Lieutenant Williams stuck his head through the curtain. ‘Warden?’
‘What is it?’
Williams hesitated as he looked from the warden to the uncuffed Lock, who was still wearing the prison blues that identified him as an inmate.
‘Go ahead,’ Marquez said. ‘You can speak freely.’
‘Someone just blew up the Federal Building in San Francisco.’
Ty’s heart rate stayed constant on the monitor, while Lock’s jumped. ‘How bad is it?’
‘Bad,’ Williams said. ‘Half a dozen dead. Plenty more injured. They’ve hit the Federal Court building in Los Angeles too.’
‘Same people?’
Williams shrugged a ‘who knows?’. ‘Group calling itself the White Aryan Resistance Movement has claimed both.’
Marquez nodded grimly. ‘Boy, they really don’t want him testifying, do they?’
‘Can you give me a minute?’ Lock asked Marquez.
‘Take as long as you need.’
He nodded at Williams, the two men left, and Lock was finally alone with Ty.
Lock reached out and touched his partner’s hand. ‘Tyrone, listen…’
Ty’s left eye flicked open. He reached up and struggled to pull the oxygen mask to one side so he could speak. Lock helped him with it.
‘Can you not touch me and shit?’ Ty croaked. ‘Don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.’
Lock felt relief. First that Ty was conscious, but more critically that he was giving Lock grief, which meant he had to be feeling better.
‘What the hell you doin’ here anyway?’
‘Good to see you too, Tyrone.’
‘They didn’t get you then?’
‘Excellent piece of deduction seeing as I’m sitting here with all my limbs intact.’
‘Shit. I was counting on not having to split the fee.’ He pushed himself up to a sitting position. ‘You get me some water, brother?’
Lock filled a glass from the water jug on the table next to Ty and passed it over.
‘How d’you feel?’
‘Like I been shot.’
Ty reached back to adjust the position of his pillows but winced with the pain. Lock did the honors.
‘You want me to get someone?’
‘Maybe that cute little Asian doctor,’ Ty said, lowering his voice. ‘We got a vibe going.’
‘You can’t be feeling that bad.’
‘They didn’t shoot me in the dick.’
Lock glanced down the bed, made a ‘I got bad news’ face.
‘Man, you’d better be messing with me.’
Lock stood up. ‘Just get better, Ty.’
Ty waved him back. ‘You ain’t even given me a sit rep.’
Once Ty had promised to take it easy, Lock filled him in as best he could on events since the riot on the yard.
‘Good call heading to the court with Reaper. I don’t trust that mofo one little bit. Even by convict standards, he’s a snake.’
‘The question is, what kind?’
‘Guess we’re all gonna find out when he takes that stand.’
Lock got up. ‘I gotta go.’
Ty raised a clenched hand. They bumped fists.
‘I mean it about that guy,’ Ty said. ‘Watch your back.’
24
Jalicia and Coburn took their seats in a meeting room within the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal Building in downtown San Francisco. The cell phone of Manny Lopez, the US Marshal in charge of court security, chirped. As he shrugged an apology, the cell phone of the man sitting next to him, an FBI field agent by the name of Peter Breedlove, blasted out the James Bond theme tune. Flushing, Breedlove scrambled to answer it.
He listened for a few moments, then said, ‘When?’ He covered his cell phone with one hand. ‘A bomb threat was just phoned in to the Santa Ana Federal Court building by someone claiming to be from the White Aryan Resistance Movement.’
‘They give a code word?’ Coburn asked.
Breedlove looked irritated. ‘No one heard of these guys until today.’
Jalicia, sitting at the head of the table, put a line through the Santa Ana Court building, which lay third on the list compiled by the US Marshals Service. ‘So, where do we go from here?’
Coburn cleared his throat. ‘The trial doesn’t have to stay in California, does it?’ he asked.
‘Nope,’ said the judge who’d been hearing the case. ‘As long as it’s in a state covered by the 9th Circuit. What were you thinking, Agent Coburn?’
‘Well, we can safely assume, even from early reports, that it’s the same group, and that they’re active in California. After all, California is the Aryan Brotherhood’s home turf.’
Bobby Gross, who’d insisted on being party to the discussion, loosened his tie. ‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions as to who’s responsible,’ he said.
Jalicia noticed that the vein in his neck was pulsing.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Manny Lopez. ‘Who else wants this trial stopped bad enough to bomb at least two Federal Buildings?’
Gross stood up. ‘I will not tolerate-’
‘Regardless of who’s responsible,’ Coburn said, smoothing his hands across the conference table, ‘I think everyone can agree that California’s too dangerous right now.’
There was a general murmur of agreement.
Jalicia leaned forward. ‘You have somewhere in mind?’
‘I think the more remote we go, the better. A smaller community than Los Angeles. That means if anyone shows up who’s out of place it’s going to be one hell of a lot easier to spot them.’
Breedlove, the FBI agent with the 007 fetish, nodded. ‘Makes sense to me. It’s too easy for these people to blend in at a big city court facility.’
‘Then I have just the place,’ Coburn said.
Ten minutes later, across the bay in Oakland, Chance snatched up her cell phone and heard the man on the other end of the line say, ‘It’s playing just like you said.’
Chance’s heart began to pound. Hers had been an educated guess about what would happen after the explosion. When she’d heard that six people had been killed her heart had sunk. Not because she felt bad for them — most of them were either black or Hispanic — but because she thought they might stop the trial entirely, which could set things back weeks if not months. What she’d been counting on was the bloodthirstiness of the prosecutor, and Jalicia Jones hadn’t disappointed.
‘They’re moving it?’
‘Yup.’
There was the sound of voices in the background. Chance was about to end the call when the man on the other end of the line said, ‘Be right with you.’
She could hear the man talking to someone, then he came back to the phone. She smiled at the thought they had someone right there in the belly of the beast.
‘Yeah,’ said the man. ‘They’re moving it to Medford in Oregon. Hope that works for you guys.’
