A Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER 58

The El Dorado Correctional Facility, situated east of the town of El Dorado, was a sprawling complex of brown cement buildings seemingly designed to compete with its desolate surroundings.

Following Brother Bartholomew’s admissions, Griff had contacted the president. It was time to trust him. Beyond funding Sylvia Chen’s research, Griff was convinced that James Allaire had no connection with the way she had conducted it. Allaire’s response to Griff’s report regarding the Certain Path Mission and J. R. Davis was to galvanize all the resources at his disposal. Clearly, the man understood that time was running out for all those in the Capitol.

Now, Griff’s military escort, organized in amazingly short order, passed through two perimeters, one made of chain-link fencing, and the second of tightly strung wire. Both were topped by razor wire.

Griff’s limousine driver checked his watch.

“Normally takes forty minutes to get here from Wichita,” he said through the partition. “We did it in just a little over twenty.”

Overhead, three Apache helicopters hovered, kicking up dust while their crews kept watch in all directions. The El Dorado security team met Griff’s black armor-plated limousine at the gate, and then escorted the caravan into the correctional facility’s main parking lot. A moving wall of Humvees flanked each side of the limo. Ambulances and police cars, along with a fleet of motorcycles, also participated in the transport team that was filling most of the available parking spaces in the expansive prison lot. Clearly, Dr. James Allaire was not a president of minimal action, especially when his life and his family’s were at stake.

Griff stepped onto the tarmac and shielded his eyes from the early morning sun and the chopper-generated winds. A SWAT team joined with the military police and the correctional officers from the El Dorado facility. Griff suspected that their orders were to safeguard him from assassination. It was good to see that Allaire was finally giving Genesis their due.

The circle of armed security surrounding Griff parted to allow a lone man to approach. He wore a dark suit and had thinning hair on top, and an ample belly below. His face featured a neatly trimmed gray and brown beard. The man shook Griff’s hand vigorously and shouted to be heard above the helicopter’s whirl.

“Warden Jay Tobert, Dr. Rhodes,” he said. “Welcome to El Dorado. We’ll get you processed and with the prisoner as quickly as possible. I hope you’ve had a chance to review the files that you requested?”

Griff nodded. He’d been given the faxed pages by one of the MPs and read all about Johnny Ray Davis on the drive to the maximum-security penitentiary. Charged with the shooting death of a husband and wife during a failed carjacking, Davis was sentenced to die. Despite an initial plea of innocent, the evidence included in the file was irrefutable. Forensics and ballistics linked Davis to the crime. Several reliable eyewitnesses sealed the case for the prosecution.

Griff swallowed hard as he glanced at the stone walls and steel bars. It was one thing to be reminded of time done in prison, but something far worse to be back inside one, regardless of the reason. The familiar feelings of hopelessness and despair returned as though they had never left.

“Reception is waiting for you,” the warden said. “We’ll go to the Tower East building first to get you cleared. Then we’ll be heading over to our Commons building. That’s where you’ll meet Davis.”

Griff followed Tobert while the battalion of security followed him.

“Looks like you’ve got some friends in pretty high places,” Tobert understated on their walk to Tower East. When Griff just nodded, the warden continued to fish for information. “Not every day the president of the United States calls me to request special access.”

“Not every day,” Griff echoed.

“I understand that the Wichita police arrested this Bartholomew fellow on his way out of town.”

Again, Griff nodded.

“He tried to run,” he said. “Guess he panicked after I made the call to Washington. I imagine you’ll be hosting him here at some point.”

“We do good keeping our prisoners where they’re supposed to be. Haven’t had a successful rabbit since I became warden. Good thing, too, because if Johnny Ray ever busted out of here we’d have a heck of a time catching him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Boy’s a natural runner,” Tobert said. “I’d guess he could run straight to California without stopping or getting winded. Guy never gets tired jogging in the yard. And I mean never.”

“Well, I don’t know what’ll happen to Bartholomew now that he’s in custody,” Griff said. “But I hope it isn’t good.”

Griff also hoped that Allaire would follow through on his promise to investigate Paul Rappaport. That part of their short phone conversation had been anything but pleasant. He had called the president’s emergency number from Bartholomew’s cramped, cluttered office at the Certain Path Mission.

“Rappaport shows up and Melvin is killed,” Griff had said to Allaire. “Murdered by someone working for Genesis. Explain to me how Genesis knew about our plan?”

“I can’t,” Allaire said. “But you had no right jeopardizing our objective by sneaking out of Kalvesta, Rhodes. You’ve gone rogue on me and I don’t like it one bit.”

“Pardon my saying so, Mr. President, but I don’t much care what you like. What I care about is what you do. And I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” Allaire said.

“Two things, actually. I want you to treat Rappaport as a suspect. Have him watched. Put a tail on him. Wiretap his phones. Get ahold of his computers. Put the CIA, NSA, FBI, and any other letters you can think of on him. Put a dossier together that will detail what he’s had for breakfast every morning for the last ten tears. I’m convinced it’s him, and somewhere along the line we’ll find that he’s tipped us off to that. He’s the force behind Genesis. He did this to become president.”

“You think he arranged to have his own daughter robbed while she was taking a shower?” Allaire asked. “You think he would arrange to traumatize her by cutting up her underwear and spreading it across her bed, just so he could get me to appoint him the designated survivor?”

“Anybody who did this to you and the others at the Capitol is capable of anything,” Griff had replied. “The setup for the release of WRX3883 has been going on for a long time. The whole Genesis thing—the blackout in New York, and those explosions—were just a prologue leading up to the State of the Union.”

“I’ll think about it,” was all Allaire had said. “What’s the second thing?”

“Have Sergeant Stafford go out with some men to the ventilation shaft to retrieve Melvin’s body. He was a hero. If you ever get out of this, he deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor, or whatever the civilian version is of that.”

“Consider it done. Now get to that prison and this time keep me posted about what you’re doing.”

Griff was replaying that conversation in his mind when he was startled by a loud buzz. He stiffened at the sound. The heavy metal door unlocked and the noise stopped.

“It’s hard coming back to prison, huh?” the warden commented, evidently aware of Griff’s history.

“You have no idea,” Griff said.

“Well, thankfully, you’re right about that.”

Griff went through the screening process without incident and followed the warden into the prison yard. The helicopters continued to circle overhead like the buzzards in his recurring Ebola dream. Crossing a patch of barren ground, they entered the Commons building. The corridors there were quiet and deserted.

“I’ve got ’em on lockdown for as long as you’re here,” Tobert announced proudly.

“Thanks. I’m sure that won’t win J. R. Davis any popularity prizes.”

“He can take care of himself. Truth is, I think most of the guys are scared of him.”

The warden opened a door marked ATTORNEY’S ROOM and motioned Griff to follow him inside.

Griff was surprised to see only a foldout table in the center of the room, with a plastic chair on either side, but no Plexiglas divider to separate the lawyers from the convicts. He took a seat at the table facing the door. Four guards stood behind him.

The door buzzed and then opened. Three more guards entered, escorting a man in an orange prison jumpsuit. His ankles and wrists were shackled. Two of the guards assisted the convict in getting seated. Faded tattoos of women covered the outsides of both his arms. His jet-black hair was buzz cut, his narrow face horselike, and his upper lip had been gashed at some point and sutured carelessly, so that the edges of the vermillion border did not meet. The result was what amounted to a permanent sneer.

But the most striking feature of Johnny Ray Davis’s countenance—the one that struck Griff almost immediately, were his eyes.

The right one was sky blue … and the left was chestnut brown.