Deadlock

20

Jalicia watched as Bobby Gross, lead defense attorney for the Aryan Brotherhood leadership, swept into the San Francisco courtroom, his entourage of a dozen other attorneys and assistants trailing in his wake. As he approached the table where she sat with her three-person prosecution team, he stopped, ran a hand through his carefully blow-dried head of hair, and pursed his lips. Jalicia suspected that he probably spent more time in front of the mirror in the morning than she did.

‘Can I help you with something, Bobby?’ Jalicia asked, fully aware of how much Gross hated being called by his first name.

He leaned in towards her. She could smell his breath. Minty fresh. ‘Tick tock. Think your boy’s gonna make it?’ Gross was all smiles, a football coach riling his opposite number before the big game.

Behind Gross, his clients, the six members of the Aryan Brotherhood leadership, were being led in by their escort of US Marshals. They seemed to be in high spirits, laughing and joking among themselves. Most of them had been in prison for over thirty years, and it showed in the motel-tan pallor of their skin. Several wore reading glasses. All were dressed in a preppy smart-casual uniform of chinos and business shirts, buttoned to the neck — all the better to hide biceps that could crack a steel-reinforced walnut, not to mention the patchwork of shamrocks, swastikas and Nazi lightning bolts inked across their torsos and arms. The only tattoo none of them could conceal was the one that identified their membership of the AB — the shamrock inked on to the third knuckle of their right hand.

Their nicknames were jokey, bordering on cartoonish: Pinky, Sherlock, Duke, Shark, Gringo, The Monk. They looked like the senior members of a Deadwood appreciation society who’d taken the construction of their respective personas just a little too seriously.

Jalicia gave them and then Gross a confident smile. Every day since she had informed Gross about her star witness he’d tried to needle her about Reaper’s appearance.

‘My witnesses are all fine,’ she said.

‘Not what I hear,’ Gross said. ‘Seems there’s been a little incident up at Pelican Bay.’

Jalicia’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘I know,’ she lied.

The door behind Gross and his team opened and Coburn stalked in with a couple of men she recognized as members of the US Marshals team that had transported Lock and Ty up to Pelican Bay. Jalicia excused herself and made her way across to them.

‘Something’s happened?’ she asked.

Coburn spread his palms to the floor. ‘Take it easy. Reaper’s fine.’

She ushered Coburn and the two US Marshals out into the corridor, away from the prying eyes and ears of the Aryan Brotherhood leadership and their hotshot attorneys.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Give it to me from the top.’

‘There was a riot on the yard,’ Coburn said.

‘They tried to get to Reaper?’

‘Reports are confused about precisely what happened. The California Department of Corrections just released some of the footage from their CCTV system.’

‘But Reaper’s OK?’

‘A little bruised,’ offered one of the Marshals.

‘What about Lock?’

‘He put a couple of other inmates in the medical wing,’ Coburn said. ‘They’ve stashed him in solitary confinement with Reaper for safe keeping.’

‘Reaper’s gonna love that,’ she said.

‘Better pissed off than dead,’ Coburn said.

The look on Coburn’s face suggested that there was something he wasn’t saying.

‘What is it?’ Jalicia asked.

‘It’s Lock’s partner. The guard didn’t know he was one of us.’

‘Which guard?’

The two Marshals looked away.

‘The one in the gun tower,’ said Coburn.

‘Ty’s been shot?’ Jalicia said.

‘He’s breathing. But we don’t know how bad he is.’

Jalicia massaged her temples. ‘Give me a minute, would you?’

She took a deep breath, then another, trying to push away her shock at what had happened to focus on the real dilemma: what to do with Reaper. There was nothing she could do about what had happened at the prison, but she could still deliver her star witness’s testimony.

‘OK, listen. I’m going to try and get the judge to halt proceedings temporarily. Give us some time to sort out this mess.’

‘You think he will?’

‘No, but it’s got to be worth-’

There was an ear-shredding boom, and the floor under Jalicia’s feet rippled with the shock waves of a massive explosion. She was lifted up by the blast, then deposited on to the ground with a thump as clouds of dust turned everything around her grey. Fire alarms wailed in protest. She swiped at her eyes, aware of gritty powder clogging her nose and throat.

Jalicia shook her head, trying to figure what the hell had just happened, then began to crawl forward on her hands and knees. Looking up, she saw flames curling round the door of a bathroom twenty feet ahead of her. She turned round, still on all fours, and headed back in the direction of the courtroom. The dust thrown up by the explosion mingled with an acrid black smoke from the nearby fire.

Stay calm, Jalicia.

She kept moving, her hand eventually finding thin air where it should have found floor. She leaned forward, reaching down to see if the space led to the first tread of a staircase, or whether it was simply a hole. She lowered her hand into a void, and quickly withdrew it.

The dust was beginning to settle, but the smoke from the fire continued to billow around her. She backed up a little, keeping her face as low to the ground as she could. She could hear a man’s voice close by.

‘Jalicia?’

It was Coburn.

‘Over here,’ she said, realizing the absurdity of what she’d just said. Even she hadn’t a clue where ‘here’ was.

‘You OK?’

‘I think so.’

A beam of light punched through the colloidal mix of dust and smoke off to her left.

‘You see the light?’ Coburn said. ‘I want you to come towards it.’

Jalicia began to crawl towards the light. Her knees and elbows ached, and there was an insistent high-pitched whine drilling into her head, but she kept moving.

‘Keep coming. You’re almost there.’

The news spurred her on. A few moments later she felt a hand on her shoulder as Coburn pulled her back up on to her feet, then propelled her through a doorway and into a stairwell. Cops and US Marshals were moving up, towards the top floors, against a tide of bodies heading down.

Two flights down, she signaled to Coburn to stop. Hands on her knees, she stood for a moment and caught her breath. She glanced up at Coburn. ‘Thank you.’

‘No trial without our lead prosecutor,’ Coburn said, clamping a hand on to her shoulder. ‘You good to start moving again?’

Jalicia straightened up, studying the heavy bags under his eyes, his grey-flecked hair turned white by the dust. ‘Yeah.’

In the lobby, the blue-blazered security guards were busy trying to get as many people out of the building and away from the immediate area as possible. Coburn split from Jalicia to go and talk to a San Francisco Police Department sergeant. A few moments later he was back.

‘You want the good news or the bad news?’

Jalicia glanced around at the people still pouring from the stairwells, their faces blackened by the smoke on the higher floors. She was still shaken from the explosion and badly in need of a caffeine hit. ‘There’s good news here?’

‘All the defendants are accounted for. The Marshals are moving them to a secure facility until we can get the trial up and running again.’

‘So what’s the bad news?’

‘There’s been another bombing.’

Jalicia felt her stomach churn. ‘Where?’

‘The Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles.’