The Target

Chapter 41

Leon Dikes sat down across from Julie, who was just finishing up a plate of food. She wiped her mouth, took a drink of water, and sat back watching him. Her face was swollen from where he had struck her.

“You want something?” she asked.

“How did you meet Jessica?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because it is better to know things than to not know things.”

“She’s just a friend I met through another friend.”

“The names they gave at the prison were Jessica Reel and Will Robie. I have had them checked out. There is very little known about them. Very little. In fact, really nothing.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“But I think that you do. Did you know that Sally, or Jessica, was in Witness Protection?”

“Because of you, right?”

“Now, I believe that this Will Robie might also be in Witness Protection, or else he might be a U.S. marshal assigned to protect her.”

“Maybe he is.”

“That answer is really not good enough.”

“Like I said, we’re just friends.”

“Simple friends do not risk their lives for one another. Jessica offered to give herself up to me in exchange for your safe release. Why would she do that, I wonder?”

“Because she’s a good person,” replied Julie in a casual tone. “That must be hard for you to relate to. Probably why you find the concept so puzzling.”

“Your arrogance in the face of imminent harm is really deserving of both admiration and puzzlement, a most unusual combination.”

“I’m a complicated person.”

“I want you to tell me everything you know about Jessica Reel and this Will Robie.”

“I’ve told you what I know about Jessica. I don’t really know Will Robie. Tonight was the first time I’d met him.”

Dikes did not appear to be listening. “Are you yourself perhaps in Witness Protection? Is that how you met?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I have also made inquiries about you, and the results have been, shall we say, scant, which is problematic to me.”

“Well, I’m not in Witness Protection, and even if I were I don’t think they make a habit of putting different people in the program together or letting people in the program know the identities of others in the program.”

“You are too young to have been placed in the program when Sally was.”

“Jessica.”

“To me she will always be Sally Fontaine.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” replied Julie curtly.

“Her father was able to reach her through Witness Protection. Whether she is still in the program or that was merely a conduit to deliver a message to her, wherever she is now, I do not know.”

“Well, neither do I,” said Julie.

“I think that you’re lying.”

“Think what you want.”

“I will ask my questions and if I receive no answers I will have to ask more persuasively. It will not be pleasant for you, but if I have no choice…?”

Dikes clapped his hands together. The door opened at once. The person now in the doorway must have been waiting there for this command, Julie thought.

He was huge, but his uniform fit him. Apparently, Dikes’s group had more money to spend on uniforms than the Alabama correctional system did.

The prison guard Albert stared down at her. In one hand he held a fireplace poker, which was glowing red at one end. In his other hand was a whip that looked well used.

Dikes said, “This is my chief interrogator. I will allow him to take charge of you for a while, unless there is something you wished to tell me.”

Julie looked from Albert and his poker back to Dikes.

“What do you want to know?” she said fearfully.

“What I want to know is everything.”

Julie said, “Then I’ll tell you what I know.”