Jury Town (6 page)

“How will jurors notify you and your staff of an emergency?” Cameron asked.

“There’s a button in each juror room. Right beside the small screen built into the desk through which we’ll communicate with them. Tell them what jury room to show up in for a new trial, what dinner choices will be that night. Things like that.”

“And through which I will send an inspirational message every morning,” Victoria spoke up with a wide smile.

Wolf rolled his eyes. “Are you still planning on doing that, Victoria?”

“Yes, sir, every morning. It’ll be my tradition. They’ll love it.”

“Governor Lewis,” someone called out.

Victoria turned toward an elderly woman who was standing between two tall boxes, clasping a broom.

“Hello there,” Victoria called back, cutting in front of Cameron to greet the woman. “What’s your name?”

“Rose,” the woman answered softly as she took Victoria’s hand.

“That’s such a beautiful name.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to thank you for one of the programs you got approved while you were governor. It’s the program that guarantees every fourth-grader in the public schools gets a laptop and Internet connection, even if they can’t afford them.”

“Complete Connection,” Victoria said, recalling the fight she and Cameron had waged against Majority Leader Franz to win funding for the initiative. “And yes, we had quite a battle in the General Assembly getting that legislation approved and financed. More than a few tight-fisted senators and delegates believed there were better ways to spend money than on education. We went twelve rounds, but we got it done.”

“It did my granddaughter a world of good,” Rose said, her voice laden with emotion. “Alicia was way behind all the other kids in her class when she got to fourth grade. And then she got a computer because of you. All of a sudden, she was on the Internet all the time, looking up things and getting so smart.” Rose wiped her eyes. “Alicia’s in seventh grade now, and she’s top of her class, getting straight As. She wants to be a doctor, a
doctor
. I hope I live to see that day.”

“I have a good feeling you will,” Victoria said, gently embracing the frail woman. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “You made my day.”

“You’re welcome, Governor Lewis.” Rose gestured around. “What you’re doing here is really good, too. God bless you.”

“Thank you.”

“That reminds me of a tour I gave President Obama,” Wolf remarked as they continued walking. The long, narrow corridor finally gave way to a sprawling, brightly lighted, circular area, which lay at the heart of the massive facility. “Everyone loved that man that day.”

“She gets it constantly,” Cameron said.

“I’m sure.”

“This is amazing,” Cameron exclaimed in a hushed voice as he gazed at the brand-new tables and chairs, which were perfectly arranged below the ceiling soaring fifty feet above them. “It’s beautiful in here.”

“It really is,” Victoria agreed, pulling out a tissue to dab at her nose, which was running. She shot Cameron a quick look, but he hadn’t seemed to notice.

“What we’re looking out at now is called the Central Zone,” Wolf explained. “This is where jurors will eat and socialize. They can also stretch their legs here in the winter if all fifty of the gym’s treadmills are in use.” Wolf motioned around toward the edge of the area. “Extending like points of a star from the Central Zone are five two-story wings of rooms, as well as the admin corridor we just came down. You’ll see it more clearly in a few minutes when we climb to the observation deck.”

Victoria’s heart skipped a beat.
“Observation deck?”

“Yes.”

“Like at the top of one of those surveillance towers?” Cameron asked.

“Just like that.”

“I’m not big on heights,” Victoria said firmly.

“Me, neither,” Cameron seconded.

“You’ll both be fine,” Wolf said with a chuckle. “The engineers assure me that the rust you’ll see in the stairway doesn’t affect the structural integrity of the tower.”

Victoria held up both hands. “Hey, I’m not going up any—”

“Archer Prison was built seventy years ago, and the star design was typical back then,” Wolf continued, pointing at one of the large, two-story openings, which led to the living quarters. “Each cell wing could handle two hundred prisoners. There were a hundred on each floor with two inmates each to the eight-by-ten rooms. We’re using four wings for the jurors. We couldn’t take the building out any further without massive construction costs, so the rooms are still just eight feet deep. But now they’re fifteen feet long, which allowed us to put thirteen rooms on each side of each floor and still have plenty of room for showers on each wing. Every juror will have his or her own room along with a sink and a toilet.”

“So there are a few extra rooms?” Victoria asked, distracted by her worry about climbing a surveillance tower. “Assuming we have two hundred jurors.”

“Eight extras,” Wolf answered. “Two hundred and eight rooms in total.”

“What about the fifth wing?” Cameron asked as he and Victoria hustled to keep up with Wolf, who was striding ahead through the maze of tables and chairs. “Is that the workout area?”

“Yup. Kitchen over there behind that wall of slots to the right,” Wolf said with a wave, “and inmates will order from the menu above the—”

“Jurors,” Victoria reminded him loudly.

“Got to fix that habit,” Wolf muttered under his breath. “
Jurors
will order from the menu above the slot and have their meal come through the slot on a tray. Breakfast and lunch will be fairly standard, still excellent quality, but dinner will be different each night, and they’ll be apprised of their choices on the screens in the desks of their rooms. Right above Victoria’s daily words of wisdom,” he muttered. “There will be central condiment stations, and everything will be cleaned every night while the
jurors
are sleeping. We’re doing everything we can to remove the possibility of information passing between jurors and staff, including having rooms and showers cleaned while jurors are out of the living quarters. Again we’ll use random-number generators to figure out who goes where to clean. Candidly, this place will be a lot like Las Vegas in terms of staff observation.”

“What do you mean?” Cameron asked.

“People will always be watching people,” Wolf responded. “You know, like box men watching the dealers, floor men watching the box men, pit bosses watching the floor men. You get the idea. We’ll be trying to catch anything being passed from a staff member to a juror on a tray, wrapped in a towel, or stuck inside a medicine vial. We’ll be watching for hand signals as codes, too. And we’ll have eyes in the sky out here watching everything.”

“But no cameras in the rooms or the showers,” Victoria said firmly.

Wolf shook his head. “No, but everywhere else.”

They reached the athletic wing and moved from the hallway into the sprawling workout center.

“Hey, this is really nice,” Victoria said, gazing at the huge room full of high-tech exercise equipment. “This room was empty last time I was here.”

“Everything came last week,” Wolf said, pointing to the ceiling. “Upstairs are four basketball hoops and several racquetball courts. There are enough machines in this room for all two hundred jurors to be working out at the same time.”

“Beautiful.”

“Let’s check out one of the rooms,” Wolf suggested.

“No need,” Victoria responded quickly.

Wolf glanced at her. “Why not?”

“Just no need.”

He stared at her for a few moments, then shrugged. “Okay, then let’s climb the surveillance tower.”

Victoria glanced at Cameron, who was gazing back knowingly. She shrugged. She’d conquered most of the demons she associated with this place—but not all. Not yet.

Wolf nodded to himself in a supremely satisfied way as he gazed into the afternoon from a hundred feet above the ground, casually leaning against a rusty vertical beam at the edge of the observation deck with one hand as he clutched his white Stetson with the other.

As if he were looking out over his kingdom, Victoria thought to herself.

“It’s beautiful up here,” he called over his shoulder.

From the top of the surveillance tower, they had a panoramic view of the world—which, outside the facility property, was filled by tree-covered foothills as far as the eye could see. Even the narrow ribbon of blacktop leading into the facility from the outside world was obscured by the dense canopy. It would be beautiful, Victoria figured as a stiff gust hit the tower, if she weren’t terrified. It wasn’t nearly this windy on the ground.

“It’s peaceful up here when you don’t have inmates down there in the yard obsessed with escaping, because what else is there for them to think about all day?” Wolf’s expression turned steely and his tone bitter as he gestured down. “Especially the ones sentenced to life who don’t care about killing you during a breakout, because, after all, what are they risking? More time on their sentence?”

Victoria stood in the middle of the tower’s twelve-by-twelve-foot observation deck at the point where the steps emerged, knees flexed as she clutched the top of the stairway’s rusty railing. They’d spent the last few minutes climbing what seemed like a thousand steps of a lighthouse-like, circular stairway to get up here. She was in excellent shape thanks to a demanding aerobics regimen she attacked four mornings a week. But her legs had turned to jelly on the last few steps as the world outside the enclosed stairway reappeared. Her brain was screaming at her to retreat to the ground
now
.

White-knuckled fingers still clutching the railing, she leaned toward the edge as far as possible. The top of the dark, brick wall was sixty feet below, encasing the old prison like a huge, square box. At each corner of the box, a surveillance tower soared skyward like turrets of a fort—they were atop the tower on the old prison’s northeast corner.

Wolf was right, she realized. The facility did resemble a five-point star from up here, if she ignored the administration corridor, which led to another, much smaller building that had served as the inmate receiving and discharge center—and the new jury corridor.

“Foothills and valleys covered by trees,” Wolf spoke up wistfully. “We’re in the middle of nowhere out here.”

As though he was thinking that this was how the landscape must have looked to his ancestors three hundred years ago all over the state of Virginia, Victoria figured.

“I love it up here. This is the fourth time I’ve made the climb.” Wolf glanced over his shoulder and waved to Victoria. “Come here. You’ll have a much better view. I want to point out some things.”

Victoria glanced at Cameron, who was clutching the top of the railing on the other side of the stairs.

“Go on,” he muttered.

“You scared?” she asked.

“Petrified,” he admitted. “This tower is swaying.”

“Come with me,” she begged.

Cameron glanced at the thin, waist-high railing, which ringed the edge of the observation deck, then retightened his grip on the banister. “Not a chance. I can see just fine from right where I am.”

“Baby.”

“Like I was born ten minutes ago. In fact, I may need a diaper in a few seconds.”

“I thought you were my rock.”

“As long as my feet are planted on the ground, I’ll do anything for you.” Cameron checked the perimeter railing again. “Right now I feel like we’re on top of a tower made of toothpicks.”

Victoria was about to pry her fingers from the railing, but sensed the structure swaying, as Cameron had said. Perhaps the swaying was just her imagination, but it caused her to vividly consider the terrifying possibility of the structure toppling over—with all of them up here.

“Come on,” Wolf called impatiently.

She gave Cameron one more what-in-God’s-name-are-we-doing-up-here expression and finally let go. She staggered several steps to the outer railing, like she was walking on a boat deck in a raging storm, and clutched it with a two-hand death grip. She was already getting dizzy. The ground below seemed to be swirling like a giant whirlpool.

She
hated
heights—always had.

“What’s wrong?” Wolf asked, with a knowing grin. “You scared of heights?”

“No. It’s the fall that concerns me.”

“Falling won’t hurt. It’s the impact you need to worry about.”

“I’m glad I can bring a little amusement to your day, Clint. What do you want to show me?”

“The precautions we’re taking to keep jurors in.”

“And our enemies out,” she reminded him as a fresh burst of air blew her long hair back and off her shoulders.

“Exactly.” He pointed down at the open space between the end of the closest wing and the high brick wall surrounding the facility. “That’s a twelve-foot razor-wire fence ten feet from the primary wall on the inside and twenty feet from the primary wall on the outside. So if you’re going to try and make it in or out of Archer Prison that way, you’ll have to negotiate a razor-wire fence twice your height, the brick wall, and then another razor-wire fence twice your height. Between both wire fences and the brick wall, we’ve installed pressure pads and motion sensors, which, if tripped, will immediately alert central command inside the facility as well as the eight guards—two on each deck—who will be up here at all times. Bottom line, getting in or out of Archer that brazenly will be damn hard. Like I said while we were touring the inside, I won’t ever call anything impossible because I’ve seen too many crazy things in my time at FBP to ever use that word. But let me put it this way, I’d be
very
surprised if it happened.”