The Victim (33 page)

“
You got ID?”

“
Sure,” she said, fishing through her purse. She slid the Florida driver’s license under the slot in the glass. It was authentic down to every detail and hologram. Even the magnetic strip worked.

Tymeshia passed the driver’s license back through the slot, along with a clip-on visitor’s badge. “Alright then. You know where you’re going, right?”

“
Yes,” she said, clipping the badge to her blouse.

Tymeshia slammed the buzzer on the wall. The latch clanged and the steel door slid open along its track.

***

Quincy took a seat across from her.

Who’s this bitch?

His posture hunched, elbows resting on the table. His dreads hung in front of his face like a tasseled curtain. He brushed them aside.

“
Yo, where Anton at?”

Daniella set up her laptop on the table. Having presumed she was an investigator, the COs let her bring it in without question.

“
He’s busy.”

Quincy shook his head, his dreadlocks flailing. “I swear on everything, man. I ain’t fittin’ to get me locked up. Shit, I’mma do life in prison ’cuz this bitch-ass white boy won’t take no time to work on my case. Can’t come see a nigga? Goddamn. I ain’t tryin’ to play that way, you feel me?”

“
Yeah, Quincy, I feel you. But Anton’s got bigger cases, no offense. I mean, what you paid him pales in comparison to what others have. I’m not trying to insult you, just telling you how it is.”

He posted up, chest out. “And who the fuck are you?”

“
I’m his investigator.”

“
What ’bout that other dude?”

“
I’m covering for him.”

He waved dismissively. “Fuckin’ hired help.”

She shrugged, unfazed. “Sure, that’s it. Look. I’m just trying to do right by you. And between you and me, there’ve been some things said that have made me concerned. For you.”

The echo of the housing unit filtered in through the crack beneath the door. She could see a CO manning the control desk through the small window in the visitation room door. Close enough that she could call for help should his anger get the best of him.

“
Bitch, whatchu concerned ’bout me?”

She queued up iTunes on her laptop and played the recording.

“
So, what’s gonna happen to that guy? The one who dropped the brick.”

“
Oh he’s fucked. He’s completely fucked. They got DNA, videotape, and his baby momma testifying against him. Police union’s been present for every single court hearing. Not to mention he was involved in a shootout a few years ago where a seven-year-old girl died. A trial in his case is like a slow guilty plea. An exercise in futility. Honestly, if he could roll up his bed sheet real tight and hang himself in his cell he’d get a better result than what he’s got coming.”

She clicked the
stop
button. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but your own lawyer’s gonna hang you out to dry. Thinks you’d be better off killing yourself.”

Rage swelled in Quincy’s eyes. He bared his gold-plated teeth.
“That lyin’ ass, bitch-ass, punk-ass cracker! I done tole my people git me a paid lawyer and this bitch says I should hang myself?” Quincy shook his head, piecing together the equation. He knew what had to be done. “No way, ain’t no cracker-ass lawyer gonna cook my goose. Fuck that. I’ll make a phone call, see this bitch dealt with once and for all.”

CHAPTER 35

Anton barged into Jack’s office. He was on the phone, the cord twisted around his finger. “I don’t give a shit, Bob; when an undercover puts an ad in the back of a smut magazine claiming to be an eighteen-year-old and then halfway through the phone call, tells the guy she’s fourteen, it’s called entrapment! The old bait and switch.” Jack covered the receiver with his palm, nodded to Anton standing by the door. He held up a
one minute
finger. “Fine, Bob. You wanna make a thirty-four-year-old father of two a convicted felon and a sex offender because he responded to an ad in the back of a porn mag, be my guest. Alright, Bob. I guess we’ll settle it in trial. Okay. You too. Bye.”

He hung up.

“
Hope I’m not interrupting something.”

“
Nah, no biggie. Bob Kastranakes is a dick. Nothing new.” Anton nodded. Bob Kastranakes was the chief the Sexual Battery Unit at the State Attorney’s Office, not known for his ability to reason. “So, what’s up? Everything okay?”

Anton told Jack about his phone call down in the lobby.

“
Daniella’s telling me she’s Kelsie’s McEvoy’s sister and here I am believing it without so much as a second guess. I figured, who’d make up something like that?”

“
First, you can’t trust Daniella. Secondly, how do you know the woman in Yuma is telling you the truth?”

Anton pondered that for a minute. “I guess I don’t. But what about the tattoos?”

“
What about ’em?”

“
Why would she have the same tattoo on her wrist as a woman who’s
not
her sister. And that girl’s boyfriend as well?”

“
People don’t have to be siblings to have the same tattoos. Jesus, half the inmates in the Dade County jail have teardrop tattoos in the corners of their eyes. Doesn’t mean they’re all related.” Jack tried to decipher Anton’s pensive gaze. “What? What’s on your mind? Yeah, this lady’s bonkers and she’s trying to get inside your head. I understand that. But what’s going on?”

“
I can’t shake the dates. Your client, Osvaldo Garcia, was arrested on March 16th. My…accident…was on the 16th. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, Payson, Arizona? What a random location.”

“
Of all the gin joints in all the world…”

“
I’m not kidding. You got this woman who claims to be the sister of the girl I was in a car crash with eleven years ago. Same tattoo and everything.”

Jack held up a hand. “Anton, listen to yourself. You sound as bat shit crazy as Daniella. What does one have to do with the other besides a common date and the location?”

Anton assumed one of the two chairs across from Jack’s desk. “Why was Osvaldo Garcia’s case federal? Why not state level? It was an ordinary murder. He didn’t transport this girl across state lines or anything, right?”

“
Nothing like that. The DOJ took jurisdiction because Garcia was arrested at a campsite in the Tonto National Forest. In his statement, he admitted to burying the girl there. They combed every inch of it for weeks but found nothing. No surprise. Almost three million acres of ground to cover. One of the largest national forests in the US. Local sheriff’s office got the initial call, phoned it in to the US Forest Service who made contact with him and took him to the ranger station. They found him sleeping in a tent. But he had built a campfire in a restricted area so they had cause to detain him. Once the local cops got a look at him and realized he matched the description of the guy who had last been seen with the victim, they called in the FBI to question him.

“
Family called me the day after he confessed. Should’ve called me sooner and he never would have said a word. Hell, they would never have indicted him. I quoted ’em a million bucks. I knew right off the bat it was going to be a capital case. In Arizona, no less. Early in my practice I applied for admission to as many federal districts as I could.” Anton looked at the wall, at least fifteen framed certificates showed admissions to federal district courts in Arizona; California; Georgia; New York; Texas; Washington, DC; not to mention numerous appellate courts and the US Supreme Court. “So handling the case wasn’t a problem. Family came up with the fee. They got a loan against their landscaping business, refinanced their house. Got the rest off a line of credit. But they did it, wired a million US dollars to me and I got on the plane and met with Ozzie at the federal detention center.”

“
Who was the victim?”

“
Eighteen-year-old runaway from Phoenix. Name was Lola Munson.”

“
What’s her story?”

As soon as Jack began, Anton already knew. He had heard Lola Munson’s story a thousand times before. It was a generic tragedy. He’d seen it on TV. He’d read about it in the news. He’d represented and prosecuted people whose lives mirrored hers.

According to Jack, Lola Munson was born in Phoenix to a sixteen-year-old mother who had gotten pregnant by a four-time felon named Danny Wheaton, the president of the Central Arizona chapter of the Romans Motorcycle Club. Patched in the 1960s, he was an original one-percenter; an outlaw’s badge of honor based on the claim made by the American Motorcycle Association that ninety-nine percent of all motorcycle riders were law-abiding citizens. When he was thirty-seven, he and young Anita Munson got together.

Wheaton was a mountain, six-four, easily pushing three bills. He wore a Fu Manchu and his graying brown hair was pulled back, woven into a tight braid. Often bare-chested beneath his vest, his body was a mural of skulls, demons, and naked ladies. His hairy belly lapped over the waist of his jeans, exposing an inch-long scar just above the navel where a Warlock had stuck him with a pocketknife during the 1978 Laughlin Run.

Jack described him as if he knew the man, everything down to the fetid stink of his jeans.

In true one-percenter tradition, he always wore his colors—a black leather vest bearing the insignia of the Romans Motorcycle Club. The patch on the back of the vest depicted a red profile of a legionnaire, complete with an Imperial helmet and plume. The word
romans mc
arced above the emblem. The bottom rocker—
central arizona
—denoted the chapter.

The patch on his chest said
president
.

“
Never heard of the Romans.”

“
Small club,” Jack explained. “Not like the Big Four: the Hell’s Angels, the Outlaws, the Pagans, and the Bandidos. The Romans have a few chapters. A few in Arizona, New Mexico, one in Reno, one in Carson City, a few in West Texas—El Paso and San Antonio come to mind. They wanted to move into California, but that’s strictly Hells Angels territory.”

Lola never got to know her father because he was killed when Anita was seven months pregnant. In addition to typical motorcycle gang enterprises such as prostitution, cargo theft, and gunrunning, the Romans ran the methamphetamine throughout Arizona. Jack reminded Anton that this was during the seventies and eighties when the best meth still came from Mexico. The Mexican cartels already had the cocaine market cornered. Using their distributors in the States, the Romans acted as couriers, packing their saddlebags full of meth and taking it from the border to the distributors.

“
The circumstances surrounding Danny Wheaton’s murder were unclear. The official report was that he was shot and killed during a drug rip down in Nogales. Apparently a rival Mexican cartel intercepted Wheaton while he was transporting meth back up to Phoenix. No eyewitnesses. Shot in the head when he pulled off the highway to take a piss. A shotgun at point-blank range. Blew his head clean off. Crime scene techs were pulling this guy’s teeth out of a tree with needle-nose pliers. Saddlebags were empty.

“
Interestingly enough, though, I learned during my investigation that Wheaton was under federal prosecution at the time for, you guessed it…trafficking in methamphetamine. He was looking at a life sentence with his priors so he became a cooperator.”

“
He was working?”

“
Yup. Working for the DEA, infiltrating his own club. Never before had the DEA been able to use a club president as an informant. So like I said…the
official
story was a drug rip. But the rumor was that the Romans did it. Word got out that he was working for the feds and the whole club was going to go down with a RICO indictment. Believe it or not, there were guys worse than Wheaton in the club that the feds wanted.”