Stone Cold

Chapter Thirty

Female inmates were housed on the sixth floor of the county jail. Politicians called it by its proper name, the Jackson County Regional Detention Center. Everyone else called it what it was-the jail.

The entire floor was one big cell where women slept on modular bunk beds arranged barracks-style. Square tables that seated up to four people, a medical treatment room, and a communal bathroom and shower filled the rest of the space. Lit by ceiling fluorescents and rectangular windows, it was antiseptic in daylight and dyspeptic at night.

Alex was assigned a top bunk on a modular unit set against one wall, the elevation and back support making it prime jailhouse real estate. She arrived in time for dinner. The food was her second disappointment since entering the facility.

The first was not finding her lawyer, Claire Mason, waiting for her. Claire’s nephew, Lou Mason, a disbarred criminal defense lawyer, was there instead. She’d known him before he was disbarred and to say that they weren’t close was an understatement.

Years ago, they had represented two defendants who were accused of a series of home invasions on the city’s east side. They were tried together. Alex was in her second year of practice. Mason was a veteran. He suggested that she put her client’s defense on first. When she rested, Mason called his client to testify. Alex listened in stunned silence as his client fingered hers as the ringleader who’d threatened to kill him if he didn’t participate in the robberies.

The jury bought Mason’s defense and his client walked. Hers got twenty years. She confronted him afterward.

“You sandbagged me! That’s why you wanted me to go first. How could you do that to me?”

“I didn’t do a damn thing to you. I represented my client. He had a story to tell and I thought the jury deserved to hear it.”

“But you fucked me and my client!”

“Grow up, Alex. You guys fucked yourselves.”

Angry as she was, she grudgingly admitted to herself that Mason was right. She’d let a more experienced attorney lead her down the path. It was a valuable lesson, but that didn’t mean she had to like her teacher.

Back then, Mason had been dark haired, dark eyed, and ruggedly handsome, his six-foot frame lean and muscled. He played by the rules when he could, breaking them when he had no choice, eventually crossing the line to save the life of his best friend. He paid the price with his law license. A TV reporter stuck a microphone in his face when the news broke that the state supreme court had disbarred him.

“Did the court make the right decision?” she asked.

“I knew what the rules were and so did they.”

“Any regrets?”

Mason looked at her, his piercing eyes drilling into hers, his jaw set, letting her question hang. Seconds passed until he gave her a wry smile.

“Does it matter?” he said and walked away.

He was still fit, his swagger undiminished by time or scandal. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt and badly in need of a shave, he was still the bad boy.

“Where’s Claire?” Alex asked. “I thought she was meeting me.”

“Something came up.”

“So she sent you? Did you get your ticket back?”

Mason shook his head. “Nope. I’m Claire’s paralegal these days. Your arraignment is tomorrow morning at nine. No cattle call. Just your case. You’ll get a chance to talk to Claire afterward. She’s going to ask the judge to release you on bail. Your girlfriend is working with a bondsman.”

“Who’s the bondsman?”

“Carlos Guiterriz.”

“That slimeball?”

“That slimeball is a friend of mine, and if you get out on bail, he’ll be holding the paper on you, so I’d think of something else to call him.”

Bonnie would have to pledge her own assets to secure Alex’s bail. Public defenders were at the bottom of the lawyer compensation scale. The balance in Alex’s IRA account was embarrassing. She had a couple of thousand dollars in her checking account and a six-year-old Honda, and that was it. Bonnie made real money, and her grandparents had left her enough cash to pay for their house, which was worth around five hundred thousand dollars, and a stock portfolio totaling something north of a million dollars.

“Knowing that Guiterriz is holding my paper only makes him slimier, but if that’s what it takes to get me out of here, I’ll kiss him next time I see him.”

“On the mouth?”

“If it comes to that.”

“In the meantime, don’t make any friends up on the sixth floor. They’ll be standing in line to snitch you out in return for a plea bargain.”

“Gee, ya think? I’m not the new kid on the block you ran circles around anymore. I’ve grown up.”

“Really. Then what are you doing here?”

Lying on her bed, Alex turned that question over in her mind again and again, unable to come up with an answer that made sense or would give her a chance of walking out of jail a free woman. One minute she replayed the events in Odyessy’s living room and the next she clenched her eyes, desperate to shut them out, unable to quell the fear roiling her body.

And fear was the last thing she wanted to show in a room full of women charged with everything from molestation to murder. Worse yet, several were her clients, their eyes popping in astonishment when she was led onto their floor.

The night passed, Alex dozing but not sleeping, waking in a sweat, momentarily disoriented, reaching for Bonnie, grabbing air. Twice she rolled on her side, pressed her face against the concrete wall, and wept, covering her head with her pillow to stifle the sound. This much she knew. Their lives would never be the same. Her only hope was that somehow they would still have a life together.

The image of Dwayne lying on the floor, bleeding and dying, blinking at her, his features going slack, kept coming back to her. She knew he was dead, that she had killed him. She searched her heart and soul for sorrow at having taken his life, but relief was the only thing she felt. And that frightened her as much as anything else.