“So,” I spoke up, “how did our clothes and car swapping charade go?”
“Fine. I felt like I was in a conga line,” he laughed. “They all followed your car like good little soldiers. Imagine their surprise when I pulled to the side of the road and took your coat off. I started stretching and turned right around so they could all get a good look at my face.”
“They probably felt like they got caught jacking off in the bathroom by their mothers.”
“Klein, you got a way with words.”
We pulled into the county jail parking lot and headed-on upstairs. If the staff wasn’t exactly friendly, they were, at least, cooperative. They seemed less emotionally invested in Valencia Jones’ fate than the folks in Riversborough. But when we met the county prosecutor outside the visitors’ area, I realized I was wrong. This guy was out for blood.
“Mr. MacClough, Mr. Klein, I’m A.D.A. Bob Smart,” he said, shaking our hands without enthusiasm.
Bob Smart was a rotund little man with cruel eyes, thick lips, and a bad comb-over hairdo. He had pudgy, sweaty hands and a wardrobe that would have been tasteless in the ’70s. He would have been easy to dismiss, but I had seen his type operate before. He practically begged you to underestimate him and, if you did, he’d eat you for lunch.
“Can I ask you gentlemen what this meeting is about?”
“Well, Mr. Smart,” MacClough began, “it’s-”
“Why,” I wondered, cutting Johnny off, “isn’t Miss Jones’ attorney here?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Klein,” Smart dropped his friendly voice. “You’ll have to ask Miss Jones. Let me repeat my initial question.”
“No need for that,” MacClough turned on the charm, “we have no wish to interfere with your case. I have all the confidence in the world that you’ll prove Miss Jones to be guilty as sin. We’re here because Mr. Klein is researching a book on Miss Jones’ late father, Raman Jones.”
I improvised. “I’m going to call it The Iceman Goeth.”
“I like it,” Smart approved. He nodded to the guard. “Go on in. You’ve got fifteen minutes.” We did the handshake thing again. He mentioned that he’d look for my book on the shelves. We watched him waddle down the hall.
“You think he bought it?” I whispered.
“Not for a second, but he couldn’t really stop us. And next time, let me do all the talking to the D.A. You almost blew it with that question about Jones’, lawyer.”
“How?”
“Later.”
We were patted down and ushered into a drab room with barred windows. Everything, from the chairs to the ashtray on the table, was bolted and/or welded down. Valencia Jones was led into the room by a female guard through a thick metal door. She was pushed into her chair and her right leg was cuffed to the chair leg.
“There is to be no physical contact with the prisoner,” the guard instructed. “I’ll be right outside that door. If you need me, there’s a call button under the table.” She checked her watch. “Fifteen minutes and counting.”
Valencia Jones wasn’t beautiful nor was she as plain as her newspaper pictures. She was a medium girclass="underline" medium height, medium weight, medium. She had skin the color of dark coffee and sad, sad eyes. If I were facing ten to twenty-five years in a state prison, I, too, would have sad eyes. The rest of her face told no tales. Her expression remained blank until the guard was fully out of the room.
“You look like Zak,” she smiled. Then, catching herself, went back into her shell.
She had answered my question without it even being asked.
“Your lawyer told you why we’re here?” MacClough half asked, half stated.
“You the man?” Jones sneered at MacClough.
“Yeah, I used to be a cop. I used to chase your father around.”
“Fuck my father!” Tears poured out of her. “Do you think if my father had been a dentist or a Yale professor that I would be here now, tethered to a chair like a wild animal? My father’s the reason I’m here.”
“Your father’s not the one who got caught smuggling the felony weight drugs. You were.”
“You know, Mr. MacClough, I spent my life trying to deny my blackness. But when you’re in here, that’s impossible. You told my lawyer that you were looking for Zak and that you might be able to help me. So far all I hear is that you sound like every other cop. You talk about my father and you think I’m guilty.”
“You’re not guilty?” I asked.
“No, sir,” she said to me, “I am not. But if you’re going to ask me how the drugs got in my car, I can’t tell you. If you expect me to prove my innocence to you, I can’t. All I know is that Zak believed in me enough to ask his father to represent me.”
MacClough and I were dumbfounded. “Zak asked my brother to represent you?”
“He did, but Zak’s dad gave him some nonsensical answer. Zak said that his dad was just afraid to handle my kind of case. I was the wrong color and drug defendants are politically unpopular. Bad for the firm’s image, you know. Zak told me he would never forgive his father. I can understand that.”
“How do you know Zak?” I shifted gears slightly.
“We met at a party during my first term. I was kind of over to one corner, drinking a beer by myself. I think he felt sorry for me. I didn’t care. I was just happy to have someone to talk to. He was really sweet and charming and funny. He was different, you know, not macho, not interested in impressing me or anything. We dated for a few months. We even lived together for a week,” she laughed. “That went kind of rough, so we chilled for a while.”
“Did you get back together?”
“Didn’t get the chance.” She tugged on her jail fatigues. “Zak and I thought it was a good idea to give it a rest for a few weeks. We agreed to talk about it as soon as we got back from Spring break. He flew back home a couple of days early and I went skiing before driving to Conn-”
“Skiing!” MacClough perked up.
“Yes, skiing.” She was indignant. “All the basketball courts were taken.”
“That’s not what he means,” I interrupted. “Were you arrested on your way back from skiing?”
“I was.”
“And if I guess where it was you went skiing, will you promise to have a little hope?”
“You ever been chained to a chair, Mr. Klein? It’s hard to have hope when you’re chained to a chair.”
“Point well taken.” I paused. “Cyclone Ridge.”
She didn’t react at all the way I had expected. “So what?” she said. “You could’ve found that out fifty different ways. You could have read it in the paper.”
“The point is that he didn’t,” MacClough jumped to my defense.
“Don’t you think my lawyer sent an investigator up there? They didn’t find anything. What do you think you’ll find almost a year after the fact?”
“Show her the paper,” John gestured to me.
I unfurled a copy of the Riversborough Gazette article about Steven Markum’s death. “Recognize him?”
Her eyes got wide. “He was. .” She choked up. “He was the valet.”
“I think,” MacClough said, “we just found out how that Isotope got into your car.”
“But he’s dead,” Valencia Jones was quick to note. “What good does that do me?”
“Maybe none,” John confessed. “But if I were you, I might find a way to get conveniently sick for a few days. I also think I can foresee your lawyer getting the urge to file every motion she can think of. I’d say it was in your best interest to stretch things out, if you catch my drift.”
We spent the remainder of our time with Valencia Jones talking directly about Zak’s disappearance. She was as clueless on the subject as everyone else. She did, however, recommend that we look up some cyberfreak friend of Zak’s called Guppy. She didn’t know his real name or address, but that his hacking exploits were the stuff of campus legend. Just for the hell of it, I wondered if Zak had ever mentioned a girl named Kira Wantanabe? Valencia Jones said the name was unfamiliar to her, but that she didn’t know all of Zak’s friends.