False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) (26 page)

Detective Tooms and Agent Lloyd met with one of the doctors as they approached the rooms. He was a short man in his mid-thirties. Black-rimmed glasses gave him a kind of authoritative look, as if he might have all the answers. Tooms figured that the spectacles had clear glass instead of lenses, and the man was using them to make himself look more distinguished. His brown hair, brushed neatly to the left side, was neatly trimmed.

“I am Doctor Clarke,” he introduced himself, then they all shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.

“Hi, I am Detective Tooms and this is Agent Lloyd,” Tooms told him. “So, Doctor Clarke, can any of the survivors talk yet? We need to get a statement.”

The doctor pointed towards the last room on the right. “In there is Miguel Sanchez. He is pretty banged up but he’s the only one who can talk.”

Lloyd looked puzzled. Was it convenient for someone, or just coincidental that only one of them could talk, she wondered? But then she knew that it was in her nature to be suspicious.

As they entered the room they saw Miguel in a full body cast: both his legs and right arm had been broken in several places and his left one was dislocated at the shoulder. Heart-rate monitors and morphine drips fed into the cast, and his body looked as if it belonged in a science fiction movie.

“Miguel Sanchez,” began Joshua, “I am Detective Tooms and this is—”

“—You here about the crash, ain’t you?” the injured man interrupted, as if he was trying to save the detective from having to ask questions. “Well sorry, man, but I don’t know shit apart from being thrown about like a pińata.”

Cassandra Lloyd walked to one side of the bed and Tooms stood at the other. The latter reached into his pocket and pulled out the digital recorder McCall made them all carry, which he didn’t mind so much because his shorthand sucked.

“What’s that for, man?” the injured man asked when he saw it, almost in a panic.

Tooms raised the device and shook it to show there was nothing abnormal about it.

“Don’t worry, man, you know us cops are too dumb to write so we got to use these to record your statement.”

Sanchez smiled at the quip and coughed as he tried to get a lungful of air.

“All we want to know is what happened on that bus,” Tooms continued. “Anything you can remember, no matter how small or unimportant you think it is. Someone tried to take you guys out and we want to know who.”

Sanchez could only move his eyes. However, as he stared into Tooms’s palpably honest face he judged that he was an honourable man. “Okay,” he relented. “So where do you want me to start?”

Tooms switched on the recorder and placed it onto the small bedside cabinet on Miguel’s right. “The prison. Start from there.” The detective could see Sanchez lick his lips and so he picked up the drinking vessel and placed the straw next to the man’s mouth. Miguel sucked up enough to wet the inside of his mouth before he began his tale:

“We were loaded on as usual, but this time it was different.”

Lloyd looked over at Sanchez, who was staring at Tooms, not her.

“Different, how?” she asked.

Miguel’s eyes shot over to her, which made him flinch in pain at the sudden movement. “It was the bus for the parole hearing. Most of us didn’t need to be on it but we were thankful for the time out, you know? The guard said they had to fill the bus or something.”

Tooms coughed, making Sanchez look over at him. Again the injured man felt the pain of even moving his eyes.

“Miguel, don’t worry about being polite. Just keep looking at me, man, even if she asks you a question, okay?” Tooms could see an almost relieved look in his eyes after he said that. “So you get put on the bus, then what?” Tooms gave the man another drink then waited patiently for him to gather himself.

“We get locked down, but then the usual guard says he has to split because he got a text to say his mama was in hospital. Well, they load on some other guy who sits up front with the driver.” Sanchez stopped for a moment to gather air.

Tooms could see the pain in the man’s eyes, pain that even hospital-strength medications couldn’t control completely. “Okay. So you’re on the bus and it’s raining.” Tooms urged the man on, trying to jog his memory.

“Yeah, man, never seen so much friggin’ rain. Was hard to see out of the windows it was so damned thick, but I remember thinking that we were going the wrong way.”

Tooms looked puzzled for a moment. “How did you know that?”

Miguel smiled like a kid with a big secret. “Man, I have done that trip hundreds of times and each time, just to amuse myself, I would plot a getaway route. You know, a kind of fantasy, that if something happened and I got out. How do I know we were off our usual route? Because I didn’t recognize a damned thing, that’s why. The street was different, the stores, hell, even the coffee shop at the corner of one of the streets had gone. No, we were going a different route.”

Lloyd looked at Tooms, who had also shot her a look of surprise.

“So you’re going along,” Tooms encouraged. “Did anything seem strange or out of the ordinary to you?”

Sanchez seemed surprised at the question, as if Tooms should have known the answer. “Yeah, just a bit. First off we were all put onto the left and the guys who got away were stuck on the right near the back. Then there was the driver and the guard next to him screamin’ at each other.”

Tooms drew closer, his interest piqued. “Why was the guard telling the driver he was going the wrong way?”

Sanchez tried to shake his head, but couldn’t manage it. “No, man, the guard was tellin’ the driver where to go and that if he fucked up his family was dead.”

Tooms’s gaze lifted towards Lloyd, who now had the same panicked expression as he did. “Then what? You’re going along, it’s raining and the driver and the guard are arguing. Then what? Did the driver lose control over the bus because of the argument?”

Sanchez’s face went white with fear as the memory came back to him. “No, the guard was looking at his cell phone and shouted ‘now’ to the driver and stuck the gun next to his head. The driver swerved and...”

Tooms placed the drinking straw next to Sanchez’s mouth and he began to drink to calm himself.

“There was a loud explosion or something to the right-hand side,” the man continued, “and the whole bus shook and next thing I know we are on the side, hanging upside down being smashed around. The noise, man, I will never forget the fuckin’ noise! People screamin’, the sound of the metal on the ground like nails down a friggin’ chalk board, but constant, you know? Next thing I know, I am in here.”

Detective Tooms nodded in appreciation of the man’s statement and reached for the recorder. As he was about to switch it off, something Sanchez had said at the start bothered him.

“At the start you said the trip was strange because not all of you should have been there,” the detective probed. “Who shouldn’t have been there?”

Sanchez swallowed hard as he fought back the memory of the crash. “What? Oh yeah, the four guys on the back row on the right. I know for sure that they were not due for parole for another year as they had been interviewed by the parole board not long ago.”

The detective suddenly had a horrified look on his face. “Four guys?” he questioned. “No, Miguel, surely you mean three guys?”

The injured man looked puzzled at the question. “No, Detective. It was four guys: Teacher, Darius, Tyrell and Monster.”

Tooms looked over at Lloyd with a terrified look on his face.

“We have four missing prisoners not three,” he said to her, trying to suppress the panic in his voice.

McCall put in a
call for uniforms to take a look at the judge’s house for anything that may explain her murder. She had also a warrant request on her computer ready to go in just in case her husband refused them entry.

They were looking for anything, even hate mail. Normally Sam would get another detective to do it, however there was a shortage in manpower, including the services of their newest detective, Jenny Thompson who was on ‘personal time’, and who could blame her?

Jenny had had a rough year, they all had, and others had taken holiday time to cut down their hours. So McCall had to resort to the ‘boys in blue’.

John Steel had found the bailiff. He had been in the bathroom emptying his breakfast into one of the cubicles in the men’s room. After being asked about the glass and the jug he had to confess that he never really noticed them, he just thought that the judge had brought them in.

After Steel had sent the bailiff to the medics for a check-over, the Englishman joined McCall in the judge’s chambers.

“Find anything yet?” he asked hopefully but knew the reality of the situation: the judge was a smart woman, so she wouldn’t just leave something lying around.

McCall shook her head as she finished looking through the judge’s jacket and purse. “Nah, nothing, just her wallet, cell phone. The usual stuff.”

Steel listened to her as he walked around the large desk and sat down on the thick hard leather of the office chair. All the time his gaze was fixed on the heavy-looking wooden desk, as if he knew it was hiding something within.

McCall watched as he began to search the drawers, not just examining the contents, but pulling them open fully, as if he was looking for a concealed one that was locked. Suddenly he stopped and looked up at McCall, as he tugged on a slim drawer above the seating space. He smiled as if he had just won a prize.

“Okay, Steel,” Sam told him. “It’s locked so we wait and see if the key—” She stopped talking as her mouth fell open at the sight of the lock-pick set Steel had produced from his inside pocket.

“Sam, could you check those books over there, there might be something useful?” he asked.

McCall understood his meaning, even if she didn’t like it: if she didn’t actually see him pick the lock, it never happened. Sam turned away and brushed a finger over the leather-bound books:
Law, History of the Law, Psychology
and numerous other volumes that would probably make her head hurt if she tried reading them.

She turned quickly as John let out a victorious ‘Yes!’, but she didn’t know whether to be impressed or scared at the speed with which he had completed the task.

“First time lucky?” she joked.

Steel shrugged and smiled as he packed the burglar’s tool back into his jacket. She walked round to see what he had discovered. Inside the drawer were a mass of papers, some of them letters, but one in particular stuck out. It read:

Ten years ago you destroyed my life like acid you Bitch now you will burn in Hell.

John Steel lifted the note by the corners as not to disturb any evidence—it was printed, using a computer, and the letters were large—72-sized Times Roman font.

“Well, that’s chilling and somewhat poetic,” Steel said.

McCall shot him a surprised look.

“In a bad murderous way that is,” Steel continued, trying to ameliorate his last statement.

McCall opened a clear evidence bag for him to place the document inside. As she sealed it he continued to look but found nothing of importance. There were a couple of receipts for a local restaurant and other places, that she was going to probably put on her expense account. He closed the drawer with an almost disappointed look on his face. He had hoped for more than just the note.

“We need to find out what she was working on ten years ago.” McCall and Steel spoke almost in unison.

Steel sat back in the chair and tapped the leather of its padded arms. “Does it strike you as odd that ‘ten years’ keeps cropping up? It wouldn’t surprise me if she had worked on a case connected with one of the escapees.” Steel saw the look on her face that told him that she had the same feeling.

“So who’s the girl?” McCall asked out of the blue, causing Steel to look up suddenly from his thoughts.

“Sorry, what?” He shook his head as if to bring himself back to reality.

“The girl in the hallway who you were talking to,” McCallpersevered. “Who is she?”

The English detective stood up and walked over to McCall. His features had become expressionless, as usual. “Ask me again after the case is done, will you?”

Sam nodded as if she was trying to understand, but he knew she wouldn’t be done with it—she would be on his back until she got an answer. The trouble was, he didn’t know who the girl was any more than she did. All he knew was that he had been tasked to keep her safe.

*

“So, Captain Brant, are you any closer to finding the escaped men?”

The Chief of Detectives’ voice was dry and calm. Emotionless, some would call it.

“Not yet,” Brant replied. “The FBI have put out their nets and pictures have gone across the board to every toll booth, gas station, train station, you name it, we have the word out.”

There was a slight pause from the other end of the line, as though the Chief was gathering his thoughts. “And the killer. Any leads yet?”

Brant became tired of the same question, but he knew he had to give him something. Since McCall’s return from the courthouse she had briefed Brant just on the off-chance of him getting such a call.

“Two of my best detectives are working on it now, they are following a lead as we speak. They think it is some sort of revenge killing.”

The pause came again, but this time Brant could swear he could hear tapping in the background, like fingernails rasping on something hard, like a desktop.

“Very good, Captain, but please keep me apprised of anything new, we all need to keep people happy, don’t we?”

Before Brant could answer, the phone gave out a dead tone as the call disconnected.

Brant looked over at McCall and Steel, who were sitting on a long couch that was at a back wall opposite Brant’s desk. After replacing the receiver he sat back in his chair.

“That was the Chief asking for updates again,” Brant told them. “I swear the man might as well get an office here—it would save the city a fortune on phone bills.”

McCall and Steel smiled, but they could see there was something eating at the captain.