“I read it yesterday.”
“Are you going to publish it?”
Gorman shook his head slowly. “I can’t, Vanessa.”
“This will be bigger than Watergate, Pat. You’ll be the next Woodward and Bernstein all by yourself. They’ll be talking about
“
“Do you really want someone like Morris Wingate running this country?”
“My politics have nothing to do with my decision. You’ve been in the newspaper business long enough to know that you can’t print the stuff you’re writing about without heavy-duty corroboration.”
“You’ve got resources, Pat. Use them to corroborate my charges.”
“I don’t have the contacts to verify something like this. You’re talking about decades-old black ops that are buried so deep that no one else has ever heard of them.”
“Carl Rice knows all about them.”
“We can’t base our story on the word of an escaped convict who’s murdered a congressman, a general, and…“ Gorman shook his head. “I forgot the body count at your father’s house.”
“You’ve got to show everyone what my father is really like.”
“I can’t do that without rock-solid proof. We’d be sued into oblivion.”
“You’re afraid, aren’t you? Did he get to you?”
Gorman looked tired. “Neither your father nor anyone connected to him has talked to me, Van. We just can’t print unsubstantiated stories accusing presidential candidates of murder.”
“Then why are you here?”
Gorman looked uncomfortable. “Like I said when I came in, you’ve gone from writing the news to being the news. You and Carl Rice are the biggest story in the country, and
“I can’t believe you, Pat. I never thought you’d take advantage of our friendship.”
“Your defense is going to be expensive. We’ll foot the bill for the best lawyer.”
“What’s the headline going to be? ‘Love-Starved Spinster Seduced by Serial Killer,’ or will you go with ‘Maniac Lovers on the Run’?”
“You’ll get to tell the story anyway you want. You can even talk about your father. Our lawyers tell me that we can’t be sued if you’re the one making the accusations.”
Vanessa looked sad. “I am so disappointed in you, Pat. I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend. I want to help.”
“You want a story. I’ve become another giant baby-eating rat.”
“That’s not true,” Gorman protested feebly, but he looked ashamed.
“Please go.”
“Will you think it over?”
Vanessa seemed on the verge of tears. Gorman could not look her in the eye.
“Just go, Pat.”
“Van…”
“Please.”
Vanessa closed her eyes. She felt more tired and defeated than she had since her arrest. She never believed for a moment that Patrick Gorman would betray her. Now she knew that he was like everyone else. For a brief moment, she gave way completely to despair. But that moment ended when she recalled something that Gorman had said. The guard entered to take her back to her cell, but she didn’t even know that he was in the room. Without realizing it, her boss had given her an idea that might save her and Carl.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Justice Center is a sixteen-story concrete-and-glass building in down-town Portland, separated from the Multnomah County courthouse by a park. In addition to the central precinct of the Portland police bureau, the Justice Center is home to a branch of the Multnomah County district attorney’s office, several courtrooms, the state crime lab, state parole and probation, and the Multnomah County jail. Ami Vergano had already been on the thirteenth floor of the Justice Center when she was interrogated in the detective division of the Portland police bureau, but she had never been inside a jail and she found her first visit to this part of the building unnerving.
The jail occupies the fourth through tenth floors of the Justice Center, but the reception area is on the second floor. To reach it, Ami walked through the center’s vaulted lobby, past the curving stairs that led to the courtrooms on the third floor, and through a pair of glass doors.
“I’m Ami Vergano, Vanessa Kohler’s attorney,” she told the sheriff’s deputy who was manning the reception desk. “I’d like to visit her. She may be here under the name Vanessa Wingate.”
While the deputy checked her ID, Ami looked around the room. A jittery teenage girl with tattoos and a nose ring was casting anxious glances toward the door where released prisoners left the jail. She smelled as if she hadn’t bathed in days, and there were dark circles under her eyes. The only other person waiting in the reception area was a heavyset attorney in mismatched sports jacket and slacks, who was reading over police reports in preparation for a visit to a client.
The guard returned Ami’s ID and searched her attache case. When the search turned up neither weapons nor contraband, he motioned Ami toward a metal detector that stood between her and the jail elevator. Ami passed through without setting off an alarm and the guard walked her to the elevator and keyed her up to the floor where Vanessa was being held.
After a short ride, Ami found herself in a narrow hall with concrete walls. The moment the elevator doors closed, she started to feel claustrophobic. The guard in the reception area had told Ami to summon the guard on this floor by using the intercom that was affixed to the wall next to a thick metal door at one end of the corridor. Ami punched the button anxiously several times before the box crackled and a disembodied voice asked her about her business.
Moments later, a jail guard peered at Ami through a plate of glass in the upper half of the door, then spoke into a walkie-talkie. Electronic locks snapped, and the guard ushered Ami into another narrow corridor that ran in front of the three contact visiting rooms in which prisoners met face to face with their attorneys. Ami could see into the rooms through large windows outfitted with thick, shatterproof glass.
Vanessa was already waiting for her in the room farthest from the elevators. She was dressed in a shapeless orange jumpsuit and sitting in one of two molded plastic chairs that stood on either side of a round, Formica-topped table that was bolted to the floor. The guard opened another metal door and stepped aside. Ami walked into the room, and the guard pointed to a black button that stuck out of an intercom affixed to the pastel-yellow concrete wall.
“Press that when you’re through, and I’ll come and get you,” he told her before closing the door.
Vanessa’s hair was uncombed, and she looked even thinner than Ami remembered. Endless days in jail in San Diego, while Oregon and California fought over which state had the right to prosecute her first, had turned her complexion ashy-gray and beaten down her spirit.
“Are you okay?” Ami asked.
“No. I’m really down,” Vanessa answered honestly. She seemed exhausted.
“I’m so sorry, Vanessa.”
“Don’t be. None of this is your fault. I have only myself to blame.” Suddenly a flash of Vanessa’s determination and self-confidence showed on her face. “But I don’t regret what I did. Carl would be dead if I hadn’t rescued him.” Then her shoulders slumped and she looked lost. “I just hope he survives in prison, but I don’t think he has much of a chance. He’s too much of a threat to the General.”
Ami did not argue with Vanessa. She was finally convinced that the secret army was a fantasy and her client a seriously deluded woman, but what good would it do to challenge Vanessa’s delusions now? Instead, she opened
