Jury Town (29 page)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

Conrad’s first clue to something amiss was the slightly ajar front door of Billy Batts’ fifth-floor apartment. The second was the shattered window at the far end of the short, carpeted hallway leading away from the door.

Gun drawn, Conrad entered the apartment cautiously, followed by a state policeman who also had his gun out.

Conrad had not met Batts, only observed through binoculars the young guard approach the kitchen worker and then the cleaning lady in the Jury Town parking lot.

“Stay by the door,” Conrad called over his shoulder quietly to the state trooper before moving slowly down the hallway. He glanced into the kitchen and the apartment’s lone bedroom—which was a wreck—before reaching the broken window.

Sprawled out on the pavement five stories below was a twisted body, blood trails seeping in several different directions out and away from the man’s mangled face.

JD drank a Coke from a large cup as he watched a guard and a state trooper enter Billy Batts’ apartment. All was perfect in his world, he thought happily.

An hour ago, he’d surprised the cleaning woman in the living room of the little house her late husband had left her when he’d died two years ago. In a strange way, the cheap furnishings and decorations had reminded JD of the trailer he’d grown up in outside Macon, Georgia.

He’d smashed the old woman’s head with a crowbar and then created the scene in the bathroom after cleaning up the blood in the living room. The crime scene investigators would probably determine, in the end, that it hadn’t been an accident, but it didn’t really matter.

One down and one to go, JD had driven here, smashed Billy Batts’ head in with the same crowbar after surprising him, and then tossed him out the window.

Again, the CSI experts would probably determine that not all of Batts’ wounds were a result of his impact with the pavement five stories below the window. But, again, it didn’t really matter. He hadn’t shot either of them, and he’d left no fingerprints. There was nothing that could link him to the murders if, in the unlikely event, the cases ever went to trial.

He slipped the silver Charger into gear and pulled away down the street.

CHAPTER 36

JURY TOWN

“What’s the meaning of this?” Kate demanded angrily as two large guards escorted her down the administration corridor. She yanked her arm away defiantly when one of them tried grabbing her by the elbow.

“In there,” the other one muttered, pointing at the open conference-room door, then to the lone chair on the opposite side of the table from Victoria Lewis and Clint Wolf.

“Why in the hell am I here?” Kate asked, hoping the utter desperation she was feeling didn’t show on her face. Goddamn Felicity. “What’s this all about?” she demanded defiantly.

When the guard was gone and the door closed, Wolf reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a small cellophane bag onto the table between them. It contained the joints Kate had been hiding in the Band-Aid box.

“That was found in your room, Ms. Wang,” Victoria explained, pointing at the bag, “hidden in your closet.”

“It’s not mine,” Kate protested. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“We videoed the search of your room,” Wolf explained. “The dog is trained to smell drugs, and it scented to the marijuana very quickly. We took fingerprints from that bag and the box it was hidden in. We have your fingerprints on file, and I’m sure we’ll find the ones on the bag and the box match to the ones on file . . . if we really need to.”

“You went in my room,” Kate said in a hushed voice,
“without my permission?”

“Don’t even try that,” Victoria volleyed back, leaning over the table. “The contract you signed with me empowers me to search your room at any time. You know that.”

“The weed was obviously planted in my closet by someone.”

“The contract also empowers me to go after you criminally if I determine that you lied to me in any way during the application process or during juror interviews.”

“I never lied,” Kate retorted.

“I’m betting if I dug deep enough, I’d find you to have a very personal connection to Abingdon, Virginia. And that you are
not
objective when it comes to Commonwealth Electric Power. I’ve got a witness who will testify to that, too.”

“Yeah, well, she’s—”

“It isn’t Felicity. You have no idea who it is.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Try me.”

Kate’s lower lip trembled. “Please don’t kick me out of here.”

“You’ve given me no choice.”

Kate’s chin fell as the outcome turned inevitable. As the possibility of earning four million dollars and traveling the world to find a husband evaporated. “Are you going to—”

“I want your signature,” Victoria interrupted, sliding a single piece of paper and a pen across the table. “It states that you permanently and irrevocably forfeit and forego any and all claims to financial compensation from Project Archer. It states that you will never take any legal action against Project Archer or any of its directors or employees. Finally, it states that you will never speak to anyone, including members of the media, regarding your time inside these walls. If you do, I can throw the book at you in criminal and civil court. In exchange for your signature on that piece of paper, I won’t turn you over to local authorities to face prosecution on a marijuana-possession charge. And I won’t charge you with breaking several sections of your contract with me. No harm, no foul, and we’re even. That’s how I’m looking at this, Ms. Wang.”

Kate stared at Victoria intently for several moments, then reached for the pen and signed on the bottom line, without bothering to read the language. What was she going to do now? Go back to teaching high school, this time in an even more remote location?

“Print your name beneath your signature,” Victoria ordered.

When Kate was finished, she put the pen down, hung her head, and sobbed. Her world had just disintegrated.

“Do you think Felicity West was influenced?” Victoria asked as she reached for the executed agreement. “Do you think someone got to her regarding the Commonwealth Electric trial?”

“What, is this a goddamn test?” Kate murmured as tears trickled down her cheeks and onto her blouse. “I can’t talk, remember?”

Victoria exhaled a frustrated breath. “Get out of here. Someone will take you back to Richmond. We’ll have the contents of your room shipped to you in a few days. Good-bye, Ms. Wang.”

Wolf eased back in his chair when Kate was gone. “That young woman just lost four million dollars so she could smoke a few sticks of marijuana. I’ll never understand the human race.”

Victoria gazed at the doorway Kate Wang had just exited through. What would Clint Wolf think of the human race if he knew everything about the woman sitting immediately to his right . . . and her cocaine habit? Not everything was as black-and-white as Wolf wanted. Maybe that many years in the Federal Bureau of Prisons had completely polarized him. Live long enough and shades of gray haunted every moment. That was more the reality, Victoria believed—for everyone.

She shook her head. She still couldn’t fathom that Cameron was gone. It hurt so badly. Thank God for Dez. She’d been so wildly tempted to seek refuge in a cocaine haze, but Dez had short-circuited that awful possibility—though he had no idea.

At least, she assumed he had no idea. Knowing her as well as he did now, maybe she shouldn’t be so sure.

Wolf chuckled. “You did a nice job bluffing Ms. Wang on your supposed witness.”

“I wasn’t bluffing, Clint.”

She knew she shouldn’t enjoy the look of shock on his face, but she did.

“Oh,” he spoke up. “Well, maybe it’s time I ask you about David Racine’s emergency.”

Now it was Wolf who seemed to be enjoying himself.

“What’s happening?” Felicity demanded as the two guards escorted her down the administration corridor toward the executive offices.

“In there.” One of the guards pointed at the open conference-room door, then to the lone chair on the opposite side of the table from Victoria Lewis and Clint Wolf.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered as she sat.

“Were you approached about voting a certain way on the Commonwealth Electric trial?” Victoria asked.

Felicity hadn’t liked Victoria when she was governor, and she liked her even less now. “Approached?”

“Don’t do that, Ms. West. This is as serious as it gets.”

Felicity crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know
what
you’re talking about.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “I’m
now
aware of certain matters you didn’t tell me about yourself when you were offered the opportunity to participate in Jury Town, matters that would have precluded your involvement here, matters that could land you in some very deep trouble if I choose to follow through.”

Felicity started to argue, but that seemed pointless. They obviously had her dead to rights. “What do you want?” she whispered.

Victoria slid a one-page agreement across the table. “Read that, print your name beneath the signature line, and sign it.”

Felicity grimaced when she got to the middle of the page. “I have to give up
everything
?”

“You lied to me.” Victoria paused, then smiled.

Felicity did not find that smile at all reassuring.

“But here’s what I will do,” Victoria continued. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars as a going-away present, if you tell me the truth. Were you approached on how to vote in the Commonwealth trial?” She wagged a finger. “Don’t tempt me to prosecute you.”

Felicity stared sullenly back for several moments, then finally nodded. “Yes,” she admitted, almost inaudibly.

“How did they get to you?”

“The tooth fairy left a note under the pillow in my room.”

Victoria shot a glance at Wolf, then looked back at Felicity. “Whoever it was wanted you to vote innocent?”

“Yes.”

“Or they’d splay your skeletons all over Jury Town for me to see.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’m going to add something to your going-away package, Felicity, because, in my humble opinion, you’re going to need it very badly.”

“What?”

Victoria gestured at Wolf. “For a number of years this man ran the Correctional Programs Division of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In addition to managing over two hundred thousand federal inmates, he also ran something within CPD called the Federal Witness Security Program, aka WITSEC, aka the Federal Witness Protection Program.” She leaned over the conference-room table. “I’m going to ask Mr. Wolf to help get you into that program because I don’t want to read about you turning up dead somewhere on a lonely country road the victim of a hit-and-run. If my hunch is correct, without the program, you almost assuredly will.”

The bottom suddenly dropped out of Felicity’s world. Witness Protection? “Okay,” she agreed hesitantly.

“Get out of here. And remember, that piece of paper you just signed absolutely prohibits you from discussing anything about your time inside these walls with anyone, including members of the media. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why do I feel like there’s something very important going on here that I’m not privy to?” Wolf asked, when Felicity was gone.

Victoria was impressed—he hadn’t asked her who her informant as to Kate’s bias was or how she’d found out about Felicity’s background. Maybe he was beginning to trust her, and not just because she paid him to.

“Because you’re a smart man, Clint,” she said, “and there is.”