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37
HOME OF ZOLTAN
TUESDAY MORNING
Savich started his Porsche, listened to his baby roar to life, and smiled. He always did. He loved the sound of those cylinders. His cell sang out Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” He frowned. “It’s Sonja Grayson, the lead prosecutor in Marsia Gay’s trial.” Ever since Grayson had told him Veronica Lake had agreed to make a deal with the prosecution and testify against Marsia Gay, he had been waiting for this call. He knew exactly what had happened. “Ms. Grayson?” He said nothing, only listened. Finally, he punched off.
Sherlock laid her hand on his. “Veronica’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Amazingly, she survived surgery, but the surgeon says her odds aren’t good. She’s in the ICU at Washington Memorial. Grayson is frothing at the mouth at the prison personnel. What’s worse for her is she specifically asked to be assigned the case, and now it’s blown up in her face. She told me news of their deal with Veronica got out faster than they thought it would.” He sighed. “They were moving Veronica to Regional today, a day too late.”
“It sounds like a monumental screwup on all sides.”
Savich said, “Now there are consequences. I’d like to drop you off at Washington Memorial to deal with all the folk there, media, Metro, politicians looking for a sound bite. It’ll be a madhouse. Grayson said she tried to call me last night, but she’d heard someone set fire to our house.” He grinned at Sherlock. “Grayson made it sound like I was a slacker.”
“Not a problem. I’ll get a whip and a chair if I need to, keep control of the zoo. You, a slacker? Find out how this happened, see how Marsia Gay managed it.”
Savich dropped Sherlock off at Washington Memorial Hospital with a quick kiss for good luck and drove directly to the D.C. Jail on D Street, fighting the ever-insane morning traffic. Grayson had asked to meet him there so they could question Marsia together, but Savich had asked her to wait. He wanted to speak to Marsia himself first.
The D.C. Jail, as the facility was called, was a huge campus housing both men and women, its large, plain buildings standing stolid behind well-maintained grounds. There were always lots of parking spaces. Savich looked around as he climbed out of his Porsche. He walked to the main entrance and was met there by Warden Putney, a tall, thin man with a bit of a stoop. He looked like he’d already been beaten about the head and shoulders since Veronica Lake’s attempted murder happened on his watch.
Savich wondered if Warden Putney would try to find excuses for what had happened, and sure enough, he started talking fast as he shook Savich’s hand. “I hate it when you think you’ve done everything right, when the guards do what they’re supposed to be doing, and still something like this happens. Veronica Lake was under watch by rotating guards. She had no contact whatsoever with Marsia Gay in the months they’ve been incarcerated here. After Lake made her deal to testify, we amped up her protection until she could be transferred to Regional. She was to be transferred today.” He drew a pained breath. “A frigging day too late. I’ll take you to the security room. It’s down the hallway.”
They were met by Wallace Freed, head of security for the women’s wing. He was comfortably in his fifties, bald with a bit of a beer belly, thick brows, and sharp eyes behind black-framed glasses that kept sliding down his nose. Freed showed them into a small security office where six large screens displayed live feeds from both inside and outside the prison. Freed sat down and typed on a keyboard, and soon they were watching a recorded video from the cafeteria. The warden said, “There are currently three hundred–plus inmates to feed, so meals are served in shifts. This is the early shift, for about eighty prisoners.”
Freed pointed. “Here’s Veronica Lake, head down, walking toward the serving line. See, there is no roughhousing, not a whiff of impending violence. Everything appears calm. Now watch.” Again, Freed pointed. “Look, eight prisoners are walking toward Lake, each from a different part of the cafeteria. It all looks accidental, their movements are fluid, easy. They’re even talking to each other, nothing loud, nothing threatening.”
Freed said, “Watch now, see Lake’s face? She knows something is wrong.” The prisoners are weaving around her, smooth and easy, until finally they begin to melt away and there’s only Veronica Lake left, lying on her back on the floor with a knife wound in her chest.
Savich leaned in close. “Did you find the shiv?”
“No. They got rid of it somehow, out of sight of the cameras,” Freed said.
Putney picked it up. “No way to know who stabbed her, either.”
Savich said, “Did you get anything from the prisoners who were in on this murder dance?”
“We’ve identified them from the video, isolated all eight. Prosecutor Grayson and two Metro detectives have interviewed each woman. None of them knows a thing. They claim they didn’t even see Veronica. They must have rehearsed what to say afterward when questioned. I’ve got to say, for a murder in plain sight, it was well planned and perfectly executed.”
Savich said, “I wouldn’t expect an amateur job from Marsia Gay. Of course, she’s behind it. You’re seeing her fine brain at work. Somehow, she got herself a small army she could trust to take Veronica out. I’d say to start, she picked one specific prisoner who has enough juice to keep the others in line, even now. I imagine each of them was offered a good deal to talk?”
Putney nodded. “Even early release for three of the nonviolent prisoners. No go. No one will say a word. Wallace, wind it back. There, stop. See that big woman with the tattoo of the rattlesnake on her biceps? Long dark hair in a braid? Looks like she eats nails for breakfast?”
At Savich’s nod, he said, “That’s Zanetti, Angela Zanetti, awaiting trial for murdering her boyfriend and his lover, for want of a better word, when she caught them in her bed. She’s one of the gang leaders, rules with an iron fist. Believe me when I say no one refuses a demand from Zanetti. She enjoys violence, incites it. Funny thing is, three of the eight weren’t under her thumb, at least that’s what I thought. The one prisoner with enough juice to pull in the others? Zanetti’s got the juice. She gets my vote.”
Savich nodded. “All right. Let’s say Gay enlisted Angela Zanetti, made Zanetti her front man—woman. Then if any of the eight confess, it would be Angela they’d have to answer to, not Gay. She’d have stayed well out of it. Ask the guards in their unit if Angela and Marsia spend much time together.”
Putney said, “Sure.” His eyebrow went up. “You make Gay sound like a Mata Hari.”
“Gay would leave Mata Hari in the dust, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. I don’t see Gay in the video. She kept away, another smart move. She must have hated missing the show.”
Putney said, “Gay was in the common area speaking to a guard, all chummy, nowhere near the cafeteria. Let me put the video on the monitor.”
Savich pointed at the young man. “Who’s the guard?”
“That’s Crowder, Junior Crowder, a nice kid, conscientious, been here two years. I spoke to him myself. He said Gay is always friendly to all the guards, said she told him she was a famous sculptor until she was framed and sent here. He said he couldn’t tell if she was pleased or upset when someone shouted Veronica Lake had been stabbed. Then he had to run off to control the prisoners in the cafeteria. There’s always a risk of a rampage after violence like that. Violence begets violence here.”
Savich asked Freed to back the tape up to look again at Marsia. She was striking, not beautiful in the accepted sense, but there was something compelling about her face that made you look twice. Her dark hair was longer, pulled back in a ponytail. All her attention appeared focused on the guard she was speaking to, though Savich knew she was aware of exactly what was happening in the cafeteria. He said, “She not only directed the show, she gave a performance of her own.”
Putney said, “However Gay managed it, we’ve got a wall of silence. I’m betting not one of those prisoners will ever give Zanetti up. Like I said, they’re too afraid of her. Grayson was throwing out threats like water, but the prisoners looked right through her.
“It’s amazing Lake is still alive. I didn’t think she’d make it to the hospital. There was so much blood. It was the purest luck our physician happened to be here, and he got to the cafeteria fast, applied pressure until the ambulance arrived. She had to be brought back twice, I was told.”
Putney met Savich’s eyes. “I wish I could say Lake will make it, but I don’t think so, not after seeing her. The prosecutor is very upset, with me, with the guards, probably at the staff serving the spaghetti.”
Savich followed Putney to a small meeting room away from the new visitor’s area with its comfortable chairs and unscratched glass partitions. He wanted a private face-to-face with Marsia Gay. He had no doubt Angela Zanetti had helped Marsia set up Veronica’s grand finale. And he also had no doubt Marsia had seduced her as she had Veronica. Had she offered her another sort of payment, other than sex and her undying love?
He sat on the far side of a scarred laminate table. When Marsia Gay was brought into the interview room, a guard behind her, she wasn’t wearing a prisoner’s three-piece suit, only ties on her wrists. Her orange jumpsuit actually fit her fairly well, and orange was a good color for her. She looked as she had in the video—maybe a bit paler in person, but composed, her face serene as a Madonna’s. She saw him seated at the table and smiled, showing lovely white teeth. Her eyes sparkled. She knew he’d come, and she’d looked forward to it.
She walked to the table, her smile well in place. “My, my, what a lovely break in my routine on this cold November morning. I suppose you’re here to ask me about poor Veronica’s murder.”
