He flicked one of the half matches against his tooth and lit up, pleasure closing his eyes on the inhale.
'What do you know about his sister?'
'Walk has a sister?'
'How about his wife?'
'His wife? Shit, that's been years. I'd bet a spoonful of chiva she's put on a sport coat by now.'
'Sport coat?' Bear asked.
LaRue smiled sourly. 'A man your lady slides on to keep her warm while you're doing hard time.'
Tim asked, 'Did Walker have a problem with Boss?'
'Walker didn't have a problem with no one. Not even with the screws.'
'So why'd he kill Boss?'
'Beats hell outta me.'
'I think you know.'
Same flat stare. 'Do you, now?'
Tim walked over and sank to his haunches so he was eye level with LaRue. 'You made a phone call just before dinner. Then you busted ass getting to the dining hall so you could whisper in Walker's ear. You're gonna tell us what you found out.'
For the first time, LaRue looked uneasy, but his composure snapped back, smoothing his face like a mask. 'I don't much seem to recall that particular phone call.'
'LaRue. I want an answer.'
LaRue shrugged and showed off a set of clean white teeth. 'What you gonna do? Put me in jail?'
'He's exactly right,' Tim said, charging back down the breezeway. 'We've got no leverage with him. He's a lifer already. We need the guy he called.'
Bear shuffle-stepped to keep up. 'And how are we gonna get to him?'
Tim moved down the brief hall and through the door into the control center, where Newlin was making decisive gains on a cruller.
'Do you monitor inmate phone calls?' Tim asked.
Newlin looked up from the recording-LaRue's whispered pronouncement again-and wiped a smudge of grease from his chin. 'Course.'
'Record them?'
'Only if we're keeping an eye. We wouldn't have recorded LaRue, probably. We're not that concerned about the seamy underworld of Brie.'
'Can we get the number he called?'
'Yeah, the prisoners have to use a PIN number before dialing. They can only call approved numbers, which we database at Investigative Services. It's just a matter of digging around the records. I'll call over.'
'And see if you can rustle up any information on who LaRue used to run with.' Tim tapped Bear on the shoulder. 'Let's get Guerrera on that, too. He's probably boring a hole in the phone with the patented Little Havana stare.'
Newlin dialed and said as it was ringing, 'Oh, and they sent over an update of the crime-scene log.' He handed a printout to Tim.
Tim perused the already familiar names. COs and sanitation workers.
His pulse quickened as he sensed-finally-some of the data pulling together. A pattern shifting shape, still eluding him.
Newlin finished his call, and he and Bear reviewed the chow-hall tape yet again. LaRue's bend at the waist. Cupped hand rising to Walker's ear. Fist tightening around fork.
'What the hell could he have told him?' Newlin's curiosity had lapsed into frustration. 'Some pickup waiting out in the harbor? A green light for Boss's killing?' He snickered at himself. 'His Manchurian Candidate activation code word?'
Tim sank into a chair, glancing at the J-Unit monitor. The wreckage had been largely disposed of, the trash orderlies brought in to mop up the remaining sludge. Walker seized his opportunity in the mayhem?
Tim closed his eyes, considering the cell. Two severed Coke bottles. Piss and mouthwash. Walker's padding himself with shirt over shirt. One mattress untouched, one missing. Two windowpanes punched through. Nothing beyond the bars but razor wire, palm trees, and Dumpsters. The trash can-Kleenex and bottle caps. But what hadn't the trash can contained?
Tim flipped to the log's next page. More COs. The frontloader operator. John Sasso. The same maintenance man from before. McGraw again. Sanitation worker.
Tim stood up abruptly. The chair tilted over with his momentum, clattering on the cheap laminate flooring. He met Bear's and Newlin's startled gazes.
'I know how he did it.'
Chapter 7
The crow lurched from one foot to the other on its spongy nighttime perch, its black marble eye shifting in its socket in sudden, awakened alarm. The ground beneath it swelled, and the crow screeched, spooking the roost, which took flight in a grand exodus of flaps and squawks. The dark upsurge lifted out of the San Pedro Municipal Landfill and wheeled south, undulating in the night murk, a few beaks still sounding their agitation.
The charred mattress bulged again, and then an arm slid from the incision, scattering tufts of ash-streaked batting. A plastic cone protruded from the striped ticking like a snorkel, the Coke label rubbed off from friction. The blackened hand groped the uneven terrain, gauging it eyelessly, grotesquely. A head fought its way out next, red- raw cheeks showing in patches through the soot.
Walker pulled himself free and collapsed backward, taking in deep breaths between spasms of coughing. He used the still-moist inside of his shirt collar to clean the grime from his swollen lids and opened his eyes. The moonless sky above seemed impossibly vast.
Aside from a heat-induced ruddiness and a few healthy scrapes along his arms, he was in surprisingly good shape. The mattress stuffing, repositioned to conceal his form and soaked with water from the cell sink, had staved off the fire. He'd dropped the mattress over the railing, then run down to slither through the slit as the ignited trash began raining down. Once inside, he'd had to turn his head to breathe, his lips sealed over the mouth of the upward-facing Coke bottle-his channel to oxygen. When the smoke had been most stifling, in the moments before he'd felt the rescuing scoop of the frontloader, he'd plugged the makeshift snorkel with a finger and sucked what little air he could through a wet rag. The five shirts had insulated his torso from the heat. Though most of the fires, he knew from the last riot, were small and isolated and quickly burned themselves out, he'd had a scare at one point when the heat had pulsed relentlessly through the soaked padding, making him writhe before it backed off.
He sat up and surveyed his surroundings. Lucky as hell-he'd gotten dumped near the top of a heap within the dug-down pit, though he was still a good ten feet below ground level. He laid the blackened remains of a table on end and used them to gain traction against the dirt wall, the crumbling border giving way as he clawed, then squirmed his way over the brink.
A dense film of seagull shit coated the ground. Above the smell of rotted fish and soot, a distant whiff of ocean.
Walker peeled off his top two shirts and threw them aside. He went with the fourth shirt since the third still bore traces of ash and the bottom one was drenched with sweat. His pants were filthy, but they'd do. They were baggy and low-slung-inmates couldn't be trusted with belts-but prison couture had spread to the outside, so he'd blend right in with the other lowlifes. Retrieving the plastic bag from his waistband, he slid out the last dripping cloth and used it to wipe off his face, his hands, his forearms.
By the time he cracked his back and began to jog toward the stream of headlights far off to the west, he looked by most accounts like an average citizen.
