brought down here. Warden Jonas up at Durban told him about your computer expertise.”

“Son of a bitch!” he uttered under his breath. “Did he say anything about hacking, anything like that?” How much had Jonas told this lawyer about him?

“No,” she answered. “He just wanted to know if you’d been on a computer at all.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That to my knowledge, you hadn’t.” She paused. “And he believed me.”

“How the fuck do you know that, you dumb bitch? Since when did you become a licensed mind reader?” he said viciously.

Her neck flushed red from the force of the insult. “Because he didn’t ask me about it, except that one question,” she answered, holding on to her composure. “That’s not what he was driving at; but he couldn’t ask me what he really wanted to ask me, because he’s not allowed to, it’s outside his legal boundaries. I may not have passed the exam, but I actually do know the law.”

“Really?” He looked at her with arched brow. “So this big question he wanted to ask you but couldn’t—what was it?”

“Did I feed you information, of course.”

The telephone rang. She picked it up. “Blake,” she spoke. She listened a moment. “Yes, I have him here.” She looked over at Dwayne. “Yes, I’ll be returning him directly.” Another pause. “Not a problem.” She hung up.

“Who was that?” he asked suspiciously.

“The duty officer for the infirmary. They’re changing shifts. Just wanting to make sure you’re still on the reservation.” She looked at him and sighed. “I can’t wait to leave this hole,” she said.

“Me, too,” he echoed for sentiment.

“That was what he was leading up to—Matthews,” she said, getting back on track while reassuring him and herself. “Whether or not I’d helped you shape your case.”

“Well, you don’t have to lie about that,” he said, relieved. “Because you didn’t.”

“No.”

“All right.” He started mollifying her. “I’m sorry I came down on you like I did, but this is heavy shit for me, baby. This is my only ticket out of here. Otherwise, I’m buried forever.”

“I know,” she said softly, her heart going out to him.

“About your computer. That’s one thing they can never know. Never.” He engaged her, eye to eye. “For both our sakes.”

“I know that, Dwayne. Believe me, I’ve had my sleepless nights over that.”

“It’s okay, Doris,” he reassured her—she was worried about the bar exam. “No one’s ever going to know.” He wasn’t going to explain otherwise.

W
YATT WENT TO THE
jail at lunchtime. “Lieutenant Blake? Got a second?” he asked, plopping down next to her in the deputy’s cafeteria again.

She jumped. He had snuck up on her. “Yes?” she answered. She hoped he didn’t notice that she was shaking.

“I spoke to my boss about your coming to work at the Public Defender’s office,” he said cheerfully. “Do you recall our conversation about that yesterday?”

“Of course I remember,” she answered, relieved.

“He thought it might be a good match. He wants to meet you.”

“He does?” She felt faint. “When?”

“Well, not for a few weeks,” he apologized. “We’re swamped with other things right at the moment.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, in the direction of the maximum-security unit where Marvin was housed. “But I thought I’d get the ball rolling by getting hold of your transcripts, so we can look them over. Do you have a copy of your law school grades, with any favorable comments on them from your professors?”

“Yes, I have a copy at home. I could mail them to you, or fax.”

“I’m here almost every day, seeing my client,” he reminded her. “I’ll catch you some time when I’m around.”

“All right,” she said. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

“We can always use another good lawyer. Let’s see, that was the winter quarter you graduated?”

“Yes.”

“And that was the spring bar exam you took?”

“That’s right.”

“Good, good.” He stood up. “When you bring those grades in,” he said offhandedly, “don’t forget to include a copy of your bar exam score.” He reached out and shook her hand. “See you around.”

“The bar exam score,” she repeated dumbly, the enormity of her gaffe hitting her in the forehead like an anvil. She’d stuck her tit in the wringer; hopefully he wouldn’t squeeze the handle.

“We need it for the record. To make sure you’re legal,” he winked, to let her know he was teasing her.