“Can you please explain what’s going on?”
“Of course,” Chandler said. “Did you bring your car in? Is there anyone else with you?”
“I left the car outside, and no, there’s no one else with me,” Helen replied. “I didn’t know if I’d be leaving right away. Where’s Jon?”
“He’s out on bail, as you know,” Chandler said. They walked toward the semi-underground research facility. “He and his attorney are assisting me in my investigation of your company’s activities here.”
“Then I don’t think I should be talking to you,” Helen said. “Anything I have to say to you should be with the company’s attorney present.”
“Dr Kaddiri, I know what you, Patrick, and Jon are going through,” Chandler said. “I’m here to help them.”
“By arresting them?”
“I think both of them are heroes. I had to arrest them because it’s my job. But even though they’re guilty of most of the lesser charges against them, I can make sure they get the most lenient sentence possible. But I can’t do it alone.”
“But shouldn’t I have our attorney present?”
“This is not an interrogation,” Chandler said. “I’m not going to ask you anything that will incriminate either Jon or Patrick. You can refuse to answer anything you feel uncomfortable with.”
Kaddiri still looked apprehensive. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d like to meet up with Jon and our attorney first, before I talk with you,” she said warily. “He didn’t tell me where he was staying, only that he… wanted me here, with him.”
Chandler nodded, looking into Kaddiri’s eyes. “He mentioned that he’d called you,” Chandler lied. “He thinks a great deal of you.” He paused, then added, “Obviously you think very much of him too, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“We’ve had our differences,” Helen said, “but… yes, I guess that’s true.”
“That’s nice,” Chandler said. “That’s
Sacramento County Jail,
651 I Street, Sacramento, California
later that evening
The Sacramento County Jail in downtown Sacramento was a fairly new, modern facility. Each of the four inmate floors had a common area, surrounded by twenty-four cells, each holding up to six prisoners depending on its capacity. Each cell had a steel door with a large, thick glass window in the center, and an unbarred narrow window looking outside. A guard tower overlooked the entire floor. An exercise room and medical holding facility were on the fifth floor, and booking and administrative offices on the first. The common area served as the dining hall, indoor rec room, and meeting hall.
The dynamics of the downtown jail made for a tense atmosphere. It was where prisoners were held from the time of their arrest and arraignment until they were convicted, after which they would be transported to the larger Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility in Elk Grove to serve their sentence. All the prisoners at the downtown jail were thus innocent in the eyes of the law, and mostly innocent in their own eyes as well. Many came from violent or oppressive environments, often of their own making. They were fresh from the hurt, ignominy, indignity, and betrayal of the arrest and the cold indifference of arraignment, and were now faced with the arcane babble of legal proceedings and the uncertainty of their future while the trial process creaked along.
That tension was pervasive even in peaceful, so-called normal times. But there was nothing normal about what was going on in Sacramento County these days. Within the confines of the jail, the threat of retaliation and escalating gang violence following the deaths of the Satan’s Brotherhood members sent the level of fear sky-high. It was just as pervasive among the jail authorities, who increased the number of guards, dogs, and weapons to compensate, and in a snowball effect generated still more fear.
Actually, today had been a fairly quiet day for Patrick, When he was in solitary, he was more or less out of the minds of the bikers, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other wackos who were looking to kill him. When he was out among the other prisoners, he kept his distance, with more or less success. Usually one guard was assigned to watch over all the isolation inmates and try to prevent trouble.
The common area on each floor of the jail had ten steel star-shaped tables fixed to the floor, with five fixed chairs at each table. Hot meals were prepared in the kitchen, then placed on paper plates on fiberglass trays and wheeled out to the common area on large carts. Utensils were cardboard. Prisoners selected a meal, either vegetarian or nonvegetarian, a beverage, and a dessert, then found a seat.
Except for sick or very violent prisoners, there was normally no preplanned segregation of any kind in the jail. The prisoners did their own segregating-blacks sat with blacks, whites with whites, Hispanics with Hispanics. There was usually enough available seating at meals to allow the members of rival gangs to be seated apart. But even when space was relatively tight, the prisoners knew that meals were not the time to get into a fight. Besides, despite the dangerous tension level, the jail was not a hard-core facility. These were prisoners awaiting trial, not yet convicted and sentenced. Most of them minded their own business and stayed out of trouble.
Patrick took the first available tray; he didn’t want to appear picky or slow the line for those behind him. He poured himself a cup of water, grabbed a carton of milk from a large tub of ice and a brownie from the dessert counter, and found a seat between two older-looking guys. The meal was what they called Salisbury steak: a piece of indeterminate meat floating in a puddle of slimy gravy, along with sodden boiled carrots, reconstituted mashed potatoes with more gravy, and a slice of white bread that had to be one or two days old but had been steamed into a semblance of freshness. The two guys on either side of him glanced at him but said nothing.
Everything on the plate tasted pretty much alike, which really characterized life in jail, Patrick thought. In a way, it reminded him of pulling strategic nuclear alert years ago: your life regulated by horns, bells, whistles, shouted voices, and the PA system; the sameness of everything, from the food to the uniforms; the regimentation; and most of all, the lack of freedom. Of course, there was no real comparison. But it was remarkably easy for Patrick to put his mind back to those days when, for seven days every three weeks, he was a virtual prisoner of the Strategic Air Command jailers, serving an unwanted but self-imposed sentence in support of the laws of nuclear deterrence. He had always passionately hated alert, hated the wasted time and wasted resources, and he found it ironic that he was relying on those memories to help keep his sanity now.
He left half of his plate untouched, finished the brownie, and drank up the milk and water. Seconds weren’t allowed, so he looked around for someone who might want his leftovers. The two old characters next to him declined. He asked the other guy at the table, “Hey, want any more?”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” the guy spat. Patrick was sorry he’d said anything. The man was big, lean, and tall, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He looked as though he’d been beaten up-his nose was broken and twisted and his face bruised. There were tattoos on his arms-and not tattoo-parlor ones but prison tattoos, made by inmates with sharpened ballpoint pens…
… and one of the tattoos, the biggest one, on his left arm-was a Satan’s Brotherhood tattoo. Oh
The biker was hunched over his tray, enveloping it with his arms as if protecting it from a thief. This was a good time to get the hell out of the common area, Patrick decided. He got up quickly. “Hey!” the biker snapped, fixing wild, psychotic eyes on him. “
“Nobody, chief,” Patrick said.
“The fuck you are,” the biker said. “I know you. I hearda you. You’re the guy who was goin’ around killing Brotherhood.”
The two old guys scattered as fast as they could. The biker got to his feet, eyes burning. Patrick looked up at the guard tower, but the guards up there were busy. “Listen, chief,” Patrick said, “you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t kill any Brotherhood members.”
But the biker exploded like a volcano.
