Except, who's gonna hijack a bunch of disabled senior citizens?'
I looked over at her. 'You've been busy. That's a lot of good info.'
'Yeah, looks like a lot. But if you want the real truth, I was relieved of duty. I'm still getting paid, but Sasso put me on the rack. Apparently my undercarriage is getting checked for wet spots. Her words, not mine. That left me with an afternoon to kill. Most of this stuff I got off the NVNTA Web site.'
I nodded.
'How 'bout you? How'd your supervisor's review go?' she asked.
'Pretty good. I'm off the hook.'
'Get outta here.' She turned and looked over at me, then almost hit a slow-moving truck before swerving at the last minute and powering on.
'That was good thinking, getting Alexa to be my defense rep.'
Then I told her what had happened and how Alexa had saved my ass. After I was finished, Secada nodded her head in approval.
'Awesome.'
'Alexa was removed from command by Chief Filosiani, so technically, after that happened she became eligible to represent me,' I concluded.
Secada drove in silence for almost ten minutes and then we transitioned onto California 137 heading toward Corcoran. Another ten minutes passed before she spoke again.
'Want to hear something strange?'
'Sure.'
'Ever since Doug and I got divorced, I've been looking to fill a huge hole in my life. I thought I would do it with work. I didn't want to start a new relationship. But sometimes we can't control our emotions or the events that produce them.' She looked over at me. 'You happened to be exactly the right guy at exactly the wrong time and now I feel very lost and lonely.'
'Let's wait and see what happens.'
'No, I won't do that,' her voice firm, almost angry. 'I told you already, I won't take what's not mine.'
When we got to the hospital ward at Corcoran, we were greeted by an old warhorse, assistant warden who led us into the ICU. The unit was half prison, half hospital. Bars and electric doors with white painted walls. The orderlies wore green medical scrubs with matching prison ink tattoos.
We looked through a glass window at an unconscious Tru Hickman. Fluids dripped into his arm from hanging IV bags. Two pounds of surgical tape and gauze encased his skinny chest.
'Got him twenty-three times in six seconds,' the assistant warden told us. He was a big, gray, overweight guy with hair growing out of his ears.
'This is my fault,' I whispered, as I looked at Tru's inert form. 'This one's on me.'
Chapter 30
The prison surveillance tape showed Tru Hickman shuffling across the cafeteria, carrying an empty metal tray, moving like a man on Thorazine. Two muscled Hispanics with gang tatts trailed him innocently. Once Tru put his tray on the conveyor they made their move. One grabbed his arms while the other started shanking him. The blade flashed over twenty times, in and out, underhanded and quick, prison style. In seconds, Tru slumped to the floor. The two inmates turned and, as if they'd had nothing to do with it, walked calmly away. The assistant warden, who I had just learned was named Jack Slater, shut off the tape.
'They're both predicate felons up here on third strikes, so killing Hickman doesn't add anything to their sentences. Those two are here for the duration. They'll get charged with murder one, cop to second degree, and when it's all done, the sentences will run concurrently.'
'Van Owen Street Locos?' I asked.
'The baddest of the bad,' he answered with a put-upon sigh.
'These guys are in Mike Church's crew,' I said softly, looking at Secada who had remained silent throughout the video. Her only reaction had been a sharp intake of breath when the stabbing started.
'I want to talk to them,' I said.
'They've already lawyered up,' Assistant Warden Slater said. 'I've been warned that they're not to be interviewed without counsel present. They're hard targets. Nobody's gonna get nada outta either one of these shitbirds.'
'Let me try,' Secada said.
'Besides the obvious, you don't have anything to trade.' The sentence allowed an unattractive leer to stain his already fleshy features.
Hickman was in critical condition and being kept under heavy sedation so we couldn't talk to him, either. With nothing else to do, an hour later we were back in Secada's SUV heading to Los Angeles. The sun was just coming up over the low hills and there was no traffic on the highway.
'All we can do is pray he comes out of this,' Secada said. 'But even if he makes it, he'll be in ICU for at least a week. I don't think he's safe, even in that hospital. There's a number that buys almost anything on the inside.'
I agreed with her. But unless the California Department of Corrections threw in with us, we didn't have the juice it would take to get Tru a transfer to a secure prison hospital like USC in Los Angeles. The situation seemed hopeless.
'This is my fault,' I muttered again.
'It's not your fault,' she answered sharply. 'Why do you keep saying that?'
'This happened because of my dumb-ass move with that BlackBerry. I was so target locked on Wade Wyatt, I ignored everything else. I pushed so hard those guys figured their only move was to kill Tru.'
'How does killing him change any of this?' she asked.
'Because as long as he's alive and yelling foul, we might have eventually gathered enough pieces to pressure the D. A.'s office downtown to go over Morales's head and give us a writ for a new trial. A new trial puts Mike Church back in the grease because no legitimate investigation would ever look past him the way Lieutenant Devine did. But if Hickman's dead, it's kinda over. The city's not gonna run this mess back through the system and eat a ton of bad press just to salvage some dead tweaker's reputation. I didn't think it through. I should have realized they could end this by simply eliminating the problem.'
We drove on in silence while my spirits plunged. Tru's fate pressed down hard on my conscious. We were heading south on 1-99, on a short stretch of road that had narrowed to a divided three-lane highway, when about a mile ahead, we came upon half a dozen squad cars and a tow rig parked in a disorganized cluster with their flashers on. We saw that beyond the flashing vehicles, an ancient six-wheel farm truck was tipped over, blocking all three lanes.
Secada slowed to a stop. The old stake-bed rested on its left side with its load of artichokes spread across all three lanes. An elderly Mexican man with a young boy at his side was talking to the officers, gesturing with both hands. Secada waited until a highway patrolman came over.
'Sorry, road's closed,' the cop said.
She showed him her badge. 'Can't we get around?'
'How do you think you're gonna do that?' He had a point. The truck was across all three lanes and the heavy concrete abutment didn't allow us any room to slide past on either side.
'We need to get back to L. A.,' Secada said.
'Make a U, go back about half a mile, and take Mountain Crest Road. It's a little narrow and winding but it will take you up in the hills around all this. Hooks back up to I-Ninety-nine near East Bridge.'
Secada thanked him and glanced over at me. 'There's a California map book in the glove compartment.'
I pulled the book out as she made a U and headed back the way we'd just come. After about six-tenths of a mile we spotted the Mountain Crest exit and turned off. While I was studying the map she negotiated the washed- out, badly potholed two-lane. As we climbed up into the low hills, the road quickly became a series of blind switchbacks. It was treacherous, but the countryside was beautiful with big, sprawling oaks throwing uneven shadows on rolling green meadows.
